Returning to the First Principles of American Education | Jason Bedrick

On this episode of Anchored, Soren is joined by Jason Bedrick, Research Fellow at The Heritage Foundation’s Center for Education Policy. The two discuss the Phoenix Declaration, a document espousing an American vision for education. Together, they explore the outlined principles of the document, including the role of parents as primary educators, the reality of objective truth, and the vital importance of passing on cultural heritage. 

Transcript

Soren Schwab - CLT (00:00.877)
Welcome back to the Anchored Podcast, the official podcast of the Classic Learning Test. My name is Soren Schwab, VP of Partnerships here at CLT. And today we're joined by Jason Bedrick. Jason Bedrick is a research fellow in the Center for Education Policy at the Heritage Foundation, where he focuses on policies that promote education freedom and choice, religious liberty, classical education, and restoring the primary role of families in education. Bedrick is the co-editor and co-author of two books, including

educational freedom, remembering Andrew Coulson debating his ideas and religious liberty and education, a case study of yeshivas versus New York. He has also authored chapters in three books, including the heritage foundation's book, the not so great society, which provides conservative solutions to the problems created by the ever expanding federal footprint in preschool, K-12 and higher education. Patrick is also an adjunct scholar with the Cato Institute.

where he once served as a policy analyst with the Center for Educational Freedom. He's also served as the director of policy at choice, a nonprofit founded by Milton and Rose Friedman to advance education, freedom and choice. And I'm cutting some of the bio because that man is accomplished. Jason, it's so good to have you back on Anchored.

Jason Bedrick (01:21.71)
Thank you so much for having me. Good to be back.

Soren Schwab - CLT (01:23.927)
Yeah for our listeners, this is not your typical episode of going back to you know, to us about your educational background because we've done that before so our listeners should go back and Listen to to the episode with Jason from gosh, I think it's been a couple of years now that you were on Go back to listening to that is probably you know Talking about school choice in a few states and and look where we are now. So pretty pretty exciting

Jason Bedrick (01:39.414)
It has.

Soren Schwab - CLT (01:51.619)
Jason, we connected a few weeks ago in Phoenix and talked a little bit about this short piece, this declaration that was released not too long ago by the Heritage Foundation, the Phoenix Declaration. And it's short, is succinct, it is to the point. And I was thinking we should talk about this, give our audience a chance to hear.

from the horse's mouth, so to speak, because you were, were you the co-author, the main author of the declaration?

Jason Bedrick (02:26.888)
There was a drafting committee. was the chair of the committee. I took a crack at the first draft, but it went through, I think, 17 different revisions. So I can't take full credit for the final product, but we are very pleased with what we produced.

Soren Schwab - CLT (02:32.174)
Yeah.

Soren Schwab - CLT (02:42.457)
Yeah, no, is fantastic. I think it was it Mark Twain when he talked about writing and I think he wrote a letter to a friend. said, I'm sorry, this letter is so long. I ran out of time or I didn't have enough time to make it shorter. Right. So like sometimes, you know, getting something short, precise and to the point takes much longer. Yeah. Talk to us kind of kind of big picture. What, when, why and who of this this Phoenix Declaration?

Jason Bedrick (03:11.032)
Sure, well, the Phoenix Declaration is named not only for the city where it was conceived a year ago and then recently unveiled, but also for the mythical bird that rises out of the ashes of its former self. this is a project of renewal. We see our American education system essentially lying in ruins and in dire need of reform and renewal. And that in order to do that, we needed to get back to basics.

Soren Schwab - CLT (03:22.702)
Yeah.

Jason Bedrick (03:40.958)
we need to get back to first principles and clearly articulate them. For a long time, conservatives have essentially outsourced education to the left.

intentionally or unintentionally, in many ways unintentionally, just saying, well, know, education should be a neutral space. I think the reality that we have learned the hard way is that there is no such thing as a value neutral education. Education is an inherently value laden enterprise. And the attempt

Soren Schwab - CLT (04:11.224)
Amen.

