[Headline image: Plato and Aristotle debate in the school of Athens]
Chris Hedges’ latest article at ScheerPost offers a great explanation of why we need to strengthen liberal arts education in this country, not gut it as is currently happening everywhere.
All across America, history, English, and philosophy departments are being downsized or eliminated altogether.
Conservatives want to reduce higher education to streamlined vocational training, while liberals want to sift it through the latest, reductionistic filter of identity politics. Both are equally ruinous.
Thomas Jefferson is purported to have said that democracy’s survival depends on having an educated populous. Truer words have never been spoken, as the current state of American politics attests.
Check out this excellent essay at SheerPost written by Chris Hedges about the foundational significan of education for a functioning democracy:
Here is an excerpt:
Plato
The ruling classes always work to keep the powerless from understanding how power functions. This assault has been aided by a cultural left determined to banish “dead white male” philosophers.
I am standing in a classroom in a maximum security prison. It is the first class of the semester. I am facing 20 students. They have spent years, sometimes decades, incarcerated. They come from some of the poorest cities and communities in the country. Most of them are people of color.
It is not that the criticisms leveled against these philosophers are incorrect. They were blinded by their prejudices, as we are blinded by our prejudices. They had a habit of elevating their own cultures above others. They often defended patriarchy, could be racist and in the case of Plato and Aristotle, endorsed a slave society.
What can these philosophers say to the issues we face — global corporate domination, the climate crisis, nuclear war and a digital universe where information, often manipulated and sometimes false, travels around the globe instantly? Are these thinkers antiquated relics? No one in medical school is reading 19th century medical texts. Psychoanalysis has moved beyond Sigmund Freud. Physicists have advanced from Isaac Newton’s law of motion to general relativity and quantum mechanics.
My friend Dr. Rob Dalrymple writes a blog at Pathos.com. He also hosts the DetermineTruthpodcast.
I encourage you to subscribe to both of them!
Rob recently wrote a blog post about the Focus on the Family initiative encouraging students to bring their own Bibles to school. Below is a short segment from the Christian Broadcasting Network explaining this nation-wide action.
Rob has given me permission to reproduce his blog post here at HumanityRenewed. Like Rob, I am also skeptical about the motives, the wisdom, and the possible consequences of this Focus on the Family endeavor.
No neither Rob nor I are anti- Bible reading!
But we are anti-. . . well, read the post below to discover what we are concerned about. . .
Rob’s blog post follows immediately after this 3:33 CBN explanatory video:
Bring your Bible to School Day: Maybe Not Such a Good Idea
On the positive side
I suspect that bringing a Bible to school and having it out so that others might see it—which I suppose is the point of “bring your Bible to school day”—might well provide an opportunity for conversations.
Others might ask, “what is that?”; or “what church do you go to?”; “why do you read that?” Such opportunities to have a conversation about the Bible, Jesus, or the kingdom of God is awesome.
I imagine that there are many Christian students who want to have conversations with others but they do not know how to go about it. There is likely a measure of fear—which is quite understandable. Starting a conversation about Jesus is not easy.
This may well be one of the primary benefits of encouraging students to bring their Bibles to school. Namely, it gives students an opportunity to overcome their fears and express their faith.
(I suspect that a “Bring your Bibles to work campaign” might have the same level of consternation among adults). In fact, why don’t they start a “bring your Bible to work day” also?
This campaign, then, may well help in the spiritual maturation of students.
In addition, I am sure that one student’s courage to bring their Bible to school might also encourage others to do the same.
On the neutral side
Shouldn’t we bring our Bibles every day?
As I watched and read through some of the promo materials for this event, I was a bit surprised that this was being billed as a 1-day a year event.
If, after all, the Bible is central to the Christian life—and I definitely believe that it is—then shouldn’t we always have a Bible at school/work? Shouldn’t every day be “bring your Bible to school/work” day?
Now, I suppose a valid response to this query might well be that we would love to have our students bring a Bible every day, but in order to do so, we must get them to do it one day first.
And this is fine, but maybe the campaign should be: “starting on Oct 6 we are encouraging students to bring their Bibles to school every day”? Or perhaps, “bring your Bible every Thursday”?
Don’t most kids use their phones these days?
Also, do kids even have Bibles? I mean actual, physical, paper Bibles.
I am sure they know that there are plenty of good Bible Apps available for download. And I bet they would prefer using them instead of carrying a Bible.
Now, although it may be more conspicuous, a conversation could still arise from someone coming up to a student, who is reading their Bible on their phone, and asking “hey, what ya reading?”
This approach, in fact, might even be more effective.
After all, not only does reading the Bible on your phone still present an opportunity for a conversation, it may be less likely to turn people away. What I mean is this: I suspect that many students will not engage a student if they see them reading a Bible.
But, if a student has the Bible on their phone, no one knows what they are reading until they ask.
On the flip side
Although I would affirm that the idea for the campaign is fine, I am actually quite concerned for a number of reasons.
NB: I am not saying that I would not encourage students to read their Bible while at school. I am just not sure that this campaign is the right way to do it.
Lack of emphasis on discipleship
For one, I saw nothing in the promotional materials for this campaign that stressed the fact that proclaiming the Gospel is something that we do with our lives.
Sure the presence of a Bible might alert someone else that you profess to believe in the Bible. But I would hope that we don’t need to bring a Bible to alert others that we profess to believe in the Bible.
I would hope that the way we live, the way we love, the way we care for others, and the way we speak would alert others that we are followers of Jesus.
In fact, if someone comes and asks, “what ya reading?” that person may be more willing to listen if they know that the other regularly manifests grace, love, kindness, and acceptance of others (I’ll return to this last item below).
