Why Johnny Can’t Think – Pt. 7

G.K. Chesterton once quipped, ”Without a gentle contempt for education, no man‘s education is complete.”  This is especially appropriate when this ‘gentle contempt’ is for a brand of education in America that has done so much to compromise and diminish not only the minds of our students, but the soul of our society as well.  

This brings us to a corresponding observation: a true education begins with being truly educated about what a true education is.  Which begs the question, how many educators have been truly educated?  How many teachers, through no perceptible fault of their own, have taken into the classroom a distorted view of education because they got a contorted view in college? It may surprise the populace to learn that many of our teachers and school leaders might be virtually unaware of the malevolent philosophical roots of the modern neo-education scheme, which means they might be totally in the dark about the blatantly subversive worldviews of some of its nefarious architects.

But any teacher-training program worth its salt begins with a scholastic model’s historic origins. Such a study, if honest, could not avoid the antithetical contrast between classical and progressive education. The latter is rooted in a secular religion that has dominated the national education landscape for over a century while the former is grounded in the Western intellectual tradition, informed by Judeo-Christian thought.  The one respects and reinforces the role of education, the other rejects and redefines it.

But an enduring pedagogical manifesto holds to education’s timeless purpose. By developing a moral imagination in its students, it cultivates a conscience; by grasping the logic of teaching logic, it advances the rationale behind careful reasoning.  As it cultivates disciplined thinking, it simultaneously nurtures creative thinking, organized thinking and independent thinking in the impressionable minds it teaches and touches.

The mission is a “both/and” proposition, not either/or – both memorization and meditation, comprehension and contemplation. It’s about facts and opinion – science and pseudo-science – and knowing the difference between them.  The more adeptly it mines the gold of knowledge, the more deftly it excavates the riches of wisdom.  

In a “school of thought” that operates as a “brain factory,” students become “thinklings” and classes become “think tanks.”  The Great Books and the Great Ideas are priority, serving up “food for thought” that nourishes and produces great minds.  

And eventually, if done well, it leads to the Greatest Mind of all – because if education is not ultimately about “thinking God’s thoughts after Him,” it fails in its highest calling and unique mission.  The secularists of course cry “foul!”, which only further illustrates the defining difference.  Hence, as the self-inflicted mortal wound of the progressive movement of education, it remains the incessant reason why Johnny can’t think. 

Brian Schroeder is the former Wyoming Superintendent of Public Instruction, an ordained minister and founder/president of The ChrisCorps Commission (bschroeder081858@gmail.com)