Jason Bedrick (04:12.982)
to make it value neutral actually just creates a vacuum that is then filled by others and in many cases filled with radical ideologues who have captured a lot of public schools and are using them not to educate but to indoctrinate and conservatives have been fighting back against that but they've been doing a better job articulating what we're against than what we're for.

and what this

does is say here is a statement of principles that we are for and we intentionally called it an American vision for education, not just conservative, because we want to make common cause with liberals and libertarians and centrists and others to reform our education system. We're not looking to replace left-wing indoctrination with right-wing indoctrination. We're looking for an American system of education

grounded in the American tradition, which includes a tradition of disagreement politically. So we're not looking for schools to just pump out conservatives. We're looking for schools to cultivate classical civic virtues, to expose children to the best that's been thought and said, particularly in our Western and Judeo-Christian traditions, looking for children who

are patriotic, who have an attachment to this country and its citizens, and who can disagree with each other civilly, which is, I think, something that we've lost. And so that's, that is the project of the Phoenix Declaration in a nutshell.

Soren Schwab - CLT (06:02.679)
Yeah, well, thanks for sharing that. I'm just so pleased. think pointing at the problem is important, right? And identifying that there is a problem and that we have it. And like you said, we're in ruins. And that's one thing. And I think the conversations oftentimes, especially on the social media, they revolve more around that. it trends better, right? When you're attacking.

But the fact that you guys are also thinking about, sure, that is the case. But let's also, what is the solution here? And I think that's really how you unite people, right? By common cause and by solutions. And we're gonna go through some of these pillars. But even listening to you kind of giving the basic overview, mean, 20, 30 years ago, none of this would have been a controversial statement, right?

Having the understanding too that just a lot has changed in the last 20, 30, 40 years. I think you mentioned it, a back to basics kind of approach to education. None of this is in any way new or revolutionary or, I mean, it seems fairly quote unquote traditional. Does that seem accurate?

Jason Bedrick (07:23.13)
In some sense, yes. Although I wouldn't just say back to basics, because when people say back to basics, I think a lot of times what they're saying is, can't we just get back to a value neutral system where we're teaching the three Rs, right? And I don't think we actually ever had that system and we can't get back to that kind of system. What I'm saying is get back to first principles.

Soren Schwab - CLT (07:33.987)
Gotcha. Yeah.

Jason Bedrick (07:43.534)
And so we need to take truth and goodness seriously, cultural transmission, character formation, academic excellence, and citizenship. All of those, think the only one that schools have really been striving for is academic excellence. And even there, they haven't succeeded very well, perhaps to a great extent because they've abandoned all of the other pillars and a building that

rests on only one pillar is not going to stand. So that's what we're trying to get back to.

Soren Schwab - CLT (08:21.431)
Yeah, no, that's that's fantastic. And thanks for that that clarification. Well, let's go through through them and kind of love to get your thoughts. The first one is parental choice and responsibility. And my goodness, especially through through COVID and beyond kind of having a conversation again about the role of the parent and parental involvement and kind of the curtains being lifted. For the first time, maybe parents paid more attention to

what's going on in the classroom. But yeah, from the Phoenix Declaration, what's kind of the stance that y'all took there on parental choice and responsibility?

Jason Bedrick (08:56.76)
Well.

I'll read it just because I don't think we'll read all of the declaration, but this one is the opening principle after our preamble. It says, parents are the primary educators of their children. Parents should have the freedom to choose the learning environments that align with their values and best meet their children's individual learning needs with public education funding following the child. Policy should respect the right and high duty of parents to raise their children and make decisions about their children's education. We thought it was important that this document

Soren Schwab - CLT (09:04.844)
Mm-hmm.

Jason Bedrick (09:27.658)
starts with parents because for a lot of people today schools are they conceive of schools as pursuing social justice and no longer being an extension of parenting working with parents but essentially as agents of parents they see themselves as

teaching, freeing children from the prejudices of their parents. And so actually trying to inculcate values that are the opposite of what parents are trying to instill. And this is the wrong approach. And so by starting with parental choice, and starting with the recognition that parents are the primary educators, we thought that was very important. And so if you believe parents are the primary educators, what follows from that?

parental choice. They should be able to choose the schools that align with their values.

Soren Schwab - CLT (10:22.297)
Thank you.

Jason Bedrick (10:26.99)
And then we think the money should then follow the child, right? Instead of we're gonna establish the school and then we're going to assign kids to it based on the location of the home their parents can afford. No, we're actually gonna have parents choose the school and the money is gonna follow the child. That's what a system that respects parental choice comes from. This language about the right and high duty of parents to raise their children, it pays homage to the...

