Education is a vast topic with its form, substance, and aims, and most of us think about education in terms of schooling. Virtually all of us have attended school, therefore our connection between education and school is rather strong. The typical day school student spends at least 16,000 hours in schooling from kindergarten to high school graduation. Coupled with a culturally normative college experience and the widely recognized influence of academic institutions, education remains a significant issue.
Perhaps this consideration of education as a significant issue was recently illuminated by the Congressional testimony offered by Ivy League college presidents. While plenty of other contemporary examples exist, the consequences of those particular comments have been well chronicled and stand out. In the aftermath of the Congressional testimony, we ought to consider some root cause factors.
For example, how and why did an institution such as Harvard, one that arguably represents the gold standard of higher education, select a president with such underwhelming qualifications? When in our society did DEI variables become a more weighty issue than academic prowess and demonstrated competency? The point isn’t to single out Harvard, although the critique has been rightly earned, but rather to raise this consideration – the proper foundation for education is theological, not ideological.
The societal pursuit and implementation of a particular ideology requires force; it is unnatural and is a reflection of how things are in this fallen state.
The Middle Ages established theology as the queen of sciences because theology links faith and reason. It also utilizes the other academic and intellectual disciplines to accomplish its aim. Ideology, on the other hand, typically posits a series of ideas which form the basis or foundation of a specific economic or political theory. Put another way, theology is systematic; it seeks to understand the nature of God. As a result, theology naturally fits within the created order; it deals with the way things are supposed to be. Ideology, however, is concerned with either a specific idea or revolution and, in some cases, both. A good example is Marxism and its various applications. Thus, the societal pursuit and implementation of a particular ideology requires force; it is unnatural and is a reflection of how things are in this fallen state. Sadly, education is all too often the venue.
Any competent structural engineer understands the critical nature of a strong foundation. In Matthew 7, Jesus points out the difference between a foundation on sand versus one on rock – foolishness and wisdom. Due to the significant influence of education in our culture, an educational system constructed on the sand of ideology inevitably results in foolishness, brokenness, and a dysfunctional society.
One of the first books I read as a young Christian educator was The Abolition of Man by C.S. Lewis, wherein he prophetically unpacked this education dichotomy. It is not a coincidence that the book’s subtitle is How Education Develops Man’s Sense of Morality. Lewis begins with a discussion of a passage from a grammar textbook, not as a critique of the text as a grammar primer but rather as an example of how the authors were espousing the philosophy of subjectivism by the very text of the grammar exercises. Often such academic tasks are assigned to elementary age students, which highlights the subtle nature of ideology in our educational system.
Education grounded on theology and constructed in a healthy Christian community marked by vibrant, healthy families, a faithful church that preaches the Gospel and embraces orthodoxy, and an excellent institutional school provides the foundation for cultural renewal.
Since Lewis’s day, subjectivism has given way to relativism, postmodernism, and our current hyper-individualistic partisanship. He calls the theological foundation of education “the Tao” and argues that it informs our fundamental sense of justice or oughtness. It is for this reason that Lewis declares that “the task of the modern educator is not to cut down jungles but to irrigate deserts.”[1] The extent to which the underlying foundation, whether theology or ideology, informs education is critical. Education grounded theologically enlists training and propagation, while education grounded ideologically embraces conditioning and propaganda. Academic institutions standing on this sandy ground often push an ideological agenda with unbridled fervor since it does not reflect our created condition. Therefore it must be forced, which in turn, yields chaos.
When Lewis authored The Abolition of Man in 1943, the world was engaged in an epic war for the second time in as many generations. In his works, Lewis consistently sounded the alarm against the consequences of modernism and relativism. He referred to those champions of ideology as rebels against the created order. “The rebellion of new ideologies against the Tao is a rebellion against the tree [the cross] … the human mind has no more power of inventing a new value than of imagining a new primary colour, or indeed of creating a new sun and a new sky for it to move in.”[2]
In 2024, our world remains in turmoil and it seems we face the implications of an educational system based upon ideology which has resulted in rebellion, as those college presidents demonstrated. Lewis foresaw this as he commented on his own age: “We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst.”[3]
Part of the remedy for the societal chaos of our day is an education based on theology. For if Lewis is right that education is either propagation or propaganda, then let us opt for the former. Education grounded on theology and constructed in a healthy Christian community marked by vibrant, healthy families, a faithful church that preaches the Gospel and embraces orthodoxy, and an excellent institutional school provides the foundation for cultural renewal. It is difficult to argue against a society that champions an education that produces men with chests who pursue virtue and enterprise, for this is the way things are supposed to be.
[1] C.S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man (New York: Macmillan Publishing), 24.
[2] Ibid., 58.
[3] Ibid., 35.
