Are We Really in the Dawn
of a New Age?
Part 4
So what have we gotten as a result of all this new age education and thought in our world today? What is the afterbirth of the dawn of this new age?
When we consider this question, one must keep in mind that it has produced some of the most animated discussions of our time. It has been an object of great “progress” and also one of interesting consideration. Thousands of books have been written about education and where it has taken us, where it should take us and where it may take us. Many such analysis touch upon the problems created by our education system and its inherent errors, how it has failed democracy and also impoverished the souls of American students. The main concern in these thesis is the contrast between the old school method which provided a unity that rose above class, race, religion and national origin and was rooted in the concept of natural rights, with what we have today.
The “education of openness”, as it is called, is blamed for ignoring natural rights and historical origins which are now seen as being flawed and regressive. Instead, this new education is considered progressive and forward looking, without demand for fundamental agreement. It is open to all kinds of people, all kinds of lifestyles and all ideologies. In reverse, it makes an enemy of the person who is not open to everything. However, when there are no shared goals or vision of public good, is there any longer a need for the social contract?
Many of the detractor arguments, which get NO press, lament the deterioration of our schools, with special emphasis on the content of education. Morals have been down played and then replaced with a feeble attempt at “values”. The concepts of honor, honesty, virtue, and other truths once thought to be self-evident are taking the last train for the coast. They are left unreplaced or perhaps only filled in by pragmatism and profit concepts.
In a book written by former newsman John Chancellor, Peril and Promise, he had this to say concerning the events that have transpired in our century due to this new age education:
If the United States runs out of scientists and engineers by the turn of the century, who will replace them? Today’s thirteen year olds? Hardly. The department of education in 1989 helped fund a study of the mathematics and science skills of thirteen year olds in several countries. The American children came in dead last, with lower scores than Spanish, British, Irish, Canadian and South Korean children. South Korean thirteen year olds were first. The comparison was devastating, South Korea is a developing country, nearly destroyed by war in the 1950’s with a population that was mostly poor farmers a few decades ago. The United States is an economic giant, but is suffering from a softening of the brain. The Council on Competitiveness estimates that sixty thousand mathematics and science teachers in our high schools are not fully qualified to do their jobs.
In 1989, the Secretary of Education, Lauro P. Cavazos, reported that since 1985. American high school students had flat or declining scores on college entrance examinations and an unchanged dropout rate. One out of every four high school students does not finish school - close to one million young people. Another fourth - another million - who graduate are functionally illiterate when they get their diplomas. Half the eighteen year olds in this country have failed to master basic language, mathematics, and analytical skills. A million dropouts here, a million functional illiterates there, every year.
(One need only read through some of the comments on Youtube to see this reality in all its glory)
These commentaries must not be pigeonholed as people who are just trying to force certain political insights, there have been reports of thousands of parents who have been deeply shocked by the experience of their children in public schools. In a report by Phyllis Schafley called: Child Abuse in the Schools, she relays the disgust with the public school system, displaying the broad discontent with the higher rates of education that are resulting in decreased production of American schools.
Perceptive people have seen the dangers of “progressive education” for a long time now. Greek scholar and theologian J. Gresham Machen, had much to say about the state of education today. In his book, Christianity and Liberalism, he had this to say:
When one considers what the public schools of America in many places already are - their materialism, their discouragement of any sustained intellectual effort, their encouragement of the dangerous pseudoscientific fads of experimental psychology - one can only be appalled by a commonwealth in which their is no escape from such a soul-killing system. But the principle of such laws (the laws that require a public school education, and that, at that time, were also being used to deny the formation of Christian schools) and their ultimate tendency are far worse than the immediate results. A public school system, in itself, is indeed an enormous benefit to the race. But it is of benefit only if it is kept healthy at every moment by the absolutely free possibility of the competition of private schools. A public school system, if it means the providing of free education for those who desire it, is a noteworthy and beneficial achievement of modern times; but when once it becomes monopolistic, it is the most perfect instrument of tyranny which has yet been devised. Freedom of thought in the middle ages was combatted by the Inquisition, but the modern method is far more effective. Place the lives of children in their formative years, despite the convictions of their parents, under the ultimate control of experts appointed by the state, force them to attend schools where the higher aspirations of humanity are crushed out, and where the mind is filled with the materialism of the day, and it is difficult to see how even the remnants of Liberty can subsist. Such a tyranny, supported as it is, by a perverse technique used as the instrument in destroying human souls, is certainly far more dangerous than the crude tyrannies of the past, which despite their weapons of fire and sword, permitted thought at least to be free.
