CatechumenPatrick
Puritan Board Freshman
Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about the future of education. We’ve had discussions here on PB about homeschooling, classical education, college education, and so on, that are very helpful. I’d like to think about education now, though, more broadly, and I’m hoping many of you will offer your insights.
I probably don’t need to convince anyone here of this, but the state of education in the U.S. (not to mention other nations like the U.K.) is nothing less than horrifying—and that was true without the added effects of the economy. I can’t provide the citation, but I’ve heard it quipped many times that, among post-industrialized nations, the U.S. ranks near the bottom in standardized test scores, while, when asked how they compared to students from other nations, U.S. kids were most likely to think they ranked at the top. At worst, that tells us (what we probably already know) that kids in the U.S. are increasingly unintelligent and overconfident. More troubling than test scores (whatever they’re worth) is the findings of recent studies like the Kaiser Family Foundation study on media use trends in 8-18 year olds, online here: http://www.kff.org/entmedia/upload/8010.pdf. Media use in this age range went from an average of 8:33 a day in 2004 to 10:45 a day in 2009 (that includes overlapping use—the actual hours are something like 7:38). So, on average, kids 8-18 spend 4:29 a day watching TV while only 38 minutes reading.
Combine this with the recent plummet of higher-education's funding and quality. Even without the recession, we all know higher-education in the U.S. has glaring holes. A few years ago I was an English tutor and TA at an average 4-year university. Though it was rather rare, I saw students graduate who were illiterate. More commonly, I saw students graduate who could not write in complete sentences, who would struggle to read young adult fiction, let alone Dickens, the Constitution, or the Bible. But now the most recent trends (that many of us no doubt saw coming for a long time) are to fund only those programs that have quantifiable social and economic benefits. The humanities—if they are to continue to exist—must justify their usefulness on pragmatic grounds. Already the humanities are dying. Almost a dozen senior, tenured humanities faculty at Kings College, London were recently fired. Professors in a number of university systems are being required to re-apply for their jobs. In most systems there is a freeze on funding for the humanities. At some, like publically funded universities in Pennsylvania , departments with less than 35 students majoring in the subject (which would include most of the humanities) have to prove their usefulness, and if they can’t, they will not be able to award any majors. Ironically, no doubt, at many of these schools the administrative budget is outrageous compared to the usually already meager humanities budgets. But there are also many cases, like the U-Cali. systems, where the money is simply not there. (All of this and more can be found at Home - The Chronicle of Higher Education.)
Most of this concerns the “secular” world but it’s not like Christians in the U.S. are any better educated, or Christian colleges any better institutions—although they do often support the humanities more than state colleges. The fact the books like The Shack and movements like the Emergent church and pop-Christianity are as popular as they are shows, again, what we already know—that most Christian groups are anti-intellectual and (by choice!) pitifully uneducated, especially in areas relevant to understanding the Bible.
This is a big problem for our churches, and that’s perhaps my main worry. Uneducated people cannot understand the Word and it preached. People who know only what their TVs tell them lack the categories for doing anything in this world except spending money and being pleasured—let alone understanding the full-fledged Christian worldview. People who are not taught to think critically, who are not given ample facts about history, science, literature, and the many (even false) ways other people have tried to understand the world, are the most susceptible to propaganda and exploitation, both of which are extra barriers to understanding the gospel.
I’ve probably told you nothing new. What I’d like to hear, though, is your thoughts on how we as both Christians and, in some cases, teachers (at whatever level, including homeschoolers of course) can do to stop these trends towards anti-intellectualism and pro-unintelligence. On one hand, 1) what ideally would be best? Ideally, how should education from infancy to college be organized and implemented for your family and for the U.S.? But let’s not just think about ideals. 2) What can we (qua-Reformed) do, practically speaking? What can and must we do in our own families and churches, and as teachers the elementary, high school, and college level (I will, for one, be a TA at a state university, in the humanities, so any advice there would be helpful!) to make sure our generation and the upcoming do not continue its plummet into complete stupidity? I appreciate your thoughts.
