Restore Authority to Education

In my first article on education in The American Mind, I argued that conservatives ought to focus more on the reform of K–12 education than attempt to undo the corruption of higher education. I indicated that this reform must happen in every family and community, and that we cannot look to public policy to save us.

Here, as promised, I outline the terms of reform. I argue that, in the most general terms, what American education needs is authority and authoritativeness. It needs discipline. It needs dogma.

Whoa there, cowboy. Aren’t our schools already too authoritative, too dogmatic? Don’t they exercise a prisonlike hold on their captive students? Shouldn’t the goal of education be freedom instead of meek submission? And again, aren’t our current problems with education rooted in the prioritization of political correctness over the knowledge, the “content,” and the skills which are the real meat of learning, the real purpose of our schools?

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