You could give money to one of our Presidential candidates or you could cut to the root cause of this dispiriting election and begin to educate the next generation to do better. If you don’t like the Boomer candidates we have, let’s stop educating our children and young adults as we educated the Boomers.
This must start with a total rejection of the secularization of government schools which has led to a decline in the human things. We must also reject most so-called “Christian” education which may (!) get theology right, but abuses history, science, philosophy, and other so-called “secular” fields of knowledge.
Let’s invest in an education for ourselves (we are not dead yet!) and students that makes all of reality available: no propaganda, no fear, no arbitrary lines on the truth. We don’t need the David Barton-types who pretend all of American history is Evangelical history or secularized education that rejects any notion of Providence. Christians have done better than either extreme and we must recover that heritage.
The fear of the Lord is the beginning of Wisdom, but religious truths are not all the truth a person needs. Wisdom teaches us how to live and knowledge gives us the tools to follow Wisdom’s rules. We call a priest when we wish one kind of knowledge and a medical doctor when we need another kind. As a result, true schooling will include all of reality: the physical and the metaphysical.
Education without God becomes unmoored to reality. By now most Americans see the crisis in undergraduate education without a core that drifts into a consumer driven market. Students do not “know” what they need any more than patients “know” the best treatment in hospital.
Religious education without other areas of learning drifts into madness. Poetic knowledge brings us beauty, but beauty needs the constraints of truth. We can think we are loving God when we are loving a figment of our imaginations. Truth, including a connection to history and physical reality, prevent this madness.
Educating the whole person is what we have always done. When Constantine saved the Roman Empire by favoring Christianity and moving the center of his attention to Constantinople, a university tradition was started by later Emperors (such as Theodosius) that never ended. As Christians gained control of education, they built world class theological study and formation and training in the “secular” sciences at the University of Constantinople (Magnaura). When fundamentalism triumphed in the City (as it did during the Latin conquest), then education declined. When secularism became paramount (Julian), then education declined.
This is our heritage and this heritage made the Renaissance (and even the Reformation!) possible. Good leaders come from good schools and good schools exist when religion and other fields are integrated into one whole . . . just as each one of us has all those aspects at one time in our lives. We all have a philosophy, a theology, a history, a connection to the body (physical reality). We cannot deny any of those aspects of our life and remain healthy as people.
Find a classical, Christian, accredited school that embraces all of reality. Rebuild a place like the Magnaura and good will be done. The politics of 2116 thanks you.
_______________
Of schools I know, I can highly recommend the Torrey Honors Institute at Biola University, The King’s College in NYC, and The Saint Constantine School in Houston as places to start that have integrity in education.
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In