I am not one of those Americans who worries that our children, raised in the captivity of public education, are going to be the victims of a systematic curricular conspiracy to sap and impurify all the precious fluids of their brains.

I am not worried that our children are going to be indoctrinated by some political worldview at school -- of course they are being indoctrinated. That’s why we make them go, to learn how to be a functioning yet uncritical American consumer.

I am worried that they are not learning to think for themselves because they aren’t allowed to hear anything that is provocatively relevant, stimulating, challenging, or even much that is honest.

Some were outraged that the President of the United States might have something to say to school children that relates to the pervasive anxiety and fear and despair that is the context of their childhoods and adolescence.

I am outraged that while our children will be forced to subsist on the fruits of our folly, no one -- least of all their President -- is allowed to give them a straight assessment of exactly why they need to be prepared for a future that will be unforgiving of their inability to cope with reality.

By demanding that nothing controversial be scrutinized, the worldview of the elites is being downloaded as comfortable delusion into the captive minds of children who must someday serve as citizens in democratic life.

By decreeing the absence of the political, those who are already winners are politicizing everything.

Nothing could be more political than what children in school aren’t allowed to learn, things they are forbidden to consider, skills they are kept from developing, the future they are not allowed to shape.

Barack Obama is far too practical to tell our children what they really need to know, but I’m not. The truth is not complicated.

Hi kids.

The reason you need to stay in school is to learn how to think. You need to learn how to think because lots of people will lie to you for the rest of your lives. If you do not learn how to think you have no chance of figuring out why people are lying to you.

Here is an example of a lie.

In school you should only learn “facts.” You should not be forced to hear anyone’s political opinions.

This is a lie.

The determination of the “facts” you are allowed to learn emerges from a process that is political by nature and design. Somebody somewhere decides what “facts” you can learn in school. They have their reasons. They want you to accept their “facts” without considering their reasons.

When someone gets you to accept their “facts” without thinking for yourself, they have power over you. They control you.

The skill of learning how to scrutinize the reasons and motives of others who seek power over you is known as a bullshit detector.

Bullshit detectors are not issued in school like laptops and textbooks. But you can build your own by listening politely, asking questions, and then making sense of the answers in your own way.

Repeat this process every day. Figure out what matters the most to you. Learn how to contribute that passion to the world, even if nobody pays you for your contribution.

If you start this process now, in school, you can learn to limit the power that others have over you while you contribute your individual purpose to the world.

You will never make a difference if you don’t learn to keep your own life and work from being tied up in the lies of others.

The world needs you to make a difference. It’s all going to be on the test.