The authors of the Federalist Papers, Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay, all writing as the eponymous Publius, knew that if the nation were to survive and its foundational ideas to persist, then the education of the public in those ideas would be crucial. In Federalist No. 51 Madison wrote that the primary break on the control of government was a “dependence on the people” of the United States, so long as those people upheld the virtues.
Our modern American K-12 education system not only fails to produce well-educated citizens in the realms of science, math, reading, and writing. It also fails to properly apply the liberal arts in a way that produces virtuous citizens able to uphold and strengthen the American Republic. The Founding Fathers who came together to write the Federalist Papers would be horrified at the intellectual state of the average citizen and would, rightly, blame our current policymakers.
A report by the Reason Foundation found that between 1960 and 2020 spending per student in the American education system has risen by a staggering 280% and now averages about $15,000 per pupil per year. In many states, education spending accounts for a fifth of both state government and local government budgets and in 2021, totaled $756 billion, according to the Urban Institute.
Despite this record level of government expenditure, America ranks poorly according to international standard metrics of student performance. A 2022 fact sheet produced by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) shows that America ranks well below many notably poorer Western countries such as Estonia, Poland, the United Kingdom, and Slovenia. We also rank far behind many richer Western countries and several Asian and ASEAN states as well. This delinquency persists despite the fact that Estonia, Slovenia, Britain, and Poland all spend less on educating their children.
In other words: the problem is not lack of money.
One of the primary issues in skills-attainment is the American obsession with the high-school-to-college pipeline. Currently American students are not educated to become productive, well-rounded, and knowledgeable citizens of the republic but are instead tested, drilled, remediated, re-tested, and assessed for their ability (or lack thereof) to get into a university. The interests of individual students are given little to no consideration and their aptitudes even less so. As a result of this college focus (despite the fact only 38.3% of Americans will graduate college) nearly 60% of the American population is left behind by our education system. Many are allowed to fail simply because they were not suited to the university path.
The decay of our educational system goes far beyond stagnating educational achievement. Most readers and policymakers will know that our K-12 education system has become embroiled in a culture war as a result of progressive control of institutions and growing parental/right-wing opposition to that control. Currently the progressive side of the spectrum seeks to create (and has succeeded) an education system that “deconstructs” and demonizes the American Nation. Take the issue of slavery as but one example: rather than teaching our children that Americans fought and died in a Civil War to (in part) end slavery and reaffirm our nation’s commitment to the natural rights of man outlined in our Declaration of Independence, they are often taught that slavery constitutes an original and ongoing sin. Worse yet, White students are singled out as the ongoing beneficiaries of imagined privileges thus engendering resentment from follow classmates of non-White background.
This denigration of our history and unique heritage is then mixed with the oft-comprehensively taught myth that America is a deeply racist country that still functions under various forms of oppression and institutional racism. An example of this deconstruction is the incoherent idea that we are a “nation of immigrants” which denies the existence of a cohesive American Nation. Our education system is not producing Americans with an attachment to their country and therefore a drive to see it develop and succeed. It is instead producing Americans who view our country as inherently immoral from its revolutionary founding to the modern day.
While the left pushes this narrative of an exceptionally awful America upon our children, the right fights back with dull tools. Parents and policymakers demand the ability to simply opt their children out of certain forms of education. Others are demanding that they simply be allowed to move their children out of the public school system, thus abandoning it to the progressive onslaught. The instincts of these parents are correct in that they seek to protect their individual children, but they are far from sufficient to protect and advance the American Nation.
With all of this in mind White Papers seeks to put forth a set of basic, fundamental, reforms to the American K-12 education system that not only seek to better prepare our children for the job market but to also prepare them to be good citizens and stewards of our country.
Policy #1: Foster Individual Ability
American policy makers, specifically those at the state level, must abandon two near-universal mantras. The first is the “no child left behind” ethos imparted by the No Child Left Behind Act of 2002. While this law has been replaced, the dogmatic egalitarian ethic it imposed on schools was not. Children have naturally varied abilities, talents, and interests. Maximizing a child’s potential by noticing and fostering talent in some educational paths over others doesn’t leave anyone “behind.”
The second mantra that must be abandoned is the ‘college for all’ mantra of the previous 50 years. American policymakers must begin to accept that our young people possess a diverse array of abilities and interests. College is not and cannot be for everyone. In attempting to fit everyone into this singular box we are setting up the 70% of students who never graduate college for a disappointing professional life.
Education systems must put effort into creating technical, vocational, and high-achieving academic tracks for our students that do not require them to suffer through the memorization-and-regurgitation method demanded by the standardized testing-to-college pipeline. If a young man is interested in becoming an auto mechanic, electrician, or roofer there must be a vocational school available to him – ideally, one that works with the local unions or business associations to provide certification before graduation and employment after graduation.
Similarly, America needs a robust network of technical schools to prepare a new generation for advanced industrial and technological applications. If a region such as Arizona has a particularly large number of chip manufacturing plants, the local education system should work with those companies to train high-schools to fulfill a variety of manufacturing roles. Technical schools could provide an environment for young women with a keen interest in computers to learn to code the newest generation of AI powered machinery or provide young men with training and experience to repair the advanced mechanical systems that move and power that machinery. The same opportunities apply for training students in medical, law enforcement, and administrative fields.
The standard high school (what the English call a comprehensive school and the Germans refer to as gestamtschule) would remain for the academically average. Students with the interest and ability can pursue semi-professional careers such as policing, corporate work, accounting, and other skilled professions without the need for college.
