Our Schools’ War on Knowledge. Plus. . .

It’s Monday, September 1. This is The Front Page, your daily window into the world of The Free Press—and our take on the world at large. Today: Matthew Continetti on Gavin Newsom’s Trump act. An FBI agent’s warning to parents about violent online forums. And much more.

But first: Our schools’ war on knowledge itself.

Once Labor Day is in the rearview mirror, it’s suddenly back-to-school week in much of the country. We at The Free Press tended to be the kind of nerds who thought fresh pencils smelled like roses and a new calculator was the key to popularity. I know: very cool.

Then again, we’re not sure kids today have any of that. We’re not even sure what school is for anymore. What are they learning, exactly? And what should they be learning to flourish in our radically transforming world?

Here’s a strange thing I’ve noticed—and that other parents of young children looking at schools might have picked up on, too. Schools these days don’t think that children need to be taught knowledge. The fancier the school, the more passionate that view.

Dan Lerman—a friend and a masterful teacher—has seen that phenomenon up close.

“At the private school where I once taught,” Dan writes, “the idea was that spelling got in the way of creativity. So I watched as kids wrote macien for machine at age 14, then wilt when people involuntarily gasped at their failed spelling attempts. Their writing was often expressive and insightful. . . and incoherent. They probably weren’t even aware of the $60,000 per annum price tag, or they might have raged against that macien.”

Why the hostility to knowledge and facts? And what should parents who want their children to know how to spell and do math do about this trend?

Dan’s piece is essential (and really funny):

Dan Lerman is optimistic that we can bring back the joy of learning actual knowledge. But Ted Gioia, one of our most incisive culture critics, says knowing anything might soon become impossible. This is because AI could, over just the next year, overwhelm us with falsehoods, undermining trust and requiring endless skepticism. You know those people who think the moon landing was staged? “Now imagine a world in which everybody is like that about everything—because nothing can be proven,” Gioia writes.

The piece, a must-read, has everyone in our newsroom talking.

We have an amazing lineup of back-to-school stories for you this week, and some incredible investigations coming down the pike. Stay tuned.

—Bari Weiss

• The Trump administration is looking to send a surge of ICE officers to Boston, making it the latest Democratic-led sanctuary city to become a target of the administration after Los Angeles, the District of Columbia, and Chicago. “The highest degree of national security and public safety concerns are in sanctuary cities,” White House aide Stephen Miller told reporters Friday.

• Chinese leader Xi Jinping welcomed Russia’s Vladimir Putin and India’s Narendra Modi to Beijing on Sunday for a security summit. Leaders from Egypt, Turkey, Pakistan, and other nations are also in attendance. The summit marks a diplomatic triumph for Xi as he looks to challenge American leadership in world affairs.

• American companies from Ace Hardware to Hormel Foods are warning that they might be raising prices in the coming weeks thanks to tariffs, the high cost of meat, and other economic pressures. Tariff-related price hikes have already hit megastores like Target and Walmart, with retailers warning more are on the way.

• New York City mayoral front-runner Zohran Mamdani is looking to distance himself somewhat from the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), a far-left group that helped power his political rise. The move comes after polls show that Mamdani is still falling short of 50 percent of the vote in November’s general election despite winning the Democratic nomination in June. “Zohran never ran as an individual, but as a representative of a working-class socialist movement,” the DSA said after he won the primary.

• Republican senator Susan Collins of Maine blasted the Trump administration’s cuts to international aid, calling them a “clear violation of the law” because they were authorized by Congress. Originally elected in 1996, Democrats see Collins as one of their top targets in next year’s midterm elections.

• Illinois governor JB Pritzker is slimming down ahead of a possible 2028 campaign for the White House. The wealthy Democrat was recently on the receiving end of barbs from President Donald Trump, who told him he should “spend more time in the gym.” Asked about why he was losing weight, Pritzker said, “How about, just for health.”

• House Speaker Mike Johnson says there will “probably” be a congressional vote on releasing more information about convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. “We have our own resolutions to do all this, but it’s sort of not necessary at the point because the administration is already doing this—they’re turning it over,” Johnson told CNN on Friday.

• First Lady Melania Trump has no interest in being on the cover of Vanity Fair, according to the New York Post. The news came after the glossy magazine’s freshly minted editor tried to convince the former model to grace the cover, provoking a revolt among Vanity Fair staffers.