Secretary Rubio ‘Parents, Not Schools, Should Raise Children’ – No Indoctrination, No Government in Education

At a Hannity town hall in Florida, Secretary Marco Rubio shared his views on education and the role of families. “It’s neither the government nor the schools’ job to raise children. They’re there to teach,” he said. “Parents raise children. Strong families raise children.” His message resonates with conservative and religious parents who believe schools should focus on academics and allow families to instill values in their children.

Rubio said he does not want the federal government to threaten schools. He argued that if the government wants to fund programs such as free school lunches, that is fine, but there should not be strings attached. “If you don’t let boys play in girls’ sports, we will take away your school lunch money,” he said, criticizing federal coercion.

“What we are doing at the federal level is ensuring that we are not bullying states into adopting policies that, at the end of the day, turn these places from schools into indoctrination centers,” Rubio added. “That’s actually the way Marxism works. They use the schools to indoctrinate and tell the kids, ‘Don’t listen to your parents. Listen to us.’ We cannot tolerate that. We won’t allow it, and that would destroy our country.”

Secretary Rubio’s education agenda centers on increasing competition through school choice and vocational training while aggressively removing Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion policies and “woke” ideologies from public institutions. Upon becoming Secretary of State in 2025, he reversed DEI policies within the State Department, replacing them with a focus on strict meritocracy and performance, declaring that “DEI is gone, forever.”

He also supported legislation to prevent socially progressive and divisive flags, including the LGBTQ+ pride flag, from being flown at U.S. embassies, insisting that the American flag alone represents the nation’s values abroad.

While serving in the Senate, Rubio pushed accreditation reform through the Fairness in Higher Education Accrediting Act, which sought to bar accrediting agencies from using DEI or affirmative-action policies as evaluation criteria.

He argued that colleges feel pressured to comply with “woke standards” to avoid financial ruin. He has accused the Biden administration of financing “racist curricula” and “radical gender ideology” in public schools, describing these movements as activism that threatens to turn the United States into a socialist state similar to Cuba or Venezuela.

Rubio supports the 2025 Executive Order facilitating the closure of the Department of Education. He has described the higher-education system as a cartel and proposed a new accreditation pathway that would allow low-cost, online providers to compete with traditional universities. He also co-sponsored the Right to Know Before You Go Act, requiring colleges to disclose graduation rates and expected post-graduation earnings so students can treat higher education as a financial investment.

A major pillar of his platform is expanding Career and Technical Education and apprenticeships so that high school students can graduate with certifications that lead directly to high-paying jobs. In late 2025, his State Department’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs assumed responsibility for several international education programs, including Fulbright-Hays, as part of the reorganization.

Cato Institute scholar Neal McCluskey supports Rubio’s position and outlines five reasons the Department of Education should be eliminated. He argues the department is unconstitutional because education is not an enumerated federal power and has historically been a state responsibility.

He contends it is ineffective, citing stagnant National Assessment of Educational Progress scores despite increased federal spending and initiatives such as No Child Left Behind and Common Core.

He further describes it as incompetent, pointing to failures in managing federal student-loan programs and repeated audit problems, unnecessary because education operated for centuries before its creation in 1980, and expensive due to staffing, operating costs, and the scale of federal loan programs. He concludes that a department he characterizes as unconstitutional, ineffective, incompetent, unnecessary, and costly should be dismantled.

Marco Rubio’s broader education vision emphasizes economic utility, individual freedom, and national competitiveness. He advocates personalized learning, stronger STEM and literacy programs, expanded dual enrollment, and competency-based models over what he calls “factory-style” education.

He famously quipped during a 2015 debate, “We need more welders and fewer philosophers,” underscoring his focus on workforce alignment. He promotes a federal-state partnership that preserves local control while supporting charter schools and tax-credit scholarships, arguing that competition strengthens the public system.

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