Columnists> About Education

By Itxu Díaz, Law&Liberty, 2025-11-07

Photo: A stream of visitors at the Trinity College Dublin Old Library Long Room, Ireland. (Khim Hoe Ng / Wikimedia Commons)

In 1983, the Reagan administration commissioned a group of experts to produce a report on the state of education in the United States. The result was A Nation at Risk, which marked a turning point in educational policy, aiming to restore excellence. The report was far from complacent. The experts barely made it through the third paragraph before delivering their verdict: “If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war.” Kindness and moderation are virtues neither for the surgeon nor the sociologist. Most, if not all, of the report’s signatories have passed away, but I would bet that if they were to evaluate today’s educational standards, they would be even more severe.

A Nation at Risk highlighted declining scores in mathematics, science, and reading. It noted a reduction in study time and academic rigor. It criticized the lack of preparation among many teachers, even though, at the time, they could not check teachers’ personal Instagram or TikTok accounts. Finally, it pointed out a growing disconnect between education and economic competitiveness.

Almost every generation believes the next is less well-educated, uses poorer language, dresses more vulgarly, and listens to awful music. Personal aging may account for some of these perceptions, but the shortcomings of postmodern educational systems are evident when examining many young Westerners: individual responsibility is out of fashion, an obsession with personal rights pervades everything, distrust of meritocracy is growing, and it is nearly a miracle to find a young person who has ever been told that, in society, the primary motivation in performing a job should be the desire to contribute to the common good.

There is no need to invent ingenious solutions for today’s educational systems; most of the work has already been done. In Ancient Greece, Aristotle laid the foundations for an education that could form good citizens. Fulfilling the citizen’s obligations to the polis was also the basis for exercising their rights. Life in society, prosperity, and the true progress of our nations still require the same today: good citizens. Postmodern education, however, seems focused on a notion of individual autonomy that can be enjoyed without any sense of responsibility for oneself or obligations to others.

Today’s educational models have created an atrophy that throws into the workplace and society young people who, from an early age, know all their rights but have barely heard of their obligations. That sort of freedom is illusory. They claim their status as free individuals, yet they have often been educated under the most restrictive doctrines, with a narrow worldview that only some will broaden once freed from indoctrination and able to embark on the true journey toward freedom.

Too many teachers today, perhaps because they are products of “our times,” have little interest in opening students’ minds—except to fill them with their own ideas, leaving no room for critical thinking, reflection, or genuine freedom. Witnessing teachers in American universities or European schools lecturing students about the conflict in Gaza, caricaturing such a complex war, portraying Palestinian terrorists as if they were Mother Teresa, Israel as if it were Satan, and even gathering students for anti-Semitic demonstrations during class, gives a clear picture of how indoctrination is education’s greatest enemy. Ideological polarization in the streets does not justify educational institutions or teachers conveying partisan perspectives. Education should always aim to remove the blindfold from a student’s eyes, not put one on.

“The business of education is not to make the young perfect in any one of the sciences,” John Locke wrote in Some Thoughts Concerning Education, “but so to open and dispose their minds as may best make them—capable of any, when they shall apply themselves to it.” Locke’s insight is perhaps the clearest vindication of the importance of forming minds that can soar freely and exercise responsibility.

Leftist educational models imposed in social-democratic Europe, and in many public (and unfortunately some private) institutions in the United States over recent decades, have proven, like their policies, radically opposed to freedom—even if they claimed otherwise. Training automatons is not training “good citizens.” The good citizens Aristotle envisioned for the polis—and that our nations need today—are free and equal individuals, who assume their obligations before claiming their rights and seek excellence and merit as the best path for themselves, aware that this is also their greatest contribution to society and the common good.

Without virtuous and educated citizens, nations weaken, and society as a whole suffers.

It is no coincidence that Aristotelian education, and later all models derived from classical education, considers self-discipline—i.e., responsibility—the starting point for freedom. A Nation at Risk emphasized the same idea. John Stuart Mill, the great theorist of liberty across centuries, also argued that education should instill a sense of moral and social responsibility.

