By Brian Tonnell
Originally published as a Classical Conversations blog.
After speaking at a Practicum in Bartlesville, Oklahoma, I was listening to the radio on my way back to the hotel. American Family Radio was airing a program called “Crane Durham’s Nothing But Truth.” On this program, the speaker discussed the importance of philosophy, describing worldview as “the water in which we swim.”
If true, would we not expect to be engulfed in that water? To become a fish comfortable swimming in that water? Would not this philosophical ocean affect our children as well? And if those murky waters repulse us, what can we do about it?
Swimming in a Sea of Worldview
Indeed, we all swim in a philosophical ocean.
Our culture’s worldview surrounds us like water surrounds a fish. In the car, secular radio bombards us with the philosophies of Macklemore, Bruno Mars, Pink, Miley Cyrus, and Lady Gaga (look up their lyrics and you will instantly understand).
In our homes, the barrage continues on television. It is nearly impossible to watch more than five minutes without encountering a blatant disregard for Biblical principles. In the grocery store, magazine covers promote our culture’s prevailing philosophy of humanism, naturalism, existentialism, and so on. Video games, advertising, and even billboards round out the philosophical waters of our culture.
However, there is one more philosophical aquarium that so many children swim—the classroom.
The Philosophy of Public Education
As homeschoolers, we spend much effort decrying public education by pointing to statistics that indicate a broken system, but all we are really doing is pointing to the symptoms.
Perhaps a better understanding of the philosophy underlying public education will help us see the root cause of its brokenness. What kind of water fills the public education aquarium?
In order to understand the problems of our modern education system, we must look to the philosophy which undergirds it. To do so, we must go back in time to the late 1800s.
G. Stanley Hall: The Voice for Child-Centered Education
G. Stanley Hall had an overwhelming impact on our modern educational philosophy.
Hall was a psychologist, educator, and philosopher who founded and served as the first president of the American Psychological Association. He believed that educating children based on a core of required subjects was detrimental to their development.
Largely influenced by Darwin’s evolution theory and by Freud’s ideas on the human psyche, Hall theorized that emphasizing intellectual attainment was disadvantageous and that the child’s needs should be placed at the center of the educational system.
As a result, “Hall’s findings ushered in a new era of pedocentric schooling in which schools adapted to the needs of children.” In his own words, he believed that childhood “comes fresh from the hands of God” and that children were “not corrupt.”
While his intentions may have been pure, his theories had a marked influence on another pioneer of American education, John Dewey.
John Dewey: The Father of Progressive Education
During the late 1800s and early 1900s, philosopher John Dewey made his mark on history and is still considered the Father of Progressive Education. According to PBS.org, Dewey “was the most significant educational thinker of his era and, many would argue, of the 20th century.”
Dewey’s worldview was humanistic, which was clearly evident in his philosophy of education. In 1933, Dewey joined thirty-three prominent religious, educational, and philosophical leaders in signing the original Humanist Manifesto.
Now, in order to understand his philosophy, let’s take a brief look at the Humanist Manifesto.
The Humanist Manifesto
The stated purpose of the Humanist Manifesto was to establish a new religion—one that places man at the center of the universe. The document states, “While this age does owe a vast debt to the traditional religions, it is nonetheless obvious that any religion that can hope to be a synthesizing and dynamic force for today must be shaped for the needs of this age. To establish such a religion is a major necessity of the present.”
The first two core beliefs of this new religion strongly assert that evolution is fact and all things are self-existing rather than created.
The fifth core belief is that “modern science makes unacceptable any supernatural or cosmic guarantees of human values.” This same core belief insists that human needs will determine the value of reality.
In other words, the concepts of right and wrong are determined by “intelligent inquiry.”
The ninth core belief states that converts to the Humanist religion will cooperate to “promote social well-being,” which, according to the eleventh and thirteenth core beliefs, will be carried out by institutions such as education and government.
Interestingly, and perhaps not incidentally, this belief mirrors that of another religious movement of the time called the “Social Gospel.” Ask your local Challenge III student for more information about this topic.
The fourteenth core belief establishes socialism as the superior economic framework and hints at communism as the premier governmental framework.
Finally, in the last paragraph, “Though we consider the religious forms and ideas of our fathers no longer adequate, the quest for the good life is still the central task for mankind. Man is at last becoming aware that he alone is responsible for the realization of the world of his dreams, that he has within himself the power for its achievement.”
Interestingly, this last idea is stated much more succinctly in the second iteration of the Humanist Manifesto (1973): “No deity will save us; we must save ourselves.”
John Dewey’s Humanist Philosophy
So, if this was the philosophical water in which John Dewey swam, what sort of educational philosophy did the Father of Progressive Education espouse?
Dewey believed that education was “a regulation of the process of coming to share in the social consciousness.” Further, he believed “the only sure method of social reconstruction” was “the adjustment of individual activity on the basis of this social consciousness.”
