The Consequential Role of America’s Schoolhouse

Historically, the local community schoolhouse was uniquely positioned between the three institutions of home, church and state.  That means it functioned strategically as an extension of the family, a friend of the faith and an incubator for a free society.

This triangular relationship was what the Founding Fathers envisioned for America’s schools because they understood all three institutions as God-ordained.  It was not only natural that they complement each other and work together in harmony, but absolutely critical, especially for a brand new and highly fragile democratic republic.

The health and growth of a young country conceived in liberty would only be strengthened and sustained by such a relationship.  Conversely, an emerging hostile or conflictual relationship would greatly weaken and potentially destroy this great American experiment.  On all three fronts (domestic, ecclesiastic and civic), the Founders knew intuitively that the local schoolhouse would play a key role in America’s foundation and future as well as its ultimate success or eventual demise.

Take the first one … the schoolhouse as an extension of the family home.  To the American Founders, the home was sacrosanct because it was the most basic form of community.  It was where all community began and, therefore, where a child would get its first taste of community.

This meant a lot of things, but at the very least, it meant children belonged to their parents, not to the state.  This by definition meant the parents were responsible for their children’s education, not the church or the state.  And this by definition meant the parents could delegate (not relinquish) their responsibility to educate their child.  (If they relinquish it, then the parents serve the school. If they delegate it, the school serves the parents.)

So our schools were to be an extension of the family, not vice-versa, which means American school life should be reinforcing family life and values, not replacing it or working against it.  When it does, the pushback should be immediate and overwhelming.

Take the second one … the schoolhouse as a support to the faith community.  As new towns were popping up everywhere in this country during its infancy, the first two structures built were usually the churchhouse and the schoolhouse (often the same building).  This was neither accidental nor incidental.  As a priority, in every new American community, the two were joined at the hip.  And there was a reason for it, conveyed  clearly by John Adams:  “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people.  It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”

How savvy, then, were the secularists in creating a false dichotomy between all things public and all things religious, and when the paradigm shift happened, they caught most Americans off guard and flat-footed.

By making the Constitution say things it never said (the “separation of church and state” clause, for example), they succeeded in muzzling all expressions of faith in a place (our schools) where our young people spend 30-40 hours a week of their developing lives, nine months out of every year, for thirteen years.  (And over the subsequent 30-40 years, we watched teen pregnancies, drug use and school shootings sky-rocket while academic competencies plummeted.}

But in a free society where religious freedom is at the core of all other freedoms, the schoolhouse should be a place where freedom of religion is taught and practiced, not freedom from religion.

Which leads to the third one … the schoolhouse as an incubator for a free society.  This is the place where we either raise up great Americans, or the opposite, because as Lincoln said, “The philosophy of the schoolroom in one generation becomes the philosophy of government in the next.”

A classical liberal arts education was always about liberating the mind from ignorance, freeing the mind from “mind blinds.” The liberal arts were the arts of liberty, the arts of freedom.  A free society cannot long abide without this kind of education.

Ronald Reagan was known for saying, “Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction.”  The Founders knew how true this was, and thus were keenly aware of the consequential role the community schoolhouse would play in either preventing this extinction or contributing to it.

It is this grander vision for our local schools to which we must return or we will crank out yet another generation who will gullibly elect big government control freaks forever hellbent on controlling our thoughts (via progressive education), our beliefs (via religious marginalization), what we can say (via cancel culture), how we buy and sell (via socialist economics), how we vote (via tampered elections) and our society as a whole (via social engineering).

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