BORDERLANDS

v.25, i. 03.21. khesanh068

Introduction

     The landmark act signed into law by President Carter didn’t exist in a bubble before then. The new bureau had been a part of a larger bureaucracy which was inadequate to serve the needs of the rapidly expanding educational system and its historic achievements in civil rights and minority admissions. Complicated by the need to keep up with the Soviet Union and eventually, with war on the horizon fostering student unrest, Congress set about to split up the bureaucracy and form what came to be known as the Department of Education in 1979.

(Image credit: Khe Sanh Combat Base,

https://dpaa-mil.sites.crmforce.mil/dpaaFamWebInKheSanh)

Capsules

     Background on the creation of the Department of Education can be recovered through synthetic intelligence (AI) search queries.

(Begin Perplexity-AI)

which department was department of education in before it became separate

    Speaking on the House floor as recorded in the Congressional Record for 11 June 1969, Rep. JD Waggonner (D-LA) made a prophetic statement under the subtitle “Amending the Higher Education Act of 1965,” which would have consequences for years to come.

(Begin Congressional Record)

     “Education, for example, was confronted in the 1950’s with the challenge of competition from the Russians. The Russians beat us to the punch because of a different emphasis, and launched the first manmade satellite on the top of Sputnik I. People became alarmed all over this country and started asking questions. What permitted the Russians to do something we could not do?”

     (In consideration for an amendment to the Higher Education Act, the need to counter campus unrest was the priority. Waggonner, in a previous paragraph, stated.)

    “They say it is surprising that this anarchy exists. I do not know where the administrators of these colleges and universities have been in recent years when they now express surprise at the crisis which exists on the campuses of our country. I said at least 50 times during the Cuban missile crisis in 1962 that the tragedy of that crisis would not be that we had a confrontation with the Russians because they placed intercontinental ballistic missiles on Cuban soil, but that the long road of history would allow us to point a finger at that moment of crisis and identify it as the beginning of a movement which would prove tragic to education in this country.” 

     “In October 1965 I asked this Congress by resolution to investigate the Students for a Democratic Society. Few then were aware of who these people were and what they were attempting to do. They said then, as they have said in even more definite terms since then, that they were going to destroy education in this country.”

(Congressional Record, https://www.congress.gov/bound-congressional-record/1969/06/11/115/house-section/article/15409-15466, page 15440)

(End Congressional Record)

Notes

     The details of the battle are included in the 9th Marines command chronology located at Records of War.

     The congressperson called out college students for, “they said in no uncertain way they were on the other side.”

     But it wasn’t the Russians the students were rallying against; it was the war in Vietnam. The prospect of atomic bombs raining down on the campus from Cuba was science fiction compared to KheSanh, being pulled from the college classroom or from the protest out on the quad and fitted into an army uniform to be shipped out to the DMZ. 

     Who was behind the “anarchy” on campus? Rep. Waggonner disagreed with those who blamed outside agitators, stating, “—the anarchy which prevails on these campuses is not being brought to these campuses but is being taught on these campuses by some.”

     Thus, the seeds were sown, even after an already tumultuous decade with desegregation and “racial balance” the priority for the federal government, to reign in protests, and those on, or off, campus who promoted it. The need for a more centralized bureau of education, with a direct voice to the White House, gradually evolved from a rather innocuous, but incredibly historic, event related to education. Sputnik.

Vietnam

(Begin Perplexity-AI)

vietnam october 1965

     “On October 3, 1965, Company M, 3d Battalion, 9th Marine Regiment suffered a devastating ambush by Viet Cong fighters in Quang Nam Province. The eight-hour firefight resulted in 13 Marine casualties, one of the costliest days for U.S. forces at that point in the war.”

https://www.perplexity.ai/search/vietnam-october-1965-XGpF6490S0iSZ0Bqn1BaaA

(End Perplexity-AI)

     The 9th Marines had barely been in country 6 months when the 03 October ambush cited in Records of War occurred. Third battalion relocated its CP to Duong son (2) (AT992678), just below the Song Cau Do River to the south of Danang that would earn a dual name of “Rocket Belt,” and “Dodge City;” the first due to where the VC set up rockets to hit the airfield, the second rather obvious. Duong son (2) was flanked by Cam Ne to the north and just below the river and Le Son to the south; each had a number of villages, all designated in parentheses. Under subheading g.) Civilian Affairs, on page 10, the chronology reported.

     Details of the 03 October ambush are found in a 2-page after action report at the command chronology. 

(Begin Records of War)

     “It has been 4 months since the VC had de facto control of the area which encompasses the 3rd Battalion, 9th Marines TAOR.”

     5.) Lessons learned a.) Even though and area has been searched it can never be assumed that the area is definitely cleared of the enemy, and b.) The basic tactical principals of patrolling (…, security to the front, flanks and rear) must at all times be adhered to when on patrol. 

(End Records of War)

     Those “principals” would be the hallmark of the United States’ long and bitterly contested campaign, both on the battlefield and “Back in the World’ (as the soldiers called America) of desegregation and student unrest on campus, that would pave the way for the creation of the Department of Education, signed into law by President Jimmy Carter in 1979.

Student Unrest

     Even before the Company M, 3rd Battalion, 9th Marines were ambushed south of the Song Cau Do on 03 October 1965, campus unrest was beginning to be extracurricular. On the floor of the Senate on 26 April, Senator Jacob Javits (R-NY) was keen to notice the rising tide on campus.