Freedom without self-control, without awareness of being indebted before being a creditor, inevitably degenerates into dangerous selfishness and plunges individuals into a kind of moral or intellectual slavery. If some thinkers argue that the great evil of the twenty-first century is immaturity, it is precisely because maturity—once the toll of youthful education has been paid—consists of freeing oneself from childish selfishness, taking control of oneself, and committing to authentic freedom.

Outside classrooms and universities, today’s perennial educator is the therapist or psychologist. Yet much of popular psychology, or pseudo-psychology, spread via forums, books, and digital platforms, far from correcting the flaws of an education based on solid ideas, only reinforces the ideological vices that afflict us. A review of self-help bestsellers reveals instantly concepts repeated endlessly without philosophical foundation: readers are told they can achieve anything by simply desiring it; to cut ties immediately with “toxic” people—as if humans were arsenic; and that they deserve all possible rights.

It is therefore unsurprising that discussions of obligations are rare, that young people are seldom told that desire without effort is futile, that life is often unfair and unpleasant, or that relationships cannot be discarded overnight without consequences. In this context, popular psychological currents seem to reinforce the immaturity many students carry upon finishing school.

In the last century, philosopher José Ortega y Gasset criticized educational models that ignore duty: “The mass of men believes his rights are infinite and his duties, none.” Ortega saw university education as a means to form select minorities who could guide society boldly and excellently. While some may reject this approach, insisting on universal education, his idea aligns with Aristotle and other classical thinkers: without virtuous and educated citizens, nations weaken, and society as a whole suffers.

Philosopher Jacques Maritain proposed in his writings on education a comprehensive education that included reason, spirit, and morality—nothing new, as it had been successfully practiced for centuries in the Christian West. One cannot claim the same success for secularist experiments in Western countries today. Could anyone claim that children educated in modern secular systems are freer, in the fullest sense, than those educated in classical, Christian-based systems? After all, Christian education was founded on a principle secularism never affirmed: “The truth will set you free.”

More recently, perhaps the most inspiring voices on the need to recover essential classical and traditional educational notions are Karl Jaspers, with due respect to J. H. Newman, who devoted himself to the same task. In his book The Idea of the University, Jaspers defends something countercultural: the goal of education is not utility but the development of moral conscience and personal responsibility. Jaspers envisions a university of greater transcendence, a space for the unconditional pursuit of truth—a space of intellectual freedom. Only in this way, he argues, can it be truly useful to the nation, from a citizen’s perspective; and only this way can academic freedom be exercised justly and effectively by the teacher for the benefit of society.

Against the notion of the teacher who indoctrinates, or the researcher who already knows the conclusions they seek, Jaspers advocates the Socratic professor, working hand in hand with students toward shared ideals: “The Socratic teacher turns his students away from himself and back onto themselves; he hides in paradoxes, makes himself inaccessible. The intimate relationship between student and teacher here is not one of submission, but of a contest for truth.”

After all, the educational excellence that is so often bandied about today is not merely a bunch of happy statistics about skills acquired during schooling. It is part of a broader project: the transmission of knowledge, human understanding, and contribution to the nation’s good. It encompasses rigor, meritocracy, and the selection of the best. Roger Scruton once wrote: “The state has a duty toward each child, and no child must be made to feel inferior to any other. Although that is true, the state has another and greater duty, which is a duty toward us all—namely, the duty to preserve the knowledge we need, which can be passed on only with the help of children able to acquire it.”

In short, perhaps it is time to return to A Nation at Risk, though repeating the research may be unnecessary. Its conclusions are likely just as applicable today and in any future period of educational crisis.

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Itxu Díaz is a Spanish journalist, political satirist, and author. He has written nine books on topics as diverse as politics, music, and smart appliances. He is a contributor to The American Spectator, The Daily Beast, National Review, The American Conservative, The Daily Caller, First Things, The Federalist, and Diario Las Américas in the United States, and columnist in several Spanish magazines and newspapers. Among several Spanish books, he has also published his first English-language book in the US, I Will Not Eat Crickets.

Edited by Jas