Conservatives often point to colleges as the source of indoctrination in America. It is a familiar refrain: send your child to a university, and they will return with values that clash with your own. I suppose that might be partially true if you didn’t choose your school wisely. Nonetheless, while this may seem true on the surface, I believe it overlooks a much deeper and more troubling reality. The truth is that the vast majority of indoctrination starts before college (K–12 indoctrination).

In fact, I would argue that it begins in grade school and continues through high school, where revisionist history and half-truths are presented to an entire generation at taxpayer expense. So, by the time a student arrives at college, the foundation has already been laid. We must understand the intention: not to cultivate thinkers, but to manufacture workers.

“We shall not try to make these people or any of their children into philosophers or men of learning, or men of science. We have not to raise up from among them authors, editors, poets or men of letters.”
– Frederick T. Gates –
Advisor to John D. Rockefeller
General Education Board’s Occasional Papers No. 1, published in 1913.

K–12 Indoctrination

This section could be an entire book, but take a moment to consider the numerous omissions in public education. The first draft of the Declaration of Independence, where Jefferson’s condemnation of slavery was searing and uncompromising, is rarely taught. Instead, you’re taught that he was a slave-owning bigot. The national values that once unified the republic are minimized. The complex truth about slavery itself (such as the roles of slave-owning organizations like the Cherokee or the presence of black slave owners, or how there were more white slaves in northern Africa than there were black slaves in the Americas) is often left out entirely. The list goes on and on.

Of course, the result is not an honest education but a curated narrative designed to shape perceptions. One has to wonder: to what end? After all, graduates today may not be able to do math or articulate the difference between a democracy and a republic if their lives depended on it, but they can certainly recite the benefits of big government, redistributive practices, and other socialist narratives. What does this tell you?

From grade school through high school, students absorb a highly selective version of history and civics. This is not accidental. The modern U.S. system, drawing on 19th-century Prussian ideas and solidified by early-20th-century reforms (especially the NEA’s Cardinal Principles (1918), the Smith–Hughes Act (1917), and industrial ‘efficiency’ models like the Gary Plan), was increasingly organized to produce orderly, work-ready graduates rather than independent thinkers. In other words, the system was designed to produce citizens educated only to a functional minimum: able to comply, consume, and conform, yet unable to think critically or challenge authority, while still believing they were sufficiently informed. Essentially, a cultivated Dunning–Kruger delusion.

Understand that unless the parents have done their job, by the time students arrive at a university, their worldview has already been shaped by a system over which they and their parents have had little to no say. Of course, it is exceptionally difficult for the parents to do their job if they, too, were subject to the same education. That’s a different article.

What I need you to understand is that you’re forced to help fund such contortions, while simultaneously being distracted by the mythical threat of higher education. That is no accident. In truth, proper education at the earliest levels determines whether liberty survives, and it should be the business of the state to provide funding for that instruction, not indoctrination.

“It is an axiom in my mind that our liberty can never be safe but in the hands of the people themselves, and that, too, of the people with a certain degree of instruction. This is the business of the state to effect, and on a general plan.” — Jefferson to George Washington, 1786

The Role of College

Ironically, college is one of the few places where the conditioning of childhood can be challenged—though this is more likely in private, conservative, non-state institutions. There are numerous conservative colleges across the nation, many of them private, that provide a counterbalance to the uniformity of K-12 education. These institutions focus on critical thinking, heritage, and values that align with the principles of the republic. Yet, somehow, many are completely unaware of these institutions or feel that they are out of reach.

What I need you to understand is that not every university is an indoctrination camp. To paint them all with the same brush is to ignore the very real opportunities that higher education can offer. Moreover, if conservatives abandon higher education altogether, they surrender the one arena where young adults are most capable of breaking free from the indoctrination they received earlier. Make no mistake; education (even higher education) is essential to preserving liberty.

“Above all things I hope the education of the common people will be attended to; convinced that on their good sense we may rely with the most security for the preservation of a due degree of liberty.” — Jefferson to James Madison, 1787

The Founders’ Warning

The Founders understood the importance of education in sustaining the republic. Jefferson was clear: education was never meant to be controlled by the state, only funded by it. We are living his reasons. Either way, he warned that the republic could not survive without an educated citizenry. However, this also means that rejecting higher education entirely is to abandon this principle and leave the nation’s future to those who would distort it.

The problem is not the idea of higher education. Get that out of your head. The problem is the misuse of education at its earliest levels and the state’s control over the system. Of course, that makes us all responsible. If conservatives fail to see this, they will continue to fight the wrong battle and ultimately lose. Perhaps that is precisely why you’ve been given the scapegoat that you have.

Conservatives need to understand that those in power benefit when citizens fight the wrong battle, and Jefferson warned us about that. Jefferson had a lifelong commitment to broad education for all citizens. In my opinion, and the opinion of Jefferson, conservatives are simply fighting the wrong battle if they walk away from higher learning.

“A system of general instruction, which shall reach every description of our citizens … is the earliest, so will it be the latest of all the public concerns in which I shall permit myself to take an interest.” — Jefferson to Joseph C. Cabell, 1818

Final Thoughts

Blaming college for indoctrination is easy, but it is also inaccurate. Indeed, the indoctrination starts before college. This is to say that the real conditioning begins long before students ever set foot on a campus. Conservatives are protesting the wrong funding/education paradigms. Taxpayers are financing the steady erosion of truth in grade school and high school classrooms. College, especially private and conservative institutions, remains one of the few places where this indoctrination can actually be challenged. Ask me how I know.

If an educated class is necessary to protect the republic (and Jefferson insisted that it is), then the solution is not to broadly attack higher education. The solution is to restore education to its proper role: honest, independent, and free from state manipulation. Conservatives who dismiss colleges outright risk compounding the very confusion already threatening our great nation. Hence, the task is not to abandon education but to reclaim it, supporting conservative institutions that preserve truth and cultivating learning that strengthens the republic. It is absolutely possible to receive a conservative education, and numerous conservative schools and universities are available to consider. You just have to look.

Knowledge is power, but power is transferred. Do NOT allow others to keep you from that power. Our job is to transfer that power into our minds. Never forget that education is the surest defense against tyranny. True learning delivers us from arrogance and blindness, guiding us beyond our own Dunning–Kruger illusions. And it is precisely this power (the power of education to preserve order and liberty) that Jefferson warned must never be neglected.

“Educate and inform the whole mass of the people. Enable them to see that it is their interest to preserve peace and order …” — Jefferson to James Madison, 1787

Keep Learning! Check out Conservatives in Academia: Overcoming Irony