The Department of Defense is doing something that would have been unremarkable a generation ago: teaching America's children the truth about where Western civilization came from. Under Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's direction, the Department of War Education Activity (DoWEA) is rolling out a new 'Western Civilization to 1500' course this fall across the roughly 160 schools it operates for military families worldwide.
The course — a full-year elective for 9th through 12th graders — traces the development of Western thought from ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia through the Greeks, Romans, and Christians, all the way to the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. It emphasizes classical education: Socratic discussion, primary sources, and the deep ideas that built the civilization American servicemembers have sacrificed for generations to defend.
The left doesn't like it. Critics — predictably amplified by the Associated Press — complain the curriculum 'distorts history' by acknowledging Christianity's central role in Western civilization and by refusing to flatten the historical record into a morally equivalent mush. Their objection, boiled down, is that American children in military schools should not be taught that America emerged from a Christian, Western tradition. That position is itself the distortion.
America is a Christian nation. Not in the sense of a state church, but in the foundational sense — the Founders drew on natural law rooted in Christian philosophy, English common law shaped by centuries of Christian jurisprudence, and a moral framework that assumed human dignity derived from a Creator. Teaching that history accurately isn't indoctrination. It's education. The decades-long project to scrub that inheritance from the classroom is what has been ideological.
Hegseth's push to restore classical education in Pentagon schools is a straightforward act of historical honesty. Military families — who have given more to this country than most — deserve to have their children taught what this civilization actually is, where it came from, and why it's worth defending.
Source: DoWEA
