Schools Are Erasing America’s Story. Parents Must Rescue It

By Connor Boyack

Sunday, June 29, 2025

 

We face a choice: Mourn a fading nation, or turn every dining room into a furnace that forges citizens who understand their birthright.

 

America is drifting into collective amnesia regarding our history. Ask a middle-schooler (or young adult, for that matter) why 56 men pledged “our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor” in 1776, and you’ll likely get a blank stare — or worse, a lecture reducing the Founders to nothing more than an oppressive patriarchy.

 

That indifference isn’t accidental; it’s hard-wired into a system that prefers compliant subjects to informed citizens.

 

The evidence is overwhelming. The National Assessment of Educational Progress — the “Nation’s Report Card” — reports that just 13 percent of eighth-graders are proficient in U.S. history. Scores have sunk to their lowest point since the test’s 1994 debut, and 40 percent can’t even clear the “basic” knowledge benchmark, which requires students to answer just half of the questions correctly.

 

After trillions in taxpayer spending, the payoff is intellectual mediocrity and historical ignorance. The K-12 failure spills into “higher” education: A 2024 survey found college students stumped on basics such as who drafted the Constitution and when it was written.

 

This systemic dysfunction has produced an electorate of historically ignorant adults removed from the nation’s past. It’s unsurprising that a 2024 study showed 70 percent of Americans flunk a basic civics quiz, while a 2023 poll found only 5 percent can name the rights safeguarded by the First Amendment.

 

None of this should shock us. Government-run (“public”) schools are the last place one should expect to find candid lessons on government abuse. Would politicians and bureaucrats, who shape school systems, prefer a populace of historically literate critical thinkers, or the opposite? The answer is clear: They favor the latter.

 

With Independence Day approaching and our nation’s 250th anniversary just a year away, Jefferson’s warning should ring in our ears: “If a nation expects to be ignorant and free . . . it expects what never was and never will be.”

 

Many parents intuit this truth and sense that something is off, yet they feel trapped — their own schooling left them historically illiterate as well. The ignorance is multigenerational; the cycle feeds itself. They outsource history to the very system that failed them — and watch it fail their kids.

 

Parents — you — can insist on better. Refuse to settle for a curriculum that airbrushes our Founding or dodges uncomfortable truths. Demand that your child’s school teach primary sources — then reinforce them at home with conversations sparked by the Declaration, the Federalist Papers, even a short biography of a Founding Father (or Mother!). When classrooms and kitchen tables work in tandem, kids develop the historical fluency and critical eye that safeguard liberty.

 

Yes, these efforts require time. Yes, parents must open books they may have never read. But educating the next generation is not an optional side quest for those who want to preserve our essential rights. The reason is simple: We will not save our country in the Capitol or the courtroom. If America is to be saved, it will be at the family dinner table — where parents reclaim their rightful role as primary teachers, where historical illiteracy meets its overdue defeat.

 

We parents cannot wait for curriculum committees or standardized tests to improve. The republic cannot afford their pace. Start tonight. Choose a founding document or a biography. Read the Tuttle Twins America’s History books (full disclosure: I’m their author) or watch Liberty’s Kids (a great PBS production from before they went woke). Connect events from the past to our present, and make the conversation lively.

 

You will be amazed at how quickly young minds rise to the challenge when the past is presented for what it truly is: the most thrilling adventure story ever told.

 

We face a choice: Mourn a fading nation, or turn every dining room into a furnace that forges citizens who understand their birthright. The stakes could not be higher, and the solution could not be closer. It is within arm’s reach — right across the dinner table.