by Ronald H. Nash
Americans love myths. By “myth” I do not mean the old-fashioned myths that my generation read in grade school. Many Americans would find reading at that fifth-grade level too difficult these days. What I mean by “myth” is what older generations used to call a fiction. A less polite but more accurate word would be lie.
One of the more influential myths presently affecting the American family, especially the Christian family, is the myth of a value-free education. A value-free education is described as one in which children are supposed to be free from any coerced exposure to the values of anyone. This is the public face behind which the proponents of an allegedly value-free education hide. Behind this attractively packaged public stance, one finds that the real, hidden agenda is something quite different. Under the guise of offering children a value-free education, various groups of social misfits and radicals are successfully eliminating one package of values from the educational arena. They are making sure that no child in the public schools of this country acquires a fair and accurate understanding of the values and teachings of the Christian worldview.
One way the defenders of value-free education frame their argument is this: They argue that because America ceased to be a homogeneous society a long time ago, the watchword today must be pluralism. In the new setting of today, they insist, we can no longer stress the values and beliefs of some, while ignoring the values of all. And so, they say, we’ll avoid all the problems inherent in this situation by simply agreeing to ignore all values. The specious argument deceives Americans into thinking it is the only way to achieve fairness in our schools.
It is important that Christians recognize what is wrong with this line of reasoning. For one thing, it is a total rejection of the older view that schools have a vital role to play in forming character and helping children achieve moral literacy. It is nothing short of madness that we have reached the point in our society that some people believe that public schools are somehow prohibited from including moral literacy among their objectives. As Russell Kirk states, “the great end of education is ethical. In the college, as at all other levels of the educational process, the student comes to apprehend the differences between good and evil. It is this humane tradition and discipline which makes us true human persons and sustains a decent civil social order.”
It goes without saying that helping students attain moral literacy can involve us in some complex issues. But as William Bennett said when he was still U.S. Secretary of Education, “You have to walk before you can run, and you ought to be able to run straight before you are asked to run an obstacle course or a mine field. So the moral basics should be taught in school, first. The tough issues can … be taken up later.” What America’s schools have stopped doing in recent years is teach our children how to walk. This view of education is not only inconsistent with moral common sense; it is also a repudiation of our heritage and good education.
There is no need to beat around the bush. The values that the value-free groupies want to eliminate from education these days are values that are central to the Christian worldview. It just so happens that this same worldview has some important things to say about the possibility of value-free education. The Christian worldview denies that such a thing is possible. Here’s why.
Religious faith is not just one isolated compartment of a person’s life—a compartment that we can take or leave as we wish. It is rather a dimension of life that colors or influences everything we do and believe. John Calvin taught that all human beings are “incurably religious.” Religion is an inescapable given in life. Recent theologians who have defined religion as a matter of “ultimate concern” are on the right track. What they mean is that every person has something that concerns him ultimately, and whatever it is, that object of ultimate concern is that person’s god, be it sex, money, power or (the true God) Yahweh. And whatever a person’s ultimate concern may be, it will have an enormous influence on everything else the person does or believes.
What this boils down to is simply this: No man is religiously neutral. Whether the person in question is an atheistic philosopher offering arguments against the existence of God, or a psychologist attributing belief in God to some cognitive malfunction, or an aclu lawyer attempting another tactic to remove religion from the public square, no human is religiously neutral. The world is not composed of religious and nonreligious people. It is composed rather of religious people who have differing ultimate concerns, different gods, and who respond to the living God in different ways. Each human life manifests different ways of expressing our allegiances and our answers to the ultimate questions of life.
The human activities we group under the heading of education cannot help but reflect the influence of our ultimate or religious concerns. It is absurd, then, to think that the choice in public education is between sacred and secular. Whatever choices the state makes under the current modes of thinking will only establish one person’s set of ultimate concerns at the expense of others. An education that pretends to be religiously neutral is a fraud.
Any putative education that strips the religious element out of its subject matter is a travesty, a perversion of the word education. When religion is removed from history, what is left is a distortion of the historical record. And yet this is precisely what most textbook publishers have done in an effort to enhance their sales. Whenever this kind of censorship is practiced, education ceases to be education and becomes something else, something dark, sinister, incomplete, and subhuman. And the textbook committees and the publishers who participate in this act of censorship must be viewed as traitors to their culture. And so religion and religious values can never be eliminated from education. What will always happen is that someone’s religion (ultimate commitments) will be taught or implied.
When the Christian encounters people who argue that education should be free of any religious content, he should recognize that this is not a religiously neutral claim. Rather, it is an assertion that reflects the religious commitments of the person making it. Education is an activity which is at its roots religious, since like all meaningful human activities, it reflects the ultimate commitments of the person engaged in the activity.
