OPINION:
Analysts and commentators are in a frenzy parsing the winners and losers in Donald Trump’s victory, all while billionaires and special interest groups are posturing to get on the president-elect’s good side. But one group won a surprising victory on Nov. 5 without spending a dime on political donations, lobbying, campaigning or any politicking at all: the classical education movement.
Classical education is a nonexistent player on the national political scene. It doesn’t have a super PAC, and, frankly, classical schools don’t represent a large pocket of voters. Instead, those involved in classical education quietly educate a relatively small number of American students in the great Western historical, literary and intellectual tradition.
Yet elected leaders — including Mr. Trump — have expended their political capital to support the classical school movement.
Mr. Trump did perhaps the most to bring the classical school movement into the spotlight through his stripped-down and innovative Republican Party platform. Eschewing the usual laundry list of lobbyist-approved policy proposals and slashing the traditional length of a platform by dozens of pages, Mr. Trump nonetheless gave a prized place to classical education.
In a brief chapter on the Republican plan to “renew the pillars of American civilization,” one of Mr. Trump’s nine policy planks was to support “the restoration of Classic Liberal Arts Education.” The plank was complete with Mr. Trump’s signature liberal use of capitalization, proof that he wrote, or at least edited, the document himself.
And again, in one of his nine planks in the platform’s brief chapter on education, Mr. Trump proclaimed the Republican Party’s support for schools that teach “Western Civilization.”
The choice of Linda McMahon — an ardent school choice advocate — as secretary of education reveals that Mr. Trump remains committed to upending the often anti-Western education system as we know it.
These aren’t one-off concerns. As president, Mr. Trump gave a rousing defense of the glories and traditions of Western civilization in a speech in Poland where he declared that “the West will never, ever be broken. Our values will prevail. Our people will thrive. And our civilization with triumph.”
Earlier this year, he praised Hungarian President Viktor Orban for “proudly fighting on the front lines of the battle to rescue Western civilization.” He even attacked Vice President Kamala Harris as “the candidate of the forces who want to destroy Western civilization.”
Mr. Trump isn’t alone in supporting classical education and Western civilization. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has embraced classical education in everything from his choices for school board to allowing the use of the Classic Learning Test (where I am the CEO) as an alternative to the SAT and ACT for admission to his state’s public universities.
Meanwhile, Texas is poised to become the largest state in the union to embrace school choice, freedom that will pour rocket fuel on the already booming classical school movement that saw enrollment increases of roughly 600% over only 10 years.
It’s not only Republicans. Cornel West ran for president to the left of the Democratic Party this last cycle, and he has long supported classical education as a means of justice and liberation, especially for Black and brown people.
With support from Mr. Trump on the right to Mr. West on the left and from state governments up to the national level, classical schools are set to grow more rapidly than ever. The biggest obstacle holding the classical movement back is that they can’t build schools and hire teachers fast enough.
If our leaders want this movement to take off, it’s time to transform supportive rhetoric into action. That especially means investing in teacher pay at classical schools through private support or public policy. Once great teachers see that they not only can escape traditional public schools’ ideological and bureaucratic constraints by moving to a classical school but also get paid more to do it, this movement will explode.
Yet with the classical movement making waves across the nation, a major question remains: Why have such a diverse set of politicians in our country, including the president-elect, lined up to back an educational movement that has effectively no political influence?
Maybe it stems from recognizing that the current educational model is failing our students. Maybe our political leaders want to support an educational model that doesn’t embrace propaganda or educational fads from either side but instead favors timeless pedagogy that cultivates intellectually curious, intelligent and free adults. Maybe people do want an education system that actually educates.
• Jeremy Wayne Tate is the founder and CEO of the Classic Learning Test, a humanities-focused alternative to the SAT and ACT tests.
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