For Liberty and Union: Paper No. 7

(by An American Citizen)

On Education and Memory

They captured our children's minds through the institutions we fund. Not overnight but over decades, while parents trusted the system, ideologues executed a deliberate strategy that Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci called "the long march through the institutions."

The results are measurable. A 2024 Harvard poll found 51% of young Americans prefer socialism to capitalism. Only 24% of high school seniors can pass a basic citizenship test. Meanwhile, 67% believe America is systemically racist, 58% support censorship of "hate speech," and 43% think the Constitution is outdated.

We're paying for this transformation. Americans spend $764 billion annually on K-12 education and $671 billion on higher education. We fund our own cultural revolution.

The Architecture of Capture

The takeover followed a deliberate timeline, documented in education journals and foundation reports.

Teachers' colleges fell first in the 1960s, influenced by Paolo Freire's "Pedagogy of the Oppressed" and Howard Zinn's revisionist history. By 1975, Schools of Education had become ideological training grounds where future teachers learned that America was oppressive and traditional values were bigoted.

Humanities departments followed in the 1970s-80s, embracing critical theory, deconstructionism, and postmodernism. By 1990, you couldn't study literature without encountering race, class, and gender analysis. Shakespeare became problematic; Western civilization became suspect.

The social sciences surrendered in the 1990s. Psychology, sociology, and anthropology adopted frameworks where oppression explained everything and individual agency nothing. By 2000, these departments were producing activists, not scholars.

Even STEM fields weren't immune. By 2010, the National Science Foundation required "broader impacts" statements promoting diversity and inclusion. Mathematics education now emphasizes "ethnomathematics." Biology textbooks discuss gender as spectrum, not binary.

The funding mechanism ensured compliance. Federal education spending grew from $25 billion in 1980 to $194 billion in 2023. Every dollar came with strings: Title IX compliance, diversity requirements, equity mandates. Schools that resisted lost funding. None resisted for long.

The Memory Hole in Operation

Orwell warned: "Who controls the past controls the future." That control is now systematic.

The 1619 Project, despite being debunked by historians, is taught in 4,500 schools. It reframes America's founding as fundamentally about preserving slavery, not liberty. Students learn that 1619, not 1776, marks America's true beginning.

Statues fall weekly—over 230 removed since 2020. Not just Confederates but Columbus, Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt. When San Francisco renamed 44 schools, they included Abraham Lincoln High School for not demonstrating that "black lives mattered to him."

Language itself is policed. "Founding Fathers" becomes "enslavers." "Conquest" becomes "colonization." "Civilization" becomes "cultural genocide." The AP History curriculum describes America as built on "exploitation, violence, and dispossession."

Meanwhile, actual history disappears. A 2023 survey found only 13% of eighth-graders proficient in US history. They don't know about Valley Forge, the Federalist Papers, or the Marshall Plan. But they know about microaggressions, systemic racism, and their own privilege or victimhood.

The Three-Generation Strategy

Yuri Bezmenov, the KGB defector, explained in 1984: "It takes 15-20 years to demoralize a nation. This is the minimum number of years to educate one generation of students."

Generation 1 (Grandparents) remember traditional America but are dismissed as irrelevant. Their knowledge is labeled outdated, their values bigoted, their memories false consciousness.

Generation 2 (Parents) are confused and conflicted. They sense something wrong but can't articulate it. They're too busy surviving to investigate. They hope it's just a phase, that pendulums swing back.

Generation 3 (Students today) know only the new narrative. They believe America is uniquely evil, capitalism is exploitation, gender is fluid, government should provide everything, and speech they dislike is violence.

The strategy worked. We're now in Generation 3, where revolutionary ideas seem normal and traditional values seem extreme.

The Homeschool Exodus

Parents are fleeing. Homeschooling grew from 1.7 million students in 2019 to 5 million in 2024—a 194% increase. Another 3 million are in "pandemic pods" and micro-schools.

The results embarrass the education establishment. Homeschooled children score 15-30 percentile points higher on standardized tests. They're accepted to college at higher rates, graduate at higher rates, and report higher life satisfaction.

The establishment fights back desperately. Teachers' unions lobby for homeschool restrictions. Harvard Law professors propose presumptive bans. Media runs endless stories about "unqualified parents" and "socialization concerns."

They're panicking because the exodus accelerates. Each family that leaves takes $10,000-15,000 in funding. More importantly, they take children beyond ideological reach. Free children become free adults who raise free children. The indoctrination pipeline breaks.

Creating Parallel Education

Alternatives multiply faster than they can be suppressed.

Classical education surges with 234 new classical schools opened since 2019. They teach logic, rhetoric, Latin, great books—everything the system abandoned. Hillsdale College's K-12 curriculum has been adopted by 53 schools in 23 states.

Online learning explodes. Khan Academy, Prager University, and dozens of platforms offer superior education for free or minimal cost. Students can learn calculus from MIT professors, history from actual historians, and economics from successful entrepreneurs.

Apprenticeships return. Plumbers earning $90,000 train teenagers while college graduates with $50,000 in debt work retail. Companies like Google, Apple, and IBM dropped degree requirements, recognizing that credentials don't equal competence.

The credential cartel cracks. When Elon Musk says he doesn't care about degrees, when Peter Thiel pays students to drop out, when successful people openly mock higher education—the monopoly weakens.

Reclaiming Memory

Memory preservation becomes resistance.

Document family history. Record grandparents' stories. Save photographs, letters, documents. Create family archives. They can't erase what you preserve independently.

Maintain local history. Every town has stories they don't want told—about self-reliance, community solidarity, American success. Form historical societies. Create local museums. Publish neighborhood histories.

Teach actual history. Read original documents, not textbooks about them. The Federalist Papers, not commentary. Autobiography of Frederick Douglass, not critical race theory. De Tocqueville's observations, not modern interpretations.

Build libraries of real books. Physical books can't be remotely edited like digital ones. Older editions preserve pre-revision history. Used bookstores contain treasures the system wants forgotten.

The Information War for Young Minds

They have institutional power, but you have parental authority—if you use it.

Monitor everything. Review every textbook, assignment, and lesson plan. Attend school boards. Question curricula. Document indoctrination. Many parents discover the programming only when children come home believing they're racist or their gender is wrong.

Provide alternatives. For every lie they teach, provide truth. For every omission, fill gaps. For every distortion, offer correction. Create parallel education at home that counters institutional indoctrination.

Build communities. Connect with like-minded parents. Share resources. Create co-ops. Start book clubs. Form educational groups. Isolation enables indoctrination; community prevents it.

Most importantly: remove your children from their reach. Every child in government school becomes statistically likely to adopt government-approved thoughts. Every homeschooled child maintains intellectual independence.

Conclusion: The Last Generation That Remembers

You are potentially the last generation that remembers freedom. The last that knows truth. The last that can teach it.

Your children will either restore the republic or bury it. That determination happens now—in what you teach them, where you send them, what you allow them to learn.

Every child in government school is a future vote for expanded government. Every homeschooled child is a future voice for liberty. Every alternative created weakens their monopoly. Every memory preserved weapons against forgetting.

The Kirk assassination will be taught to your children. As terrorism or as resistance? As evil or as martyrdom? As warning or as inspiration? That depends on who teaches them—you or the system.

They captured education because it captures the future. Reclaim education to reclaim tomorrow.

The choice is yours: comfort today, indoctrinated children tomorrow. Or effort today, free children tomorrow.

Choose your children over your comfort. Or lose them forever to those who chose for you.

For Liberty and Union

Signed,
An American Citizen

Who Remembers and Teaches

September 25, 2025