Like Charlie, I ask myself why students have been indoctrinated to hate their country, and why deprecation of the uniquely American values of free expression and honest debate is commonplace. Like many of my English department colleagues in later years, we regarded these as the daily bread by which our students and we as teachers celebrated academic growth. Sadly, such activities have become not only futile but dangerous.

Through critical race theory and its incessant demonization of those with whom its proponents disagree, progressives have marred the intellectual landscape of our schools. I do not like working in places where meaningful teaching has given way to stereotyped objectifications. American schools should prove exceptional, as our heritage is. That begins with the rule of law to which everyone is subordinate, including Democrats who tend to celebrate Mr. Kirk’s assassination as a societal good. Unbeknownst to us, it presented a turning point of our own, for he cogently described what would later become a sad commentary on the academic state of our nation’s schools, the reticence of students to think independently, and their abject inability to debate openly.

Much to our national detriment, schools have become Marxist indoctrination centers where students are taught that America is a racist country through critical race theory and in that process, are taught to hate not only their country but themselves in the bargain, especially the white students. In his book The Democrat Party Hates America, Mark Levin writes:

Like America’s colleges and universities, the public school classroom has also become a propaganda mill for anti-American Marxist lies about racism, America’s history and founding, and the principles on which this nation was founded. And the Democrat Party is all in.

When we were students, learning to hate the country was unconscionable. As teachers, we taught that we live in an imperfect but noble country, ever capable of excellence; but today, too many teachers do not present this patriotic vision. Moreover, students are no longer active and discerning consumers of their own education. Their literacy skills have suffered because of it.

Scholastic excellence cannot be legislated through unwieldy and demeaning diversity, equity, and inclusion (D.E.I.) initiatives nor through an appallingly irresponsible reliance upon technology. Students should be reading and writing classical accounts of the heroic and dramatic from books so they in turn become the moral exemplars of the literature true to our American heritage. What we see is a toxic deconstruction of moral excellence vis-à-vis D.E.I. I confess that I am confounded how such an idolatrous distortion of American ideals of good citizenship and moral behavior could have become so distorted.

Following COVID, student skill sets have even more precipitously gone downhill.  Absent the direct oversight and interpersonal interactions the students would have experienced in the classroom, many soon realized they could get away with feigning online attendance for almost an entire term while ignoring their studies altogether which many did. The result of this online delinquency was suboptimal Keystone test scores from 2019 to 2024.

For fiscal year 2020, the Philadelphia school district proposed $3.3 billion in total revenues. For the 2024 fiscal year, the district projected revenues totaled $4.6 billion, 28% more from what it had been four years before. This is why we need school choice. The funding increases that have been accompanied by declining achievement for years under the watchful [sic] eyes of greedy but incompetent bureaucrats must come to an end.

It takes more than the cowardly behavior and siren songs of grievance to make schools work. Our heritage of excellence and progress demands the urgent renewal of American dignity, a living hope directed by discipline, virtue and above all, order. It requires character and the manifestation of moral truth to set the example by teaching and doing what is true and good.

Freedom of conscience in the context of upright support for morals should be clearly discerned. Conscience demands its articulation and exemplification at all times. There must be more strict rules against misbehavior by students including upholding of the civil and criminal laws by school authorities charged with supervising students. Judeo-Christian moral values should abide in our schools.

Although public schools are not Christian religious schools, the premise that action must always reconcile with conscience, and the moral law should be respected and upheld. This is the way of the Cross by which Pope Benedict 16 taught not only for the Church, but for all institutions. It demands that reason align with the moral law by a strong vertical component aligned with Biblical morality, and a horizontal aligned with the worldly practical requirements.

Unless freedom is bound by God’s law, it becomes ungrounded in clear objective truth and forebodes idolatrous relativization. Biblical moral truths and respect for God must be given more of a place of honor in our schools and society. Charlie Kirk stood for this as few people in history have, and his memory must be honored by having a moral renaissance in our schools and our country.

To evangelize the common good is the primal truth built into every teacher’s practice. Conscience establishes our duty as well as the celebration of American exceptionalism which has increasingly been replaced by sex obsessions, racial and ethnic radicalization which exclude unity, anti-family ideology, and rejection of the beautiful principles of U.S. history.

Charlie Kirk’s legacy is at last clear now.  His life and communications have opened a door of understanding for myself and others as I retire. The hour is late, but it is not too late to once again put God and country at the center of our culture.

Critical race theory is inimical to our national dignity. It undermines the criticality of students becoming active, discerning and constructive consumers of their own education so they can thrive within the limits bound and circumscribed by the moral law. Only then can they realize their responsibility and aspire to the cultural, moral and intellectual grandeur to which they are eminently capable. This is the true business by which teachers aspire to the luminous greatness to which we are called and by which we sanctify the world to our very end.

However polarizing politics may become, whenever war and conflict rage, we must not forget that we are Americans. We live in a noble country and are exceptional.  Polarization can only be assuaged when American life stands as a renewal movement built upon the dignity of being an American. Together we must learn to grasp the universal truths that unite us.

Image from Grok.