This video comes as a warning about how much education is suffering in our country. It should be an alert for all of us to act to keep education and our children learning. This news also follows my blog from February 15, 2026: “Learn and when you learn, teach.”

This comes from not considering education as a priority.  Declining enrollment does not mean that young people and their parents are not interested in higher education, but that education has become an expensive privilege they can’t afford. Massachusetts is supposed to be an intellectual state, with more than 120 schools, including colleges and universities, mainly in the Boston and Worcester areas, and more than 250 in New England. Yet, private colleges are out of reach for most, and public colleges remain expensive for the middle and working classes.

This is not about professors losing their jobs; it is about their mission being put on hold or suppressed. The teacher works for a holy mission, being the giver of knowledge, the job of the prophets. The teachers could have chosen other jobs, easier paths, but they chose a job that pays less, demands more effort, and takes more of their personal time. They chose to do it for the students, not for themselves. Their generous souls are more sensitive to the students and their future than to how much they earn or what the job offer entails. Being with the students and their colleagues all day is better than spending the day in a room on a computer, making a lot of money. It is a job that offers human relations and friendship. Professors are role models of education, moral principles, and ethics for their students.

If knowledge cannot be shared across generations, it risks disappearing, and if it does, our civilization will disappear. Remember what decadence did to the Roman Empire; we don’t want our nation to fall as the Roman Empire did.

The heart and soul of a nation are based on knowledge and moral principles. Reading connects us with the world and different civilizations, improves our lives, and enables us to use that knowledge to build a nation. If we close schools and take away the chance to learn, or make it smaller and more difficult, we are destroying our nation ourselves, with no help from any foreign nation or any enemy. “A house divided in itself cannot stand.” A phrase said by Jesus and quoted by President Abraham Lincoln in 1858.  

“Every city or house divided against itself will not stand.” Matthew 12: 25-26, Mark 3:25, Luke 11:17.

What happened to “We shall be a city upon a hill”? Also inspired by Jesus:

“You are the light of the world. A town built on a hill cannot be hidden” Matthew 5:14-16

This phrase was used by John Winthrop in 1630 and Ronald Reagan, adding ” shining ” to it: “A shining city on a hill.”

As I described in my February 15 writing, America became the shining city of knowledge and civilization. America became a model for the world, like Athens in ancient Greece. Pericles said, “We do not imitate but are a model to others.” Just as Rome became a model during the Roman Empire, Damascus, Baghdad, and Cordoba became models for Europe and the rest of the world during the Arab Empire.

Let us keep our civilization, our knowledge to share, and be the model; let us encourage knowledge and ensure our children grow up knowledgeable, not ignorant. The shining city needs the light to shine, and the brightest light is knowledge. Light upon light: Faith and knowledge will keep our nation shining. With knowledge prevailing, there will be no room for ignorance that gives birth to hate, violence, bigotry, and racism. Remember the verse of the light (Q: 24:35) and Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, where people were lacking the light. Those who left and saw the light outside the cave returned to save those in the dark. Teachers are the ones who share the light, and a city enlightened survives while a city in darkness vows to perish.

Karima Hadj-Zoubir

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