America’s Anti-American Public Schools Are Destroying What The Declaration Gave Us
Jeremy S. Adams
America’s substandard, anti-American schools are our greatest enemy.
As Americans prepare to celebrate the Declaration of Independence and the birth of our nation, I find myself haunted by a troubling conclusion: the education many American children now receive is hollowing out the very document we claim to honor.
If you aren’t a teacher, as I have been for almost three decades, you probably don’t know just how bad this reality is.
My concern is not simply that test scores are in a “generations-long decline” — although they are. Nor is it that young people seem utterly incapable of doing the intellectual work required of citizens in an advanced democracy — although that is also true.
If I wanted to be a wee bit cranky — after so many years in the classroom, I think I’ve earned the right — it’s not even that our children are growing up in a post-literate, device-obsessed, neurologically neutered, AI-lobotomized, politically nihilistic country where schools frequently serve more as hubs of social services than they do as citadels of substantive learning.
My central concern is that in our zest to be accommodating and kind, to make sure every student gets to graduate regardless of how much (or little) knowledge they have gained, or what skills they possess, we are not preparing young Americans to take advantage of the promise Thomas Jefferson made 250 years ago.
What does any of this have to do with the celebration we are about to undertake?
The most underappreciated element of the Declaration’s genius is not its assertion about rights and freedoms, or even its soaring prose extolling universal human equality. What often gets overlooked is its implicit acknowledgement about the pluralistic nature of human fulfillment.
Freedom is a necessary component of a full and flourishing life because the “pursuit of happiness” is different for every human being. Some of us are health nuts while others find great joy in being foodies. My son lives for golf and fishing — his two older sisters couldn’t care less.