Preserving Our Republic: How Classical Education Fights for Freedom and Family

In this episode of The Lady K Show, Katy McKinney, founder of Lafayette Academy: A Classical School, shares her passion for preserving American values through classical education. Inspired by Thomas Jefferson Education and Cultural Literacy, she discusses how modern schools are failing kids and families by softening curriculums and pushing divisive ideologies. Referencing The Naked Communist’s 45 goals, Katy reveals threats to our Judeo-Christian roots and freedoms. Tune in to learn how Lafayette Academy fosters wisdom, truth, and strong citizens to safeguard our republic.

For more information about Lafayette Academy, A Classical School please visit https://lafayetteacademy.org/

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Transcript

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Hello, I'm Katy McKinley, founder and head of school for Lafayette Academy and welcome back to the Lady K Show. Today I wanted to chat about what it is we are working hard to preserve. Starting a classical school has been an outgrowth of my love of country, of I will say God first, country, family and children. And so, um there's sort of what there was a reawakening within me and my husband in terms of what it means to be a citizen of a Republic and a grand Republic at that. And so we've done just a lot of soul searching about that and of course, when you start a school, you've got to you've got to have a pretty big why that's going to stand the test of time and be ready to get knocked down and and get back up again. Anyway, got the song in my head now. But I wanted to just chat with you about the uh, you know, what it is we're working to preserve. So, obviously our culture is very fast-paced. Probably our family is one of the fastest pace, which I'm not proud of. It's sort of the nature of the beast when you start a school and you you kind of raise your hand to be in charge of things or have things up. We have to be extremely purposeful about making sure that our family stays connected and whatnot. And it's not perfect, but we do the best we can. So, when when you get into these very high fast-paced kind of cultures, I find that that relations, relationships tend to break down into texted sound bites. Our schedules pull us around and they aim to control us and steer us rather than we being in control. And so we have our work cut out for us. Um, but we each, hopefully, love our Republic and we want it to remain intact for our children, our grandchildren and beyond. But what I have seen is the rattling of these foundational pillars and the rattling is being caused to me by this feckless ideology that's creeping in primarily through our educational system, which is is shaking the foundation of our families. First of our children and then of course when parents are seeing the foundation of their children being shaken, it puts them on edge and they get concerned. So, I think it's helpful as we are thinking about how to nurture great citizens and what that even means, that we think about our goal. What is our goal? And I go back to, what is it that we want to preserve? And I think cherishing that idea of individual freedom, of natural rights, natural law, to protect the freedoms that millions have defended and unfortunately sacrifice their lives to, that that idea of that individual freedom, which is is a Western idea, started back thousands of years ago, is worth defending, you know, the founding documents that our founders put together for us. Those are worth defending because they ensure our livelihood. They ensure that we have the ability to to practice these beautiful freedoms that probably many of us take for granted because we we just have always had them, but they are not free and they are not guaranteed. So, um, to me, to see this this continuation of our Republic, um is is my primary concern and it's the reason why I started the school. And so in essence, the the essential way to make sure, and this is of course my opinion, but the essential way to make sure that our Republic is preserved is that we have our children being able to govern first themselves, but then able as a society to govern themselves in those societies. Um, and to do that, we have to fortify good communities. Um, and where do good communities come from? But they naturally stem from good families. And good families are grown through very thoughtful and selfless and purposeful individuals who are at the helm. But when that starts to break down, it's encouraging to remind ourselves that the good that we do and the good that we stand for can have a lasting impact. It is hard, obviously, day in and day out with all the things that are going on in our lives to make sure we remember that. I often think back what is the purpose? And if if it's hard to find out why I'm running so fast or why I'm doing X, Y and Z activity, then that needs to go for consideration in terms of is that worthy of our family culture? Is it worthy to help support and preserve the ultimate goal, which is creating and nurturing these wonderful contributive citizens? So, we talk a lot at our school about the good, the true and the beautiful and we want to nurture that in our kids and that takes of course um devotion and thought and it's it's found in our Western tradition. It's my belief that in order for us to reclaim and uh preserve the best of the Western tradition and the American traditions, we have to make sure that we are passing this down. And I, to me, this is through our schools. So, I wanted to just chat a little bit about my own journey to this. And I think it was 2010. I stumbled upon a book called uh Thomas Jefferson Education by Oliver DeMille. And in that I, I remember sitting by the pool, my, I think I had two kids, yeah, two kids at the time. And sitting by the pool, they were, you know, with their water wings, swimming about and I was devouring this book. I had found that there's a, it's an apprenticeship model, but it was substantial and it was something that I was looking for. And then I found another book called Cultural