An Edu­ca­tion Rev­o­lu­tion Is Need­ed Now More Than Ever

The recent vic­to­ry of Don­ald Trump at the nation­al polls ush­ered in “morn­ing in Amer­i­ca” as much as it indi­cat­ed a repu­di­a­tion of wok­e­ness. His vow to dis­man­tle the Depart­ment of Edu­ca­tion offers the US an envi­able oppor­tu­ni­ty and appoint­ing the media tycoon Lin­da McMa­hon indi­cates a wel­come, busi­ness-mind­ed (read: mer­i­toc­ra­cy-based) approach. To effec­tive­ly revamp our schools and the spe­cif­ic ways we invest in, approach, and even define edu­ca­tion, depends on some hard truths and our will­ing­ness to con­front them.

Amer­i­cans have spo­ken by refut­ing the Divi­sion, Exclu­sion, and Inequal­i­ty move­ment tak­ing over our cul­ture and our schools. Par­ents reject­ed the left­ist push for gen­der ide­ol­o­gy, crit­i­cal race the­o­ry, and pornog­ra­phy in our schools to sup­port girls-only lock­er rooms and their hard-won Title IX sports.

Yet the war is far from won and suc­cess in this bat­tle only slows the advance. To pre­serve our tra­di­tion­al val­ues, we must exam­ine how we arrived where we are today, fight­ing cul­ture con­flict with­in our own fam­i­lies. While Pres­i­dent-elect Trump address­es edu­ca­tion on the fed­er­al lev­el, our com­mu­ni­ties must tack­le these issues local­ly at the same time. We can cel­e­brate our pub­lic vic­to­ries against Bud Light and Tar­get, but if the bat­tles for the hearts and minds of our young peo­ple con­tin­ue inside our schools, we may snatch defeat from the jaws of vic­to­ry.

Accord­ing to Pew Research, the U.S. ranked an unim­pres­sive 38th out of 71 coun­tries in math and 24th in sci­ence on the most recent inter­na­tion­al aca­d­e­m­ic achieve­ment stud­ies sur­vey tak­en in 2015. We cur­rent­ly spend more per stu­dent than almost any oth­er coun­try to achieve those dis­cour­ag­ing results. Why are we fight­ing to pre­serve such a spec­tac­u­lar­ly fail­ing insti­tu­tion while the world sprints past us? Because school is good. That’s the resound­ing mantra we all ingest­ed.

Schools are where we all learned to trust the experts, espe­cial­ly the edu­ca­tors, so it’s near­ly impos­si­ble to repu­di­ate the effi­ca­cy or valid­i­ty of our “fac­to­ry schools” and teach­ers. Despite our reluc­tance, analy­sis of the prob­lem demands trans­paren­cy and can­dor.

First, for decades, schools have coached pupils (us) to believe that their high­est goal is col­lege prep and career readi­ness (read: mon­ey). Where decades ago we believed in entre­pre­neur­ship, integri­ty and inde­pen­dent inno­va­tion, now cul­ture holds that the only way to the mon­ey is the insti­tu­tion­al road. It’s no won­der par­ents would sac­ri­fice their chil­dren on the school’s altar! Save the schools or my child will not suc­ceed! As par­ents see the bla­tant lies in our schools, the pornog­ra­phy, the abject igno­rance, and the abysmal aca­d­e­m­ic per­for­mance, belief in that ulti­mate fic­tion has recent­ly (final­ly) been unseat­ed, and we can (and should) crit­i­cize our schools.

The Marx­ist prin­ci­ples of the teach­ers’ unions direct­ly con­tra­dict tra­di­tion­al Amer­i­can val­ues, but with their mar­ket stran­gle­hold they can afford to ignore our con­dem­na­tion. Inflict­ing their evil dog­ma on impres­sion­able minds is their sec­ond incen­tive to pre­serve their insti­tu­tions. We are now in a race to see who con­verts the cul­ture first. If we, how­ev­er, con­tin­ue sub­mit­ting our chil­dren to their indoc­tri­na­tion, we will soon reach the tip­ping point where our own off­spring will vote down the Sec­ond Amend­ment and for a sur­veil­lance state. And while laws may coun­ter­mand the Marx­ist mantra, many ide­o­log­i­cal teach­ers don’t heed the law.

Enter the school choice debate. On the sur­face, gov­ern­ment funds fol­low­ing the child makes sense. The par­ents can vote with their feet and their dol­lars. But finan­cial infu­sions typ­i­cal­ly inflate costs, negat­ing the val­ue of inject­ed mon­ey. Fur­ther, gov­ern­ment intru­sion dis­rupts hon­est bro­ker­age: in the case of edu­ca­tion, it will oust any edu­ca­tion­al endeav­ors unwill­ing to sub­ject them­selves to gov­ern­ment scruti­ny – which would be the only authen­tic play­ers in the game. Uni­ver­sal school choice (read: sin­gle-pay­er edu­ca­tion) would kill inno­va­tion, putting us right back to where we are now.

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The future is uncer­tain, and foun­da­tion­al trans­for­ma­tion is the only way to pros­per. That’s why Trump has float­ed tax cred­its for fam­i­lies with school-aged chil­dren. This might afford them more flex­i­bil­i­ty to raise and edu­cate their chil­dren with­out the strings of gov­ern­ment forc­ing its ideas on them.

The most rad­i­cal idea in edu­ca­tion is revert­ing to first prin­ci­ples — train­ing the stu­dent to teach him­self. This is how edu­ca­tion used to work, before we began our mod­ern “fac­to­ry school” exper­i­ment. It is how the founders – those genius­es who devised our rep­re­sen­ta­tion­al repub­lic that so few of our cit­i­zens cur­rent­ly acknowl­edge – became edu­cat­ed.

The edu­ca­tion rev­o­lu­tion begins with the recog­ni­tion that it doesn’t take an “expert” to train a child to be an adult; par­ents should do that.

Par­ents want a bet­ter route for­ward for their fam­i­lies and their children’s futures, and home edu­ca­tion offers that path­way. Most par­ents are smart enough to be their child’s teacher. Indeed, the parent’s lev­el of school­ing is not reflec­tive of aca­d­e­m­ic out­come for the home­schooled child. Ulti­mate­ly, all wis­dom is self-taught and chil­dren need wis­dom more than they need to drill math facts, mem­o­rize dates, or learn about lubri­ca­tion.

Many par­ents still feel enslaved to the sys­tem, brain­washed to con­form by its past self-pro­claimed glo­ry. The new learn­ing mod­el, how­ev­er, is inde­pen­dent of what any woke “edu­ca­tors” rec­om­mend, and for good rea­son. Inde­pen­dent-mind­ed par­ents choose home edu­ca­tion instead, to fos­ter in their chil­dren a devo­tion to truth, appre­ci­a­tion for wis­dom, and the love of free­dom.

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Sam Sor­bo is an edu­ca­tion free­dom advo­cate. A suc­cess­ful Hol­ly­wood film actor, pro­duc­er, and writer, Sam took a step back from her career to home­school her three chil­dren. She has authored numer­ous books, includ­ing her newest releas­es: “Par­ents’ Guide to Home­school­ing“ and “Christ­mas 40 Days Devo­tion­al,” with hus­band Kevin Sor­bo.

The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not nec­es­sar­i­ly rep­re­sent those of The Dai­ly Wire.