The Danger of Education Is the Illusion of Education

As Catholics, all of us want what is best for our fellow man. We want everyone to be able to read and understand how the world works. We want people to have an educational foundation that allows them to live and contribute to society while providing for themselves and their families.

This is why Western countries provide free education for students up to the twelfth grade.  In some countries, free education continues for college and trade schools. However, are we really getting what we think we are?

What Is Education?

Just what is meant by education? Learned people have defined education in various ways. But at its core it is basically preparing children for adulthood. In the past, schools taught reading, writing, mathematics, and critical thinking. Many teachers embedded biblical thinking into reading and writing up through the early 1900s.

The first text book written and printed in the United States, in 1688, was the “New England Primer.”  It’s been called “the little Bible of New England.” Over 450 editions of the Primer were printed and used for first year students throughout the United States well into the 1800s.  By the 1900s, however, moralism began replacing the Bible and God in textbooks, as the paper “A Brief History of Textbooks” points out.

Mind you, the “New England Primer” was written when progression in schooling was based on the individual student’s knowledge rather than age.  A first-year student might have been five years old. In other cases, a first-year student may have been 15. Some students might progress from the first year to the second year in a few months. For others, however, it might have taken more than a year.

Education, prior to free schooling, actually focused on the student learning as opposed to meeting a schedule. Since schooling was not free, students were invested in the process and would have been ashamed to go home wasting their family’s treasure.

An Experiment

This past year, I used the Primer as part of an experiment in home schooling a sixth grader.  This primer for first-year students made me feel somewhat dense. I did not understand a number of the vocabulary words used in the first section.

Be that as it may, I found the New England Primer very uplifting in many ways.  It is Biblically based and focuses on building character in children. It even includes prayers such as the Apostles Creed (see page 22).

Modern Educational Model

Does modern education prepare students for adult life? In some ways it does. However, in many ways it does not.

The Prussian model of education replaced the one-room schoolhouse starting around 1850. It is very efficient, at least for the administrators.

One of my colleagues commented to me that modern education combines the worst elements of a manufacturing plant and a prison.  Today’s schooling focuses more on the schedule and progression than it does on actually learning.

Because education is free it is often taken for granted. In many cases, students are moved onto the next grade when they should be held back, which erodes the credibility of educational excellence. Why put forth your best effort when everyone moves on anyways?

All students in a class are expected to learn the same thing at the same time regardless of an individual’s capabilities (so much for diversity). The unfortunate result is the speed of a class is often the pace of the weakest students leaving most of the class bored.

Students’ strengths are also often discounted.  I have personally witnessed students with excellent problem solving and mechanical skills described as “low watt bulbs” because they did not fit the mold of an elitist college prep program.  However, these students possess the skills needed for replenishing the depleted skilled trades.  They are important elements of our society.

When looking at a day in a school, how much time is really spent learning? Between attendance, breaks, the teacher getting kids to calm down and listen, lunch, collecting papers, changing classrooms, and clean up at the end of the day, how much time is actually spent learning?

Most people believe students are in classes for 6 hours or more. But this is just one illusion in modern education.

Subjects May Not Be What You Think

Modern education includes much more than just reading, writing, and arithmetic. Classes are also given in social studies, science, and health just to name a few.

However, what does Health class mean for a sixth grader? Using twentieth century thinking, I would expect this class to combine nutrition and anatomy. Maybe some first aid and home safety as well.

Of course, that is twentieth century thinking. Modern educational thinking includes human sexuality, and not from a Catholic perspective.

The District of Columbia based Advocates for Youth are successfully pushing their National Sex Education Standards.  These standards include teaching the concept of sexual consent to second graders and teaching newly invented sexual orientation definitions beginning in the third grade.

In many cases, students graduate from high school with no inkling how to prepare a home budget, save for retirement, or plan a balanced healthy weekly menu for themselves or a family, but they know about anal sex.

Part of the illusion in modern education is a bait and switch. Without a clear understanding of what is being taught, a subject may include concepts very different from what one expects.

Missing Elements of the Curriculum

Since the New England Primer was retired, key parts of education have slowly gone missing. The topics of character, spirituality, critical thinking, self-reliance, manners, self-discipline, and personnel responsibility appear to have been thrown out on the ash heap of history.

These topics were formerly embedded in the curriculum. Creative writing replaced classical composition. Excellent writing is no longer savored.

Reading class used to include reading about people of great character. Take President Washington, for example. His story provides a strong example of all the attributes mentioned. Was he a sinner? Yes, of course he was, just like all of us.

Unfortunately, the perspective on this president’s biography has changed. Textbook authors now place emphasis on his participation in slavery while ignoring his other attributes.

Many other previous examples of character throughout history are being dismissed for the same reason. Every culture on every continent practiced slavery. My ancestors were regularly enslaved. Most likely yours were as well. I find slavery to be just an excuse to discredit any positive qualities in our country’s history.

Modern Education’s Impact of Catholic Formation

The impact of the secular world’s education model overshadows even Catholic education. Let me put this into perspective.

Parishes typically offer Faith Formation or CCD programs for children through their confirmation. Parishes hold classes on Sundays (before or after mass) for about one hour, or in the evenings during the week, for 25 weeks. This means students get more secular indoctrination in government schools in one week than faith formation in a full year. Catholic youth do not have chance in this climate.

Catholic Schools, however, offer daily theology classes.  This works out to about 144 hours of religion classes per year. This sounds much better than 25 hours. However, Catholic schools seem to not be faring much better.

Jason Evert (cofounder of Chastity Project) often includes in his talks a short anecdote about Catholic Schools’ marginalization by the secular world. He started a recent talk by reciting the initial lines from less than moral pop songs. Most of the students in the audience joined him singing the lyrics. When he asked who sang each song, the students, of course, knew the artist.

He then asked who said, “For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife and the two shall become one flesh. So they are no longer two but one flesh.” None of the students could attribute this quote to Jesus in the Gospel of Mark (10:7-8).

When considering how many hours are spent staring at computer screens, it is difficult to combat the secular world. Moreover, social media platforms tune algorithms to keep one watching.

Our Command to Home School

The problem we face teaching our Faith in this modern world is not new. This has been a struggle throughout the centuries well before Christ joined us on Earth. Jewish parents struggled with the same culture war against pagan cultures just as the early Church did.

God commanded the Hebrews in Deuteronomy 6:7 to share His words and to “Keep repeating them to your children. Recite them when you are at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you get up.”

Our theological education is not something limited to Sunday or to be subcontracted to the lowest bidder. This is a life-long effort, commanded by God.  It is one which must be undertaken to fight and resist the increasing depravity of the secular world.

This subject should not just be part of our daily lives, but our family’s daily lives. This subject is one all of us must home school.