Take the current fascination with high stakes testing. Exit exams for graduation are becoming the norm in Georgia, and as part of Roy Barnes’ "reform" package, students now will have to "pass" curriculum-based examinations at the end of each year in order to progress to the next grade.

What is the message we are sending to children with all these high-stakes tests? Simply, it is this—there is only one way to be successful, and it is to demonstrate, on our schedule, that you can repeat back to us the "truth" that we present to you. Do not question it, do not fail to memorize it, do not fail to recite it upon command, or you will repeat the indoctrination.

One might even be able to argue the validity of such a premise, if government schools limited themselves to what is arguably "true," i.e., mathematics and those elements of science for which the orthodox view is relatively unchallenged, and if children were allowed to progress at their individual natural rate. However, as soon as the government school starts to deal with history, sociology, culture, morality, or any other element of human experience, the premise falls apart. Schools can’t present "truth" because there is no universally agreed upon truth. There is only opinion, dogma, and propaganda. And, as we all know, children are not identical learners, they are individuals.

Young people are ignorant, not stupid. They quickly learn to see through this sham all too clearly. They realize that government schools don’t respect them, and are merely manipulating them for somebody else’s purposes. Some will agree to play this game, because they believe they can escape into adulthood and regain their self-determination. Others, believing they are trapped forever in a mindless, cynical, perverted system, simply give up. Their capitulation takes many forms, from drugs to gangs to outrageous lifestyles, but it always sends their clear message back to us—"You can’t lie to us effectively any more, we understand your game, and we aren’t playing."

Like so much else, the government schools have it backwards. There is not one way to succeed and many ways to fail—there are many ways to succeed and only one way to fail. We fail the test of life when we give up, when we no longer want to swim in the river of human experience, when we can no longer connect with the web of community and environment, when we stop growing, learning, and evolving as individual humans. Government schools, insisting on a single way to succeed, are convincing an entire generation of children that they are failures. If we do nothing to stop this, our society will fail, and the dream that was America will be forgotten.