Before the Ballot: How the Schoolroom Shapes Government

In a country that was founded on the value of private property ownership, religious convictions, and strong families, these statistics reveal a problematic reality. And the source of the problem may surprise you: the public school system.

Whether you have school-aged children or not, this article will show you how the public school system has been quietly reshaping American values since its founding—and why it matters to you. Because, as a quote often attributed to President Abraham Lincoln says, “The philosophy of the school room in one generation will be the philosophy of government in the next.”

Collectivist Ideology in Public Schools

Since its federalized expansion in 1965, the American public school system has taught collectivist ideology and not the principles of individual liberty that founded our nation. Understanding this important piece of history reveals why American values have shifted so dramatically.

What is Collectivism?

Collectivism is a political ideology that prioritizes the outcome of the group over the rights of the individual. This stands in opposition to individualism, the philosophy that protects an individual’s rights and liberties.

While the American Founding Fathers wrote of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” collectivists like Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels wrote in The Communist Manifesto about how they would usher in the golden age of freedom through

• the centralization of goods and services,
• the banishment of organized religion,
• the abolition of private property, and
• the implementation of nationalized schooling.

That last point is crucial. Collectivists understood that to reshape society, they had to first capture education.

Robert Owen’s Public School Hypothesis

“To train and educate the rising generation will at all times be the first object of society, to which every other will be subordinate.”

—Robert Owen

Robert Owen, the original promoter of the public school system, had a simple vision for the world: one world utopia in which the three social institutions he believed contributed most to human misery:

• private property
• organized religion
• biblical marriage

The only thing that remained was for him to convince vast portions of the western population to share his hatred of the “Trinity of Evil” so they could usher in his utopian vision. To do that, as he wrote, children must be trained, not educated, above all else.

Children had to be trained to hate private property and to love government handouts; trained to hate organized religion and to love self-worship; trained to hate biblical marriage and to love sexual licentiousness.

When we trace the ideas of Robert Owen, the connection between the forgotten history of the public schools and their modern version becomes undeniable.

Collectivist Curriculum

Owen’s collectivist thinking isn’t just history—it’s alive in today’s public schools. The question we must ask is “What are children being taught in schools?” Long before 2020, when parents witnessed remote learning and realized what was taught in public school classrooms, economist and historian Thomas Sowell was sounding the alarm.

How Public Schools Condition Students

In chapter three, “Classroom Brainwashing” of his book Inside American Education (1992), Sowell detailed the methods and curriculum employed by public schools that train students to submit to collectivist ideals rather than develop their intellect. He wrote,

“[Public school programs] are attempts to re-shape values, attitudes, and beliefs to fit a very different vision of the world from what children have received from their parents and the social environment in which they are raised. Instead of educating the intellect, these special curriculum programs condition the emotions.”

Social Emotional Learning and Other Curriculum

These conditioning methods are not the only problem in public schools. The curriculum itself is training children for collectivism with:

• age-inappropriate sexual content in elementary classrooms.
• race-based instruction that divides students by identity rather than uniting them as individuals.
• Social Emotional Learning (SEL) programs that frame society through oppressor/oppressed narratives.

To learn more about harmful ideologies in curricula, read Woke and Weaponized by Classical Conversations CEO Robert Bortins and award-winning journalist Alex Newman.

In classrooms all around the Western world, this dangerous content is being braided together into the brains of small children, corrupting their youth, innocence, and potential.

The Impact on a Child’s Identity

This represents perhaps the greatest tragedy in America today: generations of people, from childhood, taught to view themselves as members of an identity tribe rather than individuals with inherent worth. What is the result? When most Americans are trained in collectivism from childhood, they naturally support collectivist ideas as adults.

Owen’s Trinity of Evil Realized

Remember Owen’s “Trinity of Evil”—private property, organized religion, and biblical marriage? The statistics from the article’s introduction tell the story: his vision has largely succeeded. Through decades of collectivist curriculum, public schools have conditioned generations of Americans to devalue or outright reject the pillars that built this nation.

What is the Philosophy of the Government?

Indeed, as President Lincoln forewarned, the collectivist philosophy that designed public schools and fills the curriculum has become the philosophy of the government.

How Public Schools Shape Voting Patterns

Citizens who were trained from kindergarten to be collectivist in thinking will be collectivist in voting. It is as simple as that. And regardless of the political aisle you align with, it is easy to see that this has happened in America.

We no longer ask the question, “Does this policy protect and promote personal liberty, responsibility, and ownership?” Rather, millions of Americans have been trained to ask an alternative one: “Does this policy further my collectivist ideological ends?”

Consider the 2025 election of Zohran Mamdani as the New York City mayor. With a campaign centered around economic handouts in housing, groceries, and education, he won 50.4% of the popular vote in the city, beating former mayor Andrew Cuomo by nearly 10 points.

The Impact on Congress and Legislation

What’s more, state and federal congressmen seem ready, eager even, to pass laws and implement departments that promise government care, money, and protection. Never mind individual liberty and responsibility. We have generations of American leaders who would rather have us all live on the government dime.

In 2025, Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Representative Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) advocated for the College for All Act that would make public universities 75% funded by federal and state taxpayer money.

The question “Will my vote protect the integrity of the Constitution?” is not asked by many members of Congress; rather, they wonder to themselves: “Will this expand or detract from government power and jurisdiction?”

Collectivist Policy: Examples in Modern Government

When both the citizens and the representatives have been largely framed by a collectivist school system, it follows that their votes and policies will be as well:

The solutions constantly demanded by voters and provided by leaders are more government programs, higher taxes, and more wealth redistribution, and the result is more dependency.

Because, as we learned from Owen and his collectivist colleagues, the rights of the individual to his own private property must be sacrificed for the so-called good of the national body.

How We Can Break the Cycle of Collectivism

If you’ve made it this far, I hope you are beginning to grasp the severity of the public school problem and the far-reaching effects it has on America. In short, President Lincoln was right: “The philosophy of the school room in one generation will be the philosophy of government in the next.”

50 million students annually go through this system, with more on the way. These are the children who will be the leaders of tomorrow. How can we expect them to be better equipped to lead than those currently in power if we continue to allow the government to train its own future presidents and congressmen?

It is time for Americans to stop feeding the collectivist cycle with the minds, hearts, and souls of children and advocate for a better alternative for the betterment of our country.

Join the Mission to Promote Education Independence

So, I invite you, whether or not you have children, to join us in our mission to promote and protect education independence. Explore our website to find

• weekly articles on timely and timeless issues,
• resources to help you engage, and
• dates for important events in your state.