Category: History
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Education in America – Part Six
Part 6: Why So Many Parents No Longer Trust Public Education Public trust is rarely destroyed by a single event. It is worn down by repeated contradiction. Parents are told that schools are committed to excellence, yet many see weak academic results. They are told that schools welcome partnership, yet too often experience opacity, delay, and condescension…
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Education in America – Part Five
The Child Does Not Belong to the State A free society must answer certain questions correctly or it will soon answer many others wrongly. One of those questions is this: who bears the first responsibility for the child? The answer is not the school district, the state agency, the licensing body, the union, or the educational theorist.…
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Education in America – Part Four
When the Classroom Becomes a Political Stage A classroom is not a campaign office, a protest rally, or a stage on which adults perform their moral identity before a captive audience of minors. Its first obligation is instruction. That does not mean politics must never be discussed. On the contrary, any serious education in history,…
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Education in America – Part Three
Part 3: From Reading and Arithmetic to Therapy and Activism There was a time when the purpose of a school could be stated without embarrassment. Children were sent there to learn to read, to write, to count, to know something of the world that existed before they arrived, and to acquire habits of mind that would serve them when novelty had…
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Education in America – Part Two
How Schools Stopped Teaching Children How to Think There are few phrases in modern education more overused, or more carelessly used, than “critical thinking.” It appears in mission statements, curriculum guides, strategic plans, and teacher training materials with almost liturgical regularity. Yet the phrase often conceals as much as it reveals. A student is not…
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Moral Confusion in Modern Times: A Rebuke of False Equivalence
The Event and Its Distorted Message In August, outside an Arlington County School Board meeting in Virginia, a small protest formed over a proposal to restrict transgender students from using bathrooms that do not align with their biological sex. Among the counter-protesters stood a man holding a hand-drawn sign that read, “Hey Winsome, if trans can’t…
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The Triumph of Reason and Fairness in Women’s Athletics
A Thankful Reflection Today is a good day. There are moments in history, quiet but unmistakable, when truth stirs from its long slumber, shakes off the scorn of the fashionable lie, and rises to speak again. The news that the University of Pennsylvania has agreed to bar biological males from competing in women’s sports is…
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“Hands Off” or Heads Buried? A response to America’s April 7th Protests
In a country where freedom of speech is still preserved—even if inconsistently respected—it is no surprise that thousands took to the streets yesterday in what they called “Hands Off” protests. Their grievance? A supposed assault on democracy, liberty, and human rights by the second Trump administration. Their slogans rang out with dramatic cries of “fascism”…
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An Open Letter to Pope Francis
Your Holiness, It is with both sorrow and necessity that I must take up my pen and write this letter, for a rebuke is never a thing to be lightly undertaken, especially when directed at the Bishop of Rome. However, when a shepherd of the flock distorts the nature of Christian love and misapplies Holy…
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Trump’s Executive Order on Women’s Sports Explained
In a political climate where common sense is often treated as a radical proposition, President Donald Trump has signed an executive order titled “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports.” As the name suggests, this directive aims to do what once required no explanation: ensure that women’s sports remain for women. Predictably, the decision has ignited…
Seeking Truth in Today's Troubled World 