Save Heritage Indiana held a mass deportations rally on Aug. 1. The organization blames the loss of our heritage, or shared values, on mass immigration.
My colleague, James Briggs, argued the decay of our public institutions is actually to blame. He criticized Lt. Gov. Micah Beckwith for “torching” what remains of those institutions. There’s truth in that. While diversity brings challenges, our culture should meet those challenges and become stronger.
That happens when public institutions integrate different groups around a set of positive, shared values, but those institutions have not done their job. That is not because they are too weak, but because they have long abandoned any shared values worth having. Beckwith is only torching institutions that deserve it.
Public institutions deny objective truth, universal values
The main institution Beckwith has focused his attention on is public, K-12 and higher education.
The diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, critical race theory, “woke” propaganda and “LGBTQ+ agendas,” that Beckwith attacks are all symptoms. The root cause is a rejection of fixed, universal truths about human nature and objective truth in favor of self-constructed identity. That explicitly secular philosophy of postmodernism is hidden under a mask of ideological neutrality and inclusion.
The state’s reforms on this issue have all been defensive. Republicans have stopped short of requiring public schools to integrate people around their own preferred set of shared values. There’s good reason to believe the courts would stop them if they tried.
I am not even sure what type of shared values Republicans would try to transmit at this point.
The Republican Party recently removed opposition to abortion and support for the traditional family, gun rights and policies to limit the national debt from its national platform. The party’s leader, President Donald Trump, is lacking in personal morals.
Some conservatives think refocusing public education on workforce training and away from liberal arts is the best path forward in light of this debate over values. That means an increased focus on the hard sciences and other in-demand fields.
Certainly, fewer serious academics in the hard sciences waste their time with postmodernism. Their fields are built on making observations, testing hypotheses and drawing conclusions that would be meaningless if they could not be trusted to reach toward some objective truth.
Conservatives, though, need liberal arts to create the next generation of leaders and educators just as they need the hard sciences to create the next generation of innovators at Eli Lilly.
Conservatives need their own institutions
Conservatives can rescue the liberal arts by promoting parallel institutions to the public ones that rejected their values long ago. Beckwith has done that, advocating for students to attend Christian universities like Hillsdale College in Michigan instead of public ones.
Indiana needs its own Hillsdale. The future of conservative liberal arts education is private. That includes the broad foundational knowledge base offered at a K-12 level. An institution with a creed or belief system is the only way to combat mandatory secularism in the public schools.
Conservatives should use their power in the government to ensure such private institutions are given a level playing field against public institutions and other private institutions. The goal of doing so should not be to retreat from the public square, but to transform it more effectively by transmitting shared values.
Hillsdale gives conservatives a network to draw from. Institutions like it offer professional development that helps conservatives succeed anywhere and obtain positions of influence.
There is little chance of rescuing all of the public institutions in our country, though conservatives can limit the harm they cause. Parallel institutions are the most tolerant way to integrate a diverse population and transmit shared values worth having.
Contact Jacob Stewart at 317-444-4683 or jacob.stewart@indystar.com. Follow him on X, Instagram, Facebook and TikTok.
This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Beckwith is torching public education — and it deserves it | Opinion
Reporting by Jacob Stewart, Indianapolis Star / Indianapolis Star
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
By Jacob Stewart, Indianapolis Star | USA TODAY Network