Literacy by ED Hirsch. That also uh he was the the author of Core Knowledge, which common core sort of stemmed out and to my understanding, core core knowledge, sorry, core knowledge is a program, it's uh, it's a beautiful history curriculum that we use in our school. Common core is, he's also the father of it, but the the way he formed it uh unfortunately got perverted and it it became something that it really wasn't originally when he put it together. All that to say, the combination of the cultural literacy and the the Thomas Jefferson education, TJ Ed as it's funnily called, those two began my journey of education could be different. Education should be different. It's not meeting the needs of our kids. So, um and in in ED Hirsch's uh cultural literacy, he talks about this chasm that exists in our culture. Um and it's a cultural chasm, you know, when you put different generations together, there's somewhat of a disconnect. Um not just because they're from different times, but because there's almost there's a rewiring that's happening right now in our current young people, um that's very unlike anything we've ever seen. And so his his thought was that to cultivate a continuously shared cultural core, we have to have a shared vocabulary of ideals and symbols and that's really at the heart of what we're doing. So, I wanted to share with you um a couple of things that I think have undermined our culture and our traditions. You may know about it, it's called uh The Naked Communist. Um it was originally written back in the '60s by uh Cleon Skousen and in it, there's a section called The 45 Goals of Communism Today. And in 1963, these 45 goals were read into the Congressional Record by Albert Herlong Jr., who was a Democrat in Florida, and since then, they have been shared worldwide. I just wanted to share with you a couple of these because I think they they are uh part of that feckless ideology that is creeping into our school systems. Again, why I started my own school. Um and the general idea is that these 45 goals um attack the Judeo-Christian um bedrock of our culture. And um it that itself has been uh long known to protect our freedoms, um and it is uh trying to be replaced now with a very socialistic society. So let me just read you a couple a couple of these 45 goals. This is number 17. It says uh number 17's goal, um again, of uh communism is to get control of the schools. Use them as a transmission belt for socialism and current communist propaganda. Soften the curriculum. Get control of the teacher associations and put party line in textbooks. Um, I will say too at the beginning of this, it says, basically all 45 of the goals, according to this author, have been achieved, um except one, the very last one. But regardless, the most important thing to me is here is that, you know, does that resonate with you? Do we feel like we've softened the curriculum? Absolutely. I've got middle schoolers coming to us who are in eighth grade, ninth grade, and their math levels are at fourth and fifth grade, fifth grade is generous. They're at third and fourth grade math levels. Um, the kids coming in, they cannot write. They cannot read at grade level. Um, that's a problem for all of us. Um, let me read you the next goal. Number 26. Present homosexuality, degeneracy and promiscuity as normal, natural and healthy. That's definitely happening. Um number 30, discredit the American founding fathers, present them as selfish aristocrats who had no concern for the common man. Number 31, belittle all forms of American culture and discourage the teaching of American history on the ground that it was only a minor part of the big picture. Give more emphasis to Russian history since the communists took over. Um, you know, I rarely hear, rarely, that a child in another school is learning about American history. It's always civics. Um, and so we purposefully call our history, American history or just history in general. They study the world and of course American history. But we call it history and we start it in kindergarten and they get it every single day, five days a week, just like mathematics and literacy. Number 40. Uh, and this will be the last one I read for today. Discredit the family as an institution. Encourage promiscuity and easy divorce. Well, we definitely know that's true, unfortunately. And I think discrediting the family as an institution has also been an issue, um obviously, and that's part of my secret agenda. I think I may have mentioned that in a previous podcast, but starting this school, um not only was it for the children, but it was also for the adults. And the secret agenda is to wherever we can, create opportunities for our parents to learn alongside their children. Um that's what I did when I homeschooled and did it classically and I loved it. My husband loved it. Um our family grew closer. We were a tighter knit nucleus that was uh just it's just beautiful. And obviously undermining the family is one of those goals and so we do everything to support the family and to strengthen the family. So, and we do that in a variety of different ways. Anyway, um all of that to say, um the, let me get to where I'm going here. What what we see happening is that um our our American culture, um also known as our Paideia, has when it started with the founding fathers was um robust, it was strong. The family nucleus was very strong. But about the 1880s through about the 1920s, 1930s, there was a small group of progressives that recognized that American education was the starting point or the entry point, if we wanted to redirect the American culture and transform that that landscape. And so it's a long game. It's a marathon. And so, um that was uh begun to be tampered with at that time. Um and what we're finding now is that um in about, in in The Naked Communist, it says, it says, in about five decades, the communist goals have been achieved all but one. Um and that's that's pretty concerning. It's been at work for probably, I would say, close to 100 years, um transforming that cultural landscape and it's not a quick alteration. It's very slow. But for those