Socialism seems appealing when schools refuse to teach its real and terrible costs.
The U.S. Department of Education has urged schools to strengthen instruction on communism and socialism ahead of National Day of Victims of Communism.
John Kennedy warns about the rise of socialism and Abd al-Sayed
Sen. John Kennedy, D-P.D., discusses clashing with Michigan Senate candidate Abd al-Said on the campaign trail. Kennedy warns of the growing socialist threat to free markets and discusses the projected huge costs of Medicare for All.
Ahead of National Victims of Communism Day, the U.S. Department of Education issued a "Dear Colleague" letter urging schools and universities across the country to strengthen their instruction on the history and human toll of communism and socialism. The letter points to countries that have already taken steps to make sure students learn about the destruction these centralized regimes have wrought.
Florida is one of them. The state recognizes Nov. 7 as Victims of Communism Day and requires high school students in U.S. government courses to learn about communist regimes and how their victims suffered.
But, the fact that the federal government had to remind schools of this shows a failure in our education system.
The progressive education machine is collapsing. We have to let it fall
Why should anyone require schools to teach the documented history of an ideology that claimed over 100 million lives in the 20th century? Because educational institutions have quietly abandoned the comparative study of economic and political systems.
When I was in school, this was an important topic in history and economics classes. Now is the next thought
Numbers don't lie. Young Americans fall in love with socialism
The result is a generation of graduates who are interested in socialist policies without ever knowing what they did. A 2025 Cato/YouGov poll found that 62 percent of Americans under 30 view socialism favorably, and more than a third have a favorable view of communism. When students are taught only the shortcomings of capitalism, without ever studying the failures and human rights abuses of centralized state economies, they naturally see socialism as the cure.
That's why I wrote College Without Communism. The aim of the attack was not partisan. This was an urgent training request. We commit academic malpractice when we send students into the workforce without a basic understanding of the economic philosophies that have shaped modern history.
A generation will never defend a system it has not been taught to understand.
If young Americans don't understand how free markets work, how they rely on voluntary cooperation, protect individual agency, and lift billions out of poverty, they won't know when those freedoms will disappear. If they never study what happened when Marxist ideology was applied in the real world, they will romanticize the idea of a centrally planned society.
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The appeal of socialism to a perfectly rational 20-year-old student of ideology only appears on the whiteboard in the lecture hall. On paper, socialism promises complete equality, generous safety nets, and fairness. But students are rarely taught what happens when those theories leave the whiteboard and are imposed on real people.
They are not taught that whenever a government tries to centrally plan human behavior, control prices, and distribute resources from the top down, it creates severe shortages and concentrates power in the hands of a few bureaucrats. They are not taught that these regimes have persecuted churches, imprisoned believers, and tried to replace faith in God with faith in the state.
We do not need to indoctrinate our students. We need to give them the full historical context to honestly compare these systems. Teach them that economic freedom and personal freedom rise and fall together. A society that punishes success to enforce equality will exhaust the resources needed to lift anyone out of poverty. Capitalism, while imperfect, is the only system that has consistently rewarded ingenuity, encouraged competition, and empowered the individual rather than the state.
National Day of Victims of Communism is a day to remember the past, but also a lesson for our future. If we want the next generation of American leaders to support prosperity, innovation, and upward mobility, they need to see what happens when this theory leaves the classroom.
We cannot expect a generation to defend liberty never taught to understand that it is time for American education to teach them.
Dr. Kenneth Ingle currently serves as president of Southeastern University (SEU) in Lakeland, Florida. Southeastern University can be found online at seu.edu and their prayer community at
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