This book Mindless: How the Education System is Indoctrinating Children and Destroying Our Civilisation by d’Abrera, Bella (Wyborn Press, 2026) has 270 pages devoted to showing how the rot has set into Western education (looking primarily at Australia, America and England), d’Abrera asks, ‘What is to be done?’ She looks at how America is leading the way here, with Australia and the UK lagging well behind.

She notes how Washington, under Trump, “turned off the money tap”. For example, it “began freezing billions of dollars in federal research grants in response to what it described as ‘institutional antisemitism’ and entrenched ideological bias on campus.” (p. 273)

She offers various examples of this, and then writes: Whatever one thinks of Trump, the freeze has exposed a reality. Supposedly, sovereign institutions have long been propped up by federal support, and Washington can hold them to account if it chooses…

Ultimately, it appears that ‘what is to be done?’ cannot be left to the universities themselves. The solution, therefore, lies outside the system. And in this respect, America is leading the way. There, individuals with dedication, energy, and awareness of how precarious things have become, are establishing new universities. Their aim is simple: to restore the university to its true purpose and ensure that they are not beholden to the state. (pp. 274-275)

Hillsdale College in Michigan is one such example of this, as is the University of Austin in Texas. Things are tougher in this regard in England, but Australia has had some success in creating new educational institutions, including Campion College in Sydney, Alphacrucis University College in Melbourne, and St John Henry Newman College in Queensland.

And the corruption in schools, and not just in higher education, can also be challenged. Thus, the rise and rise of things like homeschooling, private schooling, Christian education, charter schools, and so on. School choice, as in the voucher system, is an important way forward.

She says this about the situation in America: Down in Texas and Arizona, school choice legislation has expanded dramatically, making it possible for parents to send their children to charter or private schools with state-backed vouchers. Vouchers are essentially public grant money which gives families the genuine freedom to decide where their children are educated, and to take them out of the ideologically captured public system.

Vouchers don’t just give parents freedom to choose, they open up an immense range of choices. Parents can send their children to one of seventy-five Chesterton schools, whose curriculum is everything that today’s state system is not. Children are immersed in Homer, Dante and Shakespeare. Where government schools strip away the arts, Chesterton insists every child must paint, sing, and perform. There is no climate change anxiety, no gender confusion, and no racial tensions. (pp. 280-281)

She goes on to discuss the importance of parents in schooling: To reclaim education, they must first reclaim their role as parents. It is mothers and fathers who bring children into the world, who give them their moral and spiritual formation, not the state. They must start to recognise the ideological dangers that the system is posing to their offspring and become far less trusting. It is time for parents to stop outsourcing authority and for the family, that building block of society, to reclaim the child. This means rejecting the Rousseau-inspired deception that only experts can raise children, which has permeated Western culture, and which has to some extent, given parents licence to abnegate responsibility. (p. 283)

d’Abrera closes her book this way: Where we go from here will decide whether the Western mind survives. If children continued to be subjected to mass conditioning while being denied the chance to flourish in truth, beauty, reason, and reality, then Western Civilisation itself will not endure. The closing of the Western mind is not merely an educational crisis, but a civilisational one. We are teetering on the edge, but it is not too late. Our survival won’t depend on the rising generation now rebelling against the system, whose minds remain open enough to chart a course out of the ideological doldrums into which we have drifted. (p. 285)

Another great book is by Stefanik, Elise, Poisoned Ivies: The Inside Account of the Academic and Moral Rot at America’s Elite Universities (Threshold Editions, 2026)

It is wonderful to see efforts to turn our world back to God however God’s Word declares that we are already in the end times prior to Jesus return to restore righteousness. Sadly, we know that God allows Satan to do His utmost with the Antichrist and the False Prophet having 3 1/2 years to rule this world. However, during this time God pours out His wrath upon the Earth with the Trumpet and Bowl judgements. We are called to persevere and not deny His Word during this time but to fulfill all that He has called us to do.