Soren Schwab - CLT (10:30.808)
Right.

Jason Bedrick (10:54.994)
seminal US Supreme Court decision, Pierce v. Society of Sisters, which was 100 years ago this year, where actually the KKK persuaded the state of Oregon to ban private education because they didn't want kids going to Catholic schools. And the US Supreme Court unanimously overruled that.

Soren Schwab - CLT (10:59.256)
Hmm.

Soren Schwab - CLT (11:13.901)
my goodness.

Jason Bedrick (11:18.83)
And said no actually parents have the right and high duty to raise their children. You can't outlaw private education Right that children in the Supreme Court's language are not mere creatures of the state But I think to conservatives sometimes talk too much about parental rights You know and this idea that you know

The state doesn't own my children, I own my children. Well, it's true, the state doesn't own your children, but we don't own our children either. Actually, I think the right approach is that we are stewards of our children, right? And the reason that parents have rights is not because they own their kids the way I have rights over my property, it's because I have responsibilities.

Soren Schwab - CLT (11:53.315)
You

Jason Bedrick (12:13.258)
for my children, the high duty to raise my children. And from that duty comes those rights. The rights respect my freedom to educate my children because I have a duty to educate my children.

Soren Schwab - CLT (12:27.693)
Yeah, yeah, no, that's, that's, that's fascinating. And again, I don't think that should be a controversial statement. But you hear, especially sometimes the language of the teachers unions and, know, protect our children, right, almost using the, you know, that language of the, the students belonging to the school. And like you said, I mean, we're hearing about, you know, isolating students from their parents, right, and not sharing information with

their parents. You know, and I think that's somewhat related to the second point about transparency and accountability as well. So maybe we can transition to that a little bit. If what you're saying is true, right, and the parents are the primary educator, then what is the role of the school? Is it as a secondary educator?

Jason Bedrick (13:18.924)
Yes, exactly. And that's how we start that the schools are secondary educators. Parents are primary, schools are secondary, which means that the school should be working with the parents, not serving as replacements for the parents. And if that's the case, how do we hold schools accountable? We too often think of accountability in terms of government regulations, but the highest form of accountability

Soren Schwab - CLT (13:24.185)
Thank

Jason Bedrick (13:44.298)
is when an institution is directly accountable to the people who bear the consequences of their performance. So if it's the cable company, you want the cable company response accountable to the people who are trying to, that's sort of an outdated, do we even have cable anymore? I don't know. But the point is it's the end user. In this case, the end user in some sense is the children who can't really hold them accountable, but it should be the parents.

Soren Schwab - CLT (14:02.361)
don't know.

Jason Bedrick (14:12.224)
We for a long time have been thinking about accountability as well. It's got to be some government regulation because the public schools are not directly accountable to parents.

The public schools are accountable to an elected school board and various unelected bureaucrats in the state capitol. And that's been the system for so long, we've forgotten what real accountability looks like. And so we want to restore that and say, the schools need to be accountable to the parents. That means first and foremost, they need to be transparent. Parents have a right to know what's being taught to their children and how their children are performing.

Soren Schwab - CLT (14:46.669)
Yes.

Jason Bedrick (14:49.262)
And there should never be any blanket policy that hides information about children's mental, emotional, and physical well-being from parents.

Soren Schwab - CLT (15:00.503)
Yeah, yeah, I mean, it's, and I was a little spoiled right after after college, I taught at a classical charter school. And so we had an open door policy, and I would often have parents coming in, observing classes and asking me questions afterwards. Now, of course, there is a line to write if that's every day, and they're just watching your every move. but I think the the general posture was, we got nothing to hide, right? We want to make sure that that we're partnering with you as the parent.

Here's our curriculum, here's the books that we read, the textbooks, and if you want to come in and see the school. And that's just not the norm in most schools, obviously. So that level of transparency is not there. OK, so I think most listeners will probably follow those first two points and say, yeah, no, that's nothing too controversial there.

Now we're getting to the controversial, right? Because now you're talking about truth. Truth and goodness. So interesting, you know, kind of in classical education, we talk a lot about the transcendentals, truth, goodness, and beauty. And so you chose truth and goodness. So talk to us a little bit about the reason for including those two in the Phoenix Declaration.

