Where Should Education Go From Here?

What an interesting time this is for education. The liberals are obsessed with having elementary school children read about LGBTQ+ relationships. Efforts to mandate all students in a district participate in designated readings were thwarted in June of 2025 when the Supreme Court said that parents in a Montgomery County Public School system could opt-out of having their children participate. The conservatives are passing laws putting the ten commandments into schools. Louisiana was the first state to pass such a law, but at least 14 other states are making similar efforts. Whether the ten commandments will be allowed into public schools is being decided by the courts now. Since the courts lets the parents opt their children out of reading stories they disagree with, I hope they will also reject the posting of the ten commandments in the same spirit.

Each side wants to force their priority on the other, and therein lies the problem. Neither issue is sufficiently inspiring to all the students to have them want to explore it by their choice. When ideologies must be imposed on the population, the population should resist.

What if there was a compromise? One period of school a week could be devoted to developing the personal philosophy or worldview of the student’s choice. Christian students could study the Bible, Moslem students the Quran, Jewish students the Torah, students with more liberal views could read LGTBQ books, and those who aren’t interested in any of these could read writings of Native Americans, the Stoics, the Taoists, the Buddhists, the Hindi, or other non-monotheistic religions or philosophies.

Once again, ideology is tearing apart the country. What is disconcerting is the lack of recognition of the distribution of people and their ideas and the lack of respect for attitudes that differ from one’s own. Rather than collaboratively evolving an educational system that fosters curiosity and observational skills, the two sides keep battling to dominate the other. What do they expect the losing side to do, acquiesce? I wish there were arguments about how to make education engaging, interesting, motivating, fun, and meaningful, instead of arguing about ideology.

Let’s start with the distribution of people and attitudes in this country. There are those who think Christianity is the correct and true religion and that everyone in the country should follow the Bible. There are those who prefer other religions or are agnostic/atheistic. There are those who have their own form of spirituality, are fine if “you do you” as long as it doesn’t hurt me, and would rather not hear from the extremists on either side. If we use these three categories, what would the priorities of schools be so that everyone could coexist?

For undergraduate liberal arts students taking their general education courses, high school students, and possibly for middle school students, I think some of their education should be based on what they, as individuals, want to learn about. For that portion of learning, I think we should follow a medical model. I’ll explain that by showing what a visit to a doctor would be like if medicine followed an education model.

Doctor: “Hi. I’ve scheduled you for chemotherapy, a knee replacement, and we will do an appendectomy next month.”

You: “I haven’t even told you why I’m here today.”

Doctor: “It doesn’t matter, and I’m not interested in your concerns, you might need some of these treatments in the future, so I’m giving them to you now.”

That’s what we do in education. We don’t care what students want to learn about, at least until they pick a major at university or go to graduate school. We dictate what we expect them to learn, assess them endlessly, and grade them for how they are meeting our expectations. Then we wonder why so many students are bored or apathetic.

As an alternative, imagine if part of the learning students did was based on what they wanted to learn. Instead of being in classes, they would find faculty advisors to guide and mentor their learning. Then the faculty advisor would function like a primary care physician and send the student to other faculty specialists who would also provide direction to the students. For example, suppose a student is interested in skiing. The student knows that Miss Lumi is an avid skier and so asks her to be the advisor. Since Miss Lumi is an art teacher, she sends the student to specialists such as a math teacher who can guide the study of slopes and speed, a physics teacher who can give guidance on friction, aerodynamics, and forces on the body, an economist who can help with the finances of running a ski resort, a chemistry teacher to guide about the different types of snow, and waxing skis, an earth scientist who can discuss avalanches and a PE teacher for help with strengthening and flexibility. Perhaps an English teacher can help the student write a poem or story about snow or skiing and recommend readings the students could do and a history teacher can encourage the exploration of the history of skiing and where it is culturally important. Miss Lumi might also suggest the student spend a certain number of days on the slope, recording observations about conditions and their own skiing and learning. The student would then be responsible for their own learning, tapping into the many resources that are available in the school’s library, online, or with AI.

Such a system would have several impacts. First, students would find that teachers are being supportive of them and their interests. I think that would have a powerful effect on attitudes about being in school. Second, teachers would find out about the diverse interests of students and would then be able to incorporate some of what they learn into the teaching of more standard classes. Third, I think teachers would be energized. Fourth, I think learning throughout the school would be seen as a collaborative adventure and relationships would develop throughout the community (I’m not implying romantic relationships, just people interacting with others in a supportive, non-domineering way.) Fifth, I think the student would see the value of the different disciplines in helping understand their topic of interest and would be more willing to engage with it in standard classes (e.g. math, science, literature, art).

For those students who are old enough and asking questions about LGBTQ+ or religion, their research can be on those topics. For those who aren’t interested, those topics can be ignored.

This is a good time to rethink what, how, and why we teach. Rather than let the government or others impose a top-down form of education, I think we need to develop a grassroots conversation that includes parents, students, teachers and administrators that cross the political, religious, racial, and cultural lines and who work to design a new vision of education that is acceptable to all. Then the government needs to support this vision.