Can America’s traditional cultural possibly be restored?

 

September 2, 2025

A kindergarten teacher posted some comments on Facebook about her experience with some youngsters on their first days at her school.

“It broke my heart these past 4 days to see how many kindergarteners showed up to school with NO previous exposure to almost anything. It was so overwhelming for them to understand the concept of staying in line, wiping themselves, buttoning their own pants, opening a milk container, holding a pencil correctly.

“I had one who didn’t understand how to unzip his lunchbox so he could eat. Some can’t tell you their name, or don’t KNOW their actual given name that is on the roster. So many had never held a pencil at all, couldn’t sing the alphabet song (let alone recognize any letters/numbers), couldn’t count to ten or recognize shapes/colors.”

She expressed the frustration others show her, saying things like: “Isn’t that what school is for??” Or, “Why should parents have to do YOUR job for you?”

“Yes, school is for learning,” she said, “But when they come in SO far behind right off the bat, it is so defeating and frustrating for these babies. Even at the age of five, they recognize when they don’t know things other kids know. If a child knows who Pennywise the clown is and can recite every word (including the explicit ones) to the latest Cardi B song, but can’t recite the alphabet, count to ten, or open a ketchup packet, we got probs.” 

Now to be realistic, there probably have been some young people like this for as long as there have been humans on the Earth. But apparently, the proportion of this type of unpreparedness for life’s basics has grown enormously.

In the old days, things that previously occurred at home started the learning process. Learning to dress ourselves, feed ourselves, follow rules and procedures, doing simple tasks. And when we got to kindergarten or first grade, or whatever the first “school” experience was, we had a functional basis to begin learning our ABCs, numbers and the other subjects that schools help us learn.

But the nuclear family that has been such an important part of America since its founding is dwindling away. Far too many single-parent families exist today, with many children growing up in a family with no father, or perhaps only a part-time dad.

And there seems to be a lack of understanding among adults about true parenting, the importance of proper and traditional child rearing. And, there is a substantial lack of knowledge about America’s story, and the culture upon which our country was built that parents would pass on to their children by interaction.

And so, we now find that many in the younger generations — Gen Z, Gen X, Gen Alpha, for example — have less and less of an understanding of the background that the older generations have always had. And with the decreased understanding of our founding and our development, we find a country with an ever-weakening sense of itself. 

Our traditional values, institutions, arts, and morality are weakening. More and more we see family instability, materialism, entertainment saturation, and political division. We are losing our identity, our soul. We are committing cultural suicide.

Not only have we as a people failed to maintain our standards, but the ridiculous and dangerous virtual open border of the Biden administration, which invited millions of people — we still do not actually know how many — to enter the country illegally, has compounded the problem. This was done without having any idea of who these people were, or what their intent was.

Some of them were good people looking for a better life. But many others were drug and child traffickers, robbers, rapists, terrorists and murderers. And even those illegals who sought a better life were not oriented to the core values of America, which further diluted our cultural values.

Feelings about a cultural decline are not new. Former U.S. Secretary of Education William J. Bennett noted in an article in Education Week back in 1993 the following: “When the late Walker Percy was asked what concerned him the most about America’s future, he answered: ‘Probably the fear of seeing America, with all its great strength and beauty and freedom ... gradually subside into decay through default and be defeated, not by the Communist movement, demonstrably a bankrupt system, but from within by weariness, boredom, cynicism, greed, and in the end helplessness before its great problems.’”

At the end of the article, Bennett offers this: “The social regression of the past 30 years is due in large part to the enfeebled state of our social institutions and their failure to carry out their critical and time-honored tasks.”

Thirty-plus years past Bennett’s dire observations we find the country even further down the path to cultural collapse. Whether that direction can be reversed is a question yet to be answered. 

America’s future is in doubt. It is under attack from within.

In past weeks this column has addressed the increasing weaknesses, outright failures, and attacks on once-stable components of our culture and our nation.

