I was born on the Fourth of July. Growing up, that meant red, white, and blue sailor dresses; fireworks that felt like they were for me; and a sense that the day carried a weight I didn’t completely understand. In the fourth grade, I wrote an essay inspired by Lee Greenwood’s “God Bless the USA” that won a VFW writing contest, and I remember feeling, even then, that the pride I was trying to describe was not simply emotion. It was a conviction. Something had been handed down to me for which I was responsible to know, understand, and eventually, protect.
I have spent a good deal of my adult life thinking about what that something actually is.
What Does Real Independence Mean?
Real independence does not ask permission, does not require a license, and does not belong to any institution to grant or withhold. It is not autonomy, not freedom within approved limits, nor the liberty a government permits and can therefore revoke. That is what characterized 1776.
As we mark 250 years of American independence, it is worth pausing to contemplate independence itself: a declaration made by individuals who had reasoned their way to a conviction so settled that they were willing to stake everything on it.
Were the Founders Products of State Instruction?
No. The men who drafted and signed the Declaration of Independence emerged from homes, churches, and communities where ideas were tested freely and where a student was expected to reason, to dissent, and to make a case.
The Declaration itself is evidence of that formation. It is not a demand. It is an argument, written by people who had been taught to think, for people who had been taught to think. Freedom depends on this: the capacity to learn freely, to dissent without penalty, and to debate without a predetermined outcome. Without it, a population cannot reason independently nor remain free for long, regardless of what its founding documents say.
Why Does Independence Include a Financial Component?
Because what men depend upon will eventually rule them. The men who built this republic did not petition the crown for resources; they built something of their own, at their own cost and by their own conviction.
These honored men and their families understood that independent funding was not merely a pragmatic arrangement. It expressed the principle behind everything else: some domains of human life are ones no government has the right to enter.
Why Does Education Belong Outside Government Jurisdiction?
Because the nature of education—the formation of minds, the shaping of conscience, the transmission of what is truth—places it in a category that has always existed outside legitimate government jurisdiction. Education is one of those domains, not because families say so, but because of what education is.
The patriots of 1776 did not pursue independence on behalf of the state. They pursued it on behalf of the individual, the family, and the conviction that human beings are answerable to something higher than any crown or institution.
Why Must Independence Be Lived, Not Just Declared?
Independence, once declared, must be lived. A founding document can record a conviction, but only people who continue to reason, build, and stand on their own can keep it.
I still wear red, white, and blue on my birthday. The pride I felt as a child has not diminished; it has only grown more defined and mature. I know better now what I am proud of, and I know better what it costs to keep it. Education Independence exists in that tradition, not as a modern reaction to modern problems, but as a continuation of the oldest American conviction.
Frequently Asked Questions
Education independence is the conviction that the formation of minds and the shaping of conscience belong to the individual and the family rather than to the state. It stands in the tradition of 1776 as a continuation of the oldest American conviction: that independence, once declared, must be lived.
Because the nature of education—the formation of minds, the shaping of conscience, and the transmission of truth—places it in a category that has always existed outside legitimate government jurisdiction. The patriots of 1776 pursued independence on behalf of the individual and the family, not the state.
Because what men depend upon will eventually rule them. The Founders did not petition the crown for resources; they built something of their own, at their own cost and by their own conviction, as an expression of the belief that there are domains of human life no government has the right to enter.
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