Return Learning to Education

Situation: “How Much Wisdom…?”

Like TV during the Industrial Age, during our Global Age the internet can both educate and distract. Pausing amidst the clacking keypads, let’s recall T.S. Eliot’s warning: “How much wisdom have we lost in knowledge? How much knowledge have we lost in information?” Yes, the computer may supplant the poet from a society’s yearning; but it must not supplant parents and teachers from a child’s learning.

Nor should the federal government usurp local and state control of education. The temptation will be great, however, due the mounting frustrations and concerns of students, parents and teachers in both K-12 and higher education. But we must resist, if we are to empower our children fulfill their intellectual potential.

Solution: Return Learning to Education

We must:

* Provide students a broad education that leads to intelligence and independence, not a narrow indoctrination leading to dependence
* Restore the primacy of parents in building their child’s foundational moral virtues and academic skills
* Expand all education’s accessibility, accountability, and free teachers to teach by reducing the bureaucratization of education
* Implement strict accountability standards for all federal tax dollars
* Reject the federalization of education, because it will supplant parents and teachers with bureaucrats as the primary shapers of a child’s mind; and, consequently, will destroy every goal and hope we have for our children
* Encourage the core subjects of reading, writing, math, science, foreign language, and especially history and civics – key educational components that help answer the question, “What perpetuates American Excellence?”

Restoration: Life-Long Intellectual Fulfillment

Education is essential to a joyful future for our children and free republic. This is no mere utilitarian call for a “competitive workforce”; it is an affirmation American Excellence ultimately rests upon our children’s intellectual fulfillment. If we fail them, both our children’s and our republic’s future will prove Seneca’s warning: “Life is short and anxious for those who forget the past, neglect the present and fear the future.”

As Americans – as parents – we will never cheat our children of an education and teach them to fear the future. We will teach them to seize it!