Dennis Prager has a fantastic piece in the National Review, absolutely bursting with good ideas for “non-left-wing parents” who want to save their children from the pernicious effects of American leftist culture.

These ideas include – but are not limited to – things like the following:

[T]hey need to know what they will be taught at college — and now in many high schools — and how to respond. When they are told from Day One at college that America and its white citizens are inherently racist, they need to know how to counter this libel with these truths: America is the least racist society in the world; more black Africans have immigrated here of their own volition than were brought here forcibly to be slaves; and “racist” is merely one of many epithets, such as “sexist,” “intolerant,” “xenophobic,” “homophobic,” “Islamophobic,” and “bigoted,” that the Left uses instead of arguments.

The reason I love this piece so much is because it’s absolutely devoid of a single bit of research. Prager writes as if no one has ever studied the question of character education or how one transmits values from one generation to the next.

Instead, he just waves his hands at tried-and-true “Old Man Yells At Cloud” advice like, “Get a job!” and “Read the Bible!”

As it must be.

Prager, after all, counsels good non-leftists to steer clear of anyone who might be an expert. You don’t want your children to go to college and study education; the people who teach and research education are all leftists. And you don’t want your children to go to college and study sociology or psychology or philosophy or political science either; the research is suspect, for Prager, because the researchers are the very people who will prey on your innocent and immature children, indoctrinating them by filling their heads with information that might challenge “what America and you stand for.”

If you look carefully at Prager’s five pieces of advice for raising a non-leftist child, they amount to the same thing: Steer your child clear of the nefarious influence of the outside world … especially in the colleges and universities in this country. The world around your child will fill his head with curiosity, will ask him to explain his beliefs, and will encourage him to think critically. And this, for Prager, amounts to nothing more than leftist indoctrination. The way to counter it – perhaps the only way – is to cloister your child, to encourage faithfulness, and, most importantly, to challenge the perceived authority of anyone who isn’t citing the Bible or the National Review.

In ten years of teaching, I’ve taught hundreds of conservative students in my classes. Many of them read my blog and remain in touch with me, years after graduation. I think they have a fair idea of what I think when it comes to contemporary politics and I think they’ll likely tell anyone who asks that my views on contemporary politics have nothing at all to do with what they learn in my classes. Rather than indoctrinating them to adopt my views, my goal is to teach them to think critically about their views, to learn to explain to themselves and to others why they hold those views.

If he looked for even a minute at any of the research, Prager would find that he’s wrong when he claims that non-leftist children have little chance of surviving the indoctrination of the outside world without parental intervention that shields them from tough questions about their beliefs. But given his desire to make conservatism about little more than faith and shaking your fist at anything new-fangled, it’s not at all surprising that a) he doesn’t know anything about the topic he’s writing about and b) his version of conservatism is going to appeal to fewer and fewer people who come to college and learn to think critically.