However, there are students “left behind” at the other end of America’s ability range: the extraordinarily academically gifted. Currently these students, unless their parents have a great deal of money, are stuffed into the nation’s high schools where it is said they will “do just fine.” Defenders of the current system argue that they help inspire other students to do better. Educational attainment is not a free market, and competition among students of this kind does not take place in giant high schools. The American education system must establish academically rigorous high schools along the English grammar school model which selects students through interviews, a review of ability, and conversations with parents.
There should always be a track that sends America’s brightest or most college-interest students on the path to a university education. However, this path does not need to be the norm. Sending a young man to code or a young woman to get her LPN should be just as valuable.
Policy #2: Embed Employers and Unions in the Education Process
The plethora of new systems, schools, and programs envisioned in policy #1 should be built out with the cooperation of local and regional institutions. Unions with a shortage of workers can make their pitch to students who are more inclined toward the trades. Regional hospitals can play a role encouraging students interested in medicine to pick a field of specialization. Local businesses could coordinate grants and scholarships to send kids to college with the understanding that those kids will return to work for them thus building the local community. This kind of arrangement can encourage America’s brightest to serve their hometowns rather than concentrating in just a few hyper-wealthy metropolitan areas.
These programs will take on a variety of forms. Some may be apprenticeships at a local business or through a union hall. Others may take place at the schools themselves with business or union input on how the students are educated so that the process suits the local job market.
Any institution that hires students in order to train them should receive a grant for doing so, thereby incentivizing firms to participate in training their own workers.
Policy #3: Minimize Standardized Testing
In addition to federal examinations and college admissions tests, many states also mandate a variety of standardized tests to measure student achievement. In many cases, these tests are ultimately used to justify how much tax money a local school system will receive. This process is warping the American education system.
Standardized testing incentivizes teachers to “teach for their own survival.” If their students do well on these standardized tests, the teacher is doing a good job in the eyes of school and state education officials. This same process occurs with the SAT and other standardized college entrance tests that are given in high schools. Teachers and school systems will orient themselves in an attempt to push as many children over the SAT finish line with scores as high as possible hoping to justify their requests for more funding and resources from the state, local government, and school board.
This system is not helping anyone and is trapping teachers and students alike in a large and overbearing government boondoggle that justifies incredible levels of spending on education even as schools continue to fail.
None of this is to say standardized testing should be eliminated entirely, but testing should be rational. Why should the SAT be given to a student who wants to become a carpenter or programmer? Why should students who wish to study nursing be forced to slog through an annual state education test in every subject under the sun? They shouldn’t.
Policy #4: Pens and Paper Not Computers and Tablets
Technology is the buzzword of our time, and it is harming American students. Work at school, tests, homework, writing assignments, and math are all being moved into the digital sphere where students are more distracted than ever before. Computers and tablets have mountains of temptations from YouTube, social media, video games, and Netflix.
Instead, the United States should look to Sweden and return to books and handwriting wherever possible. After 15 years of attempting to become a digital superpower in education, the Swedish state reversed course and began reintroducing books, paper, and pens. This came on the heels of a report by the Swedish Schools Inspectorate that digital tools were impairing the countries learning environment and was linked to declining reading scores.
Policy #5: A Classical Curriculum and a Patriotic education
Until children are separated into their final high school tracks (somewhere around the age of 13), they must be educated and positively acculturated in their cultural heritage—the cultural canon of the West and of the United States.
This classical curriculum would focus on the Western traditions core to forming knowledgeable citizens. The study of history, morality, philosophy, political traditions, and our unmatched fine arts and literature. Embedded in this curriculum is instruction in phonetics, grammar, and proper writing including shorthand and cursive.
High level math courses, instruction in the sciences, and of course a focus on the Christian heritage of the West would all be included in this curriculum. The depth and breadth of this education will vary as students enter high school and choose their career paths, but it will remain nonetheless.
The purpose of a classical education is not only to create well-educated students but to create students who are aware of their history and understand their place in an unbroken line of Western heritage that they have inherited from our ancestors and are obligated to strengthen and pass down to our descendants.
Policy #6: An Expressly NatCon Education
Just as the left has a progressive vision for educating America’s children, the right must counteract them with a positive national-conservative vision. It is not enough to pull children from school or request opt outs from certain subjects such as sex education or literature. We must take back our schools and turn them into institutions that create proud citizens of a centuries-old republic and millennia-old civilization.
The first step is to eject progressive ideals from school. America is not a nation of immigrants, it is not inherently racist or immoral, men cannot become women or vice versa, and teaching children about the intimate matters of sexuality is the job of parents not the state. In short, progressive dogmas need to be excised entirely, not merely opted out of. Only upon the excising of these progressive dogmas can we finally build a patriotic education.
This patriotic education would include instruction on the heritage of the American Nation, a European nation created by European settlers and built upon a foundation of European institutions and European Christianity. A nation that has redeemed itself and its promises several times over by fighting a bloody civil war to end slavery, the only nation on Earth to truly uphold freedom of speech, and one of the few places where universal equality before the law truly exists. This education would communicate the necessity of a society composed of strong families, local communities, and a civic society that exists through strong formal and informal institutions created by citizens themselves rather than a reliance entirely upon the state.
We must create an active, well informed, and proud citizenry who see commonality in each other and a mutual obligation to advance the interests of the nation.
Conclusion:
Rebuilding the American education system will take time and a great deal of experimentation at the state and local level. Ideally this would be shepherded along by a federal government that sees the necessity to restore the civic virtues that maintain the American republic.
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