There have been quite a few fingers pointed here and there (often legitimately) in the “why-are-our-schools-in-such-a-sorry-state” debate.  Good intentioned individuals fling billions of dollars at problems, and, in the end, hard working teachers still throw up their hands in frustration and disgust.  Unfortunately, the more obvious difficulties with America’s educational system often obscure an even bigger problem that lurks behind them.  One reason for the failure of American education—particularly public education—is the larger breakdown of American culture and morals due to progressive secularization.   

Most Americans for the past generation or two have shared in a major misconception about schooling in the United States:  they believe that children in public and private schools are not “homeschooled.”  With due respect to Ockham’s infamous razor, the truth is more complicated.  The simple fact is that one reason why the public education system worked in the first place was that, by and large, the children who took part in it actually spent as much time learning at home as they did at school.  Parents, extended family, and churches taught hundreds of hours of lessons in honesty, hard work, respect for elders, perseverance, standards of right and wrong, duty to family, friends, and country, and above all belief in a Higher Power to whom humanity is ultimately and completely accountable.  Further, this Deity cared enough about people’s individual lives to pay attention and would one day call everyone to account for his or her actions. 

These are the real lessons every student needs to master.  Math, science, history, etc. are all important, but they are not as necessary to really living life well.  In fact, once someone understands the lessons listed above, academic subjects can follow whenever the student chooses to pick them up.  Without these attitudes and skills, children (and adults) are students in name only. 

The various causes of our culture’s moral vacuum are too complex and numerous to treat thoroughly here.  Suffice to say that a previously “normal” family that would lay precisely the kind of foundation kids really need to succeed is now considered “abnormal” and in some states is actively discouraged.  Religion is despised in particular, and with it the idea that humanity is accountable to anyone or anything.  The end result is that as a culture Americans have destroyed their framework for moral living, and have discovered nothing remotely sufficient with which to replace it.

This throws the untenable burden of insuring pupils’ moral education onto an already overloaded class of individuals: school teachers.  Teachers who really care about their pupils are forced to spend so much time trying vainly to pick up after a neglectful culture that they are left unable to teach their academic subjects effectively and are therefore attacked as “failures” by the very society that is causing the problem.  To make matters worse, with the rise of modern educational theory, the “solution” of universal public education becomes just another part of the problem.  Most schools have been forcibly secularized, thereby removing any real moral compass they once possessed.  Instead, educational gurus seated in the Ivory Towers of academia produce a clergy of graduates who are told to preach a variety of failing secular humanistic creeds, all of which prove to be insufficient grounds for moral behavior.  Thus, many school systems actually end up reinforcing the very aspects of a declining culture that are causing the problem.  Students learn to be concerned about what society owes them, how to understand their victimhood, ways to pad their self-esteem, and about how it is the government’s responsibility to face life’s challenges for them. 

The sub-culture of educational entertainment promoted by some and resorted to by others further encourages this when it panders to the demand that it is a student’s “right” to be constantly amused and kept interested.  As a result, students emerge more complacent, self-centered, and arrogant than ever before, not only lacking the real skills needed to excel, but actually contemptuous of them.

I must be careful not to overstate my argument.  I do not mean to paint a too-rosy picture of America’s past by implying that earlier generations consisted of perfect families who produced perfect children.  Far from it.  In addition to the fall of the American family, increased truancy enforcement, amongst other things, must also be taken into account, though space considerations prevent me from doing so here. 

What solution can I suggest?  Only massive grassroots change followed by a complete overhaul of western educational philosophies and systems can hope to really “fix” what has gone wrong.  I do think that by understanding the real issue—that the primary supports that have made public education possible in America have been cut away from under it—will help us all to assess it properly.  Parents in the United States must take up the responsibility for their own children’s education once again.  They can no longer be assured someone will do it properly for them.