Paper 7: On Education and Culture

Preserving human thought and diversity

The Last Generation

We're educating potentially the last generation that will know unmediated human thought. Within a decade, AI tutors will personalize every lesson, algorithms will curate all information, and the line between human and machine knowledge will blur. What children learn now—especially HOW they learn to think—determines whether they can distinguish their own thoughts from suggested ones.

We're teaching the last generation that may know how to think without a prompt.

The Capture

They captured education through patience:

  • 1960s: Teachers' colleges fell to ideology
  • 1980s: Federal funding came with strings
  • 2000s: Standardized testing eliminated thinking
  • 2020s: Digital learning enables total surveillance

The results are measurable:

  • Polls suggest many young Americans prefer socialism to capitalism
  • Studies indicate declining civic knowledge across all age groups
  • 67% believe America is systemically racist
  • 43% think the Constitution is outdated

We fund our own destruction: $764 billion annually on K-12, $671 billion on higher education. We pay them to indoctrinate our children.

The Homeschool Exodus

Parents are fleeing:

  • 2019: 1.7 million homeschooled
  • 2025: 5 million and growing
  • Results: 15-30 percentile points higher on all tests

The establishment panics because homeschooling preserves more than values—it preserves human cognitive independence. Children who learn from humans rather than algorithms develop different neural pathways. They learn to think, not just to process. This isn't anti-technology—it's pro-human cognition.

Every child educated by humans rather than systems is a repository of authentic human consciousness.

Cultural Preservation

We're protecting more than cultural traditions—we're preserving the very concept that multiple ways of being human are valid. The efficiency drive of algorithmic systems pushes toward optimization and uniformity. Every tradition preserved, every community maintaining its own ways, is a declaration that humanity isn't meant to be optimized into a single "best" pattern.

Memory as Resistance

Create archives that can't be remotely edited:

  • Physical books (older editions preserve pre-revision history)
  • Handwritten records (proof of human thought)
  • Printed photographs (uneditable evidence)
  • Oral traditions (memorized knowledge)
  • Skill preservation (embodied wisdom)

Not for nostalgia but for evidence of what humanity was before algorithmic optimization. These aren't just memories—they're proof that humans thrived without constant digital mediation.

The Diversity Defense

Religious communities: Preserving transcendent meaning
Rural traditions: Maintaining self-sufficiency
Immigrant cultures: Keeping languages alive
Indigenous wisdom: Protecting land-based knowledge
Subcultural movements: Resisting homogenization

Spiritual traditions may be humanity's last defense against purely material optimization. They assert truths that can't be quantified, values that can't be measured, purposes that transcend efficiency. Whether you believe or not, protect the space for transcendent meaning—it may be the only thing that prevents human existence from being reduced to data points.

Building Educational Alternatives

Classical schools: 500 new campuses teaching logic, rhetoric, wisdom
Microschools: 125,000 students in small pods
Trade apprenticeships: Up 64% since 2020
Online academies: Free courses from actual experts
Homeschool co-ops: Parents teaching parents

5 million homeschoolers prove it's possible. Join or start a network. Every alternative weakens their monopoly.

Practical Preservation

This Month:

  • Start a family archive (photos, letters, stories)
  • Join or create education alternative
  • Learn one analog skill completely
  • Teach someone something by hand
  • Read one pre-2000 book

This Year:

  • Build local history collection
  • Master three practical skills
  • Create apprenticeship or mentorship
  • Establish learning pod or co-op
  • Document community traditions

The Skills That Matter

Preserve human capabilities:

  • Handwriting: Proof of human thought
  • Mental math: Cognitive independence
  • Memorization: Internal knowledge
  • Storytelling: Cultural transmission
  • Craft skills: Embodied wisdom

These aren't obsolete—they're preservation of human cognitive independence.

Cultural Resilience

Every tradition you maintain protects diversity. Every skill you preserve maintains capability. Every story you tell carries wisdom. Every child you teach thinks freely.

What cultural tradition will you teach your children? What skill will you pass on? What memory will you preserve?

The Choice

They offer efficiency through uniformity. We preserve meaning through diversity. They promise optimization. We protect the right to be unoptimized, inefficient, beautifully human.

Multiple ways of being human must remain valid. The Amish aren't backward—they preserve alternative ways of living. Every community choosing its own path preserves options for all.

Don't just resist homogenization. Actively cultivate difference. Make your community distinct. Preserve what makes you particular. Defend what seems inefficient.

In diversity lies resilience. In tradition lies wisdom. In human education lies freedom.

Teach human. Think human. Stay human.

For Liberty and Union