This article was first published at American Thinker.
In 1779, Thomas Jefferson penned “A Bill for the More General Diffusion of Knowledge,” in which he articulated “that the most effectual means of preventing [tyranny] would be, to illuminate, as far as practicable, the minds of the people at large, and more especially to give them knowledge of those facts, which history exhibiteth, that, possessed thereby of the experience of other ages and countries, they may be enabled to know ambition under all its shapes, and prompt to exert their natural powers to defeat its purposes.”
In essence, Jefferson was making the argument that the best way to avoid despotism is to have a widely educated population with a keen awareness of history, civics, and the nature of government.
At the time, this was an unprecedented idea.
For eons, only the wealthy and privileged had access to formal education. In places like Europe, with its rigid class system and social hierarchy, the lack of general diffusion of knowledge helped keep the rich high on the hog and the poor downtrodden for generations.
Jefferson, to his credit, envisioned a nation in which all had access to education. Such is why he is generally considered the pioneer of what we now call the public education system.
More than two centuries later, the U.S. public education system has far exceeded Jefferson’s quaint model, which heavily favored local control of public education.
Strangely, as the United States has poured substantial resources into the public education system, American students are becoming dumber, ignorant of history, oblivious to basic civics, and enthralled with a dastardly dangerous ideology: socialism.
Unfortunately, the public education system, particularly regarding social studies, has been infiltrated by socialist sympathizers who are brainwashing vulnerable kids into believing that socialism is great, moral, fair, and exactly what America needs.
When I was teaching at public high schools in Illinois and South Carolina, this reality hit me like a ton of bricks. In nearly all the schools I worked, it was blatantly obvious that most of my fellow social studies colleagues were much less concerned with teaching students the basic facts about history than they were about teaching that socialism is the answer to all of America’s problems.
While many Americans may think this is anecdotal or an exaggeration, ample evidence exists that demonstrates the scope of socialist brainwashing in today’s public schools.
Late last year, an Axios-Generation Lab poll of U.S. college students found that 67 percent had a positive or neutral association with “socialism” and 34 percent had a positive or somewhat positive view.
Another poll, conducted by Rasmussen Reports and The Heartland Institute, found that nearly 60 percent of likely voters aged 18 to 24 want a democratic socialist to win the White House in 2028. According to the same poll, more than half of Americans aged 18 to 39 said their teachers or professors “held a favorable view of democratic socialism.”
It would be one thing if these teachers were giving their students a mild sense of what socialism is really like, however, as I saw, and as polls show, most young people cannot even define “socialism” correctly.
In 2019, Young America’s Foundation released a poll showing that more than half of students cannot accurately define the term socialism. The poll, which included more than 2,000 students aged 13 to 22, found 27 percent “unsure/don’t know” the meaning of the word “socialism” whereas 10 percent best described socialism as “being social.”
A more recent survey, taken in 2023, shows that less than a third of young Americans properly defined socialism as “government taking control of companies and industries such that the state—not individuals and entrepreneurs—control the economy” whereas 66 percent of young Americans aged 18 to 24 defined socialism as “the government providing more services.”
For far too long, as these statistics show, American students have not received a general diffusion of knowledge, as Thomas Jefferson had hoped so long ago.
With this being the case, it is imperative that states rectify this educational abomination.
At present, one simple remedy to address this problem is for states to update their curriculum standards so that teachers must teach the truth about socialism, whether they like it or not.
That is what Florida legislators did last year when they passed a bill, signed into law by Gov. Ron DeSantis, to “ensure students in Florida are taught the truth about the evils and dangers of Communism.”
Late last year, the Florida Board of Education approved “new History of Communism standards” to equip “students with a truthful, in-depth understanding of how communist ideologies suppress individual freedoms, abuse power, and inflict widespread suffering.”
Although this policy is not a panacea, it is certainly a step in the right direction. For decades, the public education system has embraced socialism. It is time to reverse this troubling trend.
Chris Talgo (CTalgo@heartland.org) is the editorial director and a research fellow at The Heartland Institute, as well as a researcher and contributing editor at StoppingSocialism.com.
