Can you name the three branches of our federal government? Only about a third of adults can. How about defining federalism? Which Constitutional amendment repealed an earlier one?
Helping people understand the constitutional principles of our nation is the goal of a new Kansas Policy Institute initiative: the Pearson Eby Liberty Academy (PELA). The new Liberty Academy is the fourth one operated by KPI, along with The Sentinel, Kansas Justice Institute, and the Kansas School Board Resource Center.
PELA is named in honor of KPI founders George Pearson and the late Martin Eby. The new organization was launched with a dinner in Wichita attended by an estimated crowd of about 200.
“I had a speech ready, but I think I’ll just go off-the-cuff”, Pearson began as he briefly recounted the origins of KPI in 1996 in his Wichita home flanked by KPI CEO Dave Trabert.
Through a lecture series with several events yearly throughout Kansas, PELA will:
- Provide a deep, academic grounding in the principles of liberty and constitutional governance
- Expose how these principles are applied, and too often misused, in modern policymaking
- Equip and encourage citizens to serve in local, state, and federal offices with these enduring values as their guide
Keynote speaker Kim Strassel, Columnist and Editorial Board Member of the Wall Street Journal, and frequent political analyst, told the gathering she was pleased to be able to talk about education:
“I don’t think I need to tell any of you out there. We do not have an education problem in this country. We have an education crisis,” she began. “And that education crisis is putting at risk far more than just our kids’ success and future.”
Strassel remembered her concerns about education were accelerated when her oldest child started school two decades ago:
“I remember being extremely aware, even back then, knowing, and this was in the early 2000s, that whatever school I sent him and all my other children to, that no matter how good it looked on paper, they were unlikely to get the education, that they really needed, the skills that they really needed, to succeed.”
Strassel related a humorous story about her invention of “Mom School”, which her kids “attended” after coming home from their regular school day.
“I made up my vision to teach them all the things that I thought that they wouldn’t get in school. We did geography — American geography, world geography. We did the history of this country, including studying those “privileged white members” that some of us referred to as The Founders. We read Supreme Court cases. We read the literary classics. We did lessons on how to keep a budget.
“I know many of you in this crowd will appreciate my favorite part of ‘Mom School’ were all the lessons I gave them, that they didn’t know were part of ‘Mom School.’ There were lessons in the importance of free markets and free people. So, for instance, every evening, all of my children were required to give their mother a piece of their dessert, which is something I called then a ‘Mom Tax’, which led exactly as I hoped, to many fruitful discussions about property rights and confiscation and a risk of unjust taxation, and the general child view that taxes were bad.
“We also had constant discussions at home about our own home’s system of government. ?And how that compared to other systems of government. The Strassel Household was a benevolent dictatorship. in which the children were allowed food and water and occasional access to the Disney Channel, but in which they were not afforded any votes or unfettered free speech, or any form of political opposition. And of course, there was my rule, that I think all households with children should have, which was that no one, under any circumstances, was ever allowed to use the “F” word by which I mean ‘Fair.’”
And her children’s opinion of “Mom School”?
“They hated it. You ask them to define child abuse, and they will say “Mom School”, she admitted.
But Strassel said her unique approach was born of necessity:
“I felt so compelled to do this. Successive generations of Americans, probably right up to my parents’ generation, were generally content in the belief that when they sent their kids off to school, they were going to learn something more than what their parents could teach them. That was part of the basic social contract. Pay your taxes, and one of the most basic things you got in return was that the government provided education of some general quality. No one feels confident in that anymore, unless you are at the highest elite of elite, where you are sending your kids to one of the best schools. People do not feel that is something that happens any more in this country. And it’s only become worse in the 20 years since I was worried about this with my children.
“Back then, the worry was that they would not learn what they needed to learn. Today, parents not only don’t trust that their schools are going to teach their kids the things that they need to know, they actively fear what their kids are being taught in these schools. Instead of learning basic skills, like reading and math, they are instead being indoctrinated with rewrites of history, with messages designed to divide us as a country.”
Strassel mentioned the recent results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), often referred to as The Nation’s Report Card:
“In 2024, 25% of our nation’s 12th graders were below basic in math, 32% performed below basic in reading. These were on track as equally dismal with the reports that we got from fourth-grade and eighth-grade testing, which came out earlier this year. And meanwhile, these scores in math, reading, and science were already dismal; it turns out, we’re also below what they were just three to six years ago. So not only are we in a terrible spot, we’re going the wrong direction.”
To illustrate our declining curricula, test scores, and readiness for college or career, Strassel briefly discussed the 1912 8th Grade Examination for Bullitt County, Kentucky, students linked here.
Strassell urges Congress, courts, and Executive branch to follow constitutional principles
The 30-year veteran of Washington concluded by saying the education to be offered by PELA is as badly needed in the halls of Congress and the White House, as it is in grade school classrooms, as evidenced by recent Supreme Court cases referring to the constitutionality of laws passed by legislators and executive orders issued at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue:
“Among them, I would mention West Virginia vs EPA, which the Supreme Court laid out the Major Questions Doctrine, saying that bureaucracies could not create things that Congress had not specifically spelled out. Loper Bright Enterprises v Raimondo, which finally ended Chevron Deference, so the courts no longer defer to the executive. All the gerrymandering cases we’ve seen, most of the rulings have ordered that these disputes need to be settled by an actual elected legislature. The cases we have striking down Joe Biden’s illegal forgiveness of student loans across the country. The Dobbs decision, dealing with abortion, returning the question of abortion to state legislatures all across the country. All of these cases have a common theme:. There is a message from the Supreme Court in every one of them, which is, ‘stop making us do your job.’
“Congress, write legislation. Then clearly define what is or is not allowed. Be specific. Stop having 20-year-old staffers filling in the blanks.. Stop writing omnibus bills at the end of the year, which compile all kinds of bills that no one has read.
“Do your job, Mr. President, stop proceeding along the notion that Congress isn’t doing its job, and it isn’t passing legislation, that that entitles you to then run the entire country by executive fiat. Nothing in the Constitution said that.
“Step up to the plate, state legislatures, grapple with problems that are given to you under federalism. And stop kicking the can to Washington to come in and take over more of our governance.
“And by the way, lower court judges: Stop pretending you are the executive and legislative branches. You are not. You do not get to issue nationwide injunctions and hold them high over all of the other branches of government.
“The fact that the Supreme Court has to be schooling all government across the country on their basic duties and obligations says something about where we are right now.
“I kid you not, there are members of Congress right now who do not know there is a difference between the deficit and the debt. And you think I’m joking. That is true.”
The answers to our mini-quiz at the beginning of this story:
*The three branches of government are the Executive (The President), the Legislative (The Congress) and the Judicial (Federal Courts, including the Supreme Court)
*Federalism is made up of the duties of the national and state governments and the interaction between them
*The 21st Amendment in 1933 legalizing alcohol again repealed the 18th Amendment ratified in 1919, the so-called Prohibition Amendment.”
PELA will offer its first lecture on constitutional principles later this year.
