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President Donald Trump signed an executive order recently calling for the dismantling of the Department of Education (a process that will still require an act of Congress), leaving his critics aghast and hyperbolically claiming that he is trying to end education itself in America. In fact, he is trying to rescue it.
The order states that “the experiment of controlling American education through Federal programs and dollars — and the unaccountable bureaucracy those programs and dollars support — has plainly failed our children, our teachers, and our families.”
Indeed it has. The White House noted that the DoE has spent over $3 trillion since President Jimmy Carter created the Department in 1979, “with virtually no measurable improvement in student achievement.” The Nation’s Report Card revealed that math and reading scores are at the lowest level in decades; six-in-ten fourth graders and nearly three-quarters of eighth graders are not proficient in math; seven-in-ten fourth and eighth graders lack reading proficiency; and 40 percent of fourth grade students don’t even meet basic reading levels. Standardized test scores have remained flat for decades, and in math, U.S. students rank 28th out of 37 member-countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).
The decline of American education isn’t entirely the fault of a bloated federal bureaucracy, however, or even of the ideological capture of our educational institutions. Arguably more damaging has been a culture of techno-distraction since at least the 1960s, culminating today in the ubiquity of smart phones among even young schoolchildren. Experts have warned for decades of the mentally debilitating effects of the aptly-named “boob tube,” but the addictive, bottomless pit of internet scrolling and social media obsession makes complaints of “too much TV” seem quaint.
A schoolteacher posted a TikTok video recently describing her disheartening experience with the state of public education. She laments that the students “live on their phones” which feed them a “constant stream of dopamine” from morning to night. In class, without their phones they are like addicts suffering withdrawal – “vacant,” with no ability to focus unless the teacher conveys information “packaged in short little clips.” Their eyes are open, she says, but “they’re not there, and they have a level of apathy that I’ve never seen before.” It’s as if “you are interacting with them in between hits of the internet, which is their real life.”
As a teacher of teens in a homeschooling community, I can vouch for the impact this culture of distraction has had even on homeschooled kids, who tend to be less swept up in pop culture than their public school peers. But perhaps even more concerning than their attention deficit is their deficit of “cultural literacy” – a term coined by educator E.D. Hirsch, Jr., author of the influential 1988 book Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know. “To be culturally literate,” Hirsch wrote, “is to possess the basic information needed to thrive in the modern world. The breadth of that information is great, extending over the major domains of human activity from sports to science.”
In his book, Hirsch compiled a list of over 5000 notable names both fictional (Iago) and real (Houdini), places both fictional (Valhalla) and real (Waterloo), scientific terms (absolute zero), titles of books (Pride and Prejudice) and works of art (the Sistine Chapel), history-making battles (Valley Forge), common phrases (fiddling while Rome burns) and maxims (Gather ye rosebuds while ye may), and much more, which he argued that every American should know.
Hirsch wrote, “Only by accumulating shared symbols, and the shared information that the symbols represent, can we learn to communicate effectively with one another in our national community.”
With the rise of a culture of mass entertainment from the mid-twentieth century on, our children’s familiarity with such shared symbols and information began to unravel. Centuries-old touchstones like the Bible, Shakespeare, and other cultural icons began to be replaced by TV shows and pop stars, and then eventually by “memes” which, while entertaining, are by their very nature ephemeral and tied to specific cultural moments. Ten years from now, or even five, it is likely that none of today’s memes will be recognizable; they certainly will not have the same meaningful depth to connect us as the items listed in Hirsch’s book.
As our cultural literacy declined, so has our cultural unity. Having failed to ground our children’s minds in what the English poet Matthew Arnold called “the best that has been thought and said” in our civilization, we have deprived them of any connection to that grand legacy – indeed, they have little if any connection to the past at all. Man-on-the-street videos abound on the internet in which young people, even adults, cannot answer basic questions about history such as who fought in the Civil War, or in which century the Declaration of Independence was signed. Younger generations now live in the eternal present of pop culture, focused only on the now, the new, and the what’s next.
I ask my students why they should even bother to read great books or learn history at all, and they dutifully offer the standard reasons they think I’m looking for, such as “It opens your mind,” it “increases your attention span,” and “Those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it.”
These are valid reasons, and I add that being able to position themselves in the great sweep of history and to appreciate the great achievements of their cultural heritage draws them closer to the True, the Good, and the Beautiful. It enlarges one’s soul and binds us in our common humanity. That’s not a message one gets very often from pop culture.
Then I hit them with an important reason none of them ever thinks of: young people who do not read books or know their history will one day become more easily manipulated and lied to by demagogues. They will be more easily drawn into the web of totalitarians who understand that severing young people from their cultural legacy leaves them intellectually, morally, and spiritually unfortified to resist. “Take away a nation’s heritage and they are more easily persuaded,” wrote The Communist Manifesto co-author Karl Marx. “Keep people from their history and they are more easily controlled.”
