Episode 3: America’s Education Past and Future

In episode two, I left you with a list from the book, Battle for the American Mind, that showed the difference between WCP (Western Christian Paideia) and today’s progressive Paideia. Remember, paideia is the root of our culture. Our vision of the good life begins in youth. Let us look at those comparisons again before we dive into how our paideia has been changed.

WCP: A lifelong search for greater meaning in life.

Today: Search for a job.

WCP: Seek wisdom.

Today: Seak facts.

WCP: Study history and classics.

Today: There’s nothing worth knowing that wasn’t just thought of.

WCP: Teach the application of reason.

Today: Preach the acceptance of indoctrination.

WCP: There is a divine order, revealed in Christ.

Today: There is humanist anarchy.

WCP: Strong-spirited citizens who are better together.

Today: Weak-spirited citizens who better serve the state.

I don’t know about you, but I find that WCP inspires more hope for a better future for our children and grandchildren.

                  Now that we know the history behind the foundation of our education system, we need to switch into battle mode. However, before every battle, we must study the enemy and their tactics. The more we know about them, the better prepared we are to stop their advances and outmaneuver them.

                  Think of it as an intense game of Battleship. Initially, you are firing randomly because you don’t know where your enemy is. Once you get one hit in, you become aware of where the enemy is and can quickly take them down.

                  I am so grateful to David Barton, Pete Hegseth, and David Goodwin for researching our educational history, discovering the enemy’s tactics, and then sharing it with the rest of us. If you have not already, you need to read 4 Centuries of American Education by David Barton and Battle for the American Mind by Pete Hegseth and David Goodwin. I also strongly suggest another of David Barton’s books, Separation of Church and State, What the Founders Meant.

                  Before I dive into how progressives have changed our education system over the past one hundred years, I want to remind you of what I said in episode one. Pete and David connect the dots in history to today’s dilemma in education. For many of us, it is going to be a tough pill to swallow, much like it was for Josiah in 2 Kings 22.

                  They had gone their entire life, never having heard the word of God. When it was discovered and read, Josiah tore his clothes and wept because for generations they had not been living according to the will of God. Many of you are going to feel the same as Josiah, because, like him, we have never heard the whole truth. But I want you to remember that with God, Josiah got back up, fought the battles, and brought the nation back to God.

Although this episode may shock you, persevere; hope remains.

                  Let us start with agreeing that our enemy is cunning. Progressives knew they had to take down our WCP, but they could not just wipe it out. Otherwise, they would have had a full-blown battle on their hands that they were at the time too weak to fight. This is because WCP was so engrained in our citizens. Instead, they had to replace it gradually with a fake or progressive paideia, best done through the education system. Each generation got a little more of the progressive paideia, and each generation became more and more progressive.

                  Horace Mann, the father of American education, organized school districts and implemented a common curriculum across the U.S. from 1840 to 1860. He planted ideas to gradually replace the classical Christian education with a mechanistic Prussian (German) one. We will dive into the classical Christian education model in a later episode.

                  This new form of German education was not rooted in classical Christianity but in the enlightenment and utopian philosophies of Immanuel Kant, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Karl Marx, and Friedrich Nietzsche. John Dewey, who is the father of progressive school in America, wrote his thesis on Kant’s philosophy.

                  Mann’s work led to Massachusetts becoming the first state to require all children to attend school in 1852. By 1918, compulsory education laws were in effect in all states. With local school boards remaining in control, the WCP deeply embedded, and the Bible still being taught in school, this move was not seen as detrimental. However, with the mandate that all students attend school, it now required all state governments to create state-controlled schools. By making the government, the schoolmaster, the church, parents, and local community influence are effectively supplanted.

                  Yes, all children now had access to an education, but this also centralized the government’s control of culture. At the time, the consequences of this move were not seen, but we see them now.

                  The divide of the Protestant church in the late 1800s provided progressives another in when it came to infiltrating the public school system and replacing the WCP with their own. Dwight L. Moody became the father of Christian fundamentalism. While Washington Gladden became the father of Social Gospel. Those following Gladden believed they should balance the wealth scales, seek women’s suffrage, advance prohibition, and many other social issues. This made it easy for them to align with the progressives. Unfortunately, Gladden’s followers left Christian tradition behind to pursue labor laws, temperance, women’s rights, and a variety of social activism.