Under the phony canopy of what is deceptively described as value-free education, public school students are being exposed to—are being indoctrinated in—all kinds of value-charged ideas. The only thing we can know for certain is that only one set of values is deemed out of bounds in this process, and that is the values of the Christian world-view. The values of the New Age Movement are in, as are such things as witchcraft, homosexuality, radical feminism, Marxism, and secular humanism. But let no one dare say a kind word about the sovereign God who made heaven and earth; let no one suggest that the ethics of the Decalogue or the New Testament have a legitimate place in the curriculum.
Can anything be done to counter this madness? My new book, The Closing of the American Heart: What’s Really Wrong with America’s Schools, examines a number of things Christians should be doing. I will limit my remaining comments to two of them. First, Christians should not give up on the public schools. I believe we would all be surprised at how much could be accomplished if we would organize ourselves and then team up with traditionally minded, culturally conservative Roman Catholic and Jewish parents. Evangelical Christians are hardly the only group who have reason to oppose what is going on in public education.
Second, all traditionally minded, culturally conservative families should join in a crusade to change the way public education in America is funded. In The Closing of the American Heart, I argue that the only viable solution to the inferior quality of American schools is to increase family choice through a system of educational vouchers. American families ought to have the freedom to send their children to any school they wish without the additional financial burden of private school tuition. Expanding educational choice to private religious schools would also solve the problem of whose values will be taught our children. Parents should be free to choose schools that will represent fairly their values, instead of the values of the humanists who presently pull the strings.
A value-free education is a myth, a lie. Those who defend this theory are either hypocrites or unwitting allies of the hypocrites. It is time that American families and churches expose this lie, challenge the monopoly that presently controls public education, and support the cause for enhanced educational choice. ■
Ronald Nash, professor of theology and philosophy at Reformed Theological Seminary in Orlando, FL, will be a featured speaker at Ligonier’s Orlando Conference.
Ministry in The Ivory Tower
Alan Cochet
Each semester as I watch the students return to Ole Miss filled with dreams and aspirations, bursting with energy and enthusiasm, I wonder, How can we impact these young men and women for the triune God? It is a vital question which desperately needs an answer. It is not, however, my question alone. It is one which echoes from the hallowed halls of every university to the sacred sanctuaries of every evangelical church. How can we impact university students for the Son of Man?
Real change in the life of the student begins in the home with fathers and mothers committed to Christ, modeling the Christian life, teaching the things of God. Again and again when I meet collegians whose faith is vibrant, who are grappling with the Scriptures, thinking theologically and seeking to live out their faith, I discover they have been reared in Christian homes. Ronald Nash emphasizes this in his book The Closing of the American Heart when quoting J. Gresham Machen, “The most important Christian educational institution is not the pulpit or the school, important as they are; but it is the Christian family.” Faith is forged in the home and tested on the campus.
A second crucial factor is the local church, churches where Christ is exalted and His Word proclaimed. Churches must welcome, love, nurture, and pray for the young in their flock. I can never forget the church and the Christian families who loved me and nurtured me throughout my university days. Their ministry changed my life and continues to influence me today. In the mid-sixties a young minister at College Hill Presbyterian Church in Oxford, Mississippi, instilled a vision in his congregation to minister to the university. Twenty-five years later that congregation is still ministering to undergraduates. What a need there is today for local churches to “seize the day.”
A third key factor is campus ministry. This ministry extends the arm of the local church directly onto the campus. It is a cutting edge ministry, made visceral and dynamic by the presence and participation of campus ministers in the students’ lives. These leaders focus their ministry on evangelism and discipleship, but, in fact, much of their time is spent in simply loving the students. They listen, encourage, counsel, and care, modeling the ministry of Christ. During seminary my classes were filled with peers whose lives had been changed by campus ministry. The pastor of a large metropolitan church recently told me that nearly two hundred of his members were probably there as a direct result of campus ministry. It is imperative that we develop and support campus ministry.
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The fourth and final factor is the ministry of Christian faculty and staff. These are the men and women in the trenches, the soldiers on the front line in the battle for the minds and hearts of young scholars. The classroom is the arena where the Christian faith clashes head-on with modern secular thinking. The Christian faculty is in a rare position to capture the heart and mind for Christ. They are doing the research, teaching the courses, and designing the curriculum. They are influencing the students daily in the classroom, living out the Christian world-and lifeview.
Last year the students of one professor I know placed first, second, and third in a national competition. The previous year another group had accomplished the same. This professor continually challenges and encourages his pupils to expand their thinking and to excel in their field. Perhaps more significantly, he is modeling for them what it means to be a scholar and a man of God. I am in a prayer group with another professor, a man internationally recognized as a scholar in his field. He is very busy, constantly traveling, writing, and speaking, yet he is deeply concerned for his students, praying consistently and earnestly on their behalf. What could be more powerful than a Christian faculty and staff with a passion for their field and a burden for their students?
There can be no doubt, if we are going to impact students’ lives today, it must happen in the home, in the church, on the campus, and in the classroom. Perhaps the question shouldn’t be can we effectively minister to students—but will we? ■
Alan Cochet is pastor of College Hill Presbyterian Church in Oxford, MS, and a chaplain in the U.S. Navy Reserves.