Knowledge about our history and government is required for maintaining our free republic.
“Education for freedom consists in transmitting to the rising generation the civilization they have inherited, together with the techniques by which it may be understood.”
So wrote Robert Maynard Hutchins in his 1941 essay, “Education for Freedom,” which he later lengthened into a short
book that appeared in 1943 under the same title.
Hutchins (1899–1977) was an academic and intellectual superstar in his day, becoming president of the University of Chicago at the age of 30. Throughout his lifetime, he advocated for morals, values, critical thinking, and “the great conversation” as the heart of a real education, all acquired through the study of the liberal arts. Among his other endeavors, Hutchins was editor-in-chief of the 54-volume collection, “
Great Books of the Western World.”
Our Founding Fathers and those who followed immediately in their footsteps would have perfectly understood Hutchins and his ideas. Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Noah Webster, and others were well aware of the link between liberty and education.
In “
Educating Citizens: Have We Kept the Founders’ Ideal for Higher Education?” Hans Zeiger gives us a glimpse of the importance our ancestors attached to “a moral and civic education that would sustain self-government.” After making his case for this vision, Mr. Zeiger then concludes, “The sad condition of many academic departments at most universities is that they have ceased to give allegiance to the “Great Tradition” of Western civilization that the American founders believed essential.”
America the Neglected
This same lack of allegiance extends to many of our secondary and elementary schools. According to the 2022 “Nation’s Report Card,” which assesses 8th graders in their knowledge of American history, scores once again
declined, with the great majority of students falling below proficiency levels. Civics produces equally dismal
results. Worse yet are student scores in the very
fundamentals of education, such as reading and math.
Meanwhile, the federal, state, and local governments are
spending an average of nearly $15,000 per student in our public schools. A family with two children in those schools therefore costs our system approximately $30,000 annually. Give that money to a homeschooling family, and the parents could afford to buy each child a computer, purchase a small library of textbooks and other supplementals, hire a tutor for math or writing, and spend some time overseas studying another culture and language.
In the midst of this waste and the poor education received by so many students, to suppose that the American republic can survive, much less thrive, is absurd at best. Yet the standard answer to improving our students’ learning is to throw more money at the problem.
We’re at war right now with ignorance, and we’re losing.
And right here is where our country desperately needs parents and teachers to step up and begin making a difference, one skirmish at a time, in this battle for our children and the future of our country.
A Richness of Recourses
Fortunately, some of the ordinances needed for this fight are already at hand. Our computers contain the world’s largest library of literature, history, political science, religion, and moral philosophy. Textbooks like Wilfred McClay’s “
Land of Hope: An Invitation to the Great American Story” present a balanced and inspiring narrative of our history. Numerous guides to literature like “
Honey for a Teen’s Heart” are sitting on library shelves waiting for patrons. Once some of the foundation stones of morality in our culture, the classic folk and fairy tales, along with many poems of childhood, need only readers to bring them back to life.
Parents can also find reinforcement for their teens and for themselves in the free courses now offered by some colleges, classes that emphasize both Western culture and traditional moral philosophy. Here in Front Royal, for instance, Christendom College has begun posting free online
lectures, like the series “The Heroes of Great Literature.”
Of these schools, Michigan’s Hillsdale College has won renown for the number of
free online courses it provides on the literature, history, politics, and religion of the West. Today, more than 3 million people are enrolled in these
programs. The college has also designed a K–12 curriculum, which private schools around the country have implemented or taken as their template for learning. Most recently, Hillsdale started a graduate school focused on teaching classics to future educators.
These are only a few of the options ready and waiting for parents and children.
When We Teach, We Learn
When I was much more a part of a homeschooling community than I am today, I heard a number of parents say, “I’m learning things I’ve either forgotten or was never taught.”The same holds true for all of us. When we pass along wisdom and ideas to the young, whether from books or our life experiences, we’re reacquainting ourselves with those subjects. If we want to tell our grandchildren about the Bill of Rights, more likely than not, we’ll need to revisit that document to make sure we’ve got the details correct. If a daughter asks her mother to explain “no taxation without representation,” Mom may need to hit the computer to dig up some additional information about this cause of the American Revolution.
Kitchen Table Warriors
We can also engage with the liberal arts when the family gathers for a meal. Search online for “
today in American history,” and you’ll find a number of sites informing you about an event on this particular date in the past. Share that information together every day, and you’ll quickly find yourself becoming much more enlightened about our country’s past and its bearing on the present.
Today’s headlines also make a great springboard into civics. Suppose you brought the border crisis to supper and raised some questions with the older kids. This discussion could go half-a-dozen ways. How does the president have authority over the border? What authority do the states have? What might be the long-term consequences of this situation? Similarly, the presidential primaries now underway are ideal vehicles for a discussion of the candidates’ ideas and their character.
The Liberal Arts for Freedom
“Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people,” John Adams once
said. “It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”
In “Education for Freedom,” Robert Hutchins acknowledges the need for technical and vocational education. But near the end of his essay, he calls on us to study the liberal arts, in part to gain that moral foundation noted by Adams: “If we cannot give a liberal education to every citizen in proportion to his capacity to receive it we might as well give up our hopes of achieving a democratic community.”
We have drifted far from that ideal. More than 80 years have passed since Hutchins also wrote in his essay, “We need men and women capable of freedom.” Heaven knows that today we need such men and women more than ever, citizens whose sense of right and responsibility make them able to govern themselves.
The more all of us know about our past and the workings of our government, and the more we are acquainted with the liberal arts that helped shape our country, the greater our chances of securing our liberties.
