Dick DeVos' Strategy for Privatizing Public Schools

"We need to be cautious about talking too much about these activities. Many of the activities and the political work that needs to go on will go on at the grass roots. It will go on quietly and it will go on in the form that often politics is done - one person at a time, speaking to another person in privacy. And so these issues will not be, maybe, as visible or as noteworthy, but they will set a framework within states for the possibility of action on education reform issues."

| Strategy for Privatizing Public Schools Spelled out by Dick DeVos in 2002 Heritage Foundation Speech

Dick DeVos presenting his covert ideas for the privatization of public education during a 2002 speech to the Heritage Foundation.  Much of what he suggested is playing out today under the guise of so-called "choice," using tactics such as the following designed solely to turn everyday citizens against their public schools. He takes advantage of a growing anti-government mood by advocating an Orwellian strategy of twisting language to spread the fire:

"Communicate the message that school choice works and helps public schools." DeVos then qualifies his statement by asking the audience to quit using the term public schools and use "government schools" or "government-run schools" instead.

Then he sits quietly in Ada or any one of his other millions-of-dollars mansions working behind the scenes just as he suggested until he reaches his agenda: Private schools for some financed by public dollars and disintegrating, segregated, impoverished urban schools for the rest. In the meantime, more public money will flow into the coffers of his corporate friends running to the "rescue" of those poor kids "stuck" in their "government" schools.

And most citizens sit idly by and watch as their communities are led to the abyss.