The Settler's Manifesto: How the Heritage Foundation Plans to Colonise Public Education

Introduction

The new Education Secretary has made no secret of her ultimate goal: to put herself out of a job by dismantling the Department of Education. Her recent appointment is not an accident, nor is it simply the latest iteration of the long-running conservative war on public schools. It is a direct and deliberate move in a broader campaign orchestrated by the Heritage Foundation, whose fingerprints can be found all over Agenda 47, Project 2025, and now The Phoenix Declaration. These are not disparate initiatives but parts of a single, cohesive strategy—one that seeks to remake education in the image of the far-right, stripping it of pluralism, critical thought, and any semblance of democratic purpose. The declaration presents itself as a vision for American schooling, but it is, at its core, a settler’s manifesto. It seeks to settle public education, to impose control where it is not welcome, to overwrite existing systems with an ideological project that serves only those who seek power. It is a statement of conquest, framed as reform, and its aim is clear: to turn the classroom into a battleground where history, identity, and truth itself are contested on their terms.

This is not just about education policy. It is the continuation of a colonial logic that has shaped the United States from its inception—only now, instead of expanding outward, it turns inward, reshaping the nation’s institutions to fit a rigid, exclusionary order. The United States is a multi-ethnic, multi-lingual society, yet this manifesto seeks to erase that reality, to impose a singular vision under the guise of “cultural transmission.” It is a project of forced assimilation, of ideological purification, of the same Calvinist, white nationalist framework that justified the country’s founding atrocities. They have merely swapped the frontier for the classroom, the rifle for the policy document. This is not an education agenda. It is a blueprint for control.

The Christian Nationalist Roots of the Phoenix Declaration

Reading The Phoenix Declaration as a foreigner, the first thing that stands out is not just the unmistakable American exceptionalism, but the particular brand of Christian nationalism that underpins every word. It is not simply a vision for education but a sermon, steeped in the moral certainties of a far-right Calvinist tradition that has long shaped the country’s most violent and exclusionary policies. It carries with it the weight of Manifest Destiny, the same rigid theological determinism that justified the forced conversion of Indigenous children, the enslavement of millions, and the relentless expansion of settler colonialism. The document does not seek to educate; it seeks to impose. It does not seek to teach; it seeks to indoctrinate. And it does not welcome the complexities of a diverse, pluralistic society—it seeks to flatten them, to erase them, to declare that there is only one truth, one culture, one legitimate way of being.

That idea of “objective truth” is woven throughout the manifesto, framed as a noble commitment to clarity and intellectual rigor. But this is not an embrace of facts; it is a rejection of anything that contradicts conservative dogma. In this framework, history is not a contested, evolving field of study—it is a weapon, a tool to reinforce the righteous narrative of Western supremacy. Science is not an inquiry into the natural world—it is a battleground, where climate denial, creationism, and rigid gender essentialism must be defended at all costs. The so-called “transmission of culture” is another euphemism, a mechanism for erasure, ensuring that only one worldview is seen as legitimate whilst all others are treated as deviations. It is a form of epistemic violence, the forced replacement of reality with dogma, leaving no room for dissent or nuance.

The fixation on “parental rights” is yet another tool in this arsenal, framed as a defence of family autonomy but, in practice, a means of authoritarian control. Parents, under this model, are granted the power not to protect their children, but to suppress them—to determine what they are allowed to learn, what histories they are permitted to access, and which aspects of their own identities are deemed unacceptable. It is the latest evolution of an old idea, one that has long justified the silencing of marginalised voices. Under this framework, it is not only the histories of Black, Indigenous, and immigrant communities that are at risk—it is the erasure of LGBTQ+ students, neurodivergent students, students who do not conform to the rigid categories of gender, race, and faith that this ideology demands. The very existence of difference is treated as a threat.

This project is not new. Christian nationalism has always been a tool for justifying state violence, whether in the form of colonial expansion, slavery, or the boarding school system designed to forcibly assimilate Indigenous children. It has long positioned itself as a civilising force while acting as an engine of suppression and brutality. The Phoenix Declaration is simply its latest manifestation, dressed in the language of education reform but serving the same ultimate purpose: to enforce submission to an ideological order that demands compliance, punishes deviation, and refuses to recognise the humanity of those who fall outside its narrow confines. It is not about preserving culture. It is about enforcing dominance.

