More importantly, debating the constitutionality of the bill avoids the real crisis afflicting students in public schools. It’s not so much that they don’t know right from wrong (though this is obviously a problem); it’s that too many lack the very capacity to know right from wrong. Thinking morally and empathetically requires some degree of imagination, logic, and an ability to control one’s feelings—in other words, it requires maturity. This is why most Christian churches usually wait until a child reaches “the age of reason” (usually seven or eight years old) before teaching things like the Ten Commandments and Christ’s parables.

The Louisiana legislature is about to pass a bill that would require every public school in the state to post the Ten Commandments in each classroom. The bill’s author, Rep. Dodie Horton, explained that the “purpose [of the law] is not solely religious” but also serves to “display the history of our country and foundation of our legal system.”
On cue, the disestablishmentarians took immediate issue with the bill, arguing that it was synonymous with theocratic indoctrination. As an attorney from the ACLU put it, ”Public schools shouldn’t be used to religiously indoctrinate or convert students.” Some unsuspecting non-Christian students may see one of these posters, ponder its implications, and literally come to Jesus.
One can only hope! But the greater likelihood is that they will see it as just more clutter on teachers’ already busy walls, next to the Gandhi and Malcolm X posters, across the from the motivational Garfield poster, and right behind the state, national, and Pride flags up front. Perhaps some conservative teachers might try to use it to tame their less civilized classes, while some progressive teachers will see it as yet another reason to whine about the stupid conservatives running their state.
But most teachers will probably post it on their walls … and ignore it—much like they do with posters of learning objectives, school mission statements, bullying hotlines, and all the other meaningless content mandated from on high. Somehow, miraculously, the response to the dysfunction of public schools is supposed to be remedied by one more visual that indirectly encourages them to make better choices.
None of this is to say that the critics are right. Nor is this to say that the idea behind the bill is wrong. Rather, it is to say that, as it stands, the bill does not go far enough in addressing the moral illiteracy plaguing public schools.
Along with their innumerable academic deficiencies, too many of today’s students are selfish, shortsighted, irrational, and utterly superficial. They fail to recognize that all actions have consequences, that other people have feelings too, and that they are ultimately responsible for the way they behave. Many of them struggle to differentiate between right and wrong, good and bad, truth and falsehood. Even a good number of juniors and seniors whom I work with in Advanced Placement English classes will draw a blank when encountering the words “virtue” and “vice.”
Naturally, this carries significant implications for their education on multiple fronts. In some cases, schools descend into a “Lord of the Flies”–style anarchy where students brutalize one another, as frequently happens in Louisiana’s urban campuses. In other instances, high-achieving students will lie and cheat their way to the top, only to fail miserably when they leave the permissive, grade-inflating environments of school and college.
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Truly reforming reading instruction would have to involve reforming teacher training and promoting a completely different pedagogy, one focused on student learning instead of student engagement. Incoming elementary teachers need to recognize just how formative those early years are and make the most of the time they have with their students. It’s not enough to keep them busy and amused, they must actually teach them and hold them accountable on what they’re learning.

In the pages of The New York Times, Nicholas Kristof recently took on the problem of illiteracy among American students. According to the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), two-thirds of fourth graders across the country are not reading at grade level. While not a huge jump from two years ago (2 percent), and with the increase most likely attributable to Covid learning loss, that’s still an enormous number of students struggling despite innumerable campaigns to foster reading.
Those of us teaching English can attest that this issue is not limited to fourth graders, but can be easily seen at all grade levels, even in the Gifted and Talented and Advanced Placement classes. Today’s students read far less than those of previous generations and struggle with completing basic reading tasks. I wasn’t much of a reader myself, nor was the expectation very high at the public school I attended, but I still marvel at how many more novels I read than some of my students in AP Language and Composition, who confess they haven’t read a whole book since elementary school. This definitely hurts them as they try to pass their AP exams and score high on the SAT, and I have to spend much of the year modeling how to read with them.
Like most people on the left, Kristof has always supported public schools and continues to push for ever more funding, but even he is shocked by the failure of educators to follow the data to teach reading properly: “the United States has adopted reading strategies that just don’t work very well and … we haven’t relied enough on a simple starting point — helping kids learn to sound out words with phonics.”
For too long, teachers have relied on using sight-words with younger children, using flash cards and pictures to help students learn to read instead of teaching them the different sounds that letters make. In the first few years, the sight-word method seems more effective than teaching phonics, since these kids seem to be able to identify longer, more advanced vocabulary right away, not the two- and three-letter words featured in phonics beginner books. However, this advantage soon evaporates as students read longer texts with more unfamiliar vocabulary that they haven’t already memorized. By the time they reach middle school and high school, the challenges become so overwhelming that some of them are even diagnosed with dyslexia or other reading disorders.
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Even though concern for academic freedom may seem abstract and even trivial, it is utterly practical. It determines whether we live in a conformist society or a free one. While it’s tempting for conservatives to leave higher and lower education to progressive ideologues, this condemns so many young people to mediocrity and lifelong servility.

For the second straight year, DePauw University in Indiana ranked last in the Free Speech College Rankings. Among admittedly stiff competition, DePauw’s students distinguished themselves in their belief that “disagreeable speech” should be suppressed. They also had the largest portion of students feeling unable to express their views on a subject.
Along with this lack of free speech is the obvious lack of ideological diversity. Students and professors agree on most points, and thus see little point in an open forum. As one student puts it, “I have rarely felt [any fear of expressing my opinion]…because many of my professors and students surrounding me share my political views.”

Although representing the extreme, DePauw is not an outlier. The University of Chicago, named last year as the country’s number one free-speech campus, is now thought-policing its students.

It has become common knowledge that most campuses exhibit the same antipathy towards intellectual freedom and uninhibited public discourse. Their faculties are ideologically uniform, their students vigorously protest any heterodox thinkers, and their partisan professors proudly teach their students what to think rather than how to think.
Young Progressives Conform, Act Out
There are two main takeaways from this situation. The first and more immediate one is the hypocrisy among young progressives who fancy themselves reactionaries and countercultural for combatting supposed “hate speech” and “social injustice.” In reality, they are simply parroting the elite’s narratives and acting out against the less powerful (usually conservatives and Christians). There is no truly courageous, independent thought among any of them. Colleges have gone to great lengths to help them feel safe and supported while doing the opposite with conservatives.
The larger and more lasting takeaway is that American culture is becoming a conformist culture. After all, these students will graduate and eventually assume positions of influence and authority. Naturally, many will use whatever power they have to recreate the norms and expectations they experienced at college.

This means they will police speech, marginalize dissenting views, and elevate those with more credentials. Having been conditioned to view disagreement as counterproductive and dangerous, they will support any policy or person who can enforce conformity.

This is what largely happened in the past decade where all spaces, both physical and virtual, are subject to suppression of speech and thought. Where can one go to express an unapproved and unpopular argument? Not at work or school, or even online. This leaves church and home, but the spirit of ideological conformity has largely invaded these spaces as well.
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