We support Americans in becoming lifelong learners, critical thinkers, and engaged participants in our great experiments in self-government. Our approach to education grows out of the recognition that human beings desire to know the truth about the highest and most important things, not only for their own sake, but for the sake of living well. Our civics academies articulate a clearer and more complete understanding of how free-market democracies work, why they are the most effective means ever devised to promote the common good, and why only free-market democracy is consistent with advancing and preserving the freedom of all individuals, as well as the negative lessons learned from the experience of collectivist and totalitarian systems.