Case Study: The Washington Speech and Its Use as a Founding Myth

The Phoenix Declaration and its companion documents from the Heritage Foundation hold up George Washington’s 1790 speech to Congress as a foundational text, an exemplar of virtue and statesmanship. It is prominently placed in their Back to Basics vision for education, framed as a guiding document that embodies the principles they wish to instil in students: duty, patriotism, and a righteous commitment to securing the nation. But as with all settler-colonial mythmaking, what is left unsaid is just as important as what is highlighted. Washington’s words were not a simple call for unity or national stability—they were a demand for resources to reinforce an expansionist project already in motion. His reference to securing the frontier was not about noble defence; it was about deploying military force to protect settlers from the Indigenous resistance that naturally arose when their land was stolen.

The audience for this speech was not the nation as a whole. It was not a democratic appeal to all those who lived within the country’s borders. It was delivered to the first U.S. Congress—an assembly of white, landowning men who had a vested interest in expansion and in maintaining the power structure they had created for themselves. When Washington spoke of “security,” he was speaking of securing their property, their investments, their dominance. When he referenced the need for a strong national credit, it was a plea to ensure that the country remained financially capable of funding its military ambitions. There is no ambiguity here—this was a speech about maintaining control over a settler-colonial state that had no intention of coexisting peacefully with those it had displaced.

Yet in the vision of education presented by Heritage, none of this context would be permitted. This type of historical critique—the act of reading Washington’s words not as a sacred text, but as a political document written to justify violence—would be labelled as ideological subversion. Under the Phoenix Declaration, such analysis would be considered an attack on national identity, an affront to the “objective truth” they claim to uphold. Their version of history is not a discipline to be explored but a set of conclusions to be memorised and recited. There is no room for questioning the motives of the Founders, no space to examine the material consequences of their policies, no acknowledgment that their vision of the nation was built upon exclusion and exploitation.

This is why The Phoenix Declaration exists. It is not simply about shaping education—it is about policing the boundaries of acceptable thought. It is about ensuring that only one version of history is told, one that reinforces the dominance of those who have always held power. Washington’s speech, stripped of context and repurposed as a moral lesson, is emblematic of this project. It is a case study in how history is weaponised, how the erasure of violence is framed as patriotism, and how the act of questioning is transformed into a punishable offence. In their vision for American education, there is no space for critique—only reverence.

The New Colonialism: Imposing the Manifesto by Force

The Phoenix Declaration is not just an ideological roadmap—it is a blueprint for conquest. And like all settler projects, it will not be implemented through consent but through force. States like California, with their explicit commitment to public education, multilingualism, and inclusive curricula, will not adopt this framework willingly. Instead, the federal government, under its new right-wing regime, will wield its most effective weapon: funding. Withholding federal education funds has long been a tool of compliance, used to strong-arm states into adopting policies they would otherwise reject. Now, it will be deployed to impose a Christian nationalist vision of education, threatening to strip resources from public schools unless they conform to the rigid, exclusionary framework dictated by Heritage and its allies.

This effort is already underway. Trump’s recent executive order designating English as the official language of the U.S. is not a benign administrative act—it is an open attack on multilingualism, an attempt to cement white, Christian, monolingual identity as the only legitimate cultural framework in America. This aligns perfectly with the Phoenix Declaration’s demand for “cultural transmission,” which is nothing more than a euphemism for forced assimilation. In this vision, the United States is not a multilingual, multi-ethnic society but a single cultural entity, defined by Western and Judeo-Christian traditions, in which anything outside of that framework is treated as foreign, deviant, or subversive. It is not enough to control the curriculum—language itself must be policed, and the very ability to think in non-English terms must be stamped out.

But beyond its moral bankruptcy, this project is fundamentally anti-functional. The U.S. does not, and cannot, operate as a monoculture. Its economy, its social fabric, its very survival depends on multilingualism, cultural exchange, and the ability to navigate difference. The right’s insistence on imposing a singular identity onto a country that has never been singular is not just an attack on justice—it is an act of self-destruction. In a world that is increasingly interconnected, where economic and diplomatic success relies on linguistic and cultural fluency, this attempt to erase diversity will not strengthen the country. It will weaken it. The fantasy of a homogenous America, taught in schools as a noble ideal, is not just oppressive. It is a liability.

