This essay contends that there are fundamental connections between a nation's political arrangements and its educational efforts on behalf of youth. Though the common school architects of the nineteenth century recognized these connections, they were profoundly forgotten in a later Darwinian milieu that suggested--our allegiance to democracy notwithstanding--that the business of statecraft is best left to the most "fit." This essay argues that to fully shrug off lingering vestiges of Darwinism, we need a new educational narrative, one premised on inserting community as a central curricular feature in the nation's public schools.