Dark Ages-- Barbarians in the Classroom
2nd in 4-part series
“The supreme end (goal) of education is discernment in all things – the power to tell the good from the bad, the genuine from the counterfeit, and to prefer the good and genuine to the bad and counterfeit” Samuel Johnson.
In my previous article I asked, “Have the Dark Ages arrived?” You can question whether what was called historically by this term was truly a “dark age” since so much good was done after the Roman Empire fell, but we live in an age today when things are pretty dark. An age of relativism, of people wanting no moral absolutes, of the individual being supreme, while God and his Word (the Bible) are pushed to the side. In the original “dark ages” there were many factors causing this decline in civilization. The barbarians from the north attacked Rome and overcame their weakened defenses. There are factors today also, barbarians we might say. The first we’ll look at is our education system. The barbarians in the classroom.
It's been many years now, but in this TV special, Barbara Walters faced the camera. “The alarm has sounded,” she said, “The clock is ticking. But most of us are still asleep.” What was she talking about? She was referring to the deterioration of the American education system. Test scores were going south. High school students surveyed thought the Holocaust was a Jewish holiday. Many could not locate the United States on a world map. Walters continued, “Today’s high school seniors live in a world of misplaced values, becoming a generation of undisciplined cultural barbarians” (American Kids, Why They Flunk, 1988).
Charles Colson in his book Against the Night says a friend showed him a videotape to illustrate the direction some educators have gone. The video was entitled “Sex, Drugs, and AIDS.” Shown to a high school class, it gave info about how AIDS is transmitted and how it can be avoided. OK so far. But as the tape continued, he says it became obvious there was a hidden agenda: to teach that there is nothing wrong with homosexuality. The video highlights a young boy saying he was once against the gay lifestyle, but his brother got AIDS and he realized that it is just another life-style option, one he should not judge. Apparently, Colson says, the producers couldn’t just leave it at germs and antibodies, they had to preach a philosophy. Such philosophers abound today!
Alan Bloom (educator at University of Chicago, Yale, and Cornell) calls the modern “tolerance” that is insisted upon, “the virtue, the only virtue, which all primary education for more than fifty years has dedicated itself to inculcating” (he said this in 1987). Obviously not all educators buy-into this, but many do, increasingly more.
In a California sex education curriculum titled “Intelligent Choice of Sexual Lifestyle” it advises seventh graders to set “purely personal standards of sexual behavior.” A curriculum for elementary kids specifies that children will “develop an understanding of homosexuality.” Colson says in some cases the students are asked to act out homosexual roles, then take a test on what they’ve learned. A ten-year-old gets a gold star if they do well in homosexual role play. And we wonder why the younger generation is so accepting of this lifestyle.
This barbarian influence on education began many years ago with the ideas of Freud, Darwin, and Marx, all questioning the idea of a transcendent moral law. I talked about it in the previous Cross Point, how there has been a slow progression of philosophers taking us down this path. Gregory Wolf in an article (The Platonic Lie, 1988) said, “The ideologies which gained entry in the sixties say the principles of Western culture are illegitimate and must be overthrown. The Marxist, feminists and deconstructionists have made it clear their primary enemy is the Judeo-Christian tradition. With that destroyed, terms like truth, good, evil, and soul can be discarded.”
Most of the info above comes from 30+ years ago. It hasn’t improved. “Train up a child in the way he should go and when old, he will not depart from it” Solomon once said. The principle can apply to right or wrong training.
Cross Point: There are good teachers in the school system who honor traditional biblical values, no doubt (thanks to you, if you are one of them!), but they fight an uphill battle. Correct values must be taught and reinforced in the home! Don’t take your child’s education for granted.
“The supreme end (goal) of education is discernment in all things – the power to tell the good from the bad, the genuine from the counterfeit, and to prefer the good and genuine to the bad and counterfeit” Samuel Johnson.
In my previous article I asked, “Have the Dark Ages arrived?” You can question whether what was called historically by this term was truly a “dark age” since so much good was done after the Roman Empire fell, but we live in an age today when things are pretty dark. An age of relativism, of people wanting no moral absolutes, of the individual being supreme, while God and his Word (the Bible) are pushed to the side. In the original “dark ages” there were many factors causing this decline in civilization. The barbarians from the north attacked Rome and overcame their weakened defenses. There are factors today also, barbarians we might say. The first we’ll look at is our education system. The barbarians in the classroom.
It's been many years now, but in this TV special, Barbara Walters faced the camera. “The alarm has sounded,” she said, “The clock is ticking. But most of us are still asleep.” What was she talking about? She was referring to the deterioration of the American education system. Test scores were going south. High school students surveyed thought the Holocaust was a Jewish holiday. Many could not locate the United States on a world map. Walters continued, “Today’s high school seniors live in a world of misplaced values, becoming a generation of undisciplined cultural barbarians” (American Kids, Why They Flunk, 1988).
Charles Colson in his book Against the Night says a friend showed him a videotape to illustrate the direction some educators have gone. The video was entitled “Sex, Drugs, and AIDS.” Shown to a high school class, it gave info about how AIDS is transmitted and how it can be avoided. OK so far. But as the tape continued, he says it became obvious there was a hidden agenda: to teach that there is nothing wrong with homosexuality. The video highlights a young boy saying he was once against the gay lifestyle, but his brother got AIDS and he realized that it is just another life-style option, one he should not judge. Apparently, Colson says, the producers couldn’t just leave it at germs and antibodies, they had to preach a philosophy. Such philosophers abound today!
Alan Bloom (educator at University of Chicago, Yale, and Cornell) calls the modern “tolerance” that is insisted upon, “the virtue, the only virtue, which all primary education for more than fifty years has dedicated itself to inculcating” (he said this in 1987). Obviously not all educators buy-into this, but many do, increasingly more.
In a California sex education curriculum titled “Intelligent Choice of Sexual Lifestyle” it advises seventh graders to set “purely personal standards of sexual behavior.” A curriculum for elementary kids specifies that children will “develop an understanding of homosexuality.” Colson says in some cases the students are asked to act out homosexual roles, then take a test on what they’ve learned. A ten-year-old gets a gold star if they do well in homosexual role play. And we wonder why the younger generation is so accepting of this lifestyle.
This barbarian influence on education began many years ago with the ideas of Freud, Darwin, and Marx, all questioning the idea of a transcendent moral law. I talked about it in the previous Cross Point, how there has been a slow progression of philosophers taking us down this path. Gregory Wolf in an article (The Platonic Lie, 1988) said, “The ideologies which gained entry in the sixties say the principles of Western culture are illegitimate and must be overthrown. The Marxist, feminists and deconstructionists have made it clear their primary enemy is the Judeo-Christian tradition. With that destroyed, terms like truth, good, evil, and soul can be discarded.”
Most of the info above comes from 30+ years ago. It hasn’t improved. “Train up a child in the way he should go and when old, he will not depart from it” Solomon once said. The principle can apply to right or wrong training.
Cross Point: There are good teachers in the school system who honor traditional biblical values, no doubt (thanks to you, if you are one of them!), but they fight an uphill battle. Correct values must be taught and reinforced in the home! Don’t take your child’s education for granted.
Posted in Cross Points