The truth is that the materialistic paternalism of the present day, if allowed to go on unchecked, will rapidly make an America that is one huge “Main Street”, where spiritual adventure will be discouraged and democracy will be regarded as consisting in the reduction of all mankind to the proportions of the narrowest and least gifted of the citizens.
In this book, Machen reaches out with concern for a dismal future of education in America and also, for freedom itself. His book was written in 1924, and I have to wonder if he wouldn’t been seen as some sort of prophet if he were alive today to witness the condition of America’s schools. Sadly, one needs not have prophetic discourse to have been correct on many of the points Machen makes, one need only look back to history which has been forgotten in favor of the hubris of our day.
We are warned again and again of the mounting economic power of nations such as Japan and China and the increasing power of Western Europe, along with the increasing crisis of the Middle East. Every analysis of the future, after speaking of the growing possibilities in Asia, Europe and even Russia, refers to the decline of the United States and North America. We now have a staggering public and private debt that has come home to roost after decades of mismanagement by the higher political order. There is also a rise in crime, a drug war, a rise in suicides, and the continuing AIDS epidemic. Right along side of these things is the reports of increasing costs for education with a teetering school system.
Will our future generations be able to handle the complexity of such a world as the future provides? Or does the future of America lie in the leadership of a dangerous few, a few who are head and shoulders above the rest and may have aspirations that don’t necessarily reflect the will of the people but of those few who hold power? Will the nation be a community of “hillbillies” at the mercy of an elite cartel of individuals who are perhaps not American at all? Some would say we have already reached that point in the future. The government already is trying to tell America that it knows better than we do what is good for us: “Just sit down and be quiet, we’ll take care of you.”
The decline of the West - here is an obvious fact. Where did this problem come from? What is the major influence upon our society and where has that influence failed? The answer is that the most prominent influence upon America has been the well developed, fully organized and expensively financed by your tax dollars, education system. One can receive education from kindergarten until far into college age and beyond here in America. Students come from all over the world to avail themselves of the opportunity to learn here, especially in the sciences. Even terrorists from foreign countries who hate America come here to learn how to bring us down.
In the meantime, education in the humanities has faltered. The teaching of philosophy, sociology and history have become less and less popular. And why, you ask? Could it be that they have been gutted of their educational value and spiritual content? Could it be that a degree in these subjects only traps students in a life of paying for college loans while they can only get work pouring coffee at Starbucks? And why is that? Is it necessary to always serve the “Main Street” mentality of materialism and only hire those who have monetarily practical schooling and not those for whom the higher aspirations of mankind have any meaning at all? Will the near future be full of homeless street people who have college degrees?
It is in the study of Philosophy that the questions of final authority are considered. In medicine, the final authority is the simple issue of life and death (with the recent addition of financial capability.) In science, the absolute is the speed of light, and this has now moved beyond discussion. In philosophy, however, the final authority has been lost, and with devastating results.
In the past, whatever conclusions the philosopher reached, he had to begin with some doctrine of objective value. The first objective value, out of which all philosophy was built, was the existence of God. “God is!” was step A for the study of anything philosophical. Then the assumption that God was replaced with “natural law”, which it could be argued, is the next best thing. But these days, we don’t even have that.
Dewey and his circular philosophy that begins with man and ends with man, paid little attention to old values in the process of creating that circle. Humanism has become prevalent in our schools as a result, and especially at the graduate level. From that point on the ruling point of view in America has been that there is NO ruling point of view.
What then is the fault of American education? There are many things that could be considered about this, i.e. the teaching methods, money, buildings, urbanization, but behind it all is the loss of objective value. The value of God and his Word. When the Bible is relegated to anachronism, all the substitutes fall into place to fill the vacuum. Evolution. Marxism. Freudianism and other alien ideas moved into the school system and became basic assumptions. In fact they were welcomed with open arms as a new order of thought that had more value than ideas that had sustained mankind for centuries. Such is the intellectual hubris of our day.
These new gods of the mind and thought found themselves injected into the up and coming generations of our now adult society with little backing beyond the fact that someone with a degree or perhaps some notoriety had thought them up or seemingly discovered them. Of course, it feels good to believe that man is smarter than God, therefore, one doesn’t have to listen to God, despite his overwhelming evidence of caring benevolence and benefit behind all directives.
