“Wrestling with truth promotes blessing and virtue for the whole community; therefore, we uphold that education, independent from the state, is the cornerstone of a flourishing society.” — Classical Conversations, We Believe
Education encompasses many things but in its most basic form, education is the process of uncovering what is true, good, and beautiful through the study of the created world. Thus, when being educated, one directly deals with truth claims, wrestles with reality, and challenges the ideas history has to offer.
History teaches us that this fragile process of learning can easily be hijacked by people who want to manipulate and control masses of people. Our state and federal governments understand the role education plays in weaving the fabric of a nation and have taken steps to own and direct it. Far from being the only country to do this, the United States is only following in the footsteps of countries like 19th century Prussia, modern day Germany, Sweden, and Canada. Why is owning the classrooms a successful method of manipulation? Because if a government can dictate what is taught to impressionable children, they can shape the future citizenry to accept their agenda. The public school system is nothing less than state institutions that teach government-approved curricula to 63 million children via state employees, otherwise known as teachers. It is essential that Americans recognize the natural propensity of government to amass power and with this understanding, look upon state schools with suspicion and scrutiny.
The First Amendment states in part, “Congress shall make no law… abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.” While freedom of speech is valued and protected by engaged citizens, those same advocates for liberty often forget that independent education is an essential prerequisite for freedom of speech. If the government controls what information citizens are allowed to be taught, they are indirectly controlling the public narrative without explicitly infringing on freedom speech. Simply put, you cannot speak about what you do not know. To protect the right of men to speak their minds, we must first protect their right to know truth. Free speech begins in the mind and consequently begins with education. We live in a time where free speech is under threat, not because a speech-infringing law is inching its way through Congress, but because the information itself has been captured and regulated within the walls of government schools. Government captured education harms the pursuit of truth and causes social regression by obstructing a citizen’s capacity to learn, dissent, and debate.
Freedom to Learn
All schools must choose curricula, teaching methods, teachers, professors, subjects, beliefs, students, and religious convictions because all education requires students to be pointed towards which things to think about and then shown how to think about them. Content and paradigm form education. But who has the authority to determine these intrinsic elements?
Since its establishment, the public school system has progressively taken over the education market in America; today 63 million children attend these government owned classrooms every day. By sending children to these schools, Americans have demonstrated approval in the government’s authority to decide what is taught in classrooms. It is men like Bill Gates[1] who pay for and institutions like UNESCO[2] who promote the curriculum used, tests given, teachers hired, and beliefs taught in every public classroom around the nation. Robert Owen and Horace Mann could have only dreamed of such a government monopoly on education. Are these the people we want determining the content of education? Should we allow the government to shape its future citizenry? Does the state have the authority to select the books children read, the subjects they study, the tests they take, the teachers they learn from? Surely, if we are to uphold freedom and protect the rights in the First Amendment, we must aim to remove education from the government jurisdiction.
By allowing the government to control the information of the classrooms, we are allowing them to capture the flow of information. Consider how, during the COVID-19 pandemic, Americans largely rejected the government monopoly over information in media. When it became clear that the government was manipulating, censoring, and controlling the flow of information on online platforms, Americans fought back because they recognized that a nation cannot be free if its government controls the speech and press. How much more passionately, therefore, should Americans reject the government control of the information, ideas, curriculum, and narrative in classrooms where millions of children are being educated? With this much control over the narrative, our federal and state departments of education are not that different than the “Ministry of Truth” depicted in George Orwell’s 1984. We need a better alternative than information capture and government control; thankfully, the solution can be easily acquired through free market principles.
If we return education back into the private sector, we will free truth and information from the governments control. In the marketplace of ideas, private citizens can present curriculums, teachers, beliefs to the public where bad ideas can be tested and rejected, and good ideas can be tried and rewarded. Most importantly, the government will no longer be able to influence the information taught to the people or manipulate the methods of learning used on children. These opportunities only present themselves, however, through independent education.
Freedom of Dissent
Of course, the consequence of free learning is disagreement. However, this is one of the blessings of liberty! A population that is not allowed, or even worse, unable, to disagree is enslaved. We want a population of people who are educated enough to make a case for alternative perspectives. If everyone agrees and no one dissents, how could one determine which ideas are best? It is also a sign of an unhealthy culture when bad ideas are left unpunished. That is when the public square steps in to perform its duties. Through the public square, free, well-thinking people have the freedom to reprimand bad ideas and discard them from their communities. This essential process is required in a free society. But how can it be done if everyone is educated and conditioned to accept the predetermined narrative?
Currently, the public schools are teaching the government approved narrative on mass scale without allowing dissent. In the classroom, students are taught that an explosion created the universe, sex is non-binary, white people are racist, “colored people” are victims, and American history is a story of injustice. Through testing, grades, shame, discipline, and peer pressure, government-approved propaganda is forced into the minds of children.
If the government is allowed to define the narrative of education, truth that challenges the status-que or power structures will never be tolerated by the state. Dissent will always be labeled as disinformation or misinformation because in an information monopoly, alterative ideas can never be allowed. In public schools around the nation, dissent is being stomped into the submission of government narratives. This cannot create a flourishing society because it is removing the ability of citizens to challenge bad ideas and promote better ones.
Freedom to Debate
Once a population is free to learn and dissent from the government narrative, it is then able to ask the question “What ideas cause society to flourish?” This is how free societies are built, and this is how early America was built. Public schools disrupt this free process because they teach information that was selected by the government. We are witnessing the effects of captured education everywhere in our society today; citizens who don’t know the value of personal responsibility, liberty, and independence will fall for the lies of socialistic welfare and tyrannical government. By capturing education, governments discourage its citizens from wrestling with ideas that contradict their narrative. This destroys the freedom of citizens to learn, dissent, and debate ideas, creating the perfect cycle of intellectual slavery.
We need a society that is free to wrestle with ideas to sort out the good from the bad. Without this skill, a society will be stunted in its ability to know and operate according to the truth. Free people must learn to discover what is true, good, and beautiful through the free exchange of ideas. If we know and understand the principles of the First Amendment we can see their clear application on the topic of education. Then we will have the wisdom to protect and promote the model of liberty the founding fathers stood on and we will be free to flourish again.
Additional Resources
- To learn more about how independent education and the religious clause of the First Amendment overlap, read We Believe in Educational Independence.
- To learn more about how independent education involves the family and local community, read We Believe in Parental Autonomy.
- To learn more about how independent education requires private funding, read We Believe in Private Funding.
[1] Greene, P. (2022, November 22). The Gates Foundation just gave The Reason Foundation almost a million dollars for education. Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/petergreene/2022/11/22/the-gates-foundation-just-gave-the-reason-foundation-almost-a-million-dollars-for-education/
[2] United Nations (n.d.). Goal 4: Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all. Department of Economic and Social Affairs. Retrieved January 30, 2025, from https://sdgs.un.org/goals/goal4
