Education

America's education system is a miserable failure and a leading purveyor of cultural rot, as Leftists have dominated public schools and university education departments for decades. The expansion of school choice is one of the Right's more important recent policy accomplishments, yet only 35%[1] of students attend schools other than their local public school. Even among schools of choice, very few teach an academically rigorous curriculum that celebrates our heritage and responsibilities as Westerners. There is a sliver of classical schools and private schools that instill patriotism in students, but they are dwarfed by the number of students in public and even private schools who are indoctrinated into self-loathing and liberalism. The Progressive assault on education was led by John Dewey around the turn of the last century, and its values have dominated ever since.

Education should remain primarily a local issue, as it historically has been, but all levels of government can align in support of a more academically rigorous, virtuous, and patriotic education system. Federal and state block grant funding should be used to incentivize a variety of education models, including home schooling, charter schools, private schools, and religious schools. School choice programs should be expanded significantly, but curricular and structural reform is required to help the students who remain in local public schools. Necessary reforms include overhauling curricula to adhere to a more classical model and eliminating the endless waste and administrative bureaucracy that consumes scarce resources.

The federal Department of Education can improve the nation's education system and unite American students with a positive shared experience by developing a voluntary, uniform classical curriculum that teaches the Trivium and the great books. It is statistically proven that students learn better when they learn about the culture they live in[2].

America is a quintessential chapter in the history of Western Civilization, and our history and values should be taught from a Western point of view. This national curriculum would challenge students to see themselves as the first fruits and future defenders of a precious civilization. They would learn chronologically about prehistory, ancient Sumeria and Egypt, the classical Greco-Roman era, early Christian Europe, the Middle Ages, Modernity, and about the leading lights of each age. The curriculum would integrate history with literature by including primary sources and the great books of the Western Cannon, as well as learning science and math in the context of the ideas that lead to their discovery and the societal developments that followed. It also would integrate athletics and the arts to form well-rounded graduates, culminating in a senior thesis and verbal defense before a panel. Students and families would be free to pursue other types of education if they so desire, such as those more focused on technology, the arts, or vocational training, but this national classical curriculum would be the voluntarily de facto standard. The education system is a primary vehicle for assimilation into American culture, and saving it is of foundational importance.

True academic freedom should be restored to higher education, and individual states should use their funding authority to encourage state colleges and universities to explore a more patriotic worldview. Public college and university administrators who institute policies to limit free speech or academic freedom should be removed. Government funding of college tuition should be reduced dramatically, as it drives up the cost of college but not the output of the workforce.

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[1] National Center for Education Statistics, 2016

[2] E.D. Hirsch, Jr., University of Virginia, The American Scholar, 1983