“Good things are easily destroyed, but not easily created.”
― Roger Scruton
Historically, education was built upon a foundation of the past wherein it was understood that the learning of the ancients gave wisdom to those who hoped to build for the future. Once upon a time, education meant that children were taught to read,[1] write, and count so that they could function in the world of adults and provide a living for themselves, and their families along with being a benefit to society. It was nothing new!
Whether one dealt with the age-old apprenticeship methods of education[2] or the institutionalized method of education[3] – it was understood that those who did the training and those who were undergoing the training were in their place for the purpose of maintaining a civilization.[4] Take for example the following mission statement from William and Mary College in 1727 and its reference to both classical learning and Christianity:
Toward the cultivating the minds of men, and rectifying their manners, what a mighty influence the studies of good letters, and the liberal sciences have, appears from hence, that these studies not only flourished of old amongst those famous nations, the Hebrews, Egyptians, Greeks and Romans; but in the latter ages of the world likewise, after a great interruption and almost destruction of them, through the incursions of the barbarous nations, they are at last retrieved, and set up with honor in all considerable nations. Upon this there followed the reformation of many errors and abuses in the point of religion, and the institution of youth to the duties of Christian virtues and civility; and a due preparation of fit persons for all offices in church and state.[5]
The purpose of education was to prepare a young person morally,[6] as well as for a calling/career that they were going to engage in upon completion of their studies.[7]
In the present, however, we have the perpetuation of childhood up and running now in our schools.[8] Apostasy aside, our universities are equally in the forefront of playing the “inclusion” game and spreading their own brand of “good news” in a “gospel” bordering on fifty shades of gray amidst Christianity light in most protestant liberal arts universities.[9]
Moreover, the Liberal Arts Education has academically “died not from old age, nor only from neglect and not exactly from murder, but from self-inflicted wounds that look a bit like suicide.”[10] Said “suicide” was done in the name of a “freedom” from faith, family, tradition, and our history all the while marching toward a brighter, rainbow-colored Marxist[11] future!
Yet, we should not be surprised. If one is only taught drivel, surrounded by drivellers, and encouraged to be a driveling driveller – the results will be obvious to all: an overgrown teenager wasting their family’s money only to be unemployable upon graduation because they have no marketable skills outside spouting drivel at some protest meeting in a park (and we think that the 1960s died when people threw away their love-beads, cut their hair and took baths?...).[12] Now, such fools are sent off to Washington DC to continue in their fantasy world similar to social media starlet and politician AOC when she ended up predicting the end of the world.[13]
When it is all said and done, Americans will have the school system, both K-12 and collegiate, that they are willing to pay for an put up with. Sadly, they will deserve it.
All is Not Lost
There are schools all over the country that are starting to spring up because they had the courage to ask hard questions about the current educational system,[14] and then also took steps to find out what can be done to fix it, and then did it. At the university level, such an example is the new University of Austin in Texas (UATX) that is committed to “the unfettered pursuit of truth as the cornerstone” of a “free and democratic society”[15] rather than “dropping $200,000 to have their children turned against them.”[16]
Former Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos details the same in her book Hostages No More and speaks of parent and local run schools rather than schools financed, monitored, and controlled by the Federal Government.[17] Equally, she noted the stunning success of Charter Schools that do more with less money.[18]
Above all is the homeschooling option which has begun to grow in leaps and bounds due to the chaos, moral and intellectual, as noted in the previous sections. We at Christian Liberty Homeschools will continue to offer an accredited education system that we have had up and running for over 50 years that you can trust:www.homeschools.org
[1] Jordan Peterson & Victor Davis Hanson on the downfall of Ivy League Schools:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SUC2Xk2YW9M
[2] Another reason the Jewish method of education was so superior is that children did not wait until they were 25-26 years old to learn to work. They were working with their parents since they were young. See Christian Philosophy of Education, Tape # 1 by Dr. Kenneth Talbot, class of Whitefield College (World View Productions: Lakeland, Florida).
See also comment by Rushdoony on American society today contra the past: “Children are currently held back to the point that even in their adulthood, they are unprepared, undisciplined, and thus unready for the real world unlike the children prior to the Civil War. An era which prepared children to enter college in their early teens and run businesses, lead armies, or work as ship captains by age nineteen.” Dr. Rushdoony, Tapes 11 of World History II, Whitefield College (World View Productions: Lakeland, Florida).
[3] “Most of us who were taught in a graded classroom are all too familiar with the Scope & Sequence method. The first assumption of this method is that there is an encyclopedia of information which all children must learn. The second assumption is that we can divide this encyclopedia down into efficient little increments according to twelve grade levels and 180 daily installments. Then, like an automobile assembly plant, as each child goes down the conveyor belt, he has various parts attached along the way, and he comes out of the twelfth grade a completed product.” Harvey & Laurie Bluedorn, Teaching the Trivium, Vol. II, (Muscatine, Iowa: Trivium Pursuit, 1994-5), p. 15.
[4]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IDIeSbxK24g
[5] Richard Hofstader, ed., American Higher Education Vol. 1 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1961), p. 39.
[6]https://www.encounterbooks.com/books/the-death-of-learning/
[7] See footnote 2 above.
[8]https://lawliberty.org/gender-ideologys-infantilizing-effects/
[9]https://americanreformer.org/2023/04/are-there-trustworthy-protestant-universities/
[11] “When Thomism—or, more commonly, the Scholastic tradition that grows out of Thomism and propounds the theory of natural law—ceases to be the predominating philosophy of a university, the university simply ceases to be. This is easy to see in the way courses are taught, many of which have adopted a “neo-Marxist” philosophy: “Thomism is meant to advance actual knowledge, neo-Marxism is meant to advance propaganda, which is true to Marx’s goal of putting change (revolution) above understanding (wisdom).” Whereas one philosophical system espouses the intellect and reason, the other system emphasizes feeling and action. It’s no mystery which one is the easier sell to young adults.” Quotation taken from online article found below:
https://rlo.acton.org/archives/123894-does-college-gets-in-the-way-of-education.html
[12] Jordan Peterson & Victor Davis Hanson on the downfall of Ivy League Schools:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SUC2Xk2YW9M
[13] Watch AOC on the end of the world in a decade or so:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHk8nn0nw18
[15]https://www.uaustin.org/our-principles
[16]https://rlo.acton.org/archives/122797-the-university-of-austin-is-scaring-all-the-right-people.html
[17] “The concept is simple but revolutionary. The parents have choice, the money follows the child, and the local community figures out what educational options to provide. I went to an elementary school that was entirely teacher-led. There was no principal. The school was run by a board that includes parents and teachers. The lines between grades were blurred and students moved freely between them according to their different levels. This system of customized learning for Casper’s kids wasn’t directed by government from the top down. It evolved organically to meet the unique needs of that particular community,” (hard copy; p. 122).https://www.amazon.com/Hostages-No-More-Education-American/dp/1546002014/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=Hostages+No+More&qid=1663036347&sr=8-1
[18] “Charter schools do more with less. A landmark study in New York found the city’s charter schools were nearly 25 percent more cost-effective at increasing achievement in reading and math. In Indianapolis, the charters were a whopping 59 percent more cost effective. They were 43 percent better in DC, 30 percent in San Antonio, and the list goes on.” Betsy DeVos, Hostages No More, (Hatchette Book Group, New York, NY; 2022), p. 128).