American Education ~ Then and Now

Mark Twain quipped, “I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.”  Though said (mostly) in jest, this accurately illustrates the fact that the public school system has… problems.  I’d like to take a look at American education, and consider two questions from in light of God’s law and our Founders’ intent.  Should religion be taught in the public schools?  Who is to educate the child, and for what purpose?

To separate faith from education, or religion from schooling, is an impossible feat.  In popular culture, the question has been widespread whether we will mix religion and education; however, the question is not whether or religion will be allowed to mix with education, but which religion will be allowed to mix.  Indeed, religion is being taught in American public schools; it’s just a different religion than the one that was so deeply a part of our culture from the colonial days until the early 20^th century. 

In the public school, we are not allowed to teach that God created the world, but we are allowed to teach that the world came into being on its own, or that it was created by a ‘big bang.’  I have a question, then: is it not an equally religious position to teach that God did not create the world, as to teach that he did?  If “God created the world” is a religious statement, then “God did not create the world” is also a religious statement.  Both are statements of faith!  Now, of course we do not hear these views stated quite so plainly in the public schools most of the time; but a child can be taught that God did not create the world without it being stated so bluntly.  To teach an alternate view—that man evolved out of an ape or what have you—is perfectly equivalent to teaching that God did not create the universe!

The theory of evolution has infiltrated American thought and practice, but it was not always so.  During the beginning years of our country, there was no distinction among public and private schools on ‘secular’ or ‘religious’ grounds; all schools were based on the idea that religion and education were inseparable.  Eventually, however, the prominence of Puritanism began to fade as the Enlightenment reached America.  This led to a rejection of revelation-based faith, and an acceptance of reason-based faith in the form of deism.  Deism claimed that while God created the world, he also equipped the mind of man to distinguish right from wrong on his own.  Thus, God did not have to stick around to keep the universe in working order.  Deists believed that the Bible was true, but only to the extent that it was in harmony with reason.  Instead of submitting reason to revelation as demanded by the Christian faith, deism reversed the order, submitting revelation to reason and thus placing the final authority in the hands and mind of man. 

Only a small step was required to get from Deism to Atheistic evolution.  After all, if God was only needed to create the universe but it could take care of itself after that, He might as well be gone.  But if God vanished after the initial creation, we needed an explanation for the existence of life as we know it.  Enter Charles Darwin, a naturalist whose studies of the finches on the Galapagos Islands and various other species led him to the theory of evolution, an idea that allowed men to drop the idea of an intelligent Creator in a rationally acceptable manner.  Through On the Origin of Species (1859) and The Descent of Man (1891), Charles Darwin brought the theory of evolution into the forefront of popular thought.  Through the public schools, the seeds of these radical ideas were planted in the fertile soil of youthful minds.  This humanistic view—the idea that “God did not create the universe”—has slowly infiltrated the classrooms and minds of America, replacing the Judeo-Christian faith that was inherent to the foundation of our country. 

Now, as to my second question: from a Biblical perspective, education ought to be tailored to a child’s individual needs and interests, and the child should be trained by his parents.  The Bible has little to say about schools, but it holds some very important lessons about learning, knowledge, students, and teachers.  The training of children is a responsibility delegated to the parents by God, and they are to diligently teach them God’s commandments and principles all the time (Deuteronomy 6:6-9).  Rather than training the individual for the service of culture, and far from obliterating the individual for the service of the state, Biblical education was for the training of the individual in the service of God.

American schooling fit this model for many years.  In colonial America, children were either trained at home—George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, James Madison, and Thomas Jefferson were homeschooled, among others—or attended small schools that focused on the individual student and taught Biblical principles.  The New England Primer was the main elementary textbook used from 1680-1830; it contains the Apostle’s Creed, the Lord’s Prayer, the Ten Commandments, a series of alphabet lessons based upon lessons from the book of Proverbs, the Golden Rule, a very simple catechism that summarizes Biblical figures from Adam to Paul and the basics of the Christian faith, the well-known Westminster Shorter Catechism, and a selection of poems, hymns, and simple prayers, including the all-too-familiar “Now I lay me down to sleep.”  The McGuffey Readers, used in schools through the beginning of the 20^th Century, contained references to Creation, the fear of God, the deity of Christ, the presence of the Holy Spirit, and other Scriptural essentials.  Schools were created so that children could read the Bible for themselves—and the children were eager to do so!

Enter the modern humanist philosophers.  They held a strictly man-centered view of life and morality; their ideas ran parallel to those of Charles Darwin.  They were hopelessly idealistic, with their own explanation of man’s problems, their own ethical standards that came from who-knows-where, and their own savior for man—namely, a socialist state.  The God-ordained covenant relationships of family and church stand in the way of the humanist, Communist vision of the authoritarian, all-powerful state.  In the late 1700s, Jean-Jacques Rousseau argued for a system of public education by the state that would withdraw the child as much as possible from parents and relatives.  In the 1800s, Karl Marx recognized that the nuclear family and its commitment to direct the education and upbringing of children is the one major impediment to the all-consuming state; with the abolishment of home education, family bonds would weaken and the state would assume a more dominant role. 

In the early 1900s, John Dewey, called the father of Western education because of the profound impact he had upon modern American education, built upon the ideas of Rousseau and Marx; he writes, “The school is primarily a social institution.  [Education] is the regulation of the process of coming to share in the social consciousness.”  This system directs the centralization of power in the nation’s education from the family, to the local school districts, to the state departments, and finally to the federal government.  Dewey set a precedent for centralized, standardized, institutionalized education systems that are not built for the child’s individual needs, interests, and abilities, but are all about training the individual to fit into the social entity of the state.  Everything else—academic rigor, character training, the fear of God, and work ethic—takes a back seat.  The school has replaced the church as the core of community.

The goals, values, and convictions which are held highest in a particular group of people become the driving force behind the education of the next generation.  In early America, the goal of society was liberty, particularly liberty of religion.  This goal was achieved through policies and institutions based on God-given unalienable rights, individualism, limited government, and a virtuous and educated citizenry.  When, through the work of Charles Darwin, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Karl Marx, and John Dewey, God was erased from the picture and Americans began to seek immediate pleasure rather than liberty to worship their Creator, our culture began to unravel.  The right of the parent to train his child was diminished, education became focused on the “social consciousness” rather than the individual, the power of government expanded exponentially, and the desire for excellence in education and virtue all but disappeared—all because Western civilization rejected God as the Creator and Sustainer of life.  The philosophy of education begins with a philosophy of life.  

Works Cited

Overman, Christian. Assumptions That Affect Our Lives: The Shaping of Western Civilization: A Contrast between Greek and Hebrew Thought. Louisiana, MO: Micah Pub., 1996. Print.

Swanson, Kevin. Apostate: The Men Who Destroyed the Christian West. Parker, CO: Generations With Vision, 2013. Print.