Since America has polluted itself and the world with this godless doctrine of the mind, what can possibly be the path to recovery? Basically, the West must return to being a REAL Christian nation, and return to the ideas of its fathers. Objective value must be returned, the objective value that is God himself and the revelation that is his Word, and the love of a creator that is the basis for all existence. Psalm 9:17 says it best: “The wicked shall be turned into hell, and all the nations that forget God.” Is America becoming a hellish place to live today, even as you read this?
Of course, the secular and atheistic world will not suddenly turn on itself, and its grand egomania over night. It will take more wars, more hurricane Katrinas, more Haities, more weird diseases and 9/11’s to get mankind’s attention, much to the premature demise of many an unfortunate. The good news is that God prefers to do his call to repentance any way but the hard way if he can prevent it. But if you have been raised to believe that God is about as important as Santa Claus, you run into difficulty inside the very family unit when radically changing the paradigm of thought about God from social nicety to absolute ruler of your life. This creates a strange disenfranchised society within a society and for several generations can produce a confused populace that votes against itself with every new election. We’ve already seen this in effect.
Christianity must articulate its case in public presentation that is characterized by theological soundness and scholarly, philosophic interpretations of life and reality. The church has indeed failed in the battle to win the minds of men. Christianity has received sympathy, and even emotional agreement from the world as it looks at the church of Christ, but it has not heard us say that God is the only God and Jesus is his son and equal, and one day all who live will stand in judgment when every knee shall bow and every tongue confess to this truth.
There have been too many sympathetic discussions with modern unbelievers as to who’s truth is best applied to life. As a result, they fail to mention that every man should be a liar and only God be true. The instant that Christianity agrees with the pluralizers, that there are many forms of truth, its cause is lost. It becomes impotent in its directive and then, finally, irrelevant except for greeting cards and the like.
Whether we like to admit it or not, the very foundations of thought that Americans received from education as children, along with many foreigners from around the world, are simply the circular reasoning made up by other people, John Dewey being one of them, who sought to distance themselves from the idea of God as a major force in their lives and also the surrounding society. And that is all it is. It is NOT some newly discovered evolutionary strain of thought that signals human progress, or even the development of mankind from something called the bicameral mind, as atheists would have you believe. No, it is simply man believing he can do it his own way without God, and deceiving himself as to the mounting evidence around the world that forgetting God and going your own way causes no repercussions or answers from that divine deity.
It’s just crazy.
When we consider this question, one must keep in mind that it has produced some of the most animated discussions of our time. It has been an object of great “progress” and also one of interesting consideration. Thousands of books have been written about education and where it has taken us, where it should take us and where it may take us. Many such analysis touch upon the problems created by our education system and its inherent errors, how it has failed democracy and also impoverished the souls of American students. The main concern in these thesis is the contrast between the old school method which provided a unity that rose above class, race, religion and national origin and was rooted in the concept of natural rights, with what we have today.
The “education of openness”, as it is called, is blamed for ignoring natural rights and historical origins which are now seen as being flawed and regressive. Instead, this new education is considered progressive and forward looking, without demand for fundamental agreement. It is open to all kinds of people, all kinds of lifestyles and all ideologies. In reverse, it makes an enemy of the person who is not open to everything. However, when there are no shared goals or vision of public good, is there any longer a need for the social contract?
Many of the detractor arguments, which get NO press, lament the deterioration of our schools, with special emphasis on the content of education. Morals have been down played and then replaced with a feeble attempt at “values”. The concepts of honor, honesty, virtue, and other truths once thought to be self-evident are taking the last train for the coast. They are left unreplaced or perhaps only filled in by pragmatism and profit concepts.
In a book written by former newsman John Chancellor, Peril and Promise, he had this to say concerning the events that have transpired in our century due to this new age education:
If the United States runs out of scientists and engineers by the turn of the century, who will replace them? Today’s thirteen year olds? Hardly. The department of education in 1989 helped fund a study of the mathematics and science skills of thirteen year olds in several countries. The American children came in dead last, with lower scores than Spanish, British, Irish, Canadian and South Korean children. South Korean thirteen year olds were first. The comparison was devastating, South Korea is a developing country, nearly destroyed by war in the 1950’s with a population that was mostly poor farmers a few decades ago. The United States is an economic giant, but is suffering from a softening of the brain. The Council on Competitiveness estimates that sixty thousand mathematics and science teachers in our high schools are not fully qualified to do their jobs.
