The United Nations and its “human rights” bureaucracy are unhappy with American education — especially President Trump’s policies and proposals.
Instead of local or parental control, the UN is pushing for radical changes: more federal power, less educational choice, government oversight of private schools, and the promotion of controversial ideological content — all at taxpayer expense. It also wants education globally redefined as a UN-backed “human right.”
The UN’s latest attack on U.S. education, parental rights, state and national sovereignty, and the Constitution came in the form of an investigation and “country report” to the UN’s dictator-dominated “Human Rights Council.” The outfit, which regularly praises mass-murdering regimes while condemning Western nations, frequently targets the God-given rights of Americans enshrined in the U.S. Constitution.
Among other demands on education, the United States needs more federal involvement in and oversight of government and private schools, not less, argued the senior UN official in her report last month following an in-depth investigation of U.S. education policy.
Blasting Trump’s efforts to shut down or at least reduce the power of the U.S. Department of Education, the UN bureaucrat claimed they would hurt low-income students, weaken “civil rights,” disrupt “higher learning,” and produce other alleged horrors.
“The loss of federal oversight could deepen inequities, harm marginalized students and undermine social mobility,” argued UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Education Farida Shaheed, the radical Pakistani activist who investigated the United States.
The final report does acknowledge that under the U.S. Constitution’s Tenth Amendment, education is not a federal responsibility. However, it frames that as a problem. And it then proceeds to claim that the U.S. government is obligated under “international law” to impose the UN’s agenda on education nationwide anyway.
Aside from blasting what remains of local control and decentralized policymaking on education across America, the UN special rapporteur also called for more ideologically driven mandates. The goal: Make sure children learn what the UN thinks they must learn.
States including Florida and Texas were singled out for passing laws trying to protect students — especially young students — from indoctrination with Marxist-inspired critical race theory; LGBT propaganda; diversity, equity, and inclusion; gender ideology; and sexually explicit material.
Shaheed claimed the laws produce a “chilling effect” undermining “inclusive education” — a euphemism for grotesque “sex education,” racial collectivism, and gender propaganda.
“Censorship laws restricting classroom discussions on race, gender identity and other ‘divisive concepts’ limit students’ access to critical knowledge,” she claimed, blasting state efforts to protect children from racial, sex, and gender indoctrination as “censorship.”
State and district policies keeping porn and other obscene material out of tax-funded schools are supposedly hurting children, too. “Book bans and content restrictions silence marginalized voices, preventing students from accessing a full and accurate understanding of history and social dynamics,” claimed the radical UN activist.
It is all part of the broader UN push to standardize education globally. As outlined in UN agreements going back decades, one of its primary goals is to shift the attitudes and values of children toward UN-approved beliefs.
In an interview she did last year with the UN’s education agency, Shaheed brazenly called for governments to control what is taught. There is a need for governments to ensure “that standards are outlined that all private sector providers must adhere to in accordance with the right to quality education.”
Ultimately, education must teach children to become so-called sustainable global citizens, UN leaders and agreements have been saying openly since at least the 1990s. Agenda 21 and the 2030 Agenda Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) both state that clearly.
The UN Human Rights Council has long advocated for hijacking control over private schools, too. In fact, a decade ago, the dictator-controlled outfit claimed governments have an obligation to monitor and regulate all non-government education, even imposing government standards on all.
The supposedly secular Pakistani activist-turned-UN “expert,” whose last name means martyr who dies for Allah or Islam, also slammed government efforts to rein in college campuses’ violent “pro-Palestine” riots funded by billionaire extremist George Soros and other insiders. Among other concerns, she denounced “disproportionate disciplinary actions.”
When it came to the escalating attacks against Jews, Shaheed claimed not to see it. “I do not know antisemitism is actually on the rise,” she responded when asked if she would be investigating one of the major issues that caused Trump to take on Harvard, Columbia, and other once-prestigious universities.
She expressed deep concerns over Trump’s efforts to protect taxpayers and students from rogue universities feasting on public money, too. Under the guise of “respecting institutional autonomy,” the UN rapporteur claimed the U.S. government is obligated to do what she said.
“While the Harvard case has drawn global attention, it is emblematic of a much broader pattern of coercive assault on academic freedom and institutional autonomy: from book and subject bans in schools to discriminatory censorship laws and punitive measures against universities, their students and faculty,” Shaheed said.
Blasting what she described as “criminalization” of student protests, Shaheed suggested that international legal mechanisms are required to override American policies developed by Americans. “The Special Rapporteur … has consistently expressed her serious concerns in allegation letters sent to the Government of the United States,” the report says.
Among the most alarming demands by the UN rapporteur: a redefinition of education itself to bring American schools into line with the UN’s vision on “human rights” and “equity.” Those two loaded terms mean something very different to the UN than the traditional understanding held by Americans, of course.
“The Special Rapporteur strongly encourages the federal Government and all States to consider expressly recognizing education as a fundamental human right for everyone,” Shaheed said.
