Socialism looks appealing when schools refuse to teach its horrific, real-world cost

Ahead of the National Day for the Victims of Communism, the U.S. Department of Education issued a "Dear Colleague" letter calling on schools and universities across the country to strengthen their instruction on the history and human toll of communism and socialism. The letter highlights states that have already taken steps to make sure students learn about the destruction these centralized regimes caused.

Florida is one of them. The state recognizes November 7 as Victims of Communism Day and requires high school students in U.S. government courses to receive instruction on communist regimes and how their victims suffered.

But the fact that the federal government had to remind schools of this at all reveals a failure in our educational system.

THE PROGRESSIVE EDUCATION MACHINE IS COLLAPSING. WE SHOULD LET IT FALL

Why should anyone have to ask schools to teach the well-documented history of an ideology that claimed more than 100 million lives in the 20th century? Because educational institutions have quietly dropped the comparative study of economic and political systems.

When I was in school, this was an important topic in history and economics classes. Now it is an afterthought.

THE NUMBERS DON’T LIE. YOUNG AMERICANS ARE FALLING IN LOVE … WITH SOCIALISM

The result is a generation of graduates who feel an affinity for socialist policies without ever learning what those policies have done. A 2025 Cato Institute and YouGov survey found that 62% of Americans under 30 view socialism favorably, and more than a third view communism favorably. When students are taught only the shortcomings of capitalism, without ever studying the failures and human rights abuses of centralized state economies, they naturally assume socialism is the cure.

This is why I wrote "College Without Communism." The goal was not a partisan attack. It was an urgent educational plea. We are committing academic malpractice when we send students into the workforce without a basic understanding of the economic philosophies that shaped modern history.

A generation will never defend a system it wasn't taught to understand.

If young Americans do not know how free markets work, how they rely on voluntary cooperation, protect individual agency, and have lifted billions out of poverty, they will not recognize when those freedoms 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 20-year-old college student makes perfect sense if the ideology only ever appears on a whiteboard in a lecture hall. On paper, socialism promises perfect equality, generous safety nets and fairness. But students are rarely taught what happens when those theories leave the whiteboard and are imposed on real human beings.

They are not taught that whenever a state tries to centrally plan human behavior, control prices and redistribute resources from the top down, it creates crushing shortages and concentrates power into 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 complete historical context to compare these systems honestly. Teach them that economic freedom and personal liberty rise and fall together. A society that punishes success to enforce equality will run out of 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 instead of the state.

The National Day for the Victims of Communism is a day to remember the past, but it is also a lesson for our future. If we want the next generation of American leaders to champion prosperity, innovation and upward mobility, they need to see what happens when the theory leaves the lecture hall.

We cannot expect a generation to defend a freedom it was never taught to understand. It is time for American education to teach them.