Since the seventeenth century, there have been two narratives about modernity in general and America in particular. The author uses the term "narrative" to include (a) facts, (b) arguments, and most important, (c) a larger vision of how one sees the world and chooses to engage the world. The first and originalist narrative is the Lockean Liberty narrative. Lockeans endorse the technological project (TP), transformation of nature for human betterment. The second and adversarial narrative is the Rousseau/Marx equality narrative. Rousseaueans reject the technological project (extreme environmentalists), but Marxists and socialists accept it. Nevertheless, both Rousseaueans and Marxists attribute all social problems to the market economy that accompanies the TP. Education has a completely different meaning for each narrative. For Lockeans, educational institutions should be private, competitive, and market-sensitive. The purpose of education is to develop individual freedom, responsibility, initiative, and imagination. For Rousseaueans, educational institutions must be government controlled and designed to produce equal and willing publicly-minded citizens. The author argues that president Obama's commission that formulated "A Crucible Moment: College Learning & Democracy's Future," with its emphasis on democracy, inequality, and globalization, fashioned a Rousseauean document. The president's commission envisions a world in which all will be indoctrinated with the Rousseauean viewpoint. (Contains 1 footnote.)