Pete Hegseth has pushed for years to steep American education in patriotic principles and Christian theology — and he could implement that vision for thousands of military families if he’s confirmed to lead the Defense Department.
Tucked inside the Pentagon’s nearly $900 billion-per-year bureaucracy is a network of 161 schools in 11 countries, seven states, Guam and Puerto Rico. The Department of Defense Education Activity agency educates some 67,000 children of active-duty military and civilian service members. And unlike public school systems, which are driven largely by state and local policy, the DODEA is a high-profile example of a federally run education program conservatives have longed to restructure.
If Hegseth weathers allegations of sexual assault and excessive drinking and gets confirmed, he will have the opportunity to bend a key facet of the education system in his image. It would also be a way to resurrect the “patriotic education” blueprint Trump advanced during his first term and set an example Republican-led states can follow.
“The federal government does have control over one major school district’s curriculum — that can be a model for our nation,” said Max Eden, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute who is influential in conservative education circles that are pushing to revamp the Defense Department’s schools.
“It could be huge. It could change the character of American education beyond DODEA, but for half the country.”
For Hegseth, Defense Department schools would be a new front for his yearslong campaign on American education. In his 2022 book, “Battle for the American Mind,” Hegseth and his co-author David Goodwin, president of the Association of Classical Christian Schools, discuss abandoning the country’s education models.
Hegseth, through a representative, declined to comment. Goodwin also declined to comment. “I believe he’s a good man. I believe God will use him,” Goodwin wrote this month in a Substack post responding to the allegations facing Hegseth.
The nominee has described the country’s public and private education system as infected with leftist ideology. Hegseth declared the government must purge critical race theory (and diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives) from military academies.
He has further urged families to abandon traditional schools in favor of classical education programs that are infused with great works of literature, plus the study of Greek, Latin and Christian beliefs intertwined with the American myth.
“Get your kids out of government school systems right now if you can,” Hegseth said in November during an interview recorded with Shawn Ryan, a former Navy SEAL and conservative media personality. “Save money. Move. Get a second job. Don’t take the vacation. Sell the boat. Whatever. Drive for Uber. … Because it’s about saving your kid right now.”
A new defense secretary would have power to install a new chain of command over the military school system, and use federal contracts to marshal consultants who write new curriculum, testing and teacher training standards.
Hegseth, an Army veteran of deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan, could enact the principles of the 1776 Commission that Trump created four years ago to promote “patriotic education” and counter lessons that he says divide Americans over race and slavery.
In his 2022 book, Hegseth outlines the politics and policy of a conservative fight against public education and makes the case for more instruction on the fundamentals of Christian theology.
“Marxist teachers colleges pump out ideological teachers, left-wing teachers unions reign supreme, PTAs are neutered, school boards scared fully ‘woke.’ Almost no school — public or private — seems safe. Conservatives and Christians are surrounded,” Hegseth and Goodwin wrote.
They argued political progressives and Marxists have conspired since the writing of the Pledge of Allegiance to oust Christianity from public education. They described a disease of wokeism that permeated Ivy League institutions and public universities. Curriculum, teacher training, and certification processes for the vast majority of K-12 schools are fully under the influence of a leftist agenda, they said.
But in DODEA, Hegseth would be targeting a well-regarded school system whose students outperform the rest of the country on federal standardized tests.
One education think tank labeled the system as “The Relentless Improver” earlier this year, in a report that outlined the school’s deep historical roots and lauded “extraordinarily disciplined, patient, and systematic approach to school improvement.”
The school system has served as a federal laboratory for universal pre-kindergarten programs promoted by the Biden administration. But it’s also been a recurring target for conservative politics.
The House passed a $895 billion defense bill this month that bans the Pentagon from endorsing critical race theory in any DOD-run academic institutions. Prior congressional proposals have sought to prohibit funding from being used to enforce Covid-19 mask mandates or mandate vaccines as a prerequisite for attending Defense Department schools.
Conservative lawmakers and think tanks such as the Claremont Institute have further accused the agency of peddling “left-wing” ideology to students.
“At the end of the day, regardless of anything that happens externally to our schools, we will continue to remain focused on providing a world class education and supporting our military families,” DODEA spokesperson Will Griffin said.
“We continue to remain focused on serving military connected students and their families. Military connected students are at the heart of everything we do,” he said.
The agency declined to comment on potential cabinet appointments, policy changes, and conservative politics.
“If I were advising Hegseth, I would say let’s transform DODEA into a classical school network and let’s get away from the DEI, get away from the gender stuff,” Eden said. “And let’s give our military service members a world-class education that American parents are scrambling to get into but they can’t because we’re not there yet as a country.”
Those ideas could then take hold across the country.
“What I could see unfolding politically is a patriotic curriculum inspired by Trump’s 1776 Commission — when it’s fully fleshed out and developed — is implemented in the DODEA schools,” Eden said. “And spreads state by state until half of American states, because I don’t expect blue states to like this very much, have a patriotic curriculum.”
