In a three-part essay titled “Our Killing Schools,” The Redneck Intellectual, C. Bradley Thompson, addresses the school shootings that have stunned, angered, and confused Americans. Thompson goes beyond the typical explanations—video games, rap music, the absence of God in the classroom—for these senseless acts of violence. He provides a philosophical explanation that goes to the root cause of school shootings:
My thesis is as simple as it will be controversial: I argue that the theory and practice of Progressive education—the dominant educational philosophy in America’s schools—is the root cause of the intellectual and moral chaos that defines our education system and the crisis of our teenage boys.
As Thompson correctly notes, if we truly want to understand the cause of school shootings, we must be willing to ask and answer some difficult questions.
One’s actions are ultimately shaped by the ideas that one accepts. For example, if an individual embraces the idea that success and happiness are possible, his actions will be very different from the individual who believes that success and happiness are impossible. While there are many factors involved in the ideas one accepts, a significant source is government schools.
Ayn Rand wrote that the purpose of education is
to teach a student how to live his life—by developing his mind and equipping him to deal with reality. The training he needs is theoretical, i.e., conceptual. He has to be taught to think, to understand, to integrate, to prove.
This is precisely what government schools do not do. Addressing the dominant educational theory present in government schools—Progressive education—Thompson writes in Part 2,
Progressive education also focuses on “problems” and “processes” rather than academic subjects and logical thinking, and the overriding “problem” addressed by Progressive educators is how to live in a society defined by a communal ethos. The “process” used to solve the problem encourages children to, first, live in the present and to be concerned with their immediate needs and desires; second, work together in groups in order to cope with life’s daily challenges (e.g., preparing a meal, getting a job, getting along with people, practicing safe sex, planning one’s leisure time, etc.); and, third, accept the correct attitudes for living in a social democracy. Ultimately, the primary concern of Progressive education is to indoctrinate and “socialize” students with certain social attitudes rather than to educate them.
Government schools teach children that independent thinking is pointless and misleading. Instead, they are taught to go along with the group.
The result of this mind-numbing educational theory is children who cannot think or value. They are taught to suppress their own desires and conform to society’s expectations. Most go along with this credo, but a few rebel. They become the nihilists who commit mass murder.