By Douglas V. Gibbs
A survey of the landscape of American education today reveals a crisis that threatens not just academic achievement but the very soul of our country. Today, we are experiencing rapidly declining literacy rates thanks to ideological indoctrination. Our schools have strayed far from their original purpose, and leftism’s creeping incrementalism over the last century is the culprit responsible. The path forward requires us to return to the very foundation that made American education exceptional: faith in God and biblical principles.
The early American schoolhouse, with its iconic red paint and steeple-like bell tower, stood as a testament to a profound truth: education and faith were inseparable. The Bible was the textbook. The New England Primer taught children the alphabet using biblical verses. Hornbooks displayed the Lord’s Prayer. This was not only acceptable, it was the norm because the United States was a country steeped in conviction.
The early Americans understood what we’ve forgotten: literacy was essential primarily so citizens could read Scripture for themselves. This approach produced remarkable results: 90% literacy in New England by the end of the colonial period, making America the envy of the world.
Thomas Jefferson championed public education, but with crucial safeguards that have since been eroded. He believed the states, not the federal government, should fund education, with curriculum determined by local communities and parents. Jefferson understood that education was too important to be centralized in distant bureaucracies.
This philosophy dominated American education for nearly two centuries. Communities took pride in their schools, parents directed their children’s learning, and local values shaped the classroom experience. The system wasn’t perfect, but it worked because it respected the fundamental right of parents to direct their children’s education according to their beliefs and values.
The first major assault on this successful model came in 1899 when John Dewey introduced progressive education. Dewey’s philosophy shifted focus from academic excellence and moral development to socialization and experiential learning. Where traditional education emphasized knowledge and virtue, progressive education prioritized process over content and feelings over facts.
This transformation accelerated through the 20th century as communist sympathizers infiltrated education, systematically removing God, the Bible, and prayer from schools. The 1947 Supreme Court decision in Everson v. Board of Education established a “wall of separation between church and state” that appears nowhere in the Constitution, and used the unconstitutional concept of the Incorporation of the Bill of Rights to the States (allegedly in the 14th Amendment) to impose it on the States. By the 1960s, Engel v. Vitale and Abington School District v. Schempp had officially banned school-sponsored prayer and Bible reading.
The 1979 creation of the federal Department of Education marked the final stage of this hostile takeover. Centralized bureaucracy replaced local control, federal mandates crowded out parental input, and standardized testing replaced genuine learning. The results have been catastrophic.
Today, American students rank alarmingly low in international comparisons. High school seniors struggle to write complete sentences. Many students are unable to perform basic academic tasks. We’ve created a generation that can’t read but can recite leftist talking points about socialism’s supposed superior position versus capitalism – the latter a system that built the very prosperity they take for granted.
Perhaps most concerning is the complete abandonment of virtue within our culture, which as spilled over into education. Benjamin Franklin wisely observed that “only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become more corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters.” Franklin understood what we’ve forgotten: liberty requires moral grounding.
When we removed God from education, we didn’t just lose prayer – we lost the framework for teaching virtue. Without an objective moral standard, schools became battlegrounds for anti-liberty ideologies. Some teachers now openly promote violence and racism. Politicians and leftists tell students that stealing is sometimes acceptable. Organizations like the Democratic Socialists of America are working to remove our constitutional safeguards while mocking Christianity and biblical values, and the younger generation is following their lead because they were trained to during their years in public education.
We’ve gone from a country that cherished virtue to one that mocks it. Is it any wonder we’re experiencing such social decay?
The solution to our educational crisis isn’t more funding or newer programs. It’s restoration. We must return to the principles that made American education exceptional in the first place.
We must dismantle the federal Department of Education and return control to the States and local communities. Educational decisions should be made by parents and teachers who know their students’ names, not by bureaucrats in Washington.
We must restore biblical principles to the classroom. No, that doesn’t mean establishing a state religion. It means acknowledging that the Christian tradition has always been the backbone of our culture and it provides the moral framework necessary for citizenship and character development.
We must prioritize basic skills over social engineering. Schools should focus on teaching students to read, write, calculate, and think critically rather than indoctrinating them with divisive failed ideologies.
As I often tell people, we can’t get our political house in order until we get our cultural house in order…and that begins with God. Our Founding Fathers understood that education without virtue produces clever devils. They built a system that produced literate, virtuous citizens capable of self-government, and the rigorous patriotic duties involved in keeping the republic.
The choice before us is clear: continue down the path of secular progressive education that produces ideological conformity but not competence, or return to the time-tested model that produced generations of knowledgeable, virtuous Americans who used liberty and the free market to forge America into the greatest country in history. For the sake of our children and our nation’s future, I choose the latter.
Only by restoring God to His rightful place in education can we hope to restore America to her rightful place as a beacon of liberty and excellence to the world.
— Political Pistachio Conservative News and Commentary
