The Rapidly Vanishing Neutral Zone
Classical Christian Schools must Choose a Side
On Friday, Jeremy Wayne Tate, director of the Classical Learning Test, posted on X,
I’m personally conservative. But classical education isn’t conservative or liberal. It’s human. Every parent wants their kids shaped by the greatest stories ever told. Every parent wants them to grow in honesty, courage, and respect. Every parent wants them to know the difference between beauty and ugliness, truth and lies. This isn’t about ideology. It isn’t nostalgia. It’s about giving the next generation the education that forms the whole person. Classical Education isn’t partisan. It’s universal. It belongs to everyone.
Tate is the founder of the Classical Learning Test, an alternative college entrance exam designed for homeschooled students and students educated classically or in ways not consistent with the current public school dogma. To be clear, the CLT is a better test, and my disagreement with Tate and some controversies surrounding the CLT do not ruin it. I applaud Tate’s vision in creating this standardized test, which allows students who are trying to truly return to a very different way of learning to have a level playing field with students educated in the corrupted, mainstream way.
That being said, Tate’s post expresses a form of “both-sidesism” that is unhelpful in this hour of sudden moral clarity. The implication here is that anyone of any partisan stripe can derive a good education from the classical Christian model. You need not be a registered republican.
“Both-sidesism” is rightly being recognized as a growing problem on the right, tolerable if a little annoying for a while, but now suicidal. The Left has rejected it for at least a decade. There is no neutral ground remaining on the field, and those who refuse to choose a side will be run over by both. To try and maintain the principled centrist position is a losing game in the wake of many high-profile school shootings perpetrated by the Left’s favored janissaries and foot-soldiers.
Classical education has, for a long time, had its own language and terms of art. Among them is the near-universal claim among classical schools to pursue and teach “truth, goodness, and beauty.” Tate’s original post even references this. Perhaps someone can explain to me how a political party and a more general and extreme Leftist population that rejects truth for defiance of natural law (to say nothing of God’s divine revelation), hates goodness and seeks to literally slaughter the good of society, and chooses ugliness and mutilation over beauty is supposed to take part in the classical education project.
To take a Leftist family into your school is to court disaster and institutional collapse. In order to be successful, they must be taught to reject Leftism and all its tenets of atheism, unfettered sexual licentiousness, statism, and death-worship. The democratic party embraces the destruction of the family, the murder of the unborn, the annihilation of all that the West has built since Constantine, and the persecution of God’s people, the church. Any family enrolling at a serious classical school (and not one of the numerous watered-down, faux classical schools that are popping up) must be disabused of that entire worldview and taught that it is wicked and to be repented of. It cannot coexist in harmony with the classical Christian Paideia. In other words, these families must become right-wing, be expelled, or the school will have to become woke and inclusive. There is no middle ground.
Many institutions and individuals woke up the day after Charlie Kirk’s murder with the realization that their ability to live in peace in the neutral zone between two intractable factions is rapidly diminishing. It may be entirely gone. Those who stubbornly refuse to pick a side have already been labeled as fascists by the Left, and the right is losing their patience with these people who are showing themselves to be useless in the day of battle. It is nothing short of cowardice.
My assumption about Tate is that he actually believes what he said in his post. He seems to be earnest and optimistic about his position. He has never appeared to me to be a bad-faith actor or underhanded. I think he is just misjudging the situation. A broad appeal across political lines would be useful to keep from getting locked out of the more woke-friendly institutions that would refuse to buy his test and honor its scores if he declares himself an ally to the right. One sympathizes. Unfortunately, this kind of broad appeal is no longer possible. We who have declared ourselves to be overtly on the right have all had to choose principle over ease, and, in many cases, have had to pay steep costs at the inflection point. I myself was run out of a classical Christian school along with several friends when I was deemed too right-wing by an institution desperately trying to ride the fence to the bitter end, because to choose a side meant to limit growth and necessarily exclude some potential students and offend some enrolled families. The exclusion of Leftists, a universally caustic and cancerous presence in any Christian institution, is a feature, not a bug.
As a result of this cancellation, we started a new cCe school that has openly embraced our obvious right-wing position. It is our desire to call things what they are.
More broadly, it is plain to anyone with even a passing familiarity with the classical Christian school movement that it is a right-wing project. It seeks to “conserve” Western civilization. It condemns most of the democratic party’s official platform and stands in stark contrast to their unofficial platform of transgender terrorism, uglification of art and public spaces, and absolute state control over all aspects of human life. The mere fact that cCe schools are private educational institutions is an affront to the Left, who believe the state must control the education of the youth.
In the wake of Charlie Kirk’s murder and the awe-inspiring celebration of life put on by Turning Point USA on Sunday, September 21st, it should be quite obvious at this point that appealing to an overtly right-wing constituency is in no way economic suicide. There are clearly millions of Americans shifting right in their thinking as they realize the state of the nation and as they witnessed the most powerful cadre of elites in the world declare Christ is King, preach the gospel, and hear it preached.
Pretending to be politically neutral is a foolish waste of time because the Left doesn’t buy it, and the right seeks to send their kids to these institutions explicitly to avoid Leftist dogma in schools and their children’s formation. It’s far past time for cCe schools to recognize that their constituents want them to be right-wing. Their enemies already think they are, and these “both-sides” antics fool no one on the Left and discourage the school’s actual students, families, donors, and supporters.
In society at large, people are finding that the neutral zone is gone. The fence they have been riding is coming to an end at the edge of the battlefield. It’s time to pick a side. In cCe circles, this divide could not be clearer and easier to choose. Your customers, your worldview, and the Paideia we are trying to instill in young people are all rejected by the Left. The cCe Project is inherently right-wing, and if you want the project to be able to continue, it is time to openly defend and declare that to your families.
This may take some work as even within a cCe school that is right-wing, there will be families who want to ride the fence a little longer. They will still be under the illusion that they can just stay out of the culture war. Do the work to bring them along. Charlie Kirk laid the groundwork for this, and his murder has opened many eyes. He was a relatively moderate right-wing personality, and they killed him for it. The families in your schools will identify with him. Fathers of the schoolchildren will see themselves in his death because they believed what he believed, and the mothers will see their husbands and sons. Is this what the Left wants for all of us? After watching thousands of Leftists online dancing on the grave of Kirk, it certainly seems so. In the murder of Iryna Zarutska, they will see their daughters. Is this what the Left wants for all of us? After watching her murderer continually arrested and released and ultimately sent into a luxurious private care facility, it certainly seems so. The mothers of your school will see their children in the little ones of Covenant School in Nashville and Annunciation Catholic School in Minneapolis. Is this what the Left wants for all of us? After watching their politicians condemn guns and not even so much as name transgender insanity, it certainly seems so.
The political Left is opposed to all things True, Good, and Beautiful, and the time for pretending it isn’t is over. Pick a side or be run over by both. It should be quite clear by now that the Left will not allow you to continue to educate classically. That should make the choice fairly simple. So bite the bullet and do it before it is too late.