Mistakes in educational philosophy will continue to plague us because of trouble that comes from universities, think tanks, and textbook companies. Specialists at these levels continually look to make names for themselves by inventing “revolutionary” new methods of education or emphasizing trendy new content that desperate school boards adopt, indoctrinate their teachers in, and force upon children—effectively turning them into laboratory experiments. (Anyone unfortunate enough to get not-quite-taught how to read through whole language methods rather than phonics are living examples of what I’m talking about.) It’s easy to see how this is a problem by changing some wording around: if we send our children to an “experimental” school or program, we are happy to do so, thinking they will be getting the best in cutting edge methods; but if a school were to tell us they wished to “experiment” on our children, we wouldn’t stand for it. Nevertheless, “standing for it” is what we’re doing.

A lack of funding is often cited as a barrier to quality education. Except for the fact that we don’t pay teachers enough, I don’t believe this is a problem at all. We can set the money mistake aside easily enough with a simple statistic: America spends more money on education per child than almost any other country in the world; but many other countries do a better job of educating their children. For example, we spend about $9,200 a year on education for each American child, almost twice what the Japanese spend whose educational statistics universally surpass our own. The obvious conclusion is that more money is not the solution to our problems. Thinking it is the solution only makes things worse. As Solomon noted, “Whoever loves money never has money enough; whoever loves wealth is never satisfied with his income” (Ecclesiastes 5:10).

Throwing money at a problem makes us feel like we’re getting something done to improve education, but we’ve been doing it for decades with few positive results. Funding education fools us into thinking we’ve done something to improve matters when we haven’t. At the same time, it is worth mentioning that spending money wisely is part of a solution. To this end I wonder why school districts pay to do much that parents should be doing, like providing meals, teaching “life skills,” and teaching about sex. Personally, I’m not interested in turning my children over to the State for parenting. I also wonder why some of the highest paid educators in our school districts never set foot in a classroom?

I heard a recent statistic on the radio: 35 percent of high school age kids have stolen from a store and 65 percent have cheated in school. But 94 percent describe themselves as happy with their personal ethics. When we removed prayer from public schools, we began to remove moral training—education in ethics. This is not to say we didn’t try to teach morality. We tried to fill the vacuum which a fairly unified religious culture (and its moral teachings) was no longer allowed to offer; we did this through a variety of methods that were essentially modeled after a system called Values Clarification. In a pluralistic society, we don’t all believe the same thing. In public schools, where we were trying desperately to avoid marginalizing any minority group, we bought into this idea of helping students figure out for themselves what they believed to be right and wrong. The results were programs that helped students justify cheating on tests, and sex and drug education programs that made students more likely to have sex and do drugs.

Solutions to these problems exist, but they will never be adopted in our public schools. One solution is a classical ethics approach (as suggested by C. S. Lewis in The Abolition of Man), one that includes the development of a moral imagination through story (as suggested by Bill Bennett in The Book of Virtues, among others). It won’t work because no one will ever agree on the most important ethical principles to teach to students. The second solution is to restore the study and practice of religion to the classroom. But what religion? This approach will never be taken because that question will never be answered among modern Americans. But it would work, and the proof is in prisons: recent studies have shown that while 67 percent of prison inmates will prove to be repeat offenders (and return to prison), this number drops to only 12 percent among inmates who regularly participated in religious study and services during their time in prison. Religion makes moral people. But religious truth will seldom or never be taught in our public schools again.

Next month I take up what I think is one of the most dangerous solutions offered to problems in education: turning schools into businesses. |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 1, 2009 - He makes me sick
February 15, 2009 - Re-imagining education (Part Two)
February 1, 2009 - Spiritual insecurity
January 18, 2009 - Re-imagining education (part one)
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