Editor’s Note: This article is part of a series by The American Spectator’s summer intern class on how conservatives can wage a cultural takeover. Read part one here.
While the Left remains bold in its efforts to infuse public education with DEI, critical race theory, and other forms of radical indoctrination, many Republicans are still cowardly clinging to the losing strategy of claiming that education should be value-neutral.
Case in point, a 2025 National Teacher of the Year recipient, Ashlie Crosson, recently asserted in a speech to the nation’s largest teachers union that teaching is “deeply political.”
While Crosson’s assertion is hardly shocking — it’s the official position of the National Education Association — it has garnered attention because many Republicans believe that conservatives’ goal should be to depoliticize education — an argument some connect to school choice. To this end, many Republicans have routinely repeated the tired mantra that “America’s children should be learning ABCs, not CRT.”
While it’s true that America’s children should not be learning CRT and that school choice is important, it is naive to think it’s actually possible, or even desirable, to depoliticize education.
That’s because Crosson and the National Education Association are right that education is inherently political.
There is no such thing as value-neutral education, because education, which always endeavors to nurture fully formed citizens, must posit a vision of what it means to be a fully formed citizen. This, of course, constitutes one of the central questions of politics, masterfully stated in Aristotle’s Politics: “He who would duly enquire about the best form of a state ought first to determine which is the most eligible life.”
Conservatives’ impulse to relegate schooling to the teaching of the ABCs merely cheapens education and severs it from its most important ends.
In reality, there are few institutions more politically crucial than education — and this fact is fundamental to our civilization. One of the West’s foundational political texts, Plato’s Republic, describes its ideal political regime almost entirely through the education received by its guardian class.
Immediately after describing the ideal city’s ruling class, the first question Socrates asks is, “How, exactly, will they be reared and educated by us?”
This central theme of the Republic shows that the political community is defined by what it teaches to be good and bad, honorable and shameful. In other words, all systems of education are an education into a political regime that makes particular claims about the nature of the good life.
The problem with many contemporary teachers is not that they believe education is inherently political, but that the actual substance of their politics contradicts the sound principles of a flourishing political community.
At the same conference Crosson spoke at, NEA President Becky Pringle showed the radical principles of the nation’s education leaders. Her keynote address defended DEI as a cornerstone of education and argued that the Trump administration represents an “intentional and malignant agenda to demonize institutions and divide communities.”
According to Pringle, the Trump administration’s attempt to remove DEI initiatives from the Department of Education is “dangerous, diabolical, and unconstitutional.” Rather, Pringle declared that DEI are the “three sacred values” of the future.
Pringle then made the crowd chant the sacred words, “Diversity, equity, inclusion.” She shouted, “Say the words! Say the words! Say them! Say them out loud!”
“We must legislate,” Pringle said. “And November 2026, we will hold this Congress accountable.” While the country’s current leaders in education present a startling vision of what education’s political nature entails, at least they understand that education is inherently political.
In the face of the Left’s misguided radicalism, conservatives are wrong to react with the claim that education ought to be apolitical — as if students’ minds can be otherwise well-informed but perfectly blank when it comes to understanding political life.
The question, then, is what constitutes a healthy political vision for education that avoids both the Left’s fanaticism and the shallowness of a “depoliticized” education? Our American founders put forward precisely such a vision: they believed that education was integral to the nation’s political project.
They understood that education must shape virtuous men and good citizens. According to their view, republican government depends upon the country’s ability to maintain citizens who are both morally virtuous and who are knowledgeable about the country’s fundamental principles — the principles of natural law.
For example, the Massachusetts Constitution explicitly claims that education is for the sake of virtue and establishes the state’s educational institutions for that purpose. It commands spreading “the opportunities and advantages of education” because “virtue,” along with “wisdom, and knowledge,” is “necessary for the preservation of [the people’s] rights and liberties.”
Likewise, Benjamin Rush, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, reflected in his “Thoughts Upon the Mode of Education Proper in a Republic” that Americans must “adapt our modes of teaching to the peculiar form of our government.” Because every citizen is expected to participate in self-government, republicanism especially requires educational “nurseries of wise and good men.”
The Founders’ view that education ought to cultivate virtue, which is also known as classical education, followed the predominant practice of education in the West. In recent decades, American classical education has seen a significant revival, according to the Heritage Foundation, with now over 1,000 classical schools throughout the U.S., and hundreds of thousands of homeschooling families.
In addition to cultivating ordered liberty through the practice of virtue, American republicanism requires civic education to instruct citizens in the country’s foundational political principles — the principles of natural right.
Thomas Jefferson’s Report of the Commissioners for the University of Virginia includes in its purposes of “primary education” the aim to “to instruct the mass of our citizens in these, their rights, interests and duties.” George Washington agrees, arguing in his “First Annual Message to Congress” that political freedom requires “teaching the people themselves to know and to value their own rights.”
In short, American classical education can be summarized into two principles: virtue and liberty.
Today, public education has lost the vision provided by America’s founding and succumbed to a defective understanding of education’s political character. Although Crosson is right to say that “protecting education is how we protect our democracy,” we’ve simply failed to protect American education.
By seeking a “value-neutral” or “depoliticized” education system, those opposed to the Left’s educational indoctrination have lacked solid ground to stand upon.
In the meantime, public education has become the vessel for a new vision of political life — the vision shared by teacher union leaders and liberal politicians. As leftists attempt to sideline parents and voters from education, conservatives should fight to restore educational institutions that foster moral character and impart true principles of liberty.
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