“A human being who has not been taught to think clearly is a danger in a free society.” —a Los Angeles reporter’s observation of the state of American schools
Let’s start with a few stats from Thomas Sowell’s book, Inside American Education:
One third of American 17-year-olds do not know that Abraham Lincoln wrote the Emancipation Proclamation.
Half do not know who Josef Stalin was.
30% cannot locate Britain on a map.
67% of college professors reported a widespread lowering of standards in American higher education.
75% characterized their students as seriously underprepared in basic skills.
As of 1990, the average combined verbal-math SAT score was 900, 10 points above the low in 1980 but 80 points below the high in 1963, to which they have never returned.
Since the 1960s and accelerating with the late ‘70s establishment of the Department of Education — federally funded education nationwide — the education system has been in devastating decline and infiltrated from the very beginning with deceptive dogma. Many of the very same revolutionaries from the 1960s, steeped in Marxism, even those who had served time for crime, later became teachers in public schools and professors in higher education. Academic measures were then allowed to suffer because it was essential to re-educate in the “acceptable” dogmas of the day, which were secularism and Marxism. They had to erase the foundational pillars that classical education instilled and that Western civilization was built upon, namely, Truth, Beauty, and Goodness. When people are educated in what is true, what is good, and what is beautiful, all of which are based on standards, the result is a productive citizen of good character. When people are educated in relativism, immorality, and victimhood, the result is an unproductive citizen whose mind is set on destruction.
This is what Marxism does. Its whole goal is to destroy the foundations of society in order to gain power and control. They achieve this goal by sabotaging and overtaking the education system. As Jesse Kelly stated in his book, The Anti-Communist Manifesto, “Education of the nation’s youth is the linchpin of the communists’ efforts.” Once the population is indoctrinated in the deception that they are oppressed and victimized, it breeds malcontent and envy, which leads to violence and destruction.
As Kelly continues to lay out, the most common form of Marxism being espoused on campuses today is referred to as “cultural Marxism.” He writes, “Cultural Marxism considers Western civilization to be a system of racism, white supremacy, and oppression. Cultural Marxism is thoroughly anticapitalist and replaces individual sovereignty with identity politics, victimology, and multiculturalism.”
This is the communist disease that has infected all the institutions throughout the nation.
Thomas Sowell, one of the greatest American economists and historians, also concludes in his book, referenced above, that the deceptive dogmas that have been inculcated in American education since the ‘60s have led to its demise and, as a result, the demise of society as well. He states that there are many dogmas prevalent in American education, but the two main categories are those related to society and those related to education. Social dogmas encompass “multicultural diversity,” while educational dogmas include “relevance,” educating “the whole person,” and a general minimizing of authority.
Sowell goes on to discuss how the ideology of multiculturalism is a “cultural relativism that finds the prominence of Western civilization in the world or in the schools intolerable.” This is how the seed of hate for the West is planted and grown. The education system then becomes a mill where political and ideological issues are addressed at taxpayer expense, as well as at the expense of actual academic subjects, and activists are churned out.
The Heritage Foundation’s Jay Greene explains how college professors routinely assign and praise books by notorious murderers like Che Guevara, Leila Khaled, and Winnie Mandela, and present them as positive role models, romanticizing their violence as advancing justice. This kind of indoctrination is how you end up with conservative speakers on campuses being shouted down and attacked — how you end up with riots across the country being excused as the oppressed protesting. This is how you have a Chicago teacher’s union celebrating and honoring the memory of a convicted cop killer, Assata Shakur, and how you also have kids all across college campuses defending and justifying terrorist attacks. This is how you get to the point of actually killing a person, Charlie Kirk, who was not only speaking about, but also living out what is true, what is good, and what is beautiful.
As Ohio state Representative Josh Williams correctly clarifies about Kirk’s murder, “This was not an isolated act. It was the predictable outcome of a 25-year campaign to redefine words as violence, normalize riots as resistance, and excuse assassination as politics by other means.”
The roots of all this can be traced back to the universities and schools where language was altered and words redefined, not in the pursuit of truth, but to pervert it and advance their agenda. “By the early 2020s,” Williams adds, “the definition of the word ‘threat’ had expanded, ridiculously. Anyone challenging progressive cultural dogma, especially on gender, became fair game. Misgendering was called violence. Questioning medical procedures for minors was violence. Barring biological males from women’s sports was violence. By this warped logic, physical aggression became ‘self-defense.’”
Some will argue that we shouldn’t give up on our colleges and universities despite the fact that George Leef at National Review admits, “To an alarming degree, our colleges and universities propagandize for left-wing activism rather than teach useful knowledge and skills — and rather than helping young Americans mature, they keep them in a state of childhood.” They will opine that there needs to be public oversight in the future if colleges accept federal funding. They will wax eloquent on ending illegal preferences for all time for students and faculty, and on ridding campuses of those who celebrate murder.
These are all good goals, and hopefully, colleges will start enforcing them, but I’m afraid it will be in vain.
You see, we have here in the South a plant that is not native to America called Kudzu. It is also known as “the vine that ate the South.” This climbing, rapidly growing Japanese vine grows out of control quickly and terrorizes native plants. It outcompetes everything in its path, from grasses to mature trees, which has a profound effect on other plants and insects, leading to a cascading impact on the entire ecosystem. If you catch it in time and deter its invasion, you can save some trees and plants; however, if not, it will kill everything it overtakes.
This is how I see the Marxist poison that has infected our education system.
You may be able to save a few colleges and universities where it has just started to grow. You can try to treat the Marxist vine that ate our institutions with various remedies, but the problem will remain: the beautiful tree of knowledge and wisdom underneath it is dead. You will have to tear it all down and start over.
