The Federal Government is Dumbing Us Down

I was thinking earlier about how easy it is to think that things have simply always been the way they are now.

For example, my kids have never known travel without long security lines, having to take off their shoes and jackets, and witnessing their parents occasionally groped by power-tripping TSA goons.

They can’t imagine the days that represented most of my life where you would walk your loved one all the way to their gate, watch them board, and wave as their plane pushed back from the jetway and taxied off.

Or how about the generation of kids growing up thinking that masks are a normal part of life, or that grocery store workers have always been encapsulated in plexiglass?

Or that someone can be fired for choosing not to undergo a particular medical procedure?

The way things are tend to make us forget that all of these practices and policies were once brand new—and sold to the public as a “temporary” inconvenience that would be for our own safety and well-being.

It reminds me a lot of the ratchet effect that we talked about it The Tuttle Twins and the Leviathan Crisis (based on Robert Higgs must-read, Crisis and Leviathan) where governments expand power during a crisis, then fail to reduce their power after the crisis ends.

It’s easy for most of us to remember the times before covid, and airport insanity, but there’s one “normal” that is actually pretty new that most people don’t realize hasn’t always been around.

The U.S. Department of Education.

Did you know that the DoE was only created in 1979? K-12 education wasn’t even adopted by all the states until 1930, and it wasn’t until 1965 that the federal government got involved at all.

That means that the federally managed education system that we have is actually still in its relative infancy when compared to how long people have been living, learning, and thriving in this country. One could even say that it is still in a very experimental stage, since really only a couple of generations of Americans have come up through DoE controlled schools.

I wanted to find a great visual that represented just how much the federal government hasn’t helped Americans become smarter and better educated, and although there is a plethora of data that confirms what many reading this already know (hint: putting the government in charge of things always makes them worse and more expensive) I settled on this graph instead:

Presidential Speeches Throughout History: 1800-Present

Houston… we have a problem.

I’ll leave you to do your own deep dives on exactly how or why we got here, but I feel pretty certain that it’s safe to say that education in the U.S. is not progressing in the way that would best serve our children or our future prosperity and well-being.

Plato famously wrote that, “our need will be the real creator,” and down the centuries we’ve adapted it to, “necessity is the mother of invention.”

I believe it. I’ve seen this principle at play in both my personal and professional lives, and I’m willing to bet you have too.

So instead of feeling depressed or defeated at this failed, government-managed education experiment, I feel hopeful and excited. Because now is the time when the real magic starts to happen.

From micro-schools, to homeschools, to charter schools, and far beyond to education innovations that haven’t even been conceived of yet, we are entering an era of boundless opportunity when it comes to the way we teach our kids.

Education isn’t (and never will be) a one-size-fits-all model, and that’s why we created the Tuttle Twins products the way we did.

Our books are used in classrooms and home libraries. Our curriculum is made to work just as well for teachers with large classes as it does for moms homeschooling multiple ages—and everything in between! Even parents of public school kids who simply want to supplement what their kids are learning at school use our offerings!

We make products for people who know that just because things are a certain way now, it doesn’t mean they need to stay this way.

The future is ours for the making.

So join the millions of other families who have taken teaching their kids real principles of freedom, liberty, economics, history, and the way the world really works into their own hands.

Order your Tuttle Twins books and curriculum now, and get started!

We’re witnessing the birth of an education revolution. And I’m here for it!

—Connor