A new conservative report argues that today's universities and progressive schools are helping remaking America by distancing education from the Western canon and from civic virtue.
The report says progressive educational reformers, following John Dewey, sought to detach education from the past and form subjects suited for bureaucratic rule. It also argues that classical education, especially the version that shaped the Founders, prepared students to be citizens of a limited republic.
The case for classical education runs through Latin, political history, biographies of statesmen, moral philosophy, government, and rhetoric. Its backers say that approach builds what Joshua Mitchell calls 'citizen competence' and strengthens both private life and public duty.
The report says the Founders gave greater attention to political history, biography, rhetoric, and the Roman Republic than later Great Books programs did. It also argues that Roman examples supplied models of republican virtue, duty to the res publica, and resistance to tyranny.
Why it matters: this is not just a school debate. It is a fight over what kind of people the education system is designed to produce. One model trains free citizens. The other, critics say, feeds the administrative state.
The bottom line: if classical education is going to matter again, its advocates want it tied to public responsibility, not sealed off as private enrichment. That is where the real conflict sits.