Barbara Benfield Blog

In order for our education system to be reformed in the United States it is going to need a complete overhaul. Just like restoring a classical car, bringing it back to its original beauty, we must bring our schools back to classical Christian education. Classical Christian Education can be defined as doing school in the Western Christian Paideia (WCP), which is where the teachers, students and their families, communities, and the church participate in helping the child learn a way of life, not just teach them facts to pass a test. The way to reform public education is to return to the foundations of learning, beginning with God’s word, bringing prayer back into public schools, and teaching everything from a biblical worldview. We must first look at the magnitude of the problem to understand the necessity for a large and robust solution.  

The problem started a century ago. In 1852-1918, Horace Mann, a patient progressive started public (government) schools. His plan was to slowly change the culture from a Christian way of life to creating machines for the workforce.[1] In response to this, C.S. Lewis aptly said, “You see at once that education is essentially for freemen and vocational training for slaves … If education is beaten by training, civilization dies.”[2]  We will call this change in direction the American Progressive Paideia (APP). This shift from the WCP to the APP brought about another huge tragedy to hit the public education, which was in 1962-63 when the government removed God and prayer from public schools.

            The first problem we have with public education is the removal of God, prayer, and a biblical foundation. In June 1962, in the case of Engel versus Vitale, prayer was removed from public schools because it was believed to be unconstitutional. It was the Regents’ prayer that was being challenged. It stated, “Almighty God, we acknowledge our dependence upon Thee and we beg Thy blessings upon us, our parents, our teachers, and our country.”[3] David Barton stated, “The Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) plummeted, after having been stable for decades”[4] following the removal of prayer from schools.

            With this cultural shift, our schools have become a place of indoctrination rather than education. In his book, that was written together with David Goodwin, Founder of Association of Classical Education, Pete Hegseth illustrates that we have given the education of our children over to Cultural Marxism (Cultural Marxist Paideia-CMP), which teaches our children to hate our country, God, and all who stand for biblical principles. In this, our schools have become a place to gain skills to get a job, rather than learning divine virtue, knowledge, and a Christian way of life. In Douglas Wilson’s, Recovering the Lost Tools of Learning, he quotes Dorothy Sayers, “…although we often succeed in teaching our students subjects, we fail lamentably on the whole in teaching them how to think … they learn everything except the art of learning.”[5]

            The progressive paideia asks one question repeatedly, “What can the state do to fix the problem?” Under the Western Christian Paideia (WCP), people’s problems were viewed in the context of the Bible, “What sin caused the problem?” As has been generally described, Paideia is a way of life that is passed on to the next generation. Paideia can be secular or Christian. The first response of the American Progressive Paideia (APP) is to look for “systemic” problems, not sins, that can be addressed by the state. The state becomes the temple rather than the church. We must transition from the current system of systemic solution to the sin solution.[6]

            The solution is to return to our Lord Jesus Christ, the authority of God’s Word which is the source of all wisdom (Col 2:3) and provide an atmosphere of learning. An education that shapes a child’s mind, but fails to shape his or her character, fails to instill godly virtue, fails to instill biblical wisdom, is in fact, an education that has failed. And not only is it a failed education but a dangerous one. Our classrooms must return to a place of learning. Sayers suggested that we return to an older educational method – the Trivium of the Middle Ages. This Trivium consisted of three parts: grammar, dialectic, and rhetoric. This three-part program prepared the students for the Quadrivium – the study of various subjects. The Trivium equipped students with the tools of learning in order to undertake the discipline and specialization of the Quadrivium.[7]

            This introduces us to Classical Christian Schools where the goal is “in all its levels, programs, and teaching seeks to … teach all subjects as parts of an integrated whole with Scripture at the center (2 Tim 3:16-17; Col 1:15-20). It must be Christ-centered. This is not taking the “baptized secularism of government schools, sprinkle it with prayer and a Bible class, and claim the result is somehow Christian. Secular education places man at the center of all things, while Christian education places the God/Man [Jesus Christ] at the center.”[8]

            In Battle for the American Mind, Hegseth and Goodwin say, “We need to train our children to apply reason to find Truth, sourced in God, not themselves … and to reject indoctrination.”[9] Jesus said, “The truth shall set you free” (John 8:32). This begs the question, “What does it set us free from?” The answer is, “anything that is false.” An example of this is when the FBI looks for counterfeit money, they study the real thing, not the fake. In order to discover truth, we must teach our children to start from Truth, and then exercise “their minds to revere divine order lest they succumb to anarchy.”[10]      The principle of the Christian paideia is found in Deuteronomy six, “that we shall teach our children diligently to love the Lord God with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength.” This is done through classical Christian schools beginning in the early years, creating a solid foundation (Luke 6:46-49).

            In conclusion, by taking the education system out of the hands of the federal government and putting it back into the hands of individual families, churches, and communities, we can get back to the system of education that began in this nation, which puts God first and teaches the way of life (paideia) that glorifies our Maker and Redeemer. An approach to reforming education is to turn away from progressive ideologies, and turn back to God, prayer, and biblical principles. Learning is a gift from God. If we will teach our children to meet their Creator, then their education, careers, and way of life will follow (Prov 3:13-18).

Bibliography

Barton, David. America’s Godly Heritage. Aledo, TX: WallBuilder Press, 2013.

Hegseth, Pete. Battle for the American Mind: Uprooting a Century of Miseducation. New York, NY: Broadside Books, 2022.

Lewis, C.S. Rehabilitation and Other Essays, “Our English Syllabus,” Oxford University Press (1939).

The New King James Bible. Thomas Nelson Inc, 1979.

RPS Submitter, San Diego, and Steven Douglas Smith. “Why School Prayer Matters.” SSRN Electronic Journal, 2020. https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3581192.

Wilson, Douglas. Recovering the Lost Tools of Learning: An Approach to Distinctively Christian Education. Moscow, ID: Canon Press, 2022.

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[1] Pete Hegseth and David Goodwin, Battle for the American Mind: Uprooting a Century of Miseducation (New York, NY: Broadside Books, 2022), 70.

[2] C.S. Lewis, Rehabilitation and Other Essays, “Our English Syllabus,” Oxford University Press (1939).

[3] San Diego RPS Submitter and Steven Douglas Smith, “Why School Prayer Matters,” SSRN Electronic Journal, 2020, https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3581192.

[4] David Barton, America’s Godly Heritage (Aledo, TX: WallBuilder Press, 2013). Kindle.

[5] Douglas Wilson, Recovering the Lost Tools of Learning: An Approach to Distinctively Christian Education (Moscow, ID: Canon Press, 2022), 103.

[6] Hegseth and Goodwin, Battle for the American Mind, 98.

[7] Hegseth and Goodwin, Battle for the American Mind, 103-104.

[8] Ibid, 111-112.

[9] Ibid, 81.

[10] Hegseth and Goodwin, Battle for the American Mind, 81.