Education Under Siege: Two New Books Discuss the Ongoing Battle – The American Spectator

Education is like a precious ruby hanging from an invisible chain around your neck. Once you have acquired it, it will always be with you. No one can ever yank it from your person. 

Unfortunately, it has become increasingly more challenging to attain a quality education in recent years due to the radical progressive ideology that has infiltrated both our K–12 classrooms and our universities. Two recent books discuss this threat to society’s future from different vantage points. New York Post columnist Karol Markowicz and Heroes of Liberty editor Bethany S. Mandel discuss the negative impact of COVID-19 school closures, critical race theory, transgenderism, and other woke ideologies on our children’s educational achievement, physical health, and psychological well-being in their book Stolen Youth: How Radicals Are Erasing Innocence and Indoctrinating a Generation. John Agresto, a retired university professor and administrator, writes about the potential extinction of the liberal arts and the inherent cultural risks of this trajectory in The Death of Learning: How American Education Has Failed Our Students and What to Do About It.

Stolen Youth: How Radicals Are Erasing Innocence and Indoctrinating a Generation
By Karol Markowicz and Bethany Mandel
(DW Books, 304 pages, $30)

Stolen Youth is a copiously researched book that revisits all the negative milestones that have punctuated the lives of K–12 students for the last three years, including the COVID-19 lockdowns, school closures, the uneven deployment of remote learning, and the reopening of schools with mask mandates. Markowicz and Mandel write extensively about the long-term ramifications of the learning gap created by the pandemic but also acknowledge that the forced remote learning was a blessing in disguise in that it cast sunlight on the pervasiveness of the progressive indoctrination taking place in the classroom. During the pandemic, concerned parents started speaking up against this woke educational agenda at school board meetings nationwide.

Although Stolen Youth covers well-trodden ground, including critical race theory, gender dysphoria, and the sexualization of minors, the authors each bring to the book a unique perspective. Markowicz, who was born in Russia and immigrated to the United States as a little girl with her family, writes about how her great-grandfather, Aron Gelberg, died in “a gulag near the Kuril Islands in eastern Russia sometime in the late 1930s” for opposing the government. She discusses how governments have historically used children to push allegiance to the state over one’s family, and she argues that we risk a comparable problem arising soon in the United States. COVID-19 provided the perfect backdrop for the emergence of an authoritarian state, as demonstrated by comments made in 2021 by Terry McAuliffe, the former Virginia governor who had once again entered the race: “I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach.” Fortunately, voters short-circuited his attempts to marginalize the role of parents in their children’s education by electing Republican newcomer Glenn Youngkin instead. 

Mandel, who lost both of her parents by the age of nineteen, was forced into early adulthood, which shaped her worldview and increased her resiliency. Determined to provide her children with a stable home life and the best educational opportunities available, she decided to homeschool them and became an advocate for the pedagogical practice.

The authors also decry the woke culture for forever infantilizing children. As Markowicz writes: 

What is perhaps the most worrisome overarching trend in this current political moment is the fetishization of victimhood. Even the appearance of too much resilience is discouraged. From social media trends and influences to celebrities to mental-health professionals, the message is clear; everything wrong in the world is the fault of racism or some other strain of bigotry. As a result, children are being taught to externalize responsibility of anything negative that happens to them. And their internal struggles are elevated to the level of mental illness, absolving them of the need for self-reflection. Some go even further and embrace their newly clinicalized identity as the golden ticket into a protected class.

The authors are to be commended not only for chronicling the aforementioned threats to our children’s education and well-being, but also for advancing practical solutions, such as running for the school board, homeschooling, or even relocating to another state. Markowicz relocated her family from New York City to Palm Beach Gardens, Florida, to escape the wokeism running rampant in the New York City public school system. I highly recommend that parents, educators, and adolescent students read Stolen Youth and use it as a go-to resource for identifying and speaking up against progressive ideologies.

The Death of Learning: How American Education Has Failed Our Students and What to Do About It
By John Agresto
(Encounter Books, 256 pages, $31)

In The Death of Learning, John Agresto discusses the declining popularity of a liberal arts education, the problems this situation creates for society, and the best way to institute a revival. “Today, by far the foremost major chosen by undergraduates is business,” Agresto writes. “50 percent of all students focus on just five areas, none of them among the traditional liberal arts: business, education, computer science/technology, engineering, and the health professions.” The graduate education statistics are even worse: “Of the 833,706 master’s degrees awarded in 2018-2019, over 42 percent were concentrated in two fields: education and business. Master’s degrees in English language and literature accounted for less than 1 percent.”

Agresto, the former president of St. John’s College in Santa Fe, New Mexico, maintains that there are many reasons for the precipitous drop in liberal arts degrees. Firstly, he believes that educators have done a terrible job of answering the question on many students’ minds: why would one study language, literature, history, and philosophy when one could earn a lot more money with a more “practical” degree such as accounting, engineering, or computer science? According to Agresto, the standing answer that liberal arts graduates “are more well-rounded” is both inaccurate and arrogant.

Liberal arts degrees have also been diluted by the rise of progressive ideology and multiculturalism within the university curriculum. Universities are systematically replacing the broad literature and history survey courses previously offered with more narrowly defined areas of study. Agresto presents as an example a recent catalog item for Georgetown University, “Contemporary Critical Issues in Shakespeare.” The course examines “a range of Shakespeare’s poems and plays about the political issues and critical methodologies of our own time and place.” So, instead of studying the incredible stories, complex characters, and beautiful language created by Shakespeare, students are taking a class that forces contemporary issues into a historical context in a misguided attempt to placate a present-day audience. 

Agresto further argues that the universities have failed to properly socialize the intrinsic value of a liberal arts education. The liberal arts provide insight into human behavior by educating us in the major decisions and moral questions that historical figures or legendary fictional characters have faced. We learn how they dealt with these pivotal moments and witness the long-term ramifications of their actions. As Agresto writes: 

In the domain of utility, the liberal arts do not bake bread, nor do they mend fractured bones; in the realm of moral virtue, they do not always work to soften a stony heart. But they can keep us from being ruled over by slogans and the untutored opinions of those around us; they can give us insight into matters of great importance; and, in a most practical way, they give us insight into our character and the character of those we meet.

Agresto also presents practical solutions to saving the liberal arts. For instance, he suggests that in addition to better selling the value of a liberal arts education, we should revisit the curriculum offerings at existing universities and also consider establishing new institutions of higher learning. He cites as an example the recently established University of Austin, which markets itself as “reclaiming a place in higher education for freedom of inquiry and civil discourse,” where “our students and faculty will confront the most vexing questions of human life and civil society.”

On a personal note, as someone who holds two liberal arts degrees — a bachelor of arts in English and French and a master of arts in English — along with a master of business administration in marketing,…