Jason Bedrick (16:16.226)
Well, I can assure my classical friends that beauty is hidden in there because as everybody knows, beauty is truth, truth, beauty. So it's still there. yeah, so we say education must be grounded in truth. Students should learn that there is objective truth and that it is knowable. Science courses must be grounded in reality, not ideological fads. Students should learn that good and evil exist and that human beings have the capacity and duty to choose good.

Soren Schwab - CLT (16:21.369)
You

Soren Schwab - CLT (16:25.369)
Good work.

Jason Bedrick (16:42.54)
So yeah, this is something I think that schools used to teach and no longer teach at least consciously. you know, schools have moved, I think in a postmodern direction that says, you know, there is no real truth. There's no truth of the capital T. There's only my truth. And that leads to relativism and eventually nihilism. And what you're left with is essentially just the will to power.

And that leads to a tyrannical society. And a free society has to be grounded in truth. And the classical liberal enterprise of education has to be grounded in truth. Even in math classes, I think it's important that children, when they're taking a math class, are learning, hey, we are learning things that are objectively true. And we can prove it.

And it's not, this isn't just we're teaching you skills that you're going to need in the workplace someday. Cause a lot of kids are saying, well, I have a calculator and I don't really need these skills. And, you know, I might not be a, you know, a mechanical engineer or a physicist or whatever. So do I, do I really need this stuff? Well, what you're learning is you're learning things that are true about the world.

And you are, you know, learning a way of thinking about the world, one that is grounded in observable reality and abstract truth. So we're not just empiricists, right? There's rationality here as well. Both sort of in this statement. Now, yes, people are going to disagree over the truth. We're not saying there is only one truth and we know exactly what it is. But you and I can both agree that there is truth.

Soren Schwab - CLT (18:08.884)
Thank

Jason Bedrick (18:27.268)
We can both agree that it's knowable and do our best to pursue it while understanding that we each have a different understanding of what that is. And so there's space for disagreement while we are collectively engaged in the same truth-seeking enterprise.

Right, so this is the balance that we're trying to seek in the statement. But if there is no truth or truth is fundamentally unknowable, what are we even doing here in terms of the education? So that's why we started with this after we got, know, once we oriented ourselves toward, who's in charge here, right? What's the relationship of parents and schools? Now we're talking about content. Well, if we don't start with the idea of truth and goodness,

Soren Schwab - CLT (18:46.872)
Okay.

Soren Schwab - CLT (18:56.503)
What? Yeah.

Jason Bedrick (19:13.442)
You can't even, there's nothing to build upon, right? It's a foundation of sand. And so we thought it was important that we explicitly state this.

Soren Schwab - CLT (19:22.765)
Yeah, yeah, no, that's that's fascinating. I am somewhat being facetious, right? But but you alluded to it. I mean, there's a large population in this country that, you know, when you mentioned truth, that's a non starter, right? But as you mentioned earlier about, you know, education being values neutral, like ultimately, you know, education is grounded in some truth, right? And it just happened for a long time happened to be kind of the progressive truth.

And you're trying to bring it back to I like that you mentioned reality Objective reality right that it's grounded in that But I am wondering you know for folks that read that Will they just assume that's you know, that's just like religious language, right? I mean you're just trying to you know, kind of shove your You know your Judeo-Christian, you know

values on our students. What would you say to that, Inversmove?

Jason Bedrick (20:25.57)
Well, I mean, let's say I've already been called a Christian nationalist for putting this document together. I Peter Green and cremeducation made that very fascinating claim.

Soren Schwab - CLT (20:30.583)
Yeah.

Soren Schwab - CLT (20:38.456)
Wait.

Jason Bedrick (20:38.862)
If it's not obvious to your listeners, I'm not Christian, I'm an Orthodox Jew, but there are many Christians involved in the writing of this, as well as a number of Jews and others whose religious views I actually don't know. no, mean, look, is, it is obviously Judaism and Christianity and all religious traditions are going to have something very important to say about what truth is.

But just thinking of this in terms of you know secular philosophical claims We have to have some sort of a commitment to truth and one of the great things about math Is that this is something where no matter what your religion is. I think we can Agree that their math reveals certain truths about the world

And that's an important thing for children to see that there are objective facts that not everything is just a matter of your viewpoint because again We'll put it this way Alexis to Tocqueville said liberty cannot be established without morality nor morality without faith So that's that's important

We have to have, know, at the core of faith, there has to be an idea of that there is truth that you are believing in. I just don't see us having a free society for much longer if we start abandoning the principles that undergird that free society.