In 1989, the Secretary of Education, Lauro P. Cavazos, reported that since 1985. American high school students had flat or declining scores on college entrance examinations and an unchanged dropout rate. One out of every four high school students does not finish school - close to one million young people. Another fourth - another million - who graduate are functionally illiterate when they get their diplomas. Half the eighteen year olds in this country have failed to master basic language, mathematics, and analytical skills. A million dropouts here, a million functional illiterates there, every year.
(One need only read through some of the comments on Youtube to see this reality in all its glory)
These commentaries must not be pigeonholed as people who are just trying to force certain political insights, there have been reports of thousands of parents who have been deeply shocked by the experience of their children in public schools. In a report by Phyllis Schafley called: Child Abuse in the Schools, she relays the disgust with the public school system, displaying the broad discontent with the higher rates of education that are resulting in decreased production of American schools.
Perceptive people have seen the dangers of “progressive education” for a long time now. Greek scholar and theologian J. Gresham Machen, had much to say about the state of education today. In his book, Christianity and Liberalism, he had this to say:
When one considers what the public schools of America in many places already are - their materialism, their discouragement of any sustained intellectual effort, their encouragement of the dangerous pseudoscientific fads of experimental psychology - one can only be appalled by a commonwealth in which their is no escape from such a soul-killing system. But the principle of such laws (the laws that require a public school education, and that, at that time, were also being used to deny the formation of Christian schools) and their ultimate tendency are far worse than the immediate results. A public school system, in itself, is indeed an enormous benefit to the race. But it is of benefit only if it is kept healthy at every moment by the absolutely free possibility of the competition of private schools. A public school system, if it means the providing of free education for those who desire it, is a noteworthy and beneficial achievement of modern times; but when once it becomes monopolistic, it is the most perfect instrument of tyranny which has yet been devised. Freedom of thought in the middle ages was combatted by the Inquisition, but the modern method is far more effective. Place the lives of children in their formative years, despite the convictions of their parents, under the ultimate control of experts appointed by the state, force them to attend schools where the higher aspirations of humanity are crushed out, and where the mind is filled with the materialism of the day, and it is difficult to see how even the remnants of Liberty can subsist. Such a tyranny, supported as it is, by a perverse technique used as the instrument in destroying human souls, is certainly far more dangerous than the crude tyrannies of the past, which despite their weapons of fire and sword, permitted thought at least to be free.
The truth is that the materialistic paternalism of the present day, if allowed to go on unchecked, will rapidly make an America that is one huge “Main Street”, where spiritual adventure will be discouraged and democracy will be regarded as consisting in the reduction of all mankind to the proportions of the narrowest and least gifted of the citizens.
In this book, Machen reaches out with concern for a dismal future of education in America and also, for freedom itself. His book was written in 1924, and I have to wonder if he wouldn’t been seen as some sort of prophet if he were alive today to witness the condition of America’s schools. Sadly, one needs not have prophetic discourse to have been correct on many of the points Machen makes, one need only look back to history which has been forgotten in favor of the hubris of our day.
We are warned again and again of the mounting economic power of nations such as Japan and China and the increasing power of Western Europe, along with the increasing crisis of the Middle East. Every analysis of the future, after speaking of the growing possibilities in Asia, Europe and even Russia, refers to the decline of the United States and North America. We now have a staggering public and private debt that has come home to roost after decades of mismanagement by the higher political order. There is also a rise in crime, a drug war, a rise in suicides, and the continuing AIDS epidemic. Right along side of these things is the reports of increasing costs for education with a teetering school system.
Will our future generations be able to handle the complexity of such a world as the future provides? Or does the future of America lie in the leadership of a dangerous few, a few who are head and shoulders above the rest and may have aspirations that don’t necessarily reflect the will of the people but of those few who hold power? Will the nation be a community of “hillbillies” at the mercy of an elite cartel of individuals who are perhaps not American at all? Some would say we have already reached that point in the future. The government already is trying to tell America that it knows better than we do what is good for us: “Just sit down and be quiet, we’ll take care of you.”
The decline of the West - here is an obvious fact. Where did this problem come from? What is the major influence upon our society and where has that influence failed? The answer is that the most prominent influence upon America has been the well developed, fully organized and expensively financed by your tax dollars, education system. One can receive education from kindergarten until far into college age and beyond here in America. Students come from all over the world to avail themselves of the opportunity to learn here, especially in the sciences. Even terrorists from foreign countries who hate America come here to learn how to bring us down.
