Fall 1990
Reformed Quarterly Volume 9, Issue 3 Dr. Ronald Nash is visiting professor of Philosophy and Religion at RTS/Orlando. He has been a philosopher of Philosophy and Religion at Western Kentucky University since 1964, 20 of those years as the department chair. With degrees from Brown and Syracuse Universities, He is the author or editor of more than 20 books, including
Faith and Reason,
The Concept of God, and his latest,
The Closing of the American Heart, from which this article is adapted. Dr. Nash will join the RTS/Orlando resident faculty for the 1991-92 academic year.
There is a crisis in American education. Every year, at least a million students graduate from America's high schools functionally illiterate. This means that these youngsters cannot read, write, or use numbers well enough to get along in our society. Ninety-five percent of American 17-year-olds cannot read well enough to understand technical materials and literary essays. Imagine the problems they will face if they ever attempt to read the Bible. The U.S. Department of Education estimates that our educational sys- tem has already left us with 24 million functional illiterates. But millions of Americans are culturally illiterate. This means they are ignorant of the basic information necessary to function effectively in our society. Thirty-two percent of American 17-year-olds don't know Columbus discovered the New World before the year 1750. Think of it! Forty percent of our 17-year-olds have no idea what event precipitated World War II. Seventy-five percent cannot place Lincoln's presidency or the Civil War within the correct 20-year period. Similar numbers of young people cannot point out England or New York or the Mississippi River on a map. As author Samuel Blumenfeld sums things up: "The plain unvarnished truth is that public education is a shoddy, fraudulent piece of goods sold to the public at an astronomical price." Nor do things get any beyter when we move to what we still call "higher education.” American colleges have permitted their curricula to deteriorate. This can be seen in the watering down of essential courses. They have also allowed the removal of important courses or the addition of trivial courses to the core curriculum. According to one estimate, as many as 10 thousand American college professors are Marxists who often use their courses to indoctrinate their students in their left-wing ideology. Colleges have opened wide the doors to trendy and faddish courses, such as the study of pop culture, where students get university credit for looking at pictures in comic books. College students today are surrounded by an alleged academic setting in which the things they find most obvious are confusion, conflicting claims, and the absence of any fixed points of reference. This is true not only of huge state universities, but also of many so-called Christian colleges. America's colleges have become centers of intellectual disorder As Davis Cress explains, "Instead of being havens of independent thought, universities have become channels of indoctrination... confirming the prejudices of those who control the agenda of public discourse." Shockingly, many Christians find it difficult to take talk about a national educational crisis very seriously. Their minds are on higher, more spiritual matters; at least, this is how many justify their lack of concern and action. Some Christians respond as though their interest in saving souls excuses their indifference to the state of people's minds. Surely such an attitude is both short-sighted and unbiblical. We are talking about youngsters so poorly educated that they will never be able to read the Bible with understanding. Even when some of these youngsters become Christians, they will be so poorly educated that the possibility of their ever becoming effective servants of Christ is slim or nonexistent. People who have trouble reading and writing aren't going to become effective pastors or missionaries, let alone secretaries or salesmen.
There is a crisis in American education. Every year, at least a million students graduate from America's high schools functionally illiterate. This means that these youngsters cannot read, write, or use numbers well enough to get along in our society. Ninety-five percent of American 17-year-olds cannot read well enough to understand technical materials and literary essays. Imagine the problems they will face if they ever attempt to read the Bible. The U.S. Department of Education estimates that our educational sys- tem has already left us with 24 million functional illiterates. But millions of Americans are culturally illiterate. This means they are ignorant of the basic information necessary to function effectively in our society. Thirty-two percent of American 17-year-olds don't know Columbus discovered the New World before the year 1750. Think of it! Forty percent of our 17-year-olds have no idea what event precipitated World War II. Seventy-five percent cannot place Lincoln's presidency or the Civil War within the correct 20-year period. Similar numbers of young people cannot point out England or New York or the Mississippi River on a map. As author Samuel Blumenfeld sums things up: "The plain unvarnished truth is that public education is a shoddy, fraudulent piece of goods sold to the public at an astronomical price." Nor do things get any beyter when we move to what we still call "higher education.” American colleges have permitted their curricula to deteriorate. This can be seen in the watering down of essential courses. They have also allowed the removal of important courses or the addition of trivial courses to the core curriculum. According to one estimate, as many as 10 thousand American college professors are Marxists who often use their courses to indoctrinate their students in their left-wing ideology. Colleges have opened wide the doors to trendy and faddish courses, such as the study of pop culture, where students get university credit for looking at pictures in comic books. College students today are surrounded by an alleged academic setting in which the things they find most obvious are confusion, conflicting claims, and the absence of any fixed points of reference. This is true not only of huge state universities, but also of many so-called Christian colleges. America's colleges have become centers of intellectual disorder As Davis Cress explains, "Instead of being havens of independent thought, universities have become channels of indoctrination... confirming the prejudices of those who control the agenda of public discourse." Shockingly, many Christians find it difficult to take talk about a national educational crisis very seriously. Their minds are on higher, more spiritual matters; at least, this is how many justify their lack of concern and action. Some Christians respond as though their interest in saving souls excuses their indifference to the state of people's minds. Surely such an attitude is both short-sighted and unbiblical. We are talking about youngsters so poorly educated that they will never be able to read the Bible with understanding. Even when some of these youngsters become Christians, they will be so poorly educated that the possibility of their ever becoming effective servants of Christ is slim or nonexistent. People who have trouble reading and writing aren't going to become effective pastors or missionaries, let alone secretaries or salesmen.