I probably don’t need to convince anyone here of this, but the state of education in the U.S. (not to mention other nations like the U.K.) is nothing less than horrifying—and that was true without the added effects of the economy. I can’t provide the citation, but I’ve heard it quipped many times that, among post-industrialized nations, the U.S. ranks near the bottom in standardized test scores, while, when asked how they compared to students from other nations, U.S. kids were most likely to think they ranked at the top. At worst, that tells us (what we probably already know) that kids in the U.S. are increasingly unintelligent and overconfident. More troubling than test scores (whatever they’re worth) is the findings of recent studies like the Kaiser Family Foundation study on media use trends in 8-18 year olds, online here: http://www.kff.org/entmedia/upload/8010.pdf. Media use in this age range went from an average of 8:33 a day in 2004 to 10:45 a day in 2009 (that includes overlapping use—the actual hours are something like 7:38). So, on average, kids 8-18 spend 4:29 a day watching TV while only 38 minutes reading.
Combine this with the recent plummet of higher-education's funding and quality. Even without the recession, we all know higher-education in the U.S. has glaring holes. A few years ago I was an English tutor and TA at an average 4-year university. Though it was rather rare, I saw students graduate who were illiterate. More commonly, I saw students graduate who could not write in complete sentences, who would struggle to read young adult fiction, let alone Dickens, the Constitution, or the Bible. But now the most recent trends (that many of us no doubt saw coming for a long time) are to fund only those programs that have quantifiable social and economic benefits. The humanities—if they are to continue to exist—must justify their usefulness on pragmatic grounds. Already the humanities are dying. Almost a dozen senior, tenured humanities faculty at Kings College, London were recently fired. Professors in a number of university systems are being required to re-apply for their jobs. In most systems there is a freeze on funding for the humanities. At some, like publically funded universities in Pennsylvania , departments with less than 35 students majoring in the subject (which would include most of the humanities) have to prove their usefulness, and if they can’t, they will not be able to award any majors. Ironically, no doubt, at many of these schools the administrative budget is outrageous compared to the usually already meager humanities budgets. But there are also many cases, like the U-Cali. systems, where the money is simply not there. (All of this and more can be found at Home - The Chronicle of Higher Education.)
Most of this concerns the “secular” world but it’s not like Christians in the U.S. are any better educated, or Christian colleges any better institutions—although they do often support the humanities more than state colleges. The fact the books like The Shack and movements like the Emergent church and pop-Christianity are as popular as they are shows, again, what we already know—that most Christian groups are anti-intellectual and (by choice!) pitifully uneducated, especially in areas relevant to understanding the Bible.
This is a big problem for our churches, and that’s perhaps my main worry. Uneducated people cannot understand the Word and it preached. People who know only what their TVs tell them lack the categories for doing anything in this world except spending money and being pleasured—let alone understanding the full-fledged Christian worldview. People who are not taught to think critically, who are not given ample facts about history, science, literature, and the many (even false) ways other people have tried to understand the world, are the most susceptible to propaganda and exploitation, both of which are extra barriers to understanding the gospel.
I’ve probably told you nothing new. What I’d like to hear, though, is your thoughts on how we as both Christians and, in some cases, teachers (at whatever level, including homeschoolers of course) can do to stop these trends towards anti-intellectualism and pro-unintelligence. On one hand, 1) what ideally would be best? Ideally, how should education from infancy to college be organized and implemented for your family and for the U.S.? But let’s not just think about ideals. 2) What can we (qua-Reformed) do, practically speaking? What can and must we do in our own families and churches, and as teachers the elementary, high school, and college level (I will, for one, be a TA at a state university, in the humanities, so any advice there would be helpful!) to make sure our generation and the upcoming do not continue its plummet into complete stupidity? I appreciate your thoughts.