In the meantime, education in the humanities has faltered. The teaching of philosophy, sociology and history have become less and less popular. And why, you ask? Could it be that they have been gutted of their educational value and spiritual content? Could it be that a degree in these subjects only traps students in a life of paying for college loans while they can only get work pouring coffee at Starbucks? And why is that? Is it necessary to always serve the “Main Street” mentality of materialism and only hire those who have monetarily practical schooling and not those for whom the higher aspirations of mankind have any meaning at all? Will the near future be full of homeless street people who have college degrees?
It is in the study of Philosophy that the questions of final authority are considered. In medicine, the final authority is the simple issue of life and death (with the recent addition of financial capability.) In science, the absolute is the speed of light, and this has now moved beyond discussion. In philosophy, however, the final authority has been lost, and with devastating results.
In the past, whatever conclusions the philosopher reached, he had to begin with some doctrine of objective value. The first objective value, out of which all philosophy was built, was the existence of God. “God is!” was step A for the study of anything philosophical. Then the assumption that God was replaced with “natural law”, which it could be argued, is the next best thing. But these days, we don’t even have that.
Dewey and his circular philosophy that begins with man and ends with man, paid little attention to old values in the process of creating that circle. Humanism has become prevalent in our schools as a result, and especially at the graduate level. From that point on the ruling point of view in America has been that there is NO ruling point of view.
What then is the fault of American education? There are many things that could be considered about this, i.e. the teaching methods, money, buildings, urbanization, but behind it all is the loss of objective value. The value of God and his Word. When the Bible is relegated to anachronism, all the substitutes fall into place to fill the vacuum. Evolution. Marxism. Freudianism and other alien ideas moved into the school system and became basic assumptions. In fact they were welcomed with open arms as a new order of thought that had more value than ideas that had sustained mankind for centuries. Such is the intellectual hubris of our day.
These new gods of the mind and thought found themselves injected into the up and coming generations of our now adult society with little backing beyond the fact that someone with a degree or perhaps some notoriety had thought them up or seemingly discovered them. Of course, it feels good to believe that man is smarter than God, therefore, one doesn’t have to listen to God, despite his overwhelming evidence of caring benevolence and benefit behind all directives.
Since America has polluted itself and the world with this godless doctrine of the mind, what can possibly be the path to recovery? Basically, the West must return to being a REAL Christian nation, and return to the ideas of its fathers. Objective value must be returned, the objective value that is God himself and the revelation that is his Word, and the love of a creator that is the basis for all existence. Psalm 9:17 says it best: “The wicked shall be turned into hell, and all the nations that forget God.” Is America becoming a hellish place to live today, even as you read this?
Of course, the secular and atheistic world will not suddenly turn on itself, and its grand egomania over night. It will take more wars, more hurricane Katrinas, more Haities, more weird diseases and 9/11’s to get mankind’s attention, much to the premature demise of many an unfortunate. The good news is that God prefers to do his call to repentance any way but the hard way if he can prevent it. But if you have been raised to believe that God is about as important as Santa Claus, you run into difficulty inside the very family unit when radically changing the paradigm of thought about God from social nicety to absolute ruler of your life. This creates a strange disenfranchised society within a society and for several generations can produce a confused populace that votes against itself with every new election. We’ve already seen this in effect.
Christianity must articulate its case in public presentation that is characterized by theological soundness and scholarly, philosophic interpretations of life and reality. The church has indeed failed in the battle to win the minds of men. Christianity has received sympathy, and even emotional agreement from the world as it looks at the church of Christ, but it has not heard us say that God is the only God and Jesus is his son and equal, and one day all who live will stand in judgment when every knee shall bow and every tongue confess to this truth.
There have been too many sympathetic discussions with modern unbelievers as to who’s truth is best applied to life. As a result, they fail to mention that every man should be a liar and only God be true. The instant that Christianity agrees with the pluralizers, that there are many forms of truth, its cause is lost. It becomes impotent in its directive and then, finally, irrelevant except for greeting cards and the like.
Whether we like to admit it or not, the very foundations of thought that Americans received from education as children, along with many foreigners from around the world, are simply the circular reasoning made up by other people, John Dewey being one of them, who sought to distance themselves from the idea of God as a major force in their lives and also the surrounding society. And that is all it is. It is NOT some newly discovered evolutionary strain of thought that signals human progress, or even the development of mankind from something called the bicameral mind, as atheists would have you believe. No, it is simply man believing he can do it his own way without God, and deceiving himself as to the mounting evidence around the world that forgetting God and going your own way causes no repercussions or answers from that divine deity.
It’s just crazy.
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