OPINION:
In 1943, C.S. Lewis warned of a day when our country’s educated class would claim that it made sense to “geld the stallion and then bid him be fruitful.” In his seminal work, “The Abolition of Man,” he accused the ivory tower of creating “men without chests,” where instead of pursuing the truth, our schools would educate an entire generation of moral and intellectual amputees with no understanding of the good, the true and the beautiful.
He predicted a time when the average graduate could no longer discern the difference between right and wrong or even be able to add, subtract, multiply and divide. That day is here, and this is why President Trump’s dismantling of the Department of Education is the most important thing he has done so far in his second term.
Since the 1970s, the Department of Education has failed our nation’s schools and students. Year after year, we have elevated social engineering and political indoctrination over teaching the basics of reading, writing, arithmetic and personal virtue. Decade after decade, we have promoted students from one grade level to the next, not because of academic achievement but merely because they “participated.” The result is a morally vacuous citizenry that cannot read, write, understand the basics of logic and science, or tell you why it is wrong to force girls to undress in front of boys in the girls’ locker room.
According to the 2024 Nation’s Report Card, fewer than a third of students nationwide were proficient in reading. Only 40% performed math at grade level, with nearly a quarter unable to identify odd numbers or solve a problem using unit conversions. Despite the terrible scores, graduation rates continue to rise. This means we have a generation of young people where we’ve “severed the organ but still demand the function,” a society with no understanding of its social compact, a workforce without the skills to work and an electorate with no clear moral code. We are now a truly crippled nation.
The problem in education is not a lack of money; we’re spending more than ever before. The problem is we have abandoned the good ideas of teaching students how to read, write, count, and know the difference between right and wrong and replaced them with the bad ideas of DEI, CRT, LGBTQIA, BLM, SJW and SEL. These bad ideas are bearing bad consequences as surely as an acorn grows an oak or a hurricane brings a flood.
Why would we expect decades of teaching sexual promiscuity in our schools to result in sexual restraint in our students?
Why are we surprised at the selfishness of our culture when our schools teach self-esteem more effectively than they do mathematics, science and civics?
Why would we possibly think teaching values clarification rather than moral absolutes would produce virtuous people?
Where in the annals of all of human history is there any evidence that the subordination of one person’s right to live to another person’s right to choose ever resulted in the protection of every person’s unalienable right to life?
Why would you think our young people would be able to read and do basic calculations when we have replaced the common sense of phonics and physics with the convoluted mess of Common Core?
This list could go on and on, but the evidence is clear. All we need to do is turn on the nightly news to see the proof. The Department of Education has given us a nation of “men without chests” where our progeny can’t tell us why men are not women and why 2+2=4 is not the product of “White privilege.”
Education will always lead somewhere: either toward the liberty found in that which is right and just and real or toward the slavery and ugly hell created by our own arrogance and dysfunction.
More from C.S. Lewis: “All [our] lifelong [we] are slowly turning … either into a heavenly creature or into a hellish creature: either into [one who] is in harmony with God … or one that is in a state of war and hatred with [Him]. … To be the one kind of creature is heaven … To be the other means madness.”
We should all be thanking Mr. Trump for demolishing the madness of the Department of Education. Maybe now our schools can get back to teaching our students how to read, write and count and how to pursue the truth rather than rail against it.
• Everett Piper (dreverettpiper.com, @dreverettpiper), a columnist for The Washington Times, is a former university president and radio host. He is the author of “Not a Day Care: The Devastating Consequences of Abandoning Truth” (Regnery). He can be reached at epiper@dreverettpiper.com.
