Classical Education
Battle for the American Mind, Uprooting a Century of Miseducation, is the latest book on American education by Pete Hegseth, co-host of Fox and Friends Weekend on Fox News. For this release, Pete has teamed up with classical educator David Goodwin.
As a teacher, I had a growing awareness of problems in American education even before such concerns spread like wildfire during the pandemic lockdowns. I cheered the advocacy of Betsy DeVos for school choice during the Trump administration. However, according to this bestselling book, I had only realized the basic issues facing the nation’s schools. These problems have been growing for over a hundred years.
Kyle with his copy of Battle for the American Mind by Pete Hegseth and David Goodwin.
Early in the book, I read that Western Christian Paideia (WCP) is defined as the “deeply seated affections, thinking, viewpoints, and virtues embedded in children at a young age.” According to the authors, “Classical Christian education creates a paideia unique in all human history—one that enables freedom.” What I wanted to know was how I could become a teacher and never have heard the word paideia. I continued to read.
By the fourth chapter, The Story of the Progressive Heist, I begin to find an answer. “Like a burglar replacing a priceless artifact with a forgery … the Progressives needed to replace the engine of the WCP with something else.” By the time they finish high school, students will have spent 16,000 hours in a secular, often ideological classroom listening to teachers extoll cultural Marxism, socialism, Critical Race Theory (CRT), and the LGBTQ+ movement. President Lincoln once said, “The philosophy of the schoolroom in one generation, becomes the philosophy of government in the next.” What can one hour of Sunday school do to stem the tide? The authors call for removing children from government schools.
Click on the cover to buy the book.
The final section of the book is titled, “A Solution as Big as the Problem.” This is the portion I found most interesting. This section calls for a return to the Western Christian Paideia in private and homeschooling. To achieve this return the authors advocate a return to the classical Christian education model. This includes a Christian worldview of reason, virtue, wonder, and beauty at the core of education. The authors also argue for a return to the trivium and quadrivium. The trivium encompasses grammar, logic, and rhetoric, and the quadrivium comprises arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy. These topics may seem limiting within the scope of this book review but the seven liberal arts were the foundation of education for much of human history and many books have been written about this curriculum and pedagogy.
My educational background and interest in school choice certainly amplified my interest in this book. If education and school options are of interest to you I highly recommend Battle for the American Mind. Do you homeschool or send your children to private school? Why did you make that choice? Have you read this, or another book on education, by Pete Hegseth? What did you think? Tell us in the comment section below.