His goal was to reconstruct society via the education system. He believed that the teacher’s job was “to select the influences which shall affect the child and to assist him in properly responding to these influences.” He believed that the “right character” of children should be formed by “the influence of a certain form of institutional or community life upon the individual and that the social organism through the school, as its organ, may determine ethical results.”
The Humanist’s Goal: Shaping Society Through Education
In a nutshell, he believed that society must be shaped via the school system, that the character of future generations should be molded by the governmental institution, and that the idea of right and wrong should be determined by rigorous inquiry.
Based on his godless, humanist philosophy, the waters of his educational philosophy fell squarely within the ocean of his humanist religion.
The Corrosive Effects of Humanism on Students
So what? If we buy into the idea that Hall and Dewey’s philosophical waters overwhelmingly affected our modern educational system, what results might we expect? Might we expect a generation (or more) of students to grow up sharing this philosophy? That seems reasonable.
Abraham Lincoln once said that “the philosophy of the school room in one generation will be the philosophy of government in the next.” If his statement is accurate, might we expect to see a government that swims in the humanistic philosophical waters?
To say that our government radiates humanism is to speak an obvious truth.
To say the same about the children of our culture is, perhaps, not quite as obvious.
After all, especially in the church, we try to flood our children with a philosophy very different from that of the world, a philosophy opposed to humanism. We try to surround our kids in the philosophical water of a biblical worldview.
However, as a good friend of mine very shrewdly stated, at some point, every one of our children will ask, “Who is lying to me?”
The Nehemiah Institute Study: Worldview Erosion over Time
The Nehemiah Institute asked the same question I ask now: How are our school children affected by swimming in the waters of our culture’s philosophy? They began tracking the worldview of high school students in 1988, and have administered PEERS tests that assess students’ worldview in politics, education, economics, religion, and social issues.
The results are telling.
In 1988, public school students from Christian homes overwhelmingly fell into the “Moderate Christian” worldview—in their opinion, God was relevant to religion, but to nothing else.
By 2007, the same demographic (public school students from Christian homes) overwhelmingly fell into the “Secular Humanism” category (and on the cusp of socialism). Even private school kids from Christian homes showed a striking trend to assimilate into their surrounding waters. They overwhelmingly fell into the “Moderate Christian” worldview in 1988, but by 2007, they were comfortably swimming in the waters of secular humanism.” Only in the very small number of private, Christian schools that actively taught a biblical worldview did the students’ philosophy inch away from secular humanism and toward biblical theism.
Swimming Against the Current
The point is: yes, the philosophy of our culture is the water in which we swim, and regardless of the type of fish you are, if you swim in nothing else, you will eventually be assimilated into that water.
Does this mean that all non homeschooling teachers are humanists and socialists? Of course not.
Many of my own family members and good friends have been public or private school teachers. They love the Lord and reject the godless philosophy of our culture.
However, regardless of the type of fish they are, they are forced to swim in the educational philosophical aquarium of our culture. Are we to then jump out of the ocean and migrate to a new water source in which to thrive?
How to Survive the Putrid Waters
Alas, no. That would defeat God’s purpose for His people. In the seventeenth chapter of John, Jesus prays that God will not remove us from the ocean, but that we would be protected from it while fulfilling God’s mandate to be light and salt to the world.
Even so, we are to be foreigners in this world, resisting the temptation to drink from or thrive in its putrid waters. Colossians 2:8 warns us to avoid being captivated by the hollow and deceptive philosophies of the world. And so, we must remain, but we must provide ourselves and our children a cove of fresh, biblical water for respite, training, discipling, mentoring, reviving, strengthening, and resting. The church may seem a good place to provide this, but in reality the church is looking more and more like the world every day.
You Are the Key to Resisting the Secular Humanism of Progressive Education
This task falls squarely on you and me, the parents of our future.
We need to set up our children for success by giving them safe waters in which to swim.
For me, Classical Conversations® is a critical, key ingredient to this task for my middle and high school children. We need to control the influences that bombard our children, whether through music, media, entertainment, or education. We need to train them how to respond to the philosophical waters in which they will eventually be forced to swim.
Sounds a lot like John Dewey’s philosophy. So, what separates this idea from his ideas?
John Dewey’s “savior” of the next generation was man himself through the influence of the school, the state, and the godless religion of humanism. But the real Savior of the next generation is unknown to either the school or the state.
It’s not the responsibility of the state to train our children in the way that they should go. Rather, this responsibility lies solely with you and me.
We must train and educate our children to know God and to make Him known; to love Him with their hearts, souls, and minds.
We must train them to be salt and light so that when they are eventually forced to swim in the rancid waters of our culture’s philosophy, they will be able to impact the culture and make a difference for eternity.
Read other articles on this subject here.
