The great Frederick Douglass once emphasized the connection between education and liberty. But while education focused on critical thinking and the pursuit of the truth is in fact necessary for a free people, therein lies our danger. In modern America, much of our education system enslaves rather than frees people, while spewing propaganda and deliberately distorting the truth.
From the anti-Semitism rampant on Ivy League campuses to the grade schools where children are “gender transitioned” without parental knowledge to the school libraries where woke racists and sexual perverts are advertised, it is clear that America’s education system needs an overhaul. As today, Feb. 20, is the anniversary of the 1895 death of Douglass, it seems appropriate to reflect on his words and apply them to our own situation.
Douglass knew the value of education partly because he was persecuted and threatened by slave owners for trying to attain it. As more than one of his masters understood, learning can give a man the tools to question his oppressors, see through their lies, plan a better future, and take charge of his own life. When Douglass read the Bible and other books, he discovered the power of knowledge. When the slave Douglass had escaped and reached freedom, eventually becoming a hugely popular orator and political figure, he knew that education (much of it self-taught) was part of what brought him success.
The former slave changed the minds of many Americans on civil rights for black people — Abraham Lincoln included — and eventually served in high political positions under U.S. Grant’s presidency. Douglass’s own success only made him value education more for others. Like other great men, including former slave Booker T. Washington, Douglass saw education as a path to freedom for black Americans, many of them newly freed in a hostile country. So Douglass observed:
Education … means emancipation. It means light and liberty. It means the uplifting of the soul of man into the glorious light of truth, the light only by which men can be free. To deny education to any people is one of the greatest crimes against human nature. It is to deny them the means of freedom and the rightful pursuit of happiness, and to defeat the very end of their being. They can neither honor themselves nor their Creator.
It is important, by the way, to note that Douglass did not mean just academic education. He immediately afterwards in his speech mentioned mechanics and “workers in wood, leather, tin and iron.” This also is relevant for our times. Not only are our academic institutions a shameful morass of ignorance, illiteracy, and woke Marxism, but fewer and fewer people (especially youth) have useful skills. We need better educated teachers, journalists, congressmen, scientists, doctors, and businessmen; but we also require skilled carpenters, plumbers, construction workers, and technicians. Society cannot function otherwise. The Founders honored workers of all kinds and wanted America’s youth to work with their hands as well as their heads.
Yes, there are very good and virtuous people who are uneducated, but it is hard to have a thriving and free republic with a mostly ignorant population. Indeed, many “educated” Americans believe it’s all right to sacrifice their liberties for a little safety or convenience, while others expect the government to fix every problem in their lives! We have college graduates who know nothing of our country’s history and congressmen who have never read the Constitution. How terribly dangerous that is!
We need educators, school board members, parents, writers, politicians, and skilled workers who will go out and educate the next generation, driving the woke from schools and educational institutions and founding new ones. Each one of us has a role to play; each one of us can heed Douglass’s words. If education means liberty, then we must seriously reform our nation’s education or we will lose our besieged liberties altogether.
