The Collapse of American Education
People are fleeing public education. A 2023 Gallup poll found that 63% of Americans were dissatisfied with the public school system. Parents are taking their children out of the public schools. In 2012, almost 91% of all kindergarten through senior in high school (K-12) students were enrolled in public schools; one decade later, that number had fallen to 87% — a loss of nearly two million students, and another 3 million students are expected to leave public schools in the next 6 years.
The failure is not for lack of money; since 1960, American spending on K-12 education per student (even after adjusting for inflation) has increased 350 percent. In 2019, the U.S. spent $15,500 per K-12 student — 38% more than the average among OECD (OECD: "Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development”—a group of 38 mostly developed-world [Europe and North American] nation-states) countries. We spend more money per pupil than every other nation on earth, with the exception of Luxembourg. We lavish money on education but we get failure in return.
Our students score below the international average, and scores have been descending since 2012. According to the OECD, our average student is almost a full year behind the average student from other developed countries. Singapore’s students are three years ahead of ours.
We don’t do well in math and science; among OECD countries, U.S. students now rank 20th — in the bottom half—in science and 38th in mathematics. We don’t read very well, either; a shocking 54% of U.S. adults are barely literate, reading below sixth-grade level.
We quit teaching civics about 50 years ago, and it shows: only 26% of American adults can name the three branches of government. Less than one-quarter of college graduates knew that the First Amendment prohibits Congress from establishing a national religion. Princeton University found that barely one-third (36%) of adults could pass a multiple-choice test of questions taken from the U.S. Citizenship Test, which asks basic, simple questions about American law and government.
Don’t know much about history or geography, either: A 2022 survey found that “only 13% of students scored proficient in history.” Sixty percent of students could not identify the countries the United States fought in World War II. Only 24% knew why the colonists fought against the British—or could identify Benjamin Franklin as a Founding Father (37% thought Franklin invented the light bulb, confusing Franklin with Thomas A. Edison). Only one third of younger Americans, ages 18 to 24, could locate the United Kingdom, the mother country, on a world map.
Education in America is hopelessly broken. Why? I have a thesis: The United States became the world’s leader in education because of its Biblical and Protestant Christian values; now that God has been expelled from the public schools, real education is dying.
How Prussian Schooling was Sold to Americans
Secular, anti-religious education is a relatively new phenomenon. Prior to the 1960s, America’s public schools were steeped in religious influence; the public schools were Protestant schools. As conceived by America’s intensely Christian and Protestant forefathers, the purpose of education was so that everyone might read the Bible for himself, and thus work out his own salvation (Philippians 2:12-13).
Many, including Scott Ritsema, have written and lectured about how American public education is modeled on Prussian schooling, which was designed to exterminate individuality and produce obedient factory workers and efficient and well-drilled troops and officers for the Prussian military.
Horace Mann, the father of America’s public school movement, was a proponent of the Prussian system but, surprisingly, Mann sold it to America as religious education. In 1843, Mann issued a report to the Massachusetts Board of Education advocating for the Prussian model and assuring his fellow Americans:
“Nothing receives more attention in the Prussian schools than the Bible. It is taken up early and studied systematically…. These are topics of daily and earnest inculcation, in every school.”
By the end of the 1840s, under Mann’s influence, every state had adopted the Prussian model in its public schools.
The soul-destroying conformity and regimentation remains, but the Bible is long gone from our public schools. This was not done to make education better or more effective; to the contrary, numerous studies have shown that students educated in religious schools significantly outperform students educated in secular public schools (while spending far less per pupil).
The Journal of the Witherspoon Institute published a literature review of ninety different studies, concluding:
“The results indicate that attending private religious schools is associated with the highest level of academic achievement among the three school types [i.e., religious private schools, charter schools, and public schools], even when sophisticated controls are used to adjust for a variety of factors, including socioeconomic status, race, gender, and selectivity.”
Study after study has confirmed that young people with religious influences experience better mental, emotional, and social health than young people without religious influences. Christianity is not an impediment to education. To the contrary, throughout all human history, no institution has done more to advance education than the Christian church.
Protestantism Democratized Education and Made Universal Literacy a Global Value
Historically, education was reserved only for wealthy elites and the priestly classes. As a prince of Egypt, Moses was “instructed in all the wisdom of the Egyptians”; likewise, Daniel and the Hebrew worthies were taken into the household of Nebuchadnezzar to be educated by the best teachers. But the overwhelming majority of Egyptians and Babylonians were illiterate—as were most citizens of all ancient civilizations.
The Greeks and Romans were known for their remarkable achievements in philosophy, literature, science, engineering, art, architecture, building, governance, and warfare, but even at the height of the Roman Empire less than ten percent of Roman Empire’s residents could read.
As the Dark Ages gave way to the high middle-ages, education was controlled by the Roman Catholic church, and largely restricted to clergy. The Catholic Church founded a chain of universities throughout Europe. In 1088 AD, the University of Bologna was founded—followed by Oxford University (1096 AD), University of Paris (1150 AD), and Cambridge University (1209 AD). This university system sparked monumental changes in Western civilization.
But even the Roman Catholic university system did a great deal of good. One of the most important documents in the history of the English-speaking peoples, Magna Carta (the Great Charter) was drafted by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Stephen Langton, a graduate of the University of Paris. Magna Carta circumscribed monarchical power, restricting what had been the absolute authority of the king. And although Langton was himself a Catholic churchman trained in a Catholic university, the pope hated Magna Carta because popes ruled through monarchs, and curtailing monarchical power through even the most rudimentary code of laws indirectly diminished Rome’s power.
Some outstanding scholars trained in the Catholic universities began to question the church’s doctrines. Brilliant men like John Hus (dean at Charles University in Prague) and John Wycliffe (professor of theology at Oxford), being literate and able to read and study the Scriptures for themselves, called out the erroneous teachings of the Catholic Church, and were martyred as a result.
In 1517, Martin Luther, a professor of theology at the University of Wittenberg, launched the Reformation when he nailed his 95 Theses on the door of the local church. Protestants emphasized the “solas”; Sola Scriptura, Sola Gratia, Sola Fides, Sola Christus. Scripture was the sole source of authority for Christian faith and practice, salvation was by grace alone, through faith alone, in Jesus Christ alone—not through the priestly offices of the church.
Suddenly, everyone needed the ability to read the Bible for himself; no longer was it acceptable to entrust the interpretation of the Bible to priests. With a cry of “Sola scriptura,” all believers were called to take up and read the Word. The Reformation sent literacy rates soaring in Protestant nations, even as they lagged behind in the Catholic countries. Until the 1600s, widespread literacy had eluded every nation and culture, but the Protestant Reformation changed all of that forever.
In the 1600s, Protestant nations like England and the Netherlands saw literacy rates soar above 50%. Dutch literacy rates went from 12% to 53% during the 1600s, marking the first time in human history that a nation achieved literacy for a majority of its citizens. This flourishing led to the development of capitalism, and a prosperous middle class, in the Protestant Netherlands. The first stock market was the Amsterdam stock exchange.
By contrast, literacy rates remained below 50% in Italy and France for another three centuries, until the 19th century, when Protestant educational norms finally prevailed even in the Catholic countries of Europe.
In Islamic and Hindu countries, literacy rates remained below 50% until recently; in 1980, UNESCO reported that literacy rates in Muslim-majority countries were at 30%, and India’s literacy rate was estimated at 41%. Those numbers have increased substantially in recent decades due to the demands of a globalized economy.
The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom, and knowledge of the Holy One is understanding. Prov. 9:10
This article is condensed and edited for content from a series by Sam Kastensmidt at the Institute for Faith and Culture.