Soren Schwab - CLT (22:18.361)
Yeah, yeah, no, no, I think you're you're absolutely right. I when I read the the next the next pillar, I was I was thinking of of GK Chesterton, who said that education is simply the soul of a society as it passes from one generation to another. And your next pillar is cultural, cultural trans transmission, which I find, find fascinating. So it

relates a little bit to what we just talked about, of the Judeo-Christian traditions, you mentioned kind of Western tradition, but yeah, speak to us a little bit about what do you all mean by cultural transmission.

Jason Bedrick (23:01.122)
Yeah, so I think one of the central purposes of education is transmitting humanity's accumulated knowledge and wisdom and also our particular civilizations heritage to the next generation.

Right, as we as we write a civilization only survives if it intentionally transmits its history traditions and values, including its yet unrealized aspirations to the next generation. True progress comes only by building on what has been learned and achieved in the past.

And there, you know, so once you commit to that, what flows from that, we write, students should therefore learn about America's founding principles and its root in the broader Western and Judeo-Christian traditions. Now, the Western and Judeo-Christian traditions are overlapping, but are not.

exactly the same. Even in Judeo-Christian tradition, know, the Jewish tradition and the Christian tradition are not synonymous with each other. There's Eastern Christianity and Eastern Judaism, and there are other influences in the West that are neither Jewish nor Christian. So these are overlapping. But I think the reality is that the American tradition grows out of those Western Judeo-Christian, and particularly if you're thinking of it as a tree.

the English branch.

Jason Bedrick (24:22.944)
of that tradition. And so in order to understand who we are, what our country is, what it has stood for, its founding story, you need to learn the history and traditions that it came out of. You need to learn about the English common law system and the Magna Carta, and you need to learn about the Scottish enlightenment. You need to learn also about the Roman Empire and its

It's Greek forebears. need to learn about how the Jewish traditions of the Bible and, you know, these Greco-Roman ideas sort of fused in...

Christian, medieval Europe, and so on and so forth. So you're not actually going to understand our society and what we stand for if you don't have a foundation in the roots of our society. And, you know.

One thing was Ronald Reagan who said that, you you can lose freedom in a single generation. Right. And I think we're starting to recognize the, the, the wisdom of that. We have to be very intentional about passing this information on. Too many teachers think, well, you know, you can just Google it. Right. You don't really need facts anymore. You can just Google it. Right. We've replaced history with social studies. All right. So instead of learning things sequentially, well, we're just going to have a unit on innovators. Right.

and we're going to learn about Thomas Edison and Elon Musk, and then we'll have another unit on explorers, and we're going to learn about Marco Polo and Magellan and Columbus and Buzz Aldrin, and the kids don't have a sense of, you know, what came first, what came later, what...

Jason Bedrick (26:15.16)
you know, the sequence and why these different discoveries or developments were important, what changed, you really have to do things essentially sequentially, and we, in order to transmit a culture. And we have moved away from that and are reaping the fruits of that failure right now.

Soren Schwab - CLT (26:38.137)
you

Certainly, certainly. Got a few more to get to. think the next one is so fascinating to me, right? Because I think today, when you ask, you can just go on the street and ask folks, hey, what's the point of education? The vast majority will probably say to get a better job, right? Or to acquire certain skills. Well, that was really not the case for most of human history. And so it really was about whether you want to say,

become more fully human or to cultivate wisdom and virtue, but it had something to do with character formation. And you guys are promoting that again. so character formation as one of those pillars. But I want to pick your brain a little bit on academic excellence, because on the one hand, seems like, right, I mean, we're the most advanced, educated when you look at degrees, right?

country, society, but something seems off. And so when you write about and think about academic excellence and what that should look like, whether it's in a home school or in a K-12 school, what are some of the features of a good academic kind of formation?

Jason Bedrick (28:00.846)
Sure, well, I would just note first that we do put character formation first, and that is for a reason, because we do think that is more important, and then actually cultivating virtue is a requirement for academic excellence. And so you need excellence of the heart before excellence of the mind. So character formation comes first. But in terms of academic excellence, we write the following, that schools should prioritize a rigorous and content-rich curriculum.

