Once upon a time in America, primary schools tended to offer a wide variety of subjects, from mathematics to physics, from philosophy to literature, from history to civics. Practical education was there, with things such as farming and economics being covered too. It was not uncommon 100 years ago to find a 15-year-old learning about meteorology for planting crops while also reading John Locke.

Curricula way back when often offered a broad range of knowledge so youth could essentially go do anything they wanted. And if a young person did not know how to do something, they had the skills necessary to learn themselves without being spoon-fed by a teacher.

As time went on, though, less and less was taught in primary schools. Lessons were, and still are, condensed. For example, instead of actually reading the Constitution and analyzing it in-depth, your government class in high school probably just told you the gist of what it was about and made you take it for granted. Other examples are legion.

Once students began getting these smaller, simplified lessons, higher education became more necessary. But then the problem spread to universities. The trend continued until we arrived where we are today.

Why this has happened is another huge subject, but now a high school diploma is meaningless, a Bachelor of Science degree is a basic job requirement for many menial and entry-level jobs, and graduates of either level of schooling are still clueless.

What we’ve done is turn high schools into preschools and universities into expensive vocational high schools. Ask yourself, what are you missing if professors here have to teach you what was formerly covered in high school?

Chances are you came to Iowa State University to get a job — a specific job probably — such as an engineer. Engineering is great, but that’s vocational schooling, not true education, and a crime has been committed against your intellect without your knowledge.

Two hundred years ago, if you wanted to be an engineer, you went to college, explored a liberal education until you felt you were educated, then you left school and got a job as an apprentice with a respected engineer. Degrees as we understand them now didn’t exist in many institutions. Perhaps that same informality wouldn’t work today, but at least the goal back then was not a money-for-degree transaction.

The understanding at that time was if you had made it through all your schooling, you could do or learn whatever your job required because you were a well-rounded, broadly educated individual. There was no need to specialize so much in school as you had your whole life to specialize out in the world. Universities gave you the basic tools to do anything.

The last vestiges of the concept of classical liberal education can still be seen. Iowa State has categories called “Humanities,” “Social Sciences,” “U.S. Diversity” and “International Perspectives.” That such special class requirements exist ought to hint to a thinking person that something is amiss. They used to be standard topics of study, not unique classifications you are forced to take — common knowledge stuff, even.

Thomas Jefferson said, “If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.” He believed that the only way freedom could continue was if Americans were broadly educated. A well-educated person, after all, cannot be tyrannized because they are wise enough to recognize bad ideas when confronted by them.

Coming to the university is supposed to be about educating the whole of your person, not only teaching you stuff just to make you a tax-revenue-generating drone in society. Our current hyper-focus on science, technology, engineering and mathematics fields, to the exclusion of classical liberal studies, creates socially naive, politically ignorant and mindless law-abiding subjects of a self-created tyranny by the idiotic masses.

That America is slipping in the world is no mystery when our youth learn little bits of things in college that they used to learn completely in seventh grade and know nothing beyond what is necessary to get a job and pay taxes.

How can an American participate in their governance properly if they were taught just enough for a career and don’t know enough history, economics and philosophy to fundamentally understand the problems America faces? A person can be a brilliant scientist but a horrifically incompetent citizen and voter.

Citizenship is a duty, not a right, and fulfillment of that duty requires a classical liberal education. It is no coincidence that America’s current miserable state of political, economic and social affairs exists concurrently with our lack of proper education. Our government sucks because we’re getting the government we earned.

Do you think you’re being educated the way the founders envisioned future enlightened Americans to be, in order to maintain the Republic and ensure that America is forever the shining city on the hill? Or are you the unwitting victim of a corporate, consumer-driven, vocational-based, pseudo-education?

Iowa State is a wonderful place, and I love it dearly. But can we do better? Mustn’t we do better for the sake of our nation?