Stop Sending Kids To Schools Where Teachers Celebrate Murder

Last week, the leftist culture of death claimed another prize victim. A modern-day Socrates, Charlie Kirk bearded the lion in its den by going onto college campuses to challenge the ideas of students, professors, and anyone else who happened to be there through respectful dialogue. And like Socrates, Charlie was so successful in changing the hearts and minds of young people that the left had to kill him to shut him up.

On cue, Democratic leaders offered tepid denunciations of the political violence they inspire before deflecting to President Trump, Jan. 6, and, of course, gutting the Second Amendment. The Democrats’ radical base, on the other hand, was far more honest; they gleefully praised the murder of one of Western civilization’s greatest defenders.

At the forefront of these demonic celebrations were members of the educational establishment. While both school districts and state governments are taking action against these ghouls, the damage has already been done. Teachers do not just impart knowledge; they also shape our children’s characters. A system that has granted such power to murder-loving ideologues cannot be redeemed; it must be destroyed and remade.

The True Purpose of Education

Up until the modern era, the purpose of education went beyond mere economics. The early Renaissance writer Petrus Paulus Vergerius explained the moral nature of the liberal arts:

We call those studies liberal which are worthy of a free man; those studies by which we attain and practice virtue and wisdom; that education which calls forth, trains and develops those highest gifts of body and of mind which ennoble men, and which are rightly judged to rank next in dignity to virtue only. For to a vulgar temper gain and pleasure are the one aim of existence, to a lofty nature, moral worth and fame.

With the advent of mass public education in the industrial era, this ancient focus on “moral worth and fame” was supplanted by more practical concerns. Workers in the local factories needed to be more concerned about doing their jobs in the most efficient way possible rather than grappling with the great ideas of Western civilization.

The pragmatism of John Dewey, the godfather of modern American education, made his approach to moral education vague at best. For him and his pedagogical heirs, character is not established on timeless principles inculcated from youth but must be subject to constant re-interpretation to fit ever-changing modern contexts. This paradigm shift enshrined the poison of moral relativism at the center of American schooling, where it festers to this day.

In the 20th century, families, religion, and social associations were still strong enough to keep the “vulgar tempers” produced by these schools in check. As the left has chipped away at these institutions over the decades, the educational establishment has seized more and more responsibility over shaping the character of its charges, to the point where it actively hides its efforts from parents and seeks to punish those who dare to complain.

A Return to Virtue

The revival of classical education in our country over the past few decades has been working to restore this critical moral element to the schooling of American children. Most of the heavy lifting in this reform effort is done by charter and private schools, institutions that educrats seek to co-opt or destroy at every turn.

When I was hired at one such charter school in September of 2002, both the principal and the board of directors made it very clear that I was to reflect the school’s character pillars not only in my classroom discussions, but in my personal behavior as well. My private life (including my political beliefs) was to stay strictly private, lest my example teach my students lessons that detracted from their proper moral development as determined by their parents.

This approach was rigorously enforced by the school’s policies. Candidates for teacher positions were subject to an hours-long interview process, including a “mock teach” after which students were encouraged to speak honestly about their experience with the candidate. Unannounced classroom observations by administrators and parents provided accountability during the school year.

When the scourge of social media encouraged us to publicly post everything about ourselves, the board of directors adopted strict guidelines for the faculty to ensure that they remained positive models for student behavior. If a teacher engaged in questionable activity, the school administration would investigate and possibly invoke his contract’s “at-will” employment clause. In these rare cases, the firings provoked little to no outcry from either the students or their parents because the entire community understood that the policies were meant to protect and elevate the students. 

The Reckoning Is Here

The vulgarly tempered individual who allegedly assassinated Charlie Kirk is now in custody. By all accounts, he was raised in a politically conservative family yet still became a radicalized leftist in recent years. While we may never know just how he came to embrace political violence, his middle and high school years were during Trump’s first term, a time when teachers joined “the Resistance” and often ranted against the president in the classroom. 

Was the assassin indoctrinated into the cult of anti-Trumpism in his formative years when he should have been learning about the principles and achievements of Western civilization? Did one of his teachers lay the foundation for his professors to later shape him into a leftist folk hero like Luigi Mangione? And how many more would-be “heroes” is the educational establishment grooming at this very moment?

Charlie liked to tell students, “Your future is not your GPA. Your future is whether or not you know Christ and your character.” Government school teachers and the administrators who enable them abandoned both GPA and character long ago, as evidenced by America’s top educrats indulging in political fantasies instead of working to solve the problems they created.

Though he focused on college campuses, Charlie was also a tireless advocate for K-12 education reform (especially homeschooling) as part of the cure for the myriad ills besetting our nation. As the country continues its nosedive in educational excellence, parents and local communities are finally rising up to retake control over the shaping of their children’s minds and souls and to demand teacher excellence in both academics and morals. When the educrats refuse to provide this accountability, even more parents (regardless of political affiliation) will see them for the vipers they are and reject them.

The establishment has spent decades sowing the wind with its smug viciousness; it will now reap the whirlwind of parental rage. The teachers, who in their stupid arrogance revealed their evil natures online, declared war on us long ago; we will now crush the serpent’s head beneath our heels. Americans refuse to accept the “new normal” of applauding political violence and dancing on a good man’s grave. Instead, we will rip out the abusive establishment by its roots and restore an educational paradigm that teaches the good, the beautiful, and the true. This victory will be the true legacy of Charlie Kirk.

Robert Busek is a Catholic homeschooling father of six who has taught history and Western Civilization in both traditional and online classrooms for over twenty years. His essays have also been published in The American Conservative and The American Spectator. The views he expresses here are his own.