(Begin Congressional Record)

     “Laying stress on teaching in American colleges, the New York University Alumni News of April features an article by Dr. Floyd Zulli, Jr., professor of romance languages at NYU.”

    Below are excerpts of the article the Senator has the article submitted for the record.

From the New York University Alumni News, April 1965) ZULLI DEMANDS REVIVAL OF TEACHING CONCEPT IN AMERICAN COLLEGES (By Floyd Zulli, Jr., professor of romance languages, New York University)

     “In the last 10 years, the jargon and theory of education have been notably enriched by such innovations as programed learning, new mathematics, educational television, language laboratories, data systems, computers, and countless other boons to civilization invented by IBM or Remington Rand to assure us that we are living in the space and lunar age. But the fact that Johnny still can’t read and often has difficulty writing, and that millions of Johnnies are floundering in colleges or about to storm their portals leaves the present-day teacher uneasy, to say the least…

     “Ever since Sputnik I soared into the empyrean and the less-than-literary expression, ‘population explosion,’ was coined, the groves of academe have not been the same. Reason, calm, moderation and measure, once the hallmarks of the cultivated man, are hardly anywhere apparent.”

     “Much of the student unrest on today’s college campus is owing not to the fact that the social consciousness of this generation’s youth glistens any more brilliantly than that of its father’s. It comes about largely because students are unmotivated in their studies and find the experience of a college education dull, impersonal, repetitive, or simply a mechanized rat race. The major responsibility for ameliorating this unhappy situation rests with the teacher.”

(Congressional Record: https://www.congress.gov/bound-congressional-record/1965/04/26/111/senate-section/article/8393-8503 ) Page 8425.

     Once again, the theory that the Russian launch of Sputnik into orbit is credited for the apparent lost-in-space Oort cloud covering youth. 

     The fact that student unrest was beginning to surface at all was a striking observation by Zulli, and even more so brought to the attention of Congress long before it peaked during the protests of 1968. Eight pages later, Senator Wayne Morse (D-OR), who had already become an anti-war activist, submitted for the record.

(Begin Congressional Record)

      “I ask unanimous consent that the brilliant argument and speech made by the Senator from Alaska [Mr. GRUENING] at the Students for a Democratic Society rally held in Washington, D.C., on April 17, 1965, at the Sylvan Theater be printed at this point in my remarks.”

     Senator Ernest Gruening (D-AK) voted along with Senator Morse against the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution in August 1964. 

     “I was unable to vote for the resolution sent to the Congress by the White House last August, approving not only of what had been done by the administration in Vietnam, but authorizing the President to use our Armed Forces as he saw fit anywhere in southeast Asia. Only two of us in the Congress voted against this resolution. My distinguished colleague, Senator WAYNE MORSE, of Oregon, who was the other Member of the Senate to vote against this resolution, has repeatedly pointed out that we are conducting war in Vietnam in violation of the Constitution of the United States. Despite congressional ratification of the resolution, there has been no declaration of war by Congress as the Constitution provides. Of course, there should not be such a declaration, but neither should we be carrying on a war as we are doing.”

(End Congressional Record)

     Senator Gruening made other appearances along with other notables to fan the flames of the antiwar movement, which had already been sparked across the nation. One of the unintended consequences would be the restriction of funding for colleges and universities that allowed students, organizations such as the SDS, and outside agitator counterparts to begin the burning down of the institutions of higher learning in the United States. All of this because of Sputnik.

HR 11941

    The 11 June 1969 House Congressional Record included headings such as “Pending Legislation Relating to Campus Difficulties,” (page 15427) On page 15456, one of the more lucid descriptions on why there was campus unrest was presented by Rep. John Brademas (D-IN).

(Begin Congressional Record)

     “For convenience, however, it might be possible to divide the causes into three chief kinds. 

     First, I believe there is a small, but nonetheless highly significant group of revolutionary extremists on our campuses who wish to destroy the university, not to elevate it and improve its quality. With this group and with the violent tactics that some of them are willing to employ, I have absolutely no sympathy; the criminal law should be enforced when they break the law-as with any other citizen. 

     But, Mr. Speaker, I believe it would be a great mistake to assert that the existence of this group is the only cause of disorders on the campus. 

     A second explanation for some of the troubles is criticism by students on the way the college or university is run. I refer here to complaints about curriculum, defense-related research, the impersonality of faculty-student relations, the roles of students, faculty, and trustees in the governing processes of the institution, the relationship between the university and the community of which it is a part, and similar dissatisfactions. Whether one agrees with a particular criticism in any given instance is another matter. All I am saying here is that criticisms of this kind are one of the principal sources of some of the student disorders. 

     A third major cause of student unrest is the entire spectrum of problems within the wider American society-the war in Vietnam, the draft, racial discrimination, poverty, and the feeling on the part of many students that too many Americans are more concerned with material gain than with making real the dreams of our Founding Fathers.”

(End Congressional Record)

Notes

   The debate went on, in and out of the House and Senate, with various pieces of legislation designed to curb unrest, address poverty, marginalization, civil rights and disability as reason not to allow students to be given equal opportunity in education.

Afterword

     From low earth orbit to the rice paddies in Quan Nam Province, the seeds had been sown for the creation of a separate branch of government dedicated to education. Twenty-two years passed between the orbit of Sputnik and the official act of creation of the Department of Education on 17 October 1979; it was eleven years after the siege of Khe Sanh, a singular defining point in the Southeast Asia war that would bring the Marines Back to the World.