With the debate over education currently raging, we have an opportunity not just to jettison a bureaucracy and an ideological agenda that have failed our children. Now is the moment to revive a focus on the cultural literacy that connects each new generation to our civilization’s grand, unifying heritage, one that will bequeath to them the wisdom and humility, the beauty and morality, and the aspiration and purpose they need to flourish.
Reprinted from Intellectual Takeout with the permission of The Fred & Rheta Skelton Center for Cultural Renewal.
People without knowledge of ideas that have failed in the past are more easily impressed with hearing of them in the present. Examples are treaties outlawing war, disarmament (even unilaterally), and the welfare state.
See “Forty Centuries of Wage & Price Controls” by Robert Schuettinger and Eamonn Butler..
Admittedly, it might be at too high a level for the brilliant commenter who stated “Only neocons and libertarians read that rag,( the Wall Street Journal) and they’re all scumbags.”
Because when I need a sleeping aid masquerading as a homework assignment from our resident Lord High Executioner I always turn to Robert Schuettinger and Eamonn Butler.
Oh the unqualified derision that drips off of you. I guess we are supposed to be impressed?
I didn’t think there could be a bigger snob on this site than THX with all of his Ayn Rand and Lenny Peikoff gibberish, but it seems that you are vying for the title.
Lemme guess…..this is another pathetic attempt to show us your self-serving snobbery has no limits.
That “brilliant commenter” knows more about the real world that you ever will, stuck in that rarified atmosphere of academia as you are.
It’s even worse. Look at all those boomers out protesting yesterday. Most of them got their education before the Dept of Education was formed and they are still a bunch of retards, despite a lifetime of witnessing the failure of their idiotic leftist ideas. I talked with one and it’s like speaking to someone that doesn’t have a brain.
“Those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it.” Would someone please tell President Trump about the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930?
Admittedly, the genius in the comment section who states the stock market is rigged might think the riggers are making stock prices go down to make President Trump look bad. Others who don’t use the comment section to inform readers what they think about their ex-wife –classy that–understand market-determined prices reflect an incredible amount of information.
Effectively educated people realize what lower stock prices mean for unfunded liabilities. They also realize the negative consequences of unfunded liabilities for taxpayers and businesses with defined benefit pension plans. They realize eliminating taxes on Social Security makes deficits worse. Someone might want to educate President Trump about that. Let the childish name-calling commence.
Of course you are an “effectively educated person”, aren’t you. Aren’t you, Little Ritchie? My guess is no.
Meanwhile at least 50 countries are now asking to negotiate with Trump on the tariffs according to Forbes, and the market is pretty much in bounce back mode, down only 250 points as of noon.
Here’s the link you Trump hating shmuck:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/alisondurkee/2025/04/07/will-trump-negotiate-tariffs-white-house-claims-over-50-countries-want-to-talk/
You are truly a broken idiot. Let the “childish name-calling” commence, indeed. Sucks to be you teach. It is no wonder you teach at a dink college in a high tax state.
You are even too chicken shit to use his name, Litt;e Ritchie
That’s all you got?
The reason I won’t use the word that your friend used for his ex-wife should be obvious. I will continue to use his posts as they are very entertaining and telling. Maybe YOU will be brave enough to list your name “Intrepid.”
Oh Ritchie Ritchie Ritchie. It doesn’t much to get the bulge on a tub like you. You are such a girly man pansy. I’ve been on this site for about 10 years, since it was a Disqus site. And under my current handle. You’ve been here for all of two months. And you have already made such a fool of yourself you had to change to a second handle…..which I figured out based on your obvious narcissism. What an inferiority complex laden dolt you are.
Simply because you were dumb enough to initially list your email address as a handle at dinky little Monmouth College in Ill shows me just how desperate you are for some recognition and how self-centered you truly are. It was easy to find that idiotic pic of you in that cute little red soccer team costume, the one with the two college girls hanging on your arms.
Typo alert: ‘It doesn’t take much”
Now , now richard
people don’t usually hate the village idiot
they just laugh at them
unless they know they are aspiring to be one
then there is cost
Time to get back to teaching the youth about the Founding of America(Not on Slavery)about about the U.S. Constitution and that Global Warming/Climate Change is a scam
Great literature is mankind’s ongoing chronicle of the human condition. If we’re unable to understand who we were, who we are, and who we could be, then civilization can’t advance. And the only other direction is decay.
I was teaching at a local university and was discussing the Civil War. One of the students, with no sarcasm, asked me how Washington was able to save the country. My stunned reaction was lost on the college senior. We are doomed.