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The Collapse of American Education (Pt. 2) – Our Squandered Inheritance

See part one of this series here

If you examine the history of American education, you will find that the current secular and anti-religious flavor is a relatively new phenomenon. Prior to the 1960s, America’s public schools were steeped in religious influence. Horace Mann, nicknamed the father of America’s public school movement, sold the concept of public schools, in part, by assuring excellent biblical education. In 1843, after examining schools in several European nations, Mann issued a report to the Massachusetts Board of Education advocating for the Prussian model of public education. In his report, Mann assured fellow Americans: 

“Nothing receives more attention in the Prussian schools than the Bible. It is taken up early and studied systematically…. These are topics of daily and earnest inculcation, in every school.” 

By the end of the 1840s, under Mann’s influence, every state had adopted the public-school model. More than 180 years have passed since Mann’s promise of Bible instruction in the public schools, and the obvious reality is that public schools now show open contempt for Christianity and its moral framework. There is no religious neutrality. Examine the websites of America’s largest teachers’ unions (NEA or AFT), and you will find more content related to their ideological aims than any academic resources. Their platforms read like manifestos devoted to undermining the beliefs of Christian families.

Why have the American people allowed this to happen? It is not because Americans share this hostility toward religion. Instead, the modern zeitgeist has convinced people that all religion is anti-intellectual. And if that is true, then it would be sensible to remove religious influence from academic institutions.

In this article, I want to show that this belief is wrong for at least two reasons.

First, recent studies show that students from private religious schools significantly outperform students from secular public schools—even though private schools spend significantly less money per pupil. The Journal of the Witherspoon Institute issued a report on data compiled from ninety different studies.

“The results indicate that attending private religious schools is associated with the highest level of academic achievement among the three school types [i.e., religious private schools, charter schools, and public schools], even when sophisticated controls are used to adjust for a variety of factors, including socioeconomic status, race, gender, and selectivity.”

In addition to the academic superiority of private religious schools over their secular counterparts, study after study has affirmed that young people with religious influences experience better mental, emotional, and social health than young people without religious influences. If we are going to reject religious influence in education, we should at least acknowledge that it’s not because the secular alternative is more intellectual or beneficial for students.

If we are going to reject religious influence in education, we should at least acknowledge that it's not because the secular alternative is more intellectual or beneficial for students.

Second, history has proven that Christianity is not an impediment to education. To the contrary, no institution has done more to advance the cause of education through human history than the Church of Jesus Christ. Any fair-minded historian would be hard-pressed to deny that claim.

All the greatest empires of antiquity reserved formal education only for the wealthy and powerful. As a prince, Moses was “instructed in all the wisdom of the Egyptians” (Acts 7:22), but the overwhelming majority of Egyptians were illiterate—as were most citizens of all ancient civilizations.

In Western civilization, the Greeks and Romans were known for their advancements in philosophy, literature, science, engineering, governance, and warfare. However, even at the height of the Roman Empire, less than ten percent of its residents could read. Fast forward a full millennium, and you find that world literacy rates remained below twenty percent.

As the Dark Ages ended, the Catholic Church established the first universities of Europe. In 1088 AD, the University of Bologna was founded—followed by Oxford University (1096 AD), University of Paris (1150 AD), and Cambridge University (1209 AD). With each century, the proliferation of Catholic universities only accelerated. According to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, there are now 1,861 Catholic colleges and universities in the world. Encyclopedia Britannica acknowledges that “the Christian church created the bases of the Western system of education.”

As the Church took an aggressive interest in promoting education, it sparked monumental changes in Western civilization. For instance, in 1215 AD, the Magna Carta was drafted by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Stephen Langton, a graduate of the University of Paris. This famous document helped to secure the liberties of the English by restricting the authority of the king, declaring that the God-given liberties of Englishmen should be preserved “for ourselves and our heirs in perpetuity.”

One year later, Pope Honorius III approved the formation of the Dominican Order of friars who were charged to educate both clergy and laity of the Church. This, in turn, gave birth to the era of Scholasticism — producing brilliant minds like Saint Thomas Aquinas. This amplified focus on education is credited with generating the great Renaissance (i.e. “rebirth”) in European philosophy, art, literature, music, and technology. This newfound desire to spread knowledge created the impetus that led Johannes Gutenberg to invent the printing press. It should be no surprise that his first project was the Bible.