Soren Schwab - CLT (28:13.667)
Mm-hmm.

Jason Bedrick (28:27.87)
And again, that means we are striving for merit. We are not just

passing kids along, social promotion. This isn't about equity, right? We are striving for excellence. And content rich. This is not a progressive education. This is not just choose your own adventure. There actually are things out there in the world that we need to know. And we should be intentional about sharing that with our children.

rooted in foundational subjects such as math, literature, science, history, civics, and the arts. Now, we put all of those because all of those are really important for education. And I think some on the right have said, well, know, the arts, you know, literature, these things have been captured by the left. And, you know, let's just retreat and focus on STEM, right? If we just teach our kids STEM,

Soren Schwab - CLT (29:20.385)
Yes, yes.

Jason Bedrick (29:31.758)
you know science technology engineering and math, you know, they'll have access to good jobs later and you know, forget the rest But what you're forgetting is is the cultivation of virtue? is the the cultivation of the soul right which which is done through Literature which is done through studying history and and you know citizenship which is done through civics. So we really Should not be abandoning

all of these other ways of knowing things. and the arts too. Our students should be looking at the paintings of Rembrandt and van Gogh and they should be trying their own hand at imitating the great masters and

There is a great cultivation of one's soul when they are engaged in the arts. It's unfortunately too often just sort of an afterthought, like here, try and play this recorder and here's some markers, do whatever you want. No, we really should be engaging. Actually, there's one of my favorite schools that takes this very seriously is Great Hearts out here in Arizona. I know they're in Texas and some other states too.

But when you walk into a great hard school, one of the first things you notice if you've been to a bunch of different types of schools is that they have great art all over the walls. And then what you'll find out is many of those are not originals, they're drawn by the students. By their senior year, they really are copying the masters and doing a great job. And then also, once they've spent a decade plus

Soren Schwab - CLT (31:00.921)
it.

Jason Bedrick (31:20.494)
imitating the masters, now they're actually ready to produce art of their own that is of a very high quality. Not just what you'll find at the local modern art museum, which is a splatter on the wall or a banana duct taped on the wall or something like that. Actually something that is beautiful that you look at and say, wow, I wish I could do something like that. That's amazing. So we should not be abandoning the arts.

Soren Schwab - CLT (31:42.585)
You

Jason Bedrick (31:46.558)
And again, we write the emphasis should be placed on core knowledge and tried and true pedagogy rather than fads or experimental teaching methods. You know, stick with what works.

make incremental progress, but radical experiments like going from phonics to whole language have proven disastrous. know, there's this whole Soul the Story, what's her name? Emily Hannaford podcast where she's like, yeah, we have forgotten actually how to teach kids how to read. And it's not that hard. We should be able to do this. But

Soren Schwab - CLT (32:05.269)
my goodness. Yeah.

Soren Schwab - CLT (32:13.089)
I believe so.

Jason Bedrick (32:21.07)
the education schools that are teaching our teachers are spending a lot more time teaching Franz Fanon and how to inculcate social justice warriors than like how do you manage a classroom and teach kids how to read? It's a huge problem. we do, in that sense, we do want to get back to basics.

Soren Schwab - CLT (32:41.505)
Yes, sir. I think they call it the science of reading now because phonics is now this right wing, whatever, as long as we get kids to read. I really don't care what we're gonna call it. But it's interesting. what you're talking about, one of the prerequisites, though, is a general sense of humility and, if not veneration for those who came before us, right? And the general sense of, you know, talking a lot about

know, reading great books like Standing on the Shoulders of Giants, right? That the past and yes, even these dead white guys, right, have something to teach us, right? That these, you call them the masters, have something to teach us. And that is such a stark difference, right, between going, visiting a classical school and going to maybe one of the more progressive public schools. I stopped calling them traditional public schools. Sometimes we still refer to them as

yeah, no, I go to the traditional public school when nothing about them is in any sense of the word traditional. Well, Jason, let's let's talk about that last one, which, you know, as a non non American citizen, a proud green card holder, of course, I want to I want to talk about the last one is is citizenship. And I I've read it. I know where you're going with that. So I can get behind it. But talk to us a little bit about the, you know, the the embassy.

Jason Bedrick (33:41.846)
is traditional.

Jason Bedrick (34:05.027)
You don't sound convinced though.

