Four Steps That Ended the West and One to Revive It

Our goal for the 2024 Liberty University Law Review Symposium was to explore the case for educational freedom from multiple angles. While several of our other authors have focused on the proper role of parents and the civil government in education, those approaches represent only part of the American education system. Many of our articles are more poignantly focused on the legal aspects that this topic implicates, but Mr. David Goodwin provides a slightly different perspective. Mr. Goodwin is a seasoned educator, intellectual, author, and an advocate for Classical Christian schools. He has written a book—a New York Times Best Seller—in which he considers the history of education and identifies, within the modern education system, problems that he argues Classical Christian education is equipped to address. Here, borrowing from his book, Mr. Goodwin offers a perspective on the history of education and the importance of private schools that the rest of our authors are not able to provide. We are grateful to Mr. Goodwin for his continuing work in the field of education and for his willingness to participate in our Symposium. It is our hope that his contributions will add to the robustness of our consideration of educational freedom in the United States.