Ironically, as the Catholic Church placed a heightened emphasis on scholarship, many of the greatest biblical scholars of the era began to question the doctrines of the Church. Brilliant men like John Hus (dean at Charles University in Prague) and John Wycliffe (professor of theology at Oxford) were martyred for challenging the doctrinal positions of the Catholic Church.

In 1517, the Protestant Reformation galvanized around Martin Luther, a professor of theology at the University of Wittenberg, when he nailed his 95 Theses on the door of the local church. This new Reformation advanced the Bible’s doctrine of a universal priesthood of believers. For Protestants, it was no longer acceptable for illiterate believers to entrust the study and the interpretation of the Bible to ordained priests. With a cry of “Sola scriptura,” all believers were called to take up and read the Word.

Literacy rates did not skyrocket in the immediate aftermath of the printing press, but the Reformation sent literacy rates soaring in Protestant nations, even as they lagged in Catholic countries. Throughout the entirety of human history, the democratization of literacy and education had eluded every culture on the planet. The Protestant Reformation changed all of that forever.

In the 1600s, Protestant nations like England and the Netherlands saw literacy rates soar above 50%. Dutch literacy rates went from 12% to 53% in a single century, marking the first time in human history that a nation achieved literacy for a majority of its citizens. In Catholic countries like France and Italy, literacy rates remained south of 50% until the 19th century.

In nations dominated by Islam and Hinduism, literacy rates remained abysmal until recent years. In 1980, UNESCO reported that literacy rates in Muslim-majority countries remained at 30%. In 1981, India’s literacy rate was estimated at 41%. Those numbers have increased substantially in the past four decades due to political reforms, the dawn of the Internet, and pressures of a globalized economy.

However, things were radically different in the West. The Reformation—a religious “protest” movement—birthed a sense of individualism, independent thought, innovation, and free-market capitalism. This, in turn, sparked calls for religious freedoms. These developments paved the way for the Enlightenment, with all its brilliant and absurd fruit. The convergence of all these groundbreaking developments enabled western European nations to become dominant on the world stage for centuries, with mixed results.

As Protestants came to the New World, they brought this same emphasis on literacy. This is reflected in America’s earliest legal codes. The Old Deluder Satan Act of 1647 states:

“It being one chief project of that old deluder, Satan, to keep men from the knowledge of the Scriptures, as in former times by keeping them in an unknown tongue…. It is therefore ordered that every township in this jurisdiction, after the Lord hath increased them to fifty households shall forthwith appoint one within their town to teach all such children…to write and read.”

Eight years later, the New Haven Code of 1655 declared:

“It is ordered… that all parents and masters do duly endeavor, either by their own ability and labor to provide… that all their children, and apprentices as they grow capable, may through God’s blessing, attain at least so much, as to be able duly to read the Scriptures… to understand the main grounds and principles of Christian Religion necessary to salvation.”

Sadly, the churches of today have largely abdicated our God-given responsibility to train up future generations. We have ignored the Christian heritage of faith-filled education, instead convincing ourselves that our tolerance for secularism is sophisticated and noble. Our abdication has resulted in an absolute freefall in the quality of education along with the moral collapse of entire generations.

We have ignored the Christian heritage of faith-filled education, instead convincing ourselves that our tolerance for secularism is sophisticated and noble. Our abdication has resulted in an absolute freefall in the quality of education along with the moral collapse of entire generations.

Once upon a time, the church stood at the forefront in advancing the cause of education. It is beyond time for the church to reclaim its role as the nation’s greatest champion of education. In an increasingly pluralistic society, this will not (and should not) come by edict. But as more states adopt “school choice” policies enabling parents to choose between public and private options, we are afforded an incredible opportunity to compete in the educational marketplace. We must not squander these opportunities.

In part three of this series, we will see how the Protestant churches in America built the educational institutions that laid the foundation for the most successful experiment in self-government ever attempted.

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