Uprooting a Century of Miseducation

Although my D.Ed. kept me reading tons of literature on education while I was studying for the degree, my reading on the topics has slipped over the years. Never in all my studies, however, had I come across such a truth bomb as I found in this book by now-SecDef Pete Hegseth and David Goodwin:

Progressives haven’t just taken over secondary education since the 1960s, but have instead been systematically dismantling all levels of American education for over a century. Every public school, charter school, and even most Christian schools now educate our children according to the Progressive’s atheistic standards, and every small battle we try to win against them within that structure is doomed to fail.

This book review will first summarize the problem (progressive indoctrination) and the solution (Classical Christian Education) before making some final critiques and notes. I absolutely loved this book, and while I won’t be able to delve into the intricacies of the authors’ arguments, I hope this review whets your appetite to delve into them yourself.

The Problem: Progressive Indoctrination

The authors not only describe at length the effects of the Progressive’s atheism on our youth, schools, and culture, but they also describe the cause. Central to their “progress” is not what they teach or even how they teach—it’s not even what they have added to American education but rather what they have removed (50). The authors write:

Progressives made three fundamental changes to diminish reason in America’s schools. First, they removed logic and rhetoric from the curriculum. Second, they stopped using the Socratic method, or the requisite study of world history, philosophy, and theology. And third, they divided subjects into silos without a unifying frame. In short, they completely hollowed out the classical Christian education framework that had birthed the American experiment. (159)

With these three changes, a new form of education emerged, a new way of “doing school the American way.”

To the Left, our Western Judeo-Christian roots are the problem—they must be dismantled, one theory, one word, one classroom, and one mind at a time. (31)

This reality is the reason our attempts to “put God back in school” by allowing kids to bring their Bibles and pray over meals are woefully insufficient. The whole system has been infected and reeks of a God-is-dead mentality. Ponder for a moment some highlights of our modern public education, the emphases on LGBTQ+ and CRT ideals. About these things, the authors write:

Critical Theory is what you get when you try to actually live out avowed atheism… If there is not God, there is no hierarchy—no order. That means that flatness, or equity, is the ultimate good. The Frankfurt School decided the answer was to be “critical” of every social construct so they could “deconstruct” our culture and flatten it. (109)

The great plume of smoke we see rising from selfishness and hypersexuality in our culture emanates from a fire built to worship the creation rather than the Creator. (46)

It’s no wonder children are languishing in our government schools. Children were made for the infinite and they are being treated like finite machines. (185)

The Solution: Classical Christian Education (CCE)

The authors describe CCE (also called Western Christian Education) in terms unfamiliar to most, emphasizing the idea of paideia throughout.

Paideia, simply defined, represents the deeply seated affections, thinking, viewpoints, and virtues embedded in children at a young age, or, more simply, the rearing, molding, and education of a child. (44) … If you had to define paideia in a single word, it would be “enculturation,” not teaching. Pedagogy is the act of formulating a culture in children. (30)

What’s needed, they write, is a return to CCE or the Western Christian Paideia (WCP), where subjects are integrated, history is studied, Latin is appreciated, and Christ is central. Since the late 19th century, the Progressives have removed those elements listed above (logic, rhetoric, and the Socratic method) while also siloing subjects into separate categories that make integration virtually impossible. They removed God from the picture as well (beginning with a pledge to the State, by the way), thus nullifying “education” and leaving studentswith nothing more than training. About this, C.S. Lewis wrote way back in 1939:

“Education is essentially for freemen and vocational training for slaves… If education is beaten by training, civilization dies.” (80)

The authors provide a fantastic and clarifying “direct comparison of Western Christian Paideia (WCP) versus the American Progressive Paideia:”

WCP: A lifelong search for greater meaning in life.
Today: Search for a job.

WCP: Seek wisdom.
Today: Seek facts.

WCP: Study history and classics.
Today: There’s nothing worth knowing that wasn’t just thought of.

WCP: Teach the application of reason.
Today: Preach the acceptance of indoctrination.

WCP: There is a divine order, revealed in Christ.
Today: There is humanist anarchy.

WCP: Strong-spirited citizens who are better together.
Today: Weak-spirited citizens who better serve the state. (53-54)

We must be careful, however, about what we think might help in this Battle for the American Mind and what’s actually needed. In the past, we Christians have made some vain attempts to fight the symptoms of Progressivism while ignoring the disease. The authors touch on three such attempts that I’m will sound familiar to you:

Unlike Christian schools that append a chapel or Bible class to a progressive course of study, every CCE classroom is saturated with Christian understanding. (211)

Charter schools cannot truly do classical education because they teach nothing of transcendent truth, biblical revelation, or God, not to mention the truth system of Christianity. (213)

No matter the school, I know something for certain: two or three hours of “church” each week is not sufficient to counteract forty hours (or more) of social justice indoctrination. (248)

Instead of merely hoping that church will be a sufficient salve for our kids who attend public school, and instead of depending on Christian or Charter schools (both apparently slaves to the Progressive system) to thwart the Progressive trend, we need to opt for a full-scale reversal away from Progressive education. This book provides a strong case that Classical Christian Education is the very reversal we need.