We need to spend more time discipling our students and encouraging them to live and love like Jesus. I suspect that if we did this more effectively, we would not need to have a “bring your Bible to school day.”
Don’t get me wrong. I am not saying that those who are behind this campaign do not also believe that our character matters. I am saying that I did not see this in their literature.
I am also not saying that unless you have your life in order you should not let people know that you are a Christian. After all, none of us have our lives in order.
I am saying that the person who hasn’t lived in accord with the call of Christ needs to know how to engage in a conversation about Jesus, the Bible, and the kingdom. Here again, is the importance of discipleship.
Students need to know that they can be honest about how they are trying to follow Jesus, the Bible, and the kingdom, but they are struggling.
Certainly, this is a great way to have a conversation about the Bible. It may well be that the person who comes to ask, “what ya reading?” is also a Christian who is struggling to follow Jesus too. They can then bond and work together to learn how to better follow Jesus.
In addition, I would ask if those behind the campaign are preparing students for how they might respond if someone begins to mock them. The fact is that bringing a Bible to school will quite likely bring scorn.
The problem is that none of the promotional materials for this campaign focused on discipling our students and preparing them for living out the Gospel or how to have conversations.
They will know that you are my disciples–Love
I think that we are better served by putting a greater emphasis on discipling our students. That would include teaching them the Bible. But it would also include encouraging them to take part in some of the school initiatives that reach out and serve others.
Would not the witness of our students be better served if they worked at a food drive to help needy families in their communities? Or if they assembled resources so that students in inner-city schools might have access to better textbooks or even computers and technology?
Imagine if every church adopted a school in their neighborhood and let the administration of that school know that they were there to serve the students and their families, the teachers, and the administration. Wouldn’t the Church’s witness be more dynamic if schools knew that there were caring people ready to serve at any moment?
NB: Someone might push back on this by saying that schools would never call on a local church to help. To which I would respond: why don’t you find out? After all, I know of churches that are doing this very thing!
Other concerns
My primary concern relates to the root convictions behind this campaign. What do I mean?
The Focus on the Family website (which I understand to be one of the driving forces behind the campaign) under the tab, “For Parents,” has a list of “5 reasons students should participate.”
I find reason #4 deeply troubling.
Reason #4 is, “stand for your rights.” In other words, the campaign asserts that by bringing their Bible to school students are standing for their rights.
This reason, I believe, is nothing more than a dangerous assertion of Christian nationalism (we addressed Christian nationalism in a 4 part series on the determinetruth podcast in Nov-Dec 2021).
How so?
For one, we must understand that there is no inherent human right that demands that all persons should be allowed to “bring their Bibles to school.” It may well be a legal right of all Americans. But it is not a legal right in other countries. And I don’t suppose that we should be kicking down the doors of the UN demanding that Christian students in N Korea be permitted to bring their Bibles to school.
In addition, I suspect that many of the same proponents of the “Bring your Bible to School day” campaign would be outraged if a similar campaign to “Bring your Quran to School day” was endorsed by the Islamic community in the US.
After all, if bringing your Bible to school is an inherent right, then is it not also a right for Muslims to bring their Quran to school? If we say “yes” to the former and “no” to the latter, then we are espousing Christian nationalism.
This campaign also demonstrates a lack of awareness of the global church.
One website asserted that it was important to bring your Bible to school because “we should not be ‘undercover’ Christians.” The article went on to claim that “Jesus says to us in the book of Matthew to shine your light, don’t hide [it] under a bowl.”
Now, this might seem like a good response, but it both radically distorts the meaning of Jesus’ words and it shows no awareness of what life is like for millions of Christians around the world—let alone in the history of the church.
To claim that we must bring a Bible to school, work, or any other public setting because Jesus commanded us to let our light shine and not to hide it is an affront to millions of our brothers and sisters in Christ around the world who will be imprisoned, tortured, and even killed for doing so.
Sure bringing a Bible to school in America may well be a means of bearing witness to Christ. But in some countries of the world may well be the means of assuring your death.
Sure the idea behind this day sounds great. And I would encourage students to do so. I would not encourage them to do so, however, without discipling them. Without encouraging them to have a love for others that is modeled on Jesus’ love for us. At the end of the day, I cannot endorse this campaign because it is lacking with regard to a proper focus on discipleship and, more importantly, it is shrouded in the garb of Christian nationalism.
NB: I must say that I chuckled when I saw that the promotional materials made sure to include homeschooled students in the message: #noneleftbehind. I know that we don’t want to leave kids out, but it just seems unnecessary for kids to bring their Bibles to the table so mom may know that they are Christians.
Where did the belief in universal human rights come from?
Why did western societies ever begin to write documents proclaiming that “all men (and women) are created equal and endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights”?
What was the original spark of humanitarian instinct that eventually gave rise to a document like The Universal Declaration of Human Rights?
The Judeao-Christian belief that all people are created as the Image of God certainly had an important role to play. But many “Christian” societies have embraced this biblical doctrine without any practical implementation towards eliminating torture, injustice, or discrimination.
So how did the broad-based, societal belief in establishing “human rights” for everyone equally as a matter of law spring into life?
Professor Lynn Hunt teaches modern European history, specializing in the French Revolution, at UCLA. She has written a fascinating book called Inventing Human Rights: A History (W. W. Norton, 2007) where she argues that the impetus towards universal human rights arose with the creation of the novel in the mid-eighteenth century.
It is difficult today for us to imagine a time when the fictional novel was a new invention, a new form of literature. It is also difficult to understand the novel’s wild popularity among the masses.
Almost everyone who could read consumed them whole. And many who could not read had someone read the latest novel to them.
One of the major social benefits of this craze was the rise in empathy for others, especially others who were not like you, others whom the reader did not know personally, first hand.
An important question