Back-to-school season is here, and with the recent examples of race-based classroom activities and sexually charged curriculum in schools nationwide, parents are right to wonder what their students will be taught this fall.
A recent commentary by an education reporter about his own children revealed that last year his sixth grader had no homework, spelling tests, handwriting exercises, or times tables.
“I’m concerned that my list [of topics and tools left out] is symbolic of the broader American education experience,” Chad Aldeman wrote for The 74, the education news site. “Schools need to teach students facts, figures, dates, and other specifics before they can expect kids to think critically about those areas.”
A foundation of facts and figures helps students to be creative because we base new ideas on established knowledge—we need material to help us create something else. (To wit, Albert Einstein is credited with saying: “It is the supreme joy of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge.”)
Yet radical racial and sexual content in K-12 schools is curbing creative thinking. In some cases, the books that children are required to read contribute to this phenomenon.
For example, in Montgomery County, Maryland, the 2024-2025 English curriculum features kindergarten and first grade books such as “D Is for Drum: A Native American Alphabet” by Michael Shoulders and “Tunjur! Tunjur! Tunjur! A Palestinian Tale” by Margaret Read MacDonald.
Perhaps such books seem harmless based on the titles, but the foundation of this curriculum, Amplify CKLA, says it is “built on the conviction that equitable instruction is vital to an effective program.” Reviewing this curriculum further, one finds that other materials in the curriculum hint at themes of domestic violence, immigration, emotional distress, and racism.
This type of curriculum prioritizes ideology over reading skills, hindering creativity and encouraging intellectual conformity.
Unfortunately, creative play in general is down: As Jonathan Haidt explains in his new book “The Anxious Generation,” screen-based activities are up sharply since 2000 (even since 1980) while “socializing outside of the home” and playing outside both have decreased.
Students are less likely to meet in person with friends and more likely to interact virtually. This may be tied to the prevalence of technology and the untethering of American society from interpersonal communication and fact-based knowledge.
The “action civics” movement in K-12 schools is another example of how school officials are removing facts—names and dates, in particular—from classwork. Instead of learning about the institutions of government and how the different branches work, which is what traditional civics teaches, students are encouraged to become political activists without a firm understanding of the structure of American government.
The public schools in the nation’s capital have incorporated an action civics curriculum that contends that “democracy is a verb,” yet the curriculum teaches nothing about the Constitution or the Declaration of Independence, the literal foundations of our democratic republic.
What, then, can be done?
States and local education officials should consider policies that empower parents and school boards to work together to choose the types of books children read in schools.
One option: Adopt a classical or “great books” curriculum for public schools that educators may freely choose to adopt. (Most curricular decisions today are mandated by school district offices.) These books not only are foundational in civics but fundamentally shape deep thinkers and profound writers.
Parents also should have more choices for their child’s education. They should continue to advocate school choice and curricula that align with their values and meet their child’s needs.
More fundamentally, parents not only should encourage children to go outside but carefully monitor their children’s screen time to foster uninhibited imagination. Families don’t need legislation for this: Haidt, for one, suggests that parents and school communities agree not to allow children to have their own smartphones until a certain age or grade, such as freshman year in high school.
It is a sad day when children have lost the capacity to imagine.
Policymakers, families, and educators should rebuild and reimagine school curricula to inspire children with a love for the impractical and the desire to create.