Other Notes

How might CCE look in practice? I wondered this myself as I read, and while the authors provide a number of examples throughout, this example from their section on “Beauty” (art) was most striking to me of how the integration of school and faith can work:

Would Christians say, “Truth is what you make it” or “Goodness depends on the person”? Christianity is so obviously incompatible with these statements about truth or goodness that the point has already been made. But if you say, “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder,” most Christians will pause. Many will agree. Why? Because different people have different tastes? Many Christians have embraced the radical individualistic view that aesthetics are relative. In truth, the beholder’s eye can only recognize beauty rightly if it has been cultivated to do so… For Christians, beauty needs to transcend our personal preferences and yield to God’s. (188)

The authors also make a number of other poignant remarks—too many to mention!—though here are a few more of my favorite one-liners:

Our kids need cultivation in the great, not just the popular. (190)

When elected governments encourage incivility, civilization’s days are numbered. (162)

Morally simplistic stories fail to inspire virtuous kids. (181)

Christianity will survive without America, but America cannot survive without Christianity. (233)

One Disagreement

Although I’m fully onboard with the authors’ argument for a return to Classical Christian Education in America, I did find some points a bit overbearing. The main one is the issue of including Latin so that students can read original sources without the poison of modern interpretations.

At one point, the authors disparage Progressive schools as viewing “Mandarin Chinese or Spanish [as] more relevant, or practical, than Latin.” (212) Why? This argument (that everyone must study the original languages) never made sense to me in seminary and it certainly doesn’t make sense to me now when discussing middle and high schoolers! Translations exist, and thankfully so, because some specialists had chosen ancient languages and translation as their field of interest. Not everyone is a specialist or gifted linguist, and thus not everyone needs to expend his energy on studying a language, simply so he can decipher original meaning from original sources.

Basic Latin is fine and worthy of our attention, of course. As Dorothy Sayers wrote, “A rudimentary knowledge of Latin cuts down the labor and pains of learning almost any other subject by at least fifty percent.” (212) But students should study more than basic Latin if they so desire, or opt instead for Mandarin Chinese or Spanish or whatever language they choose. Modern foreign languages open whole new vistas of practical learning about God’s world and other culture, both historically and presently, not merely through reading but also through interaction. Latin, on the other hand, has countless trustworthy English translations already, the study of which could build strong discernment even without the extra work of reading original sources in original languages.

In a similar vein, every student could study and learn to appreciate art, but that doesn’t mean they will all become painters themselves. Students can study basic Latin and get a rough taste for it to benefit their learning in other subjects, but if it’s not in their wheelhouse to study original documents in original languages or to become their own translators, we needn’t expect such a specialization from them. This, I believe, would be a proper interpretation of Proverbs 22:6, that we train up children towards their natural bents, not frustrate them with expectations of specialization in areas where they’re not naturally gifted.

Conclusion

The brief yet sudden shift to in-home education during COVID-19 gave many parents an inside look at the Progressive education their kids endure every day in public schools. They got to read the textbooks, see the teachers, hear the teaching, and endure the discussions: and many were understandably shaken (5). I think that no matter what schools our kids currently attend, we all need such a wakeup call.

My family has been struggling with this issue of education for several years now. We’ve made one drastic change this year and are happy about it, but it may not be sustainable. If we were to return to the States next year, how would we choose to move? What would be the motivating factor for where we landed? In his closing remarks, Hegseth offers some incredibly strong words on this issue that will keep me thinking for the coming months if not years:

Find a school that reflects your values, and visit it… Then, once you find that school, move to it (you can find more than three hundred such schools at classicalchristian.org). If you have to switch jobs, switch. If you need to pass up a promotion, pass it up. If you need a longer commute, drive it. If you need to take another job, take it. (243)

This desperate need to educate my kids in a God-fearing, anti-Progressive, education-centric way is too important to leave as a secondary or tertiary issue when considering my own future ministry. The right school should be of primary concern, because my kids are my ministry!

This book is a strong argument for why Pete Hegseth would make a great Secretary of Education (once he’s done cleaning up the military as SecDef, of course). It was an unexpected yet thought-provoking book, and although unnecessarily wordy at times, it should be an essential read for Christian parents, teachers, and teachers-in-training.

©2025 E.T.