No Need for School Reform: Think Again!

Commentary

Over the course of the past several decades, we have lived through one of the most dysfunctional and amoral eras in modern history. The rejection of traditional values and the embrace of moral relativism by bloody-minded culture warriors is threatening the foundations of Western civilization itself.

Throughout the USA, Canada, Europe, and the British Commonwealth, anti-Western, anti-Semitic, anti-Christian, anti-capitalist, and pro-communist sentiment is front and center in schools and universities. It is undermining genuine human compassion, representative democracy, rule of law, freedom of speech, civic pride, and personal integrity. It can only be overcome by rejecting cultural Marxism and renewing our foundational commitments to faith, virtue, liberty, and country.

Throughout North America, ordinary folks are concluding that the best place to begin the project of civilizational renewal is in schools and universities. But thousands of post-modern progressive educators view this conclusion as preposterous and appear determined to defend a failing status quo.

This year, the author of an early summer Troy Media article, “Our Schools Don’t Deserve a Failing Grade,” argued that public education is fundamentally successful and that criticisms of schools are exaggerated or one-sided. Rather than seeing systems in need of reform, he contended that schools perform an essential civic function and, in several important respects, are stronger than ever.

The outspoken educator, who began his career in the 1980s, suggested that popular concerns about declining standards, disengaged students, and ideological indoctrination are grossly misinformed. He asserted that educational initiatives such as sexual orientation and gender identity programs encourage respect and acceptance, while Indigenous education and reconciliation imperatives foster empathy, social responsibility, and a deeper understanding of history.

The teacher also maintained that today’s students are generally kinder, and that schools continue to perform their essential mission effectively. In his view, teachers deserve support rather than criticism, because public education remains a vital institution that is helping young people become better citizens.

All of these assurances rest on dubious assumptions about 21st-century schooling. Progressives tell us that public education remains strong and should not be characterized as a failing system. They say that schools have become more compassionate than in previous generations, particularly through programs promoting diversity, equity and inclusion.

As children and parents enter the forthcoming school year, thousands of North American teachers are likely to make the same assertions. Education authorities will contend that concerns about student performance and behavior are overstated. This particular author argued that students today are no less respectful or motivated than those of earlier decades and may, in fact, be kinder to one another.

He said existing shortcomings call for improvement rather than wholesale change. Rather than a fundamental reform of the system, he called for expanded support for struggling students and a greater emphasis on multilingual education.

The conventional wisdom in university faculties of education is that teachers are successfully carrying out their mission by helping young people grow into compassionate citizens of the world—and their work remains worthy of public confidence and support.

The Peril of Woke Schools

Ironically, the professional views of progressive educators are no longer based on rational judgment. Confidence in the present educational order overlooks a growing body of evidence which suggests that today’s schools are experiencing serious academic, cultural, and institutional difficulties.

A recent collection of essays published by the Frontier Centre for Public Policy, “The Peril of Woke Schools and the Value of Traditional Education,” offers a strikingly different assessment of education in North America.

Bringing together scholars, teachers, journalists and policy analysts, the volume asserts that public education has drifted away from its traditional purpose: the transmission of knowledge, the cultivation of virtue, and the preparation of informed citizens capable of sustaining a free society.

Foreword author Conrad Black and some 19 contributors challenge the notion that schools are stronger than ever. They point to declining literacy and numeracy scores, increasing classroom disorder, diminished academic expectations, and growing public dissatisfaction with educational outcomes.

They further argue that ideological activism has increasingly displaced intellectual pluralism, narrowing the range of acceptable opinion within schools and universities.

According to some of the book’s contributors, educational philosophies influenced by thinkers such as John Dewey and Paulo Freire have gradually shifted the emphasis of schooling away from the mastery of knowledge toward social and political transformation. The purpose of the school curriculum has gone from actual literacy to political literacy.

The book also disputes the assumption that initiatives undertaken in the name of inclusion are beyond criticism. Its authors do not reject the importance of treating every student with dignity and respect. Rather, they contend that some contemporary programs have moved beyond fostering tolerance and have instead promoted contested ideological assumptions as settled truth, thereby discouraging genuine debate and critical inquiry.

Similarly, while few would deny the dedication of countless classroom teachers, the contributors maintain that goodwill alone cannot compensate for systemic weaknesses.

They argue that rising concerns over discredited teaching practices, student behavior, falling achievement levels, and increasing parental frustration should not be dismissed as nostalgia or moral panic. Such concerns deserve careful examination rather than reflexive denial.

Free Societies Require Quality Schools

None of this is to imply that modern schools are beyond repair or that all educators are intransigent ideologues. Indeed, many teachers continue to perform extraordinary work under difficult circumstances.

But if schools are to remain worthy of a free and democratic society, they must be willing to engage honestly with criticism, welcome intellectual diversity, and recover their primary mission: the pursuit of truth, the transmission of knowledge, and the maintenance of a civilizational inheritance.

Calling for educational reform is not a mean-spirited or quixotic exercise in conservative nostalgia. It is an urgent necessity that requires immediate attention. The future of Western nations may well depend upon a willingness to rethink what schools teach, how they teach it and, above all, what ends education ought to serve.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.