                  Progressives in the late 1800s blended the idea of Marxist government with aspects from the Social Gospel and the belief in an American national destiny in order to make Marxism more palatable to Americans. (Battle for the American Mind, page 74)

In 1892, Bellamy penned the Bellamy Salute, a precursor to the Pledge of Allegiance, which schools nationwide adopted. The original salute mirrored the Nazi salute. (see picture in Battle for the American Mind on page 78.)

                  Here are the words to that salute.

                  I pledge allegiance to my flag and the Republic for which it stands; one nation indivisible, with Liberty and just for all.

                  Congress feared another form of Marxism and add in the words: the flag of the United States of America and under God. Here are the words to our current pledge, which is recited every morning in classrooms across the nation.

                  I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands; one Nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

                  The reciting of this pledge at school bred nationalism, which has its place. However, the intentions behind this were to place nationalism above Christ. This is what we have today, and it does not look pretty.

                  You can see the danger of imbalance from the writings of Dallas Lore Sharp, who was a Methodist minister, professor, and progressive.

                  My child is first a national child. He belongs to the Nation even before he belongs to himself. His education is first national and after that personal. We parents can hardly see this. It is a particularly difficult point of view for the highly individualized, assertive Anglo-Saxon whose political weakness is his undeveloped sense of social solidarity. (Battle for the American Mind, page 92)

                  In the 1890s, John Dewey gave lectures on the school and social progress. He argued for vocational training rather than a focus on liberal arts, saying:

                  “It is our present [Classical Christian] education which is highly specialized, one sided and narrow. It is an education dominated almost entirely by the medieval conception of learning. It is something which appeals for the most part simply to the intellectual aspect of our natures, our desire to learn, to accumulate information and to get control of the symbols of learning; not to our impulses and tendencies to make, to do, to create, to produce.” (Battle for the American Mind, page 79) (The School and Society book) (The School and Society PDF)

                  I just want to pause here, step back, and analyze what John Dewey is saying. On the surface, it may not seem bad. When you take it apart, you see the fallacies. Let us look at where he says that classical Christian education appeals simply to the intellectual aspect of our natures, our desire to learn, to accumulate information and to get control of the symbols of learning.

                  Are some of you furrowing your brow, shaking your head, and saying, “What?”

                  Isn’t learning and accumulating knowledge the whole point of any education?

                  The next part of this line says that classical Christian education does not appeal to our impulses and tendencies to make, to do, to create, to produce. John Dewey is known as a father to progressive education. He believed we learn by doing. Yes, we learn by doing. However, we cannot go and do without a solid foundation in knowledge and reasoning. Furthermore, and you may think I am stretching here, but do we want an educational system that not only appeals to our impulses but encourages them? Acting on impulse almost always ends in disaster. How about we fill our students with knowledge and teach them how to reason with religion and morality before they go and do?

                  We still see this ideal playing out in public schools today, with our STEM schools and vocational pathways. Our education system has turned into a pipeline for jobs, rather than producing productive citizens who can think, reason, and produce independently without the government telling them what is right or wrong.

                  In 1939 C.S. Lewis wrote: “education is essentially for freemen and vocational training for slaves . . .If education is beaten by training, civilization dies.”

                  Wise words from a wise man.

                  David Goodwin and Pete Hegseth sum up this part of the progressive movement by acknowledging that you realize this is a very different story than you learned about progressives from your school textbooks.

                  “You may have learned that their movement ended child labor or regulated the “robber barons.” The Progressives write the textbooks, so they tend to emphasize their popular and positive achievements. And, as the saying goes, the victors tell the stories the way they want them to be told. Their war was clandestine, so it stayed out of their textbooks.” (Battle for the American Mind, page 81)

                  We have only scratched the surface of the history behind this detrimental shift in American education. Join me for another episode as we peel back the layers. In the meantime, be sure to read your copy of Battle for the American Mind. Pete and David go into much more detail. I am hitting the highlights and bringing in my perspective as an educator.

Resources and Links

Book- 4 Centuries of American Education by David Barton: https://shop.wallbuilders.com/index.php/four-centuries-of-american-education.html

Book – Separation of Church and State, What the Founders Meant by David Barton: https://shop.wallbuilders.com/index.php/separation-of-church-state-what-the-founders-meant-book.html