One of the major problems our country faces is poor education. Parents blame teachers, teachers blame students and parents, students don’t seem to care, and everyone blames a lack of funding (though we spend more money on education than any other country).

The reason the blame game has been so prevalent is that we are selfish, and much of our political selfishness comes from a false sense of entitlement, of believing we “deserve” things. Here I focus primarily on parents and students. Parents rightly want the best for their children, but a sense of entitlement makes them think their kids are owed a good education.

It’s not that children don’t like to learn (about things that interest them, at least). It’s that education is something they feel free to take for granted. It’s the same kind of problem we’ve discovered with the welfare system and to which the Bible offered a solution when it told the well off to leave the edges of their fields un-harvested so the poor could come by and pick up the leftovers—the wealthy offered help, but the poor still had to work for it (Leviticus 19:9, 10).

When my son first wanted to make movies, I told him to buy his own camera. He saved up money for more than a year to get it. When my daughter wanted to learn piano, we got her lessons but told her we would not get her a piano until we were sure she intended to pursue it and that she had to prove this pursuit through practice. Today, with a piano in the house, she continues to play without being told to do so. What my son experienced was ownership. What my daughter experienced was privilege. What parents and students want regarding education is their right to it. And this is a mistake because it results in students failing to value their education.

But this problem is not simply one of entitlement. It’s also a problem of the human heart—of personal, not just political, selfishness. Solomon said, “Though it cost all you have, get understanding” (Proverbs 4:7), to encourage the young to pursue something he understood to be valuable. But many young people don’t. Solomon understood that some things in life can only be achieved through the kind of discipline no one likes to experience. Few children are enthusiastic about learning English grammar or algebra, but they need to learn whether they want to or not. Put them in the position of thinking that school is something owed to them and they’ll be even quicker to dismiss what they have no interest in.

My college students pay for their educations; some have no help from parents or scholarships at all. You’d think they would really hunger for their college educations, but they tend to show the same reluctance to homework, reading, and attendance they showed when education was free. Every so often I dismiss a class early, but, to test my theory about education and the human heart, I say something like, “Okay we’re getting out early today . . . unless, of course, you think that I’m stealing tuition money from you by not keeping you the whole hour.” The response is always the same: they pack up and walk out of class, happy to have a few extra minutes for themselves.

Students and their parents aren’t the only ones to blame. Teachers who pursue administrative jobs (especially in central offices) may do so to get out of the classroom and as far from students as possible. Then there are teachers’ unions, existing to demand job security and refuse any reform or accountability that could threaten teacher jobs. I know I’m generalizing again. There certainly are amazing professionals, parents, and students. But we’re not talking about individual exceptions. We’re talking about a nationwide, systemic failure in education. Someone has to accept blame. And it has to be everyone.

And this is my point: the first problem in American education is a problem of the human heart. We have become a society of people who think ourselves more important than others. I do not know how to fix a problem like that. How do policies and procedures change human hearts? The only policy I can come close to arguing as a solution, is a policy of privatization or, at least, privilege. Through private and charter schooling, and/or voucher programs, parents, teachers, and students choose to accept the “blame,” or, rather, to take up the responsibility of ownership, saying, essentially, “I’m not what matters most, and education is a privilege, not a right.” But this is neither a guarantee nor a solution likely to be adopted nationwide (since it threatens public schools and demands greater accountability). I only know that the first real problem in American education is the selfishness of Americans. And no simple policy is going to fix that. |L

OTHER COLUMNS:
November 8, 2009 - Why I believe in God
October 25, 2009 - Commuting in days of evil
October 11, 2009 - Poets and don’t know it
September 27, 2009 - How Hollywood proves abortion is wrong
September 13, 2009 - Significance
August 30, 2009 - Dance alternatives
August 16, 2009 - Gluttons for gossip
August 2, 2009 - Truth from Twilight
July 19, 2009 - Visitor-friendly churches
July 5, 2009 - The Shack
June 21, 2009 - When forgiveness fails
June 7, 2009 - Re-imagining Education (Part Six)
May 24, 2009 - We are not alone
May 3, 2009 - Re-imagining education (part five)
April 26, 2009 - Conviction
April 12, 2009 - Re-imagining education (part four)
March 29, 2009 - An evangelistic proposal
March 15, 2009 - Re-imagining education (part three)
March 1, 2009 - He makes me sick
February 15, 2009 - Re-imagining education (Part Two)
February 1, 2009 - Spiritual insecurity
January 4, 2009 - Church and politics
December 21, 2008 - Heaven’s music
December 7, 2008 - The church and marriage
November 23, 2008 - God and the president
November 9, 2008 - A time for courage
October 26, 2008 - Likes and dislikes: the Prince Caspian movie
October 12, 2008 - What’s that noise?
September 28, 2008 - Modesty matters (part two)
September 14, 2008 - All it takes is some TLC
August 31, 2008 - Modesty matters (part one)
August 17, 2008 - What would you fight for?
August 3, 2008 - Staying through the credits
July 20, 2008 - Honor to whom honor
July 6, 2008 - Tyler Perry and the movies you’re missing
June 22, 2008 - The peaceable kingdom
May 25, 2008 - Another generation grew up
May 25, 2008 - Technology and the Bible (part two)
May 11, 2008 - Technology and the Bible (part one)
April 27, 2008 - What is truth?
April 13, 2008 - And the geek shall inherit the earth
March 30, 2008 - A charactered God
March 16, 2008 - The college choice (part two)
March 2, 2008 - Good news can be hard to hear
February 17, 2008 - The college choice (part one)
February 5, 2008 - Ten suggestions for a godly standard of living
January 20, 2008 - Expelled: that “Bueller” guy’s pro-God movie
January 6, 2008 - Choosing a lifestyle
December 23, 2007 - Teachable TV?
December 9, 2007 - Owners or stewards?
November 25, 2007 - Christians teaching Christians to change TV and film
November 11, 2007 - My money is God’s business
October 28, 2007 - Navigating under the radar
October 14, 2007 - The things God values
September 30, 2007 - Movie moments
September 16, 2007 - God’s economics
September 2, 2007 - The best books to read
August 19, 2007 - There’s a rat in ‘separate’
August 5, 2007 - The art of reading
July 22, 2007 - Atheist chic
July 8, 2007 - Why books matter: the sequel
June 10, 2007 - Books: why they matter
June 3, 2007 - The non-impact of “The Lost Tomb of Jesus”
May 27, 2007 - The universal gospel
May 13, 2007 - Loving Muslims through culture
April 29, 2007 - Hope
April 15, 2007 - God in the dark
April 1, 2007 - The gospel goes to the movies
March 18, 2007 - What the Bible movies can teach us
March 4, 2007 - What will you hurt for?
February 18, 2007 - Why Heroes . . .
February 4, 2007 - Give peace a chance
January 21, 2007 - When fairy tales are true
January 7, 2007 - WYSIWYG lives
December 31, 2006 - What’s coming next?
December 17, 2006 - Mercy, mercy
December 3, 2006 - Proof of evolution!
November 19, 2006 - Hungering for God
November 5, 2006 - Violence and government, war and peace
October 22, 2006 - The mighty meek
October 8, 2006 - The Battlestar and the Bible
September 24, 2006 - Soap for the soul
September 10, 2006 - Right vs. cool
August 27, 2006 - The painful truth
August 13, 2006 - More Lies Hollywood Tells
July 30, 2006 - Christian counter culture
July 16, 2006 - The lies Hollywood tells