Soren Schwab - CLT (34:07.661)
Well, that's why, really why I brought you on is to convince me, can I be part of this without being a citizen? Now, talk to us about why you included citizenship, why you call it citizenship, you could have called it patriotism or others and what you mean by that.

Jason Bedrick (34:09.166)
Sure.

Jason Bedrick (34:24.898)
Well, we think citizenship in conferences is a lot more than just patriotism. That is a part of it. The first line is a republic depends upon an educated and patriotic citizenry, right? We recognize that education is trying to do a number of different things. Classical liberal education, what does the word liberal mean? We're not talking about political liberalism today. Liberal education is educating for freedom.

Soren Schwab - CLT (34:28.972)
of me.

Jason Bedrick (34:53.868)
right liberal libertas right it is educating for freedom to be a citizen in a free society right so it says that schools should teach students the civic virtues and civic knowledge necessary for self-government and the task of building a more perfect union including the value of civil disagreement which is something i think we've really lost

Students should also, schools rather, should also foster a healthy sense of patriotism. So not just nationalism, not just, know, yay, we're the best, we're better than everyone else, but a healthy sense, which means that there actually is an attachment. I think we've gone too far in the opposite direction where students are not proud of the country. They don't appreciate its accomplishments. Too many college students today, if you ask them about...

our founding fathers, ask them about George Washington, the first fact they'll give you is that he was a slave holder, right? They don't have the background that slavery was ubiquitous in human history and that America is among the first nations that abolishes it. And it was very difficult and we fight a whole civil war in order to do that. But it really reduces many of our founding fathers into

Soren Schwab - CLT (35:47.575)
He was a slave owner. Yep.

Jason Bedrick (36:12.336)
to these evil men. If we were founded by a bunch of evil people that were enshrining white supremacy and racism in our founding documents, who wants to defend that kind of society? Who wants to perpetuate it? The whole thing collapses if we lose an appreciation for the accomplishment of our founding fathers in.

writing the Declaration of Independence and signing the Constitution and building a society with liberty and limited government, this is a real problem that we're facing.

So schools should foster a healthy sense of patriotism and cultivate gratitude for an attachment to our country and all who serve its central institutions. We talk about how we need those shared civic rituals like the Pledge of Allegiance and the National Anthem. These should be respected and revived. In many cases, schools have abandoned them. Students should develop a deep understanding of and respect for our nation's founding documents and the ideas they contain about ordered liberty, justice,

Soren Schwab - CLT (37:15.993)
Thank

Jason Bedrick (37:24.46)
the rule of law, limited government, natural rights, and equal dignity of all human beings. Too often you're getting textbooks where they're just reading a few paragraphs about the founding documents but not actually reading the founding documents themselves, let alone reading primary sources like the Federalist Papers or for that matter the Anti-Federalist Papers, right?

Soren Schwab - CLT (37:39.417)
All right.

Soren Schwab - CLT (37:47.779)
Thank you.

Jason Bedrick (37:48.654)
It concludes, students should learn the whole truth about America, its merits and failings, without obscuring that America is a great source of good in the world and that we have a tradition that is worth passing on. All right, so this means not the 1619 project that magnifies our failings.

Soren Schwab - CLT (37:54.797)
Mm-hmm.

Soren Schwab - CLT (38:00.451)
I love you.

Jason Bedrick (38:07.662)
and ignores our successes and accomplishments, but also not a history curriculum that says, well, the slaves were actually better off in some ways and that minimizes the sin of slavery or anything like that. No, we need to show the whole truth about America, warts and all. And I think when you do that, you come away with an appreciation of America as that shining city on a hill, as a beacon of freedom in the world.

Soren Schwab - CLT (38:19.801)
Yeah

Soren Schwab - CLT (38:35.985)
huh.

Jason Bedrick (38:37.774)
but one that is not perfect. And the work is to form a more perfect union, not just to say hurrah, we're the best. And this gets to, I think, our overall project. One of the reasons we...

Soren Schwab - CLT (38:41.026)
Right.

Jason Bedrick (38:53.634)
This came out of a conference that was called the conservative vision of education conference, but we actually call this an American vision for education, not a conservative one. Because we see ourselves as making common cause with, you know, classical liberals, libertarians, centrists, those even on the center left, who are committed to the American project. And that doesn't mean that you think we've been perfect. I think

Soren Schwab - CLT (38:57.443)
Mm-hmm.

