Learnings in America

Not too long ago I saw a political ad from someone whose name will not be mentioned here. That's not because I don't want to discredit him or her. It's because I honestly don't remember who it was or what position he or she was running for. All I know is that this person was running for a Washington position of some kind (I think). Apparently identity wasn't very important to me at the time, because I don't even remember what his or her gender or political affiliation were.

What I do remember, and what I'll be talking about in this post, is one promise relating to education in the future. This person promised to ensure that education would emphasize science, mathematics, and technology because that's the way of the future.

Now, I can agree with that much. I do believe that our children will need knowledge of science, mathematics, and technology because technology in particular will only increase in the future, barring some catastrophe that destroys it all and sends us back into Biblical times. However, I would agree with it more if I believed it wouldn't result in other things being less emphasized - or worse, excluded altogether - from our children's education.

I'm talking in particular about language, writing, and logic. These are the classes that teach people how to comprehend, how to think, and how to communicate.

What am I doing right now? I'm writing about an issue I believe in. I'm definitely not perfect at it, but still. Without the English classes I took in high school and college, I wouldn't be able to. If my parents and grandparents hadn't taught me how to read, I wouldn't be typing this up right now. And without logic and reason, how can we truly know and understand anything?

Sadly though, these are things that already seem to be getting phased out in education, at least in my opinion. According to this data, 14% of American adults (that's 32 million) can't read. 19% of high school graduates can't read either. These are students coming out of an institution claiming to teach our children what they need to know to go out into the world. Apparently they're not actually doing their jobs.

Then there is college. Colleges used to be about getting an education. Colleges today still claim to teach people how to think. Unfortunately, they leave out the part where they actually teach people how to think like them. Most of them are nothing more than indoctrination schools and job training nowadays (job training isn't so bad though).

Then there is grad school. So many people are in grad school that shouldn't be. I read an article earlier this year written by a guy named Ed Dante. He's a writer who many students - college and grad school students - have paid to write their papers for them. He quoted some correspondence between him and a grad school business student in this article: "You did me business ethics propsal for me I need propsal got approved pls can you will write me paper?" "where u are can you get my messages? Please I pay a lot and dont have ao to faile I strated to get very worry." "thanx so much for uhelp ican going to graduate to now". With golden quotes like those coming from graduate school students, it's no wonder our society is heading down the can.

But are reading and writing skills really that important? They have been in virtually every job I've ever had, and those jobs had nothing to do with essays. From reading and comprehending instructions in e-mail to knowing how to find information and connections buried in paperwork and even acting as a scribe for a man who couldn't type due to a disability, I've had to know how to read, understand, comprehend, and write to survive and not get fired.

Also, and this is especially true for you Christians who read my blog, how can we expect our children to be able to comprehend their Bibles, to truly know Jesus, without the ability to read? Of course they learn from us, but eventually they'll be out on their own. We can teach them for about twenty years, but the remaining sixty or so they'll be out in the world, making their own choices. Without an ability to read the Bible, how can they discern truth from lies? What's preventing them from falling into deep and dark heresy, or some place that claims to be, but is not actually, a church?

In fact (and I'm back to including non-Christian folk in the discussion), without an ability to read, think, and comprehend truth, how can we expect the next generation to be any better than us? It's this blogger's opinion that the general inability to think in our society is at least part of the cause of most of the problems we face in society today. Rather than engage in rational discussion, people just angrily yell at one another, trying to be louder than the other guy. How can anything get done in a lasting way with that "method"?

So, yes, I agree that we need to teach our children science, math, and technology because that is the way of the future. We are surrounded by the kind of technology that Leonardo da Vinci (who was also an engineer as well as a painter and pretty much everything else that everyone else has ever been) could have only dreamed of. However, we also need to teach our children how to read and how to think as well rather than lessen or eliminate those essential abilities. We cannot expect the next generation to be any better than ours unless they can think, reason, and understand truth. So much of our culture is enveloped in ideas that make no logical sense whatsoever (i.e. relativism, the idea that truth can be true for one person but false for another at the same time) because people don't think them through. That lack of thinking can only lead to worse things in the future.