Grit, persistence, adaptability, financial literacy, interview skills, human relationships, conversation, communication, managing technology, navigating conflicts, preparing healthy food, physical fitness, resilience, self-regulation, time management, basic psychology and mental health practices, arts, and music — all of these would help students and also make school seem much more relevant. Our fixation on college readiness leads our high school curricula toward purely academic subjects and away from life skills. The purpose of education should be to enable a citizen to live a good, positive, socially productive life independent of work.

Getting a good education and making good grades no longer ensures success, and nobody seems to have noticed, except our children.

The vast majority of American children have been educated in the American public school system, in which textbooks and courses of instruction are increasingly oriented to reflect humanist views and a secular philosophy. The undermining of respect for parental authority in favor of state direction or individual autonomy, and the contemporaneous purging of religious influence in the public schools has impaired the development of healthy family members. Values that had historically provided strength to the family, such as firm discipline and corporal punishment, patriotism, and academic achievement, were either attacked, or given token attention.

I’ve noticed a fascinating phenomenon in my thirty years of teaching: schools and schooling are increasingly irrelevant to the great enterprises of the planet. No one believes anymore that scientists are trained in science classes or politicians in civics classes or poets in English classes. The truth is that schools don’t really teach anything except how to obey orders. This is a great mystery to me because thousands of humane, caring people work in schools as teachers and aides and administrators, but the abstract logic of the institution overwhelms their individual contributions. Although teachers do care and do work very, very hard, the institution is psychopathic — it has no conscience

Just doing what we are doing, and hoping our kids turn out "just fine," is not a strategy. I know many good families, good parents, who believe that living in a good neighborhood, with other good families, and going to "good schools" will insulate their kids. Instead, the story unfolds otherwise. The school tells students that their parents' beliefs are backward; they are young and naive if they hold traditional values, it's much easier to follow the crowd, social media reinforces every "woke" message, Hollywood does the same, and, voila, you have a high school graduate you don't recognize. Or, just as bad, a falsely fortified graduate who heads off to college and is completely consumed by the next level of "woke" educational and social pressure. If I had a dollar for every parent or grandparent who lamented as much to me during my travels, I would be a very rich man.

We have 6,000 kids every day drop out in this country. And they don't drop out because they're dumb. They drop out because they're bored to death. They're in a 19th century education system in a 21st century world. If we really are serious, then, first of all, we make sure that we build the curriculum around their interests, rather than just push them into something they don't care. Second thing, unleash weapons of mass instruction. I'm a passionate, ardent supporter of having music and art in every school for every student at every grade level.

As previously announced, we are already studying how to remedy the problems with your schools. The causes of their failures are many, ramified, and deeply entrenched in local politics. The most amazing thing about the situation is that fifty years ago, a century ago, your schools were far better than they are now! They taught fewer subjects and taught the better, with far more success and far less jargon. Everyone agreed then that children were children, that is, impulsive, naive, and ignorant creatures in need of training. No one suggested then that schools or teachers had to put up with hostility or violence or that students had “rights” to such behavior or that freedom of speech included rudeness in the classroom. Persons could be expelled from school and sometimes were. Children were expected to be good citizens and mannerly, and the schools taught citizenship and manners. A necessary adjunct to the school was the truant officer, who sought out and detained any child under eighteen who was not in school, and children did not get out of school until they could read and write and do arithmetic. As is true on so many worlds, the theoreticians and politicians have ruined a good thing.

For some years now there has been considerable conflict in educational circles about what and how children should be taught. The old system was to serve two purposes: to discipline the mind and to provide young people with a background of knowledge about the past, history, philosophy, and the arts. More recently, the influence of Dewey has been powerful in effecting a change in orientation. It is not so important, according to this school, to provide the child with a background of general culture. The essential thing is to relate every fact learned to the tangible world around him. The purpose of his education is to explain to him the things he can feel and see and touch and experience in his daily life.

The schools we go to are reflections of the society that created them. Nobody is going to give you the education you need to overthrow them. Nobody is going to teach you your true history, teach you your true heroes, if they know that that knowledge will help set you free. Schools in amerika are interested in brainwashing people with amerikanism, giving them a little bit of education, and training them in skills needed to fill the positions the capitalist system requires. As long as we expect amerika's schools to educate us, we will remain ignorant.

School trains children to be employees and consumers; teach your own to be leaders and adventurers. School trains children to obey reflexively; teach your own to think critically and independently.

Our fixation on college readiness leads our high school curricula toward purely academic subjects and away from life skills.

Education conceived as preparation for life locks the learning process within a vicious circle. Youth educated in terms of adult ideas and taught to think of learning as a process which ends when real life begins will make no better use of intelligence than the elders who prescribe the system. Brief and rebellious moments occur when youth sees this fallacy clearly, but alas, the pressure of adult civilization is too great; in the end young people fit into the pattern, succumb to the tradition of their elders—indeed, become elderly-minded before their time.

Because we are failing to teach our children, a lot of them lack wisdom which leads to the lack of maturity among many of the youth and that translates into our politics.

Education is necessary, I know. But education without values is like a flower without fragrance. No matter how expensive or beautiful the vase, without the flower, it has no meaning. Similarly, education without values can make one literate but can’t make one strong and complete.