By contrast, consider the definition of education in the 1828 Webster’s dictionary, the first American dictionary. “To give children a good education in manners, arts and science, is important; to give them a religious education is indispensable; and an immense responsibility rests on parents and guardians who neglect these duties,” it says. (Emphasis added.)
For virtually all of human history, education of children has been a responsibility of parents. But under the UN’s agenda, indoctrination pretending to be education becomes a human right enforced at the barrel of a government gun.
“The right to education requires States [governments] to deliver free, quality, public education for everyone,” the UN’s final report declared (emphasis added). That is clearly an ominous call for forcing all children into federalized government “education” based on UN principles while marginalizing alternatives to government-controlled schools.
As stated above, the UN’s view of “quality education” would differ significantly from the views of everyday Americans. As the UN’s own agreements make clear, it believes children should learn globalism, environmentalism, feminism, multiculturalism, and even UN-approved “spirituality.”
Perhaps even more significant is the total incompatibility of the UN’s understanding of “human rights” with the traditional American and Christian understanding of God-given rights from the Creator. Under the biblical understanding and the American system of government, unalienable rights pre-exist government. Indeed, governments exist to protect those rights, not grant them.
Under the UN’s bizarre version of “human rights,” however, rights are granted by governments and can be restricted or abolished at will. Adding insult to injury, those fake government-imposed “rights” may “in no case be exercised contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations,” according to Article 29 of the UN’s “Universal Declaration of Human Rights.”
In other words, the UN’s supposed human rights are the revocable, government-granted privileges of people to take from their neighbors by force, instead of the unalienable God-given rights protected by the Constitution.
Obviously, the two views on human rights are not just different — they are fundamentally incompatible with each other at a basic level. The fact that some of the world’s most brutal communist and Islamist dictatorships sit proudly on the UN Human Rights Council exemplifies the conflict well.
The implications of this redefinition of education as a UN-granted human right are enormous. Consider Article 26 of the controversial UN “Universal Declaration of Human Rights,” the organization’s foundational “human rights” document. It states clearly that education must be “compulsory” and that it “shall further the activities of the United Nations.”
In short, if parents, private schools, tutors, and even government schools are not promoting the UN’s agenda in “education,” they are depriving children of their “human rights” enshrined in UN agreements. Depriving children of their UN-defined human rights is considered to be a serious offense.
The UN rapporteur has been very explicit on the issue of indoctrinating children with UN-backed ideologies. “There is a growing understanding of the need to embed sustainable development values … in educational processes, and efforts are being made to incorporate sustainable development principles into educational curricula to prepare students for the challenges of the future,” she said in a Q&A with the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) last year.
Another major call in Shaheed’s repot is for federal-level reforms such as ratifying and complying with more international treaties. Among those recommended are the highly controversial UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR).
Those agreements, which flagrantly violate the U.S. Constitution, have been cited by governments to assign a government bureaucrat to oversee every child from birth to adulthood. They also mandate that all decisions involving children be made in the “best interest” of the children — as defined by government, rather than parents.
If adopted, the UN rapporteur’s recommendations would bring U.S. education policy even closer to the ultimate goal of UN-dictated and -monitored global standards. Naturally, this would involve bypassing not just local and parental authority, but even state and national control.
In her comments to UNESCO, Shaheed also claimed the “evolving right to education” means reinterpreting and developing even more treaties, “international jurisprudence,” and “soft law instruments” at the global level. Citing the “Abidjan Principles on the human rights obligations of States to provide public education,” for instance, she said governments must also “regulate private involvement in education” and “limit undue influence of private actors.”
In the UN’s push to reframe government education as a human right that must be enforced by authorities, parental rights, state sovereignty, and academic freedom are all in the crosshairs. The UN no longer even hides the agenda anymore. And as the Pakistani UN rapporteur explained, the U.S. government has made major progress in that direction already. But far more work remains for U.S. education to fully comply with the UN’s vision.
The human rights report on education represents merely the latest salvo in a globalist war on what remains of not just local control over education, but what little remains of traditional education itself. Instead, the UN is openly pushing for a centralized indoctrination system based on ideologically driven mandates in compliance with UN agreements — all under the guise of “human rights,” “quality,” and “equity.”
The special rapporteur’s proposals, if implemented, would fully align U.S. education with the radical agenda of the UN and UNESCO. It would also further the transformation of American classrooms into globalist indoctrination centers and dismantle the very foundations of American liberty and self-government — and not just in education.
The UN report makes that clear. Without the “systemic reforms to funding, governance and assessment” called for by the global outfit, there will be an erosion of the “role of education” in fostering what Shaheed refers to as “social progress.” The UN’s vision of “social progress,” like its understanding of “human rights,” is entirely incompatible with traditional Christian and American values and jurisprudence.
Because culture and politics are both downstream from education, the UN’s vision for restructuring education will — if it succeeds — further the fundamental transformation of every element of American society that has been accelerating for decades. The same changes are being sought worldwide. For liberty and Christian civilization to survive, it is essential to stop this diabolical agenda and dismantle the institutions behind it.
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