Build Our Schools on Founding Principles

The kind of school that works best in a free society is the kind that best reflects that society.  Since a democratic republic and an educated society are parallel (or should be), they ought not contradict each other.  The tension comes when they do.

The failure of these two institutions (democracy and education) to complement each other is, in part, why much of our nation’s education apparatus struggles to consistently bear good fruit. Respecting intellectual freedom without rejecting religious liberty is American education’s inherent calling (unlike totalitarian countries), and doing so age-appropriately while deferring to the parents’ best judgment is its common-sense parameters. (Sidebar: The parents are the owners of our schools, so they are the ultimate authority. The kids we teach are their kids, they pay the taxes, so we as educators work for them, not vice-versa.)

A free society is built on self-evident truth which gives birth to a body of rights and freedoms.  To frustrate, ignore, twist, pervert or negate the same in our schools, to whatever degree, is to cripple our students in the functionality of their citizenry and make them less than qualified to perpetuate the legacy of liberty in their society.

Few would argue anymore that today’s American youth possess a disheartened grasp of the founding principles of a free society as rooted in the Declaration of Independence and US Constitution.  (If your child does, be grateful and proud, because he or she is increasingly one of the grand and rare exceptions.) This is, no doubt, because “we the people” have become illiterate ourselves in our national history and foundations.  Where historical nearsightedness flourishes, cultural appreciation does not.  And when one generation takes the lead, subsequent generations necessarily follow.  The law of increasing entropy sees to it.

So as the struggle for the best educational model in this country continues, we seem hard-pressed to build schools that mirror the kind of society our Founding Fathers aspired to build, unlike any civilization in the history of mankind.  Which begs the question, why is it not more obvious that education in this nation should shadow the democracy of this republic?

If our society was built on the First Amendment (“Government shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof”), then shouldn’t our schools be as well?  Isn’t school about preparing young people for the society they will live in?  Right now, as it stands, we teach the First Amendment in our schools but fail to practice it there.

An ideologue views education as the engine that will drive their own agenda.  They’re bent on shaping kids (or society) in their image, believing America would be better off if they could just make young people think the way they do?  Coming out of the average university’s teacher-training program, they obviously did not get the memo that that is not their job.   No surprise, of course, since the average university believes it is.

Educators can be very opinionated (our liability) with an insatiable hunger for knowledge (our asset), and, as a result, we sometimes convince ourselves we have all the answers.  The zeal that flows out of that condition drives us to share what we know with others (our students).

This passion is then fueled by the comparative human tendency of viewing the average layperson as not nearly so enlightened.  The dilemma in this scenario emerges when the “unenlightened” ones’ views are not respected, or conversely, when the “enlightened” ones’ views are legislated, be it through the vehicle of journalism, government or … a la education.

These marketplaces thrive only as they breathe freedom, which means they must never be relegated to the dark dungeon of thought control or religious cleansing.  When they do, they go beyond the misuse of freedom; they become painfully guilty of liberty’s wholesale and unmitigated abuse.

It becomes more clear, then, why we have produced so many young citizens who haven’t a clue as to what a free society is, or their place in it.  How can they if we don’t?  Control freaks always reproduce after their own kind, and neuroticism is the fruit that is borne thereby.  

The point is, our schools must insist our kids wrestle long and hard with the founders’ view of freedom.  Though it’s a very deep ocean, the bottom of which they’ll never reach, at least we can take them deeper than where they are now.  And we must.  

Liberty literacy is built on founding principles. Our schools must be as well.

Brian Schroeder is the former Wyoming Superintendent of Public Instruction, an ordained minister and founder/president of The ChrisCorps Association (bschroeder081858@gmail.com)