Imagine you are hired as vice president of a company that has stood proud for more than 200 years — a company with a reputation for excellence and continuous improvement. It delivered prosperity for generations. It embodied the values that made people proud to work there. People from around the world would do whatever it took to move to the host country just for the chance to be part of it.
Yet over the past several years, a growing share of employees, first-line managers, and senior leaders have disparaged the company, its history, and its reputation — while collecting generous salaries, bonuses, and promotions. The result is a wrecked reputation, internally and externally. The company has been recast as a racist, greedy, capitalist organization that must be “transformed” through government intervention.
You are being hired as the change agent.
In this example, that company is the United States of America. The employees doing the damage are the teachers’ unions, public school administrators, and their allies in the Democrat Party.
The setup is an analogy. The damage is real.
According to the latest Minnesota Department of Education data and reporting by Catrin Wigfall and Josiah Padley of the Center of the American Experiment, 65 percent of Minnesota 11th graders perform below grade level in math.
In 11 public schools, not a single student tested proficient in grade-level math.
We are living through the most dramatic decline in academic performance in our lifetime. Students in Minnesota — and across the country — are being indoctrinated with anti-American, anti-capitalist messaging from pro-socialist administrators, faculty, and curriculum.
Nearly 75 percent of faculty in American colleges and universities identify as liberal, while only about 15 percent call themselves “middle of the road” and just under 11 percent are conservative. Among the liberals, socialists and Marxists make up more than 30 percent of faculty. These professors have infected three to four generations of students with Marxist, anti-American ideology. The result is not a well-rounded education. Generations of students have been taught the sins of our nation in exhaustive detail and almost nothing of its unmatched virtues.
The consequences are predictable and devastating: only 19 percent of Americans age 45 and younger can pass the U.S. citizenship test. If you lack knowledge of your country — its history, its founding principles, and its virtues — you will neither advocate for it nor take pride in it. And when forces seek to transform it into something it was never intended to be, you will be unprepared to stand up and defend it.
In a recent survey, if the United States were invaded by a foreign nation, among Americans aged 18–34, only 45 percent said they would stay and defend it. More — 48 percent — said they would leave.
We now have the least patriotic generation in American history.
Real change requires informed citizens at the grassroots level. That work begins with school boards. This election cycle, as we fight for record turnout to strengthen Minnesota’s economy and restore safer communities, research school board candidate in your district. You can use tools like the Minnesota Parent Alliance voter guide.
Minnesota public schools are producing the most poorly prepared students in decades. They are also producing a generation more inclined to embrace socialism and reject capitalism than any generation of Americans before them. Let this election be the year the turnaround begins.
Kendall Qualls is a U.S. Army Veteran, businessman, husband of 40 years and father of five.
Kendall Qualls
Kendall Qualls is the President of TakeCharge, Minnesota which is an organization committed to supporting the notion that the promise of America works for everyone regardless of race or station in life. Mr. Qualls was a Republican candidate for Governor of Minnesota. Prior to his candidacy, he was a health care executive and served in the U.S. Army as an Artillery officer. Mr. Qualls has been married for 36 years and has five children.
