Before we can fix the education crisis poisoning America’s future, we have to understand where it all began. The truth is, our broken public school system wasn’t just an accident—it was built on authoritarian ideals from the very beginning. In this second installment of “The Poisoning of the American Mind,” I trace the roots of government schooling back to the Puritans, Prussian militarism, and the so-called progressive reformers who used education to engineer obedience and conformity. Spoiler alert: the American classroom was never about freedom, it was about control.