At the same time, the imposition of this agenda is not limited to curricula—it extends to the teachers themselves. Across red states, new laws and policies seek to purge educators whose identities or beliefs do not align with conservative orthodoxy. In Florida, the “anti-woke” agenda has driven teachers out of the profession for the crime of acknowledging systemic racism (the banning of AP African-American Studies) or discussing LGBTQ+ identities (the “don’t say gay” bill). In Oklahoma, merely mentioning Karl Marx or teaching about climate change is enough to put teachers under scrutiny, or even lose their teaching license. These policies are not about protecting students—they are about controlling them. By criminalising teachers who bring critical thought into the classroom, the right ensures that only those willing to serve as enforcers of the new order remain. This is not education. It is ideological purification.

This is settler colonialism turned inward—neo-colonialism applied not to a distant frontier, but to the very institutions that shape the country’s future. Where settler colonialism sought to erase Indigenous peoples and cultures at “the frontier” of the new country to make way for white expansion, this new project seeks to erase difference within the United States itself. It is the imposition of a white Christian nationalist framework onto a nation that has never fit that mold, an attempt to eliminate plurality not through persuasion, but through coercion. The goal is not to teach students how to think—it is to tell them what to believe. And the means of achieving this are not democratic—they are authoritarian, backed by economic blackmail, legal threats, and the removal of all who refuse to comply.

This is not a war for education. It is a war for reality itself.

Final thoughts …

This was never just about schools. It was never about “fixing” education or improving outcomes for students. It was always about control—who controls knowledge, who controls history, who gets to decide which identities and perspectives are valid, and which must be erased. 1984 and The Handmaid’s Tale were meant to be warnings, not blueprints, yet here we are, watching the right-wing machine systematically dismantle public education, rewriting the past to justify its grip on the present. The goal is not to teach, but to dictate. Not to foster inquiry, but to suppress it. They understand that education shapes how people see the world, and they want to ensure that young people see only what they allow, think only what they prescribe, and never learn how to question the foundations of power itself.

And yet, for all its cruelty and ambition, this project will not succeed. It cannot. No matter how much force is applied, diversity will not be erased. People will always resist. Culture will continue to evolve beyond their grasp. Knowledge will slip through the cracks, as it always has under authoritarian regimes. The irony, as someone who grew up in the shadow of the Cold War, is that this is exactly what the far-right always accused the Soviets of doing—controlling education, suppressing dissent, rewriting history to fit a rigid ideological framework. We were told, relentlessly, that the great sin of communism was its enforced conformity, its erasure of inconvenient truths, its tight grip over what could and could not be said. And yet, when the USSR collapsed, we learned just how much of that was U.S. propaganda—half-truths and exaggerations used to justify endless war. What we see now is the truth behind that projection: they were not warning us about what the Soviets were doing. They were revealing what they always wanted to do themselves. And now, with full control of the state, they are doing it.

But the cost of this authoritarian project will be profound. Students will suffer, stripped of an education that prepares them for the world as it is, rather than the fantasy world the right demands they inhabit. Educators will be driven out of the profession, replaced by ideological enforcers who prioritise obedience over critical thought. Communities will be fractured as federal coercion forces states to choose between funding and principles. The ripple effects will not be contained to the classroom—they will seep into every facet of society, deepening inequality, widening the gap between those with access to knowledge and those left in ignorance, and further entrenching the rule of the powerful over the powerless. In the end, it is not education they are trying to reshape—it is reality itself.

This is not happening in isolation. It is part of the broader enshitification of everything—the deliberate degradation of once-public, once-functional systems, the looting of the public purse under the guise of reform. Destroying public education isn’t a side effect; it is the point. The same forces pushing this agenda are the ones turning housing into an investment scheme, healthcare into a privilege, and basic survival into an ever-tightening noose of debt and insecurity. Heritage and its allies do not want better schools. They want the public school system to fail, to be so underfunded, so politically hobbled, that private institutions—religious schools, for-profit charters, ideological training camps—become the only option. This is just one play in a much larger game: the dismantling of the public sphere itself.

The question, then, is what comes next. Recognising the true nature of these policies is the first step—seeing them for what they are, rather than the rhetoric they hide behind. Fighting back means refusing to cede this ground, through state-level resistance, community organising, and direct action. It means rejecting the premise that these people have any legitimate claim to shape the future of education. And above all, it means understanding that this is not just about what is taught in schools. This is about democracy itself. About whether knowledge remains a public good or becomes a tool of indoctrination. About whether pluralism survives or is stamped out in favour of ideological purity. And for some of us—autistic, trans, queer, disabled—it is about survival itself. Because when they rewrite history, they do not just erase ideas. They erase people. And if we do nothing, we will be next.