who are um interested in that strategy, it's an effective one. Slow and steady wins the race, right? So, that's what we're trying to do with Lafayette Academy and others. Um we are other classical schools. I know we're all on the same team, working hard to make sure our children get a robust education, one that's grounded in the Judeo-Christian tradition, um and making sure that they are understanding their role as um American citizens. So, I wanted to share with you, this is kind of an interesting thing. I was putting together a while back, well first off, um if you haven't read this book, uh The Battle for the American Mind. This is a great book, um wrote it a couple years ago when it first came out by Pete Hegseth, who we all now know very well, and David Goodwin, who at the time was I believe president of the CLT, the Classical Learning Test. Anyway, they got together and wrote this great great book and um I I found it very interesting some of the ideas about just our Paideia more clearly defined in this book. But I wanted to share with you as I was putting together a talk, um it came to me to to juxtapose um Western views with Eastern views. And knowing that obviously communism is is around our world. We actually just had a North Korean escapee come to our school and share her story. It was incredible. Um, but just understanding the Eastern view versus the Western view and and why we want to preserve this Western view, I thought was very interesting. And um so I wanted to share this with you. Um, what I did was I compared the Western Paideia with um today's Paideia. And and there's a lot of that that thought coming in that is not grounded. I mean, you could say it's Eastern, but it might it's not even Eastern, it's communism. It's that that idea that um man should be controlled rather than being free. So, let's we'll call it at that. But Okay, so the Western Paideia is that the goal here is that students gain wisdom. But today's view of that is that our kids should only seek factual data, focused on news and recent events and even activism. That's that's the whole purpose of what we're doing here. The Western Paideia says that children would see divine order in everything. And the view today is that only anti-humanist anarchy is before us. It's uh chaos at best and, you know, we should just accept that and that is man's normal and, you know, highest state in terms of progress. The Western Paideia is that students practice the art of reason and they do so through the pursuit of truth. On what's happening today in our schools is that indoctrination from secular points of view is the norm. And that secularism is really where it's at. That's where the authentic truth lies. The Western Paideia talks about the idea that we study history and we study the classics. Why do we study the classics? Um, we study the best that has been said and the best that has been thought. And why is it the best? Because it's stood the test of time. Why do things stand the test of time? Because they produce the best results. Why do we have best practices? Because people have tried a bazillion ways to get at one thing. And they found, you know, out of the hundred ways we did it, you know, these one or two ways is probably the most efficient, the most productive, the easiest. Same with the classics. They're the best because they bring out um the truth of humanity and we're able to study that and glean uh knowledge from that. The opposite is that nothing is worth knowing that wasn't just thought of. So don't worry about the history, don't worry about the classics. That doesn't really hold any value. What you need to focus on right here right now is is what's going on in your world and and don't hardly look beyond. The Western Paideia talks about having strong spirited citizens who are better in a community or the polis than all by themselves. And the opposite view of that is that there are weak spirited citizens who serve the state or serve themselves. And we see that in a in a communist regime. Um, the citizens are weak and they serve the state and that was very clear with our North Korean visitor. That was her whole sole purpose. She said they weren't even allowed to hardly think. So, the Western Paideia, the last one here is there there's always a search for greater meaning in life. And today's focus with education is, go get a job. Get your education to go get a job. And our focus with our school is get an education so you can better see who you are. And it's really it's that, not to say that getting a job is is not needed or expected. Of course, we all have to produce. But we've been think we've been duped into thinking that the only purpose of education is to get a job. And for the Greeks and for centuries beyond or or since, um the idea here, which is from The Battle for the American Mind, I'll quote, um that rather than vocational or information-based concepts that we have today, the Greeks sought divine truth and the related and the related values of goodness and beauty. They proved that the pursuit of the ideal produced a civilization that lasted longer and was more influential than any other culture in history. They got at the heart of what it means to be a human being and they extrapolated from that the absolute best, most grand view that a human being could produce. Um and of course we talk about the Romans, we talk about the Greeks, they they did last the test of time. And their thought was the cultivation of the soul in the individual. So, if we go back to to the beginning of this idea, what is it that we want to preserve? We are we are aiming to preserve and cherish that idea of individual freedom, individual thinking, of natural rights and natural law. And the only way we can do that is through a purposeful passing of that proverbial baton from one generation to the other, um primarily through our families, through our churches and through our schools. And we need to be on high alert to know what are the influences coming into those different organizations to make sure they are of the highest caliber to make sure that we're giving our kids the absolute best.