Treat Education Like a Rental Car

A guide for surviving behind enemy lines

Education, at least in the United States, is a scary proposition. The States have laws compelling children to attend school. Drift afoul of those laws, and the heavy hand of government will punish both student and parent with a fury that would make a drug dealer blush. With few viable exceptions, majority of American youth are educated in government schools. This makes the government both punisher and giver of knowledge.

There can be no doubt that a well-educated population makes for a better society. Personally, I am a fan of teaching the liberal arts as historically laid out as the trivium (grammar, logic and rhetoric) and the quadrivium (arithmetic, astronomy, music and geometry.) A well-founded education, matriculating students through the trivium and quadrivium as it applies to history, religion, science and the politic in ever deeper layers as they progress through primary, middle, high school and beyond makes for happier and well-adjusted adult citizens. Having a broad and reflective education enhances lives, as everything from arts, entertainment, occupations, family dynamics and religion have historical references. As Mark Twain once said, “history never repeats itself, but it often rhymes.”

Understanding history, literature and mythology allows perspective of almost every situation in current events. Joe Biden is King Lear in dotage, desperately seeking genuine love from his children. Is not Ron DeSantis a young David testing out whether he can fit into Saul's armor? Putin is the enraged Agamemnon, sailing off to a foreign land to avenge his spurned honor. How can one not witness the back biting and decaying Republic of the United States and not draw reference to Rome's late-stage Republic and its eventual civil war between Julius Caesar and Pompey?  Political pundits are always looking for the “crossing the Rubicon” moment. I personally take solace that individuals of extreme wealth combined with nefarious intentions, like George Soros and BlackRock's Larry Fink, will spend eternity in the lowest circles of hell as aptly described in Dante's Inferno.

History may not repeat itself, but lately, it is rhyming in three-part harmony. All that are educated in the virtue that is education itself, can see these modern-day connections to historical pasts. Understanding the human nature that created the beauties as well as the tragedies of our ancestors is the only way to affect our modern world and endeavor to be better. The givers of education are responsible for imparting that knowledge. Upon reflection of our current K-12 and post-secondary education systems, are we anywhere near projecting that ideal?

Hardly. Modern educational institutions are merely a communist jobs program and students serve as a means to an end for both funding as well as the target of that ideological indoctrination. To this day, I will never forgive myself, nor the conservatives, for ceding the battleground of education so easily. I must admit, the back in the 80s, as I was completing my liberal arts education, I witnessed the sorry state the educational system and falsely believed that once students progressed into the “real world” all would be made right because surely the communist claptrap that was my college experience could only survive in the Ivy-covered protective bubble of the university. I was wrong. That starry-eyed activism, sands historical context, spilled beyond the walls of the university and into pulpits, boardrooms, financial houses, and government. For someone who cherishes learning, our modern educational institutions have become the enemy. In the 21st century, gaining any sort of a true education means going behind enemy lines.

What should a modern student, or parent for that matter, do about this current state of education? Obviously, getting involved at the local school board level is a must. But it took 50 years of communist infiltration into the school systems, and it will be a long and slow crawl out of that morass. Regarding secondary education, more young adults are opting out. There's a great article by Substacker,  John Carter, DIEing Confidence in the Academy where he lays out this current trend. However, there are certain career trajectories that simply require knowledge and credentialing that only current educational institutions provide. Doctors, lawyers, engineers, just to name a few, must continue with post-secondary education to gain those key learned metrics.

With our current twisted system that legally compels parents to enroll their children into primary schools and the necessity for post-secondary credentialing, there is only one way for a parent and student to look at our educational systems. And that is to treat it like a rental car. One simply needs to look for the least inexpensive, utilitarian vehicle to get from point A to point B. Remember, anyone wishing to extract anything resembling a liberal arts education out of our current educational institutions must do so behind enemy lines. They must ever be aware of the land mines planted by administrators designed to blow up in the faces of anyone daring true mental inquiry. In modern education institutions, administrators abound to assist students in a variety of life, learning and happiness issues. Academic advisors, health and wellness administrators, career advisors, diversity monitors, plus every possible aggrieved group representative on Earth have positions in academic administration staffs and have a toeholds on students' educational fate.

Be warned, despite the titles and stated purposes of each of these administrators, a student’s academic wellbeing is the furthest thing from their minds. They are in place to facilitate a universal communist world view. Many will say that I am being over dramatic in my portrayal of educational professionals. Naysayers often point to a friend or neighbor who works in education and claim, surely, they are there to help. True, there are some working in education who somehow made it past the Maoist and Marxist screening process and do have altruistic motives. But, when the chips are down, and a parent truly requires professional assistant to help their children navigate "educational" institutions, these individuals are themselves powerless against the indoctrination machine. They will collapse like a cheap tent in a light breeze at the first instance they buck up against the administrative machine.

When a student is forced to take an inane DEI inspired class taught by a modern Bolshevik as part of the requirement for graduation, the best course of action is to study precisely what the enemy believes is the answer and regurgitate that on a test. There is no point arguing for the right in this situation. Efforts will not only fall on deaf ears, but there will also be retribution from one of the staffed administrators for such insolence. It is best to check that DEI required box and position your rental car towards the next stop on the graduation journey. 

Gone to are the late-night bull sessions among fellow coeds. Those informal gab sessions, that during my time at university, often brought more light to a studied topic over a beer and pizza than the dry robotic delivery of the professor earlier that day. For the modern student seeking a true education at the university level, it is simply too risky to engage in out-of-class discussions among perceived colleagues. One spoken misstep in a bull session that offends the fragile psyche of a classmate in one of the sanctioned aggrieved groups, can still bring a reign of terror from school administration for such unsanctioned utterances. In the modern university there can be no benign explanation for thoughts uttered, as all such musings will be duly recorded and presented at a First Amendment denying tribunal. Here is where the administration leaders fulfill their communist calling as grand inquisitors, ever scouring the campus for apostasy. Once a free-thinking student is discovered, a Torquemada inspired administer, backed by the university’s Tribunal of holy Wokeness, rapidly descends upon such insolence. For a student ensnared by wrong thought, these campus “courts” are designed to extricate any remaining notion of free expression and compel the offender into ideological compliance or face expulsion (modern excommunication.)

For students forced into educational systems either by law or a desire for specific credentialing, it is best to limit in school exposure to the barest minimum. That means driving the educational rental car to all the various required stops upon their journey, extracting the necessary information and getting the H E double hockey sticks out of there. The thoughtful student knows that free speech and academic integrity no longer exist in educational institutions and to pretend that honest dialogue will be honored brings, not educational enlightenment, but undue pain and hardship.

Finally, if one manages to navigate their rental “education” to the final destination called graduation, they should promptly return their vehicle to the nearest drop location (with tires warn bare and brakes smoking,) skip graduation and never look back. For if one truly got an education in their four years behind enemy lines, they would have nothing in common with the pomp and circumstances of the graduation ceremony. Believe me, the self-congratulatory pageant of issuing honorary doctorates to DEI inspired laureates followed by Communist Manifesto inspired speeches bears no resemblance to an individual who successfully navigated the modern educational system and excited with the ability to critically think.

As businesses plan for their future and look to fill leadership ranks, the graduate that can prove resilience to group-think and, despite all institutional efforts to the contrary, achieved an education under hostile circumstances, will be the far more desirable hire than their run-of-the-mill, cookie-cutter communist cohorts. When reflecting on whether anything was learned in obtaining a degree, only the rental car-driving graduates can faithfully utter the words, "vini, vide, vici" regarding their education. And, for those cherished and dedicated learners, God's beautiful world is truly their oyster.