It has been evident for decades that our schools of education — those college programs that aspiring teachers must usually complete if they want to become certified — do a poor job. Those schools were long ago overrun by educational theorists who disdain knowledge but love the idea of using schools to shape young minds as they believe they should be shaped.

One thing that is certainly out is education for character. In today’s Martin Center article, dean Matthew Post of the University of Dallas, one of the few schools that has resisted the invasion of trendy theory, explains that we desperately need to change the way we train teachers.

He writes, “The content in many schools is a problem, but a deeper one remains: Too few teachers and leaders focus on the importance of character formation.” Instead of that, many teachers are eager to indoctrinate youngsters in Critical Race Theory and other “progressive” notions.

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Post doubts that our current education schools can be reformed. We need new institutions and we also need to get rid of mandatory state teacher licensing, which does nothing to ensure competence. But how can we accomplish that?

Post answers, “Independent homeschooling co-ops, schools, publishers, and other continuing education services have a role to play. But so, too, does any university with the vision and will to offer more robust teacher formation, tailored to those dedicated to classical liberal education in the true sense: Education that begins with human beings as rational and free, is committed to individual and communal flourishing, and pursues excellence in scientific discovery, artistic work, shared inquiry, and civic responsibility.”

He’s right. One of the great looming battles in America will pit the forces of statist education against parents who are increasingly coming to realize that such education is making a terrible mess of their kids.