America’s kids need to learn from the Founders — to have a future, learn from the past

The numbers are in: Parents are fed up with failing government-run schools.

From 2012 to 2022, the share of American children not attending government-run schools rose from 9% to 13%.

That’s roughly 2 million students opting into charter schools, homeschooling or other school options. 

For advocates of education freedom, this sea change comes as no surprise.

The steady wave of school-choice policies enacted throughout the United States in recent years created more options for students, and the eye-opening revelations that came along with COVID school lockdowns encouraged parents to take advantage of them.  

This same dynamic sparked the development of new types of education, including the resurrection of an old and forgotten approach that made America great — and possible — in the first place: classical schooling. 

What is a classical education?

There are nearly as many definitions of it as new classical schools, but one answer is that it introduces students to the tradition of Western thought and literature, as far back as ancient Athens and Jerusalem, and anchors them in the true, the good and the beautiful. 

It’s the type of education that America’s founding generations received.

George Washington’s favorite play was about the Roman senator Cato.

John Adams was a devoted student of Cicero.

James Madison’s essays in the Federalist Papers are replete with the case studies of ancient Greece and Rome drawn from classical histories.

When writing about the Declaration of Independence later in life, Jefferson famously described it as “an expression of the American mind,” which drew from — among other sources — “elementary books of public right, as Aristotle, Cicero, Locke, Sidney Etc.” 

Today, the fact that most people, including many of society’s so-called elite, have no familiarity with these sources should be troubling.

Untethered from the intergenerational wisdom that was one of the key ingredients of our founding, we are floating further and further away from the vision they cast for our future — without even knowing it.

Indeed, the same people who defend “democracy” the most fervently are often the ones most actively undermining our Founders’ idea of it. 

For a country based on the principle of government by the people, this is simply unacceptable.

You can’t love what you don’t know — and a republic whose citizens do not adequately understand the responsibilities they’ve been entrusted with certainly won’t last. 

Sadly, that seems to be what many of today’s educators, bureaucrats and politicians want.

They aren’t simply failing to teach civics adequately; they are wholly focused on telling students in government schools that the country they live in, along with its Declaration of Independence and Constitution, are fundamentally racist and evil.

Is it any wonder a recent survey found some 70% of registered voters would fail a basic literacy quiz and a mere 25% consider themselves “very confident” in explaining how our government works?

Americans are fed up, and they’re taking action.

From 2019 to 2023, more than 264 new classical schools were founded, and existing ones saw enrollments surge.

Per a market analysis by Arcadia Education, 677,500 students are enrolled in classical schools this year. But by 2035, that number is expected to more than double to 1.4 million.  

Contrary to the insanity that we see on TV, college campuses and from politicians in Washington, most Americans still love this country.

They’re proud of our heritage, and they want to pass on that patriotism to the next generation. 

Today, the signs of American decline are all around us: a failing economy, rampant lawlessness, the degradation of education and public virtue.

But we should not accept collapse as an inevitability.  

Classical education gives us the chance to rekindle the flame of the West before it goes out.

If we fail, then the great nation our Founders created will surely collapse.

But if we’re successful, we can raise our children and grandchildren to be a new generation of “Founders.”  

To have a future, we need to start learning from our past. 

Kevin Roberts is president of The Heritage Foundation and Heritage Action for America and a former president of Wyoming Catholic College. Ryan Walters is superintendent of the Oklahoma State Department of Education.