Can you remember a schoolteacher that made a special impact upon or contribution to your life? Did you know this kind of teacher is becoming increasingly rare?
Hi, I’m Rex Rogers and this is episode #37 of Discerning What Is Best, a podcast applying unchanging biblical principles in a rapidly changing world, and a Christian worldview to current issues and everyday life.
Public education today, from kindergarten to graduate school is in serious trouble, and in many examples, moral free-fall.
Once a destination for international students the world over, due to the excellence in teaching, scholarship, and learning to be found there, now public institutions – in general, which is to say most of them – are hothouses of ideological discontent and sources of propaganda rather than truth, something many no longer even believe exists.
Public education today has been co-opted by the Left in ways I’m thinking the average person has no clue. And why would you?
Unless you have children or youth in school now, unless you take the time to investigate—which since the online schooling that occurred during the lockdowns, began to happen—parents, and even more-so those with no connections to education, just don’t know how fast and how far public education has fallen.
Allow me to take a moment to emphasize that I am not, most definitely not, impugning the integrity or values of every teacher or professor or staff person serving in public education. Far from it.
Among those who are standing firm for truth, critical thinking, First Amendment liberty, and morality, I think they are our new “First Responders.” These diligent teachers, professors, and staff members are the ones in positions to help children and youth before they are overwhelmed values contrary to science, history, religion, and common sense.
And not every school has surrendered its educational philosophy to the ideological Left to the extent of other schools. But the exceptions are an endangered species.
Public education from kindergarten to graduate school is now home to:
- equity of results not equality of opportunity,
- LGBTQ orthodoxy and drag queen story hours,
- gender as a social contract,
- sexually explicit curricula in elementary schools,
- climate change propaganda,
- critical race theory promoted by the organization Black Lives Matter, a theory that oddly teaches racism as a means of eliminating racism, then argues endlessly for the absolutized values of diversity, inclusion, and equity, labeling anything not to their liking as white supremacy,
- Woke political correctness and so-called micro aggressions,
- Extensive politicization of sports,
- hostility toward Christianity,
- victim mentality, promoting victim hood,
- casting aside science, reason, history, and biology, and often repress freedom of speech and diverse opinions.
Honestly, it is so bad in many public universities that I find it sad and disconcerting when I can’t get excited at the announcement that a friend’s son or daughter has gained entrance at a certain Public U. Some of the big-name schools are better known for their football programs—a sport I enjoy—than their academic programs, many of which have succumbed to anti-Americanism, promotion of abortion on demand and unfettered sexual expression, the class conflicts of cultural Marxism, and the worship of race.
Liberal education in American education was once an engine of free civilization and economic development. But liberal education—a concept once defined as "a philosophy of education that empowers individuals with broad knowledge and transferable skills, and a stronger sense of values, ethics, and civic engagement ... characterized by challenging encounters with important issues, and more a way of studying than a specific course or field of study” is now fast fading from the educational landscape.
Take this example: critical thinking was once a primary goal of liberal education. But now, in many public educational institutions, “critical thinking” really isn’t—or at least it isn’t what employers mean when they use the term. Organizations want people who can be objective and analytical, using logic and reason to solve problems.
That’s what the term ‘critical thinking’ means to them, and what it has meant to most of us for decades…”
“Today, however, that is not at all what colleges and universities mean—or perhaps I should say, what most professors mean. ‘Critical thinking,’ for them, is a Marxist exercise in ‘critique,’ what Marx himself called ‘the ruthless criticism of all that exists.’ It seeks not to solve problems but to break down, or ‘deconstruct,’ all aspects of society, beginning with but not limited to language.”
So, colleges and universities are teaching students to deconstruct, to tear down, to reject traditional values, to rely on emotion over reason or evidence, to be victims, to believe life and society are unfair though they are entitled, to be in a continual state of anxious anger. Logic, reason, dispassionate observation, hypothesizing, experimentation, problem solving, and a search for truth are all passe, out the window.
Take this second example of the decline of liberal education: debate has given way to “dialogue.” There was a time when evidence, reason, and logic mattered. So genuine debate could take place. “Not so with the new orthodoxy. Here disagreement is an intolerable personal affront. It is construed as a denial of others, of their experience of who they are. It is a blasphemous assault on that most high god, “My Identity.” Truth-as-identity is not appealable beyond the assertion of identity.”
The late Christian philosopher Francis A. Schaeffer pointed out this trend in the 1970s. He said, “’All A is A and all Non-A is Non-A and therefore A cannot be Non-A and Non-A cannot be A.’ This is the concept of thesis and antithesis. The concept that there is an absolute objective linear truth and that thesis and antithesis make a contrast.”
But the philosopher George Wilhelm Friedrich “Hegel showed up and said that thesis and antithesis shouldn't equal contrast, they should equal synthesis.
In other words, there are no absolute truths, there is no "right" thesis, only many ideas that may result in synthesis.”
“The loss of antithesis in American culture led to what Dr. Schaeffer coined the ‘line of despair’ or giving up all hope of achieving a rational unified answer to knowledge and life.”
As Schaeffer saw it, “Thesis is met by antithesis, and instead of one having to be true and the other false, both are reconciled to develop a synthesis. ‘The conclusion is that all possible positions are relativized and leads to the concept that truth is to be sought in synthesis rather than antithesis.’”
So, debate, a search for truth based upon merits of an argument, long one of the building blocks of real education, is now no longer acceptable, only dialogue = endless discussion in search of consensus and some synthesized understanding of life. The problem with this is that it leads nowhere, only to power plays or despair.
Theologian Erwin Lutzer described the problem this way: “If we think we can fight against deceived culture by winning the war of ideas, we are mistaken. The best ideas do not win very often in a culture obsessed with empty utopian promises…The America we thought we knew is no more.”
This is the sad state of public education. It exists to educate but no longer remembers how, or why.
Again, to quote Lutzer: “In a time of universal deception, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.”
This is where the First Responders come in—teachers, professors, staff member, and yes, parents who have the courage of their convictions, who will stand for truth against ideological and intentional error. What’s at stake are the hearts and minds of our children and youth. What’s at stake is the soul of this country and the potential of its future.
I admire and salute public education First Responders who are standing in the face of a tsunami of philosophies intended to tear down rather than build up. Pray for and support these First Responders—public educators and staff members who know truth and still seek to make it known. They are standing in the gap for the future of our children and youth.
Well, we’ll see you again soon. This podcast is about Discerning What Is Best. If you find this thought-provoking and helpful, follow us on your favorite podcast platform. Download an episode for your friends. For more Christian commentary, check my website, r-e-x-m as in Martin, that’s rexmrogers.com.
And remember, it is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm.
© Rex M. Rogers – All Rights Reserved, 2022
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