Classical Christian Education as the Remedy for America's Educational and Cultural Decline
Source: Louis Markos. "How Classical Christian Education Can Save America." September 24, 2026. thefederalist.com
The Gist
This article argues that American schools have been ruined by decades of secular progressive ideas, and that the solution is Classical Christian Education—an approach that combines classical learning tools with Christian faith and the great works of Western civilization. The author, reviewing a new book by David Goodwin, claims this method produces students who are wiser, more virtuous, and better equipped to resist manipulation and social decay than those from secular schools.
Conclusion
Classical Christian Education (CCE), as detailed in David Goodwin's 'Forging the American Mind,' offers the necessary framework to restore American education and society by replacing secular progressive pedagogy with one grounded in reason, virtue, revelation, and the Western canon.
Premises
- American public education has been progressively secularized since the 1860s, replacing Greco-Roman and Judeo-Christian foundations (reason, virtue, wonder, beauty) with secular values like diversity, equity, and multiculturalism.
- CCE trains students in the trivium (grammar, logic, rhetoric) as tools of learning, enabling them to distinguish truth from falsehood, good from evil, and beauty from ugliness independently rather than through mere mimicry.
- CCE immerses students in the 'Great Conversation' of Western civilization's Great Books, which inoculates them against political propaganda, identity politics, advertising manipulation, and failed ideologies.
- CCE synthesizes human reason with divine revelation (unlike secular education, which relies on desiccated reason alone, or Islam, which relies solely on the Koran), with Christ as Logos providing the unifying principle of truth.
- CCE's aim is to align students with reality and God's created order rather than encourage self-expression or private desires, producing morally self-regulating, virtuous citizens.
- CCE emphasizes structure, order, hierarchy, and habit formation for children, contrasting with progressive education's emphasis on self-direction and rebellion, which Goodwin claims leads to happier, better-adjusted students.
- CCE treats history as a narrative driven by human moral agency, contrasting with progressive education's deterministic 'forces and trends' model, thereby respecting students as ethical agents in God's plan.
Assumptions
- Western civilization's classical and Judeo-Christian tradition represents objective truth, goodness, and beauty rather than one cultural perspective among many.
- Secular/progressive education is inherently deficient because it lacks access to divine revelation.
- Children's happiness and moral development are best served by external structure and hierarchy rather than autonomy or self-direction.
- The 'Great Books' canon adequately represents the totality of human wisdom worth transmitting.
- Christianity uniquely and correctly completes/perfects the Greco-Roman philosophical tradition.
- The decline of American education and culture is causally linked to the abandonment of classical/religious pedagogy, rather than other social, economic, or historical factors.
- A single educational model (CCE) can serve as a societal-level solution ('save America') rather than being one option among many valid approaches.