The deteriorating education system, particularly at the college level, but increasingly at the K-12 levels, has resulted in millions who have not learned about their country and its history. Lots of them have instead been, and are being, indoctrinated with distinctly un-American political ideology. And some professors and teachers willingly abandon their professional integrity to do this.

The latest big push is to fight what some call the “systemic racism” of the United States by seeking to convince members of one race that they are inherently evil, and members of the other races that they are perpetual victims.

News journalism is becoming more and more agenda driven. Relevant and important stories are often not presented by many news sources. Some who play the part of journalists will pass items off as news that are manipulated to benefit a political agenda. Some items presented are misinformation and are not researched for accuracy, because they advance the political agenda, as written. 

In the political sphere, where dishonesty exists, loyalty to partisan agendas has replaced forthright service to the American people for many office holders. The “progressives” are working hard to change things so that they will be in power forever.

The broad benefits to our culture of the two-parent family, and its educational and stabilizing effects on children, have been seeping away over recent decades. In 1960, 87.7 percent of children under 18 lived with two parents. In 2020, was 70.4 percent, almost 20 percent lower.

Concerns for protecting people’s oversensitive feelings have replaced responsible behavior as the guidepost for living a good and productive life. Efforts to make everyone equal in terms of outcomes — equity — to protect feelings, defy nature. Some people are simply stronger than others, faster than others, smarter than others, etc. It’s part of being an adult to accept our strengths and deal with our weaknesses.

The rise in violent crime in many American cities reflects the lack of appreciation for life, and the failure of families and schools to teach basic humanity and life lessons to millions of young people. Lots of these under-educated people are now adults.

An example of what results when families and schools fail is this: An adult male recently brought a pregnant 12-year-old girl to a hospital in Tulsa, OK because she was in labor. He told the people there that he was the father of the baby-to-be. He had no apparent recognition that impregnating a child of 12 is a crime, not to mention its immorality. 

This situation of improperly trained youth has been made worse by enacting truly foolish ideas. The idea of defunding the police is responsible for much if not most of this new pandemic of criminality, as police officers retire, quit, or back off of doing their job because they no longer have the backing of the local government.

And soft-headed “progressive” prosecutors who do not prosecute the accused, and the equally silly idea of no bail and immediate release of persons arrested for serious crimes, invite those criminals to hit the streets and commit more crimes. Every day criminals released or not prosecuted are availing themselves of this foolishly provided opportunity.

The rising acceptance of socialist, communist, and Marxist ideals results from the failure of families, and the education system, which is increasingly shoving un-American ideals down the throats of the young people it is intended to help learn important subject matter, like English, math, science, geography, the arts, and real history.

Today, many without a solid background in American history say they prefer socialism, because they apparently don not understand how it has failed every time it has been tried, with Venezuela and Cuba as current shining examples.

The southern border crisis is dramatic evidence of what happens when goofy “progressive” ideals replace the sensible and successful design of our federal government. Each day tens of thousands of people enter the country illegally, with the permission and assistance of the government, and not just from Cuba or the Northern Triangle countries, but also from Ecuador, Venezuela, Brazil, Haiti, Colombia, Turkey, Russia, and China.

As the government continues to strongly encourage vaccinations to fight Covid, and hint at renewed restrictions, thousands of illegal immigrants are ushered across the border and transported around the country with no concern about how many of them are infected with the virus.

A friend sent an email of a Facebook post, which read, in part: “I was born in 1942, almost at the midpoint of the 20th century – the American century. America’s prestige and influence were never greater. 

“Thanks to the ‘Greatest Generation,’ we won a World War fought throughout most of Europe, Asia, and the Pacific. We reduced Germany to rubble and put the rising sun to bed. It set the stage for almost half a century of unprecedented prosperity. We stopped the spread of communism in Europe and Asia and fought international terrorism.”

Today, America is a mere shadow of that great nation. And many of its people are working hard to change it further.