ROOKE: Inside Classroom Battle That Will Decide If Freedom Survives Next Generation

Interesting bill of rights, christianity, declaration of independence, far left, founding fathers, k 12 education, political ideologies, public education, texas, the bible admin June 30, 2026 0 Comments

ROOKE: Inside Classroom Battle That Will Decide If Freedom Survives Next Generation

Texas recently took a concrete step in a long-running fight over what children learn about the roots of their country.

The Texas State Board of Education (SBOE) approved a required reading list for K-12 English and literature classes that includes Bible verses and stories alongside other classic works. The is supposed to help restore necessary cultural and historical context for understanding Western literature, American founding documents, and the moral framework that shaped our nation. This change is set to take place in the 2030-2031 school year.

SBOE member Brandon Hall strongly supported the rule change, calling it a “generational opportunity” to teach the truth about America’s founding, reported CNN.

“We’re going to stop watering down American history. We’re going to teach the truth. Our nation was founded as a Christian nation, and Texas is a Christian state,” said Hall, adding that the Bible has had a “remarkable impact on our culture, our societies and our laws.”

Of course, some are incorrectly claiming that this is an improper mixing of religion and state education, including fellow Board member Evelyn Brooks. She voted against the rule, calling it “unconstitutional,” and argued that “Teachers need to have their autonomy.”

However, in the decades since Christianity and its teaching were banished from the U.S. classroom, far-left ideologies have been taught with a religious vigor, with a resulting outcome that generations of Americans no longer believe in the basic principles of God-granted freedom and human dignity.

Public education used to include instruction that drew heavily on moral lessons from the Bible, emphasizing honesty, duty, and self-control. A person’s ethical responsibility to their family and community was part of institutionalized learning. Now we focus on individual feelings being the arbiter of truth and social accountability. (Sign up for Mary Rooke’s weekly newsletter here!)

American liberty, as described in the Declaration of Independence, rests on the idea that rights come from a Creator and that people are capable of self-government under higher moral standards. Without basic exposure to the Christian principles that informed those ideas, students struggle to see why restraint, personal responsibility, and conscience matter more than raw individual desire. Even more worrisome is the rise in thought that our rights are not endowed by our Creator but by the government.

This all started in the 1960s when mandatory prayer and Bible readings in the classroom were ended. In the decades since, classroom content moved toward secularism, which is bad enough for society on its own but made worse by claiming the Christian principles which founded America were outdated. Young Americans were provided with an education that increasingly focused on critiquing America’s founding rather than explaining how these specific intellectual and religious inheritances produced limited government and individual rights.

Everyone keeps being shocked at the recent successes Democratic Socialist candidates keep having in state and national elections. But that’s because no one wants to admit that we’ve allowed young Americans to adopt far-left orthodoxies when we denounced American Christian morality.

Polls show higher favorability toward socialism among those under 30 compared with older cohorts. A Cato Institute/YouGov poll from 2025 found that 62 percent of Americans aged 18-29 held a favorable view of socialism. Support for capitalism has declined in several generational surveys, according to Gallup. Views on family structure, gender, and the proper scope of government have also shifted toward prioritizing collective outcomes and identity categories over individual character and self-reliance.

Public education was always an extension of the “church.” Older generations thought that eliminating this connection would secularize the education system. But what really happened was that the founding American church was replaced by one that treats freedom as a liberation from traditional constraints and inherited social norms.

The core tenets of the left-wing religion, which has complete control over our classrooms, elevate group equity and state redistribution over the importance of duty and family. There is no absolute truth, only “my truth as I see it through my lived experience.”

Men can be women. Sex is not biological reality, and gender is on a spectrum. Crime is defined through the lens of past circumstances rather than justice. The government is an all-knowing deity. Teaching self-restraint is akin to abuse. All of these run counter to the Christian morality that underpins self-governance.

The Texas reading list attempts to reintroduce core texts that shaped the culture in which the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights were written. The Declaration of Independence appeals to “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God.” Early American legal and political thought drew on biblical concepts to justify limits on power. The idea that humans are fallen yet capable of virtue through moral training justified republican government over monarchy or pure democracy.

Children who never encounter these connections in school have no ready framework for why a society of free individuals does not descend into chaos or require constant government control. They miss why self-control, rooted in moral training, makes real freedom possible in the first place.

We’ve allowed our nation to be conquered. Typically, a nation wishing to expel its occupiers uses deadly force. Restoring basic exposure to our founding principles is a pretty modest corrective in comparison. Texas is simply renewing the covenant that was lost in its public schools. (ROOKE: Probably The Most Important Step To Ending Antifa Just Took Place In Texas)

For a free nation to endure, each generation must acknowledge the moral teachings that created our country rather than assume it persists without deliberate effort. And if we continue to allow it to form in the minds of our children, there is no possible way our nation can continue to function. We no longer have the moral framework required to uphold life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Follow Mary Rooke on X: @MaryRooke

Sign up for Mary Rooke’s weekly newsletter here!