Jason Bedrick (39:23.648)
of Martin Luther King Jr. was so persuasive because he was saying to Americans, look, we all agree with the founding ideals of this country, but we as a society have failed to live up to them, right?

know, Frederick Douglass makes a very similar, very compelling case that America is not living up to its ideals, which is why we say that you're not only passing on, sorry, one second. You're not only passing on its history, tradition and values, but also its yet unrealized aspirations.

to next generation. So anybody who is committed to those values is inside the tent. Those who are outside the tent are those who say, well, actually we need to replace the Constitution because it's just the enshrinement of white supremacy, or those on the far right who say America's wrong turn was at lock and all of the founding principles of America really are.

mistake and we need to abandon the entire liberal project. I think that's, you know, those, they're also essentially outside the tent.

But again, we're not looking to replace the left wing indoctrination with right wing indoctrination. We are looking to educate children for liberty. And we do that by exposing them to the great conversation. Thinking again of citizenship, they should be reading the Federalists and the Anti-Federalists, right? They should be hearing different parts of the debate. We intentionally cite both John Adams and Thomas Jefferson in the preamble because they were founding fathers at sort

Soren Schwab - CLT (41:00.632)
Yeah.

Jason Bedrick (41:11.736)
opposite ends of the political spectrum of their day. And students should be reading from the letters that they were sending to each other in their closing years, sort of justifying their own position and arguing with each other, both within what became the American political tradition, but different poles of it. so

We don't want to indoctrinate, indoctrination is just the unquestioning acceptance of certain ideas and certain principles. We want kids who are educated for freedom and that means sharpening their intellect with conflicting ideas that come from our tradition.

Soren Schwab - CLT (41:57.697)
Yeah, yeah, well said. I think for folks that are in support of that and in agreement of that, I think that's why we're seeing such an increase in whether they're liberal arts schools, colleges, classical schools, a re-embracing of that. But what I love about your work, and I think CLT's as well, we hold ourselves accountable by being grounded in truth, goodness, and beauty.

And if that's our quote unquote bias, if that's our bent, then we're okay with that. You know, if that's our quote unquote values, but it's important. But thank you for casting that vision. know, and we have our qualms with the College Board and with ACT, certainly do, but I think that's just not gonna help long-term, right? We need to cast a vision why we think we're the superior standardized test in line with what you shared with us.

So Jason, I appreciate your work. I encourage everyone to follow the work of the Heritage Foundation. I know there's a lot of talk about you all, but really, when you read this piece and many of the other pieces, is common sense. It's well-rounded, it's principled, and we're excited to lock arms with you all. So Jason, thank you for your work on the Phoenix Declaration. yeah, if anyone wants to...

follow you in your work? What was the best place to kind of go for that?

Jason Bedrick (43:28.098)
They can follow me on X, I'm at Jason Bedrick, and they can read the Phoenix Declaration by going to heritage.org slash phoenix dash declaration. There's a dash in between the Phoenix and Declaration. So heritage.org slash phoenix dash or hyphen declaration. And I hope people will check it out. We would love to see.

school boards adopt this as the the principles that they're going to follow in their own districts. I think it's helpful to get school leaders and school board members asking the right questions, you know, is our curriculum really cultivating these civic virtues? Is it cultivating patriotism? And what about the hidden curriculum, you know, our

Are we doing anything for Memorial Day or Veterans Day or are these just days off? All of these sorts of things gets them, it will get them asking, I think the right questions and lead to a positive reform and renewal of our American education system.

Soren Schwab - CLT (44:26.041)
friend.

Soren Schwab - CLT (44:31.319)
Yeah, it's gonna lead, I think it's gonna lead to a lot of healthy, good conversations and hopefully an intentionality, right? That maybe for some of these schools was missing. Jason, you're the man. Really appreciate you. You've been a good friend to CLT. Thank you for all your work. We could probably do another episode just talking about updates in school choice. I'm sure while we were recording, there were several things happening, but.

It has to be it for today. Again, we're here with Jason Bedrick, research fellow in the Center for Education Policy at the Heritage Foundation. Jason, thank you much for coming on Anchor today.

Jason Bedrick (45:08.184)
Thank you so much for having me.