A Generation Lost...That Can Still Be Found
A Good Friday story of redemption
A GENERATION LOST…THAT CAN STILL BE FOUND
A Good Friday story of redemption
Six years ago, I spoke at a college campus in Minnesota during one of the most turbulent moments in recent American history. The country was reeling from the death of George Floyd and the subsequent riots across the country. Emotions were high. Division was everywhere. My talk addressed the Black Lives Matter organization, and its explicit call (since rescinded) to “disrupt the...nuclear family structure.” I argued that this sort of radicalism was ultimately bad for black people and indeed for the country as a whole.
After my remarks, a young woman approached me—not with curiosity, but with anger and resentment. She challenged everything I said. She was dismissive, confrontational, and openly disrespectful. At the time, it wasn’t unusual. I had seen it before—and I’ve seen it many times since.
But recently, I heard from her again.
This time, the tone was entirely different. It turned out her name was Avery and she was writing to apologize. She admitted that at the time, she was “filled with anger,” not walking with God, and blinded by what she now recognized as a distorted worldview. Avery acknowledged that she had not understood the message I was trying to share—and that she had responded out of ignorance. Today, she is married, a mother, and living a life centered on faith, family, and purpose.
A Generation Shaped by Indoctrination
What I encountered in that young woman wasn’t just disagreement. It was the product of a system. Across our public education system—from K–12 classrooms to college campuses—too many young people are being taught what to think, not how to think.
They are immersed in a worldview that emphasizes grievance over gratitude, division over unity, and victimhood over personal responsibility. Respect for elders, appreciation for tradition, and adherence to basic social norms are increasingly dismissed as relics of the past.
The result is a generation that is often misinformed, emotionally reactive, and hostile toward ideas that challenge what they’ve been taught. That’s not education. That’s indoctrination.
Closed Minds, Not Critical Thinkers
Even more troubling is what comes next.
When ideology is taught as truth—and competing ideas are discouraged, you don’t produce independent thinkers. You produce rigid ones. Young people become resistant to truth itself.
Avery, the young woman who once confronted me, now says it plainly: she was blinded—unable to see beyond the narrow framework she had been given.
We see this play out across the country every day. Speakers are shouted down. Debate is replaced with outrage. Facts are dismissed if they conflict with the narrative. An education system that cannot tolerate dissent is not preparing students for the real world—it is isolating them from it.
This Strategy Is Not New
The idea of shaping society through the minds of children has long been understood. As Vladimir Lenin famously said, “Give me your four-year-olds, and in a generation I will build a socialist state.” Control what children are taught, and you shape the future. That’s exactly why what happens in our classrooms matters so much.
What Actually Changed Avery
And yet, despite everything she had been taught, this young woman’s life changed—completely.
Not because of a new policy.
Not because of a different professor.
Not because of a political movement.
She gave her life to Jesus Christ. That is when everything shifted.
Her anger gave way to humility.
Her confusion gave way to clarity.
Her resentment gave way to purpose. Today, she and her husband are raising a child and working to help others avoid the same mistakes they made. That kind of transformation cannot be manufactured by any institution. It comes from a changed heart.
We Cannot Ignore This Any Longer
If we continue down the current path, we will raise generations increasingly disconnected from truth, from one another, and from the values that sustain a healthy society. We cannot afford to look the other way. Parents must take a more active role in what their children are being taught. Communities must demand accountability from schools. And leaders must have the courage to speak honestly about what is happening.
Because this is not just about politics.
It’s about the future of our country.
Seeds of Truth Still Grow
Avery ended her letter to me with a powerful reminder: The seeds you plant may not grow immediately—but in time, they can. Six years ago, she rejected everything I said.
Today, she is living it.
That should give us hope—but it should also serve as a warning. If we don’t reclaim the truth, someone else will shape the next generation in its place. And the consequences will be far greater than one angry conversation on a college campus.
Kendall Qualls is an Army Veteran, retired executive from the healthcare industry and candidate for Governor of Minnesota. He also serves on the Board of Trustees at Crown College and Board of Advisors for the National Medal of Honor Leadership Center. He is the founder of Take Charge, which promotes strong families, education, and free enterprise as the means to prosperity.
Mr. Qualls has authored a book, The Prodigal Project: Hope for American Families. His message has reached millions of people as a speaker and through his articles published in the New York Post, Washington Examiner, The Washington Times, The Federalist, Real Clear Politics, The Christian Post, and the Minneapolis Star Tribune. His previous articles in the Journal of FBT include “The Scandal Hidden in Plain Sight,” “Resurrect the Family,” “A Movement for Revival and Restoration,” “Amazing Grace,” “The Cincinnati Beat-Down,” “Charlie Kirk’s Message Transcended Ethnic and Political Boundaries,” “We Must Return to the Classical Black American Tradition,” and “Black Americans Are Not Hyphenated Citizens.” He has appeared on the FBT Podcast with host Connie Morgan in an episode titled “Bucking the Narrative.”
As a college professor at an elite school, I can assure you that the indoctrination is real and ongoing. My students know all of the slogans and theories, and yet when quizzed about them rarely can they explain what they are asserting, beyond citing racial disparities. For example, this week I was explaining why redlining did not play the role in the Black-White wealth gap that students assume. Before beginning, I asked how many of them thought the claim was true. All of them did. I then asked what redlining was. Only one student could offer a half coherent explantation. For most, it apparently had something to do with maps that lowered housing values. One student—a very smart one—said that it was the process of forcibly relocating Black people to the undesirable parts of cities.
Thankfully, once I start to unpack historical reality students are quite open to what I have to say; indeed, many seek out my classes because they know they will get heterodox perspectives. I take this approach in my teaching because I believe that my first responsibility is to truth, but more importantly, because I was indoctrinated as an HBCU undergrad. Republicans/conservatives were racist. That's it. I was disabused of this notion—embarrassingly—in law school. My best friend was a White guy from NYC. We did everything together, and I could say then and now that there wasn't a racist bone in his body. One day we were just talking and he said he was a conservative Republican. I was literally stunned because that was simply impossible. He had to be joking. He then began to school me on conservatism in the Western political tradition, from Edmund Burke to F.A. Hayek. I had never heard of ANY of these people—and I had taken many political science and history courses. I felt like a fool and wanted to call him a racist and hide under the bed, but I couldn't because he wasn't. I was angry and felt that I had been cheated and betrayed, indoctrinated rather than educated, taught what to think rather than how to think. From that day forward (long before the idea of being a professor popped into my head) I committed myself to resisting totalizing ideologies and to put in the extra work to think through issues and arrive at my own conclusions, wherever on the ideological spectrum they might be found.
I am always amazed that so many of my colleagues can be intellectually satisfied by finding ever more sophisticated ways of proving that Blacks people are oppressed. I would be bored out of my mind had I spent a quarter century reinforcing a social construct (race) and a fixed binary while trying to convince myself that I was doing nothing of the sort. Young people are ready for the truth; they are ready to be challenged. It is we adults who have failed them, not the other way around.
Beautiful Easter message. Thank you and God bless.