MOJO Academy Book Brief

Book Title: Battle for the American Mind: Uprooting a Century of Miseducation

Author: Pete Hegseth with David Goodwin

Publishing Year: 2022

Number of Pages: 288

Audible Time: 9 hours and 23 minutes

Brief Summary

Pete Hegseth and his co-author, David Goodwin, argue in this compelling book that America’s schools sit on the front line of a deep culture war—and that conservatives have been losing that war for a century. Hegseth identifies the central battlefield as the roughly 16,000 hours a child spends in a public or private school classroom from kindergarten through 12th grade.

About 120 years ago, progressives, Hegseth argues, set out to reshape American culture and the economic order while dismantling education’s traditional reliance on Christianity. Schools became their primary tool.

Hegseth and Goodwin trace how that plan took hold.

They present classical Christian education—grounded in virtue, truth, and the great books—as the clearest path back. It is difficult to argue with their case.

This book picks up—to me—where Allan Bloom’s The Closing of the American Mind left off in the 1980s.

Bloom looked at the university and what it was doing to students.

Hegseth looks at the 13 years before college, when those minds are formed as the latest battlefield.

As to their answer, there is some hope in it.

Religion and morality sit upstream from culture, so if we fix the source, the rebuilding of Christendom—the culture can follow but that is large uphill climb especially in today’s post modern culture.

I first covered this book in 2022 in a two-part series on the Theory 2 Action Podcast. Part 1 is here. Part 2 is here.

Two Important Quotes

“The battlefield for the hearts and minds of our kids is the 16,000 hours they spend inside American classrooms from kindergarten to 12th grade. ... It’s the 16,000-hour war for our kids in our country.”

Hegseth calls it a war and names the battlefield. This is not a debate over curriculum.

Sixteen thousand hours is a long time to shape a young mind, and that is the heart of the whole book.

“Just about 120 years ago, progressives had big ideas to change the culture and economic order while dissolving old reliances on Christianity. The fruits are now being seen ripe on the vine, first in the baby boomers and now in the Generation X, millennial, and Gen Z generations. The tree from which this poisonous fruit is harvested has matured. It grows more plentiful and more bitter with each successive generation.”

This quote ties the whole story together. Hegseth starts with a plan from a century ago and follows it through four generations.

Four years after my 2022 series, the fruit looks riper and more bitter than it did then.

My Nuggets of Wisdom

Lets face it, a child spends about 16,000 hours in a public-school classroom from kindergarten through 12th grade is a very persuadable point.

That is a great deal of time for schools to shape what children believe about truth, morality, family, faith, history, and America.

You can see the results all around us: in our children, our economy, the way we speak, the way we behave, and the loss of basic virtues such as self-control, responsibility, courage, and respect.

You can see it even more in the lack of knowledge acquired, lack of history known, and lack of immediate history in their lifetime not known.

This book was important when I first wrote about it in 2022.

It seems even more important today.

The political ideas—To the point of radical— moving through many schools and institutions have grown more extreme.

What once looked like mild social democracy has, in and many more cases, moved toward socialism or Marxism.

Mark Levin makes a similar argument in American Marxism, while Christopher Rufo shows how radical ideas have spread through major American institutions in America’s Cultural Revolution. Hegseth and Goodwin focus on where this process often begins: the classroom.

I believe St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas, and Allan Bloom would recognize the problem Hegseth and Goodwin describe here.

Schools often claim to teach students how to seek truth, but too often they teach students what to think instead of how to think.

Political messages and personal feelings of teachers can replace serious learning.

In Confessions, Augustine describes a long search for truth. Classical education follows that same path by asking students to wrestle with great questions, read great books, and build strong character. That is very different from an education built around ideology.

Some critics call modern schools “American madrasas.”

The point is not to insult a religion, but to warn that schools can become places of indoctrination instead of places that teach students to think, question, and learn.

You might say this is all overblown, David.?!!

To which I say : The academic numbers are troubling.

• Roughly one-third of American high-school seniors perform below the basic benchmark in reading, and reading achievement has declined in recent years. At the same time, more parents are looking for alternatives to traditional public schools.

• In 2018–19, 2.8% of students were homeschooled; by 2022–23, the figure had risen to 3.4%. When full-time virtual schooling is included, the share of children receiving instruction at home rose from 3.7% to 5.2%.

• A separate Census Household Pulse Survey analysis by Johns Hopkins estimated that 5.92% of school-aged children were homeschooled in 2023–24. The surveys use different methods, so their figures should not be compared directly.

COVID-19 likely sped up this shift, but interest in homeschooling and other alternatives has remained well above its pre-pandemic level.

In my view, many parents are absolutely leaving because they no longer trust public schools to educate their children without pushing political beliefs.

Some readers will say Hegseth exaggerates. I disagree.

Parents should look carefully at what their children are being taught, how they are being taught, and whether schools are helping them become wise, capable, and virtuous adults.

Defending failing schools—or protecting the interests of teacher unions—must never matter more than giving children a sound education.

Final Recommendation

I highly recommend Battle for the American Mind to every parent, grandparent, and concerned citizen. It was profound in 2022, and it matters even more today.

The book is a wake-up call, and it also gives you a way to act.

Here is what I want you to do after you read it:

• Get involved locally by going to school board meetings and reviewing what your school teaches.

• Look hard at the alternatives, including classical Christian schools.

• Begin yourself to read the great books as a parent.

• Don’t think it is too extreme to homeschool your kids.

The war for our kids is real and ongoing, and it is happening 16,000 hours at a time.

If You Liked This Book

• America’s Cultural Revolution by Christopher Rufo: how radical ideas moved into our institutions.

• American Marxism by Mark Levin: where the radicalization is heading.

• Debunking Howard Zinn: how the history our kids are taught gets twisted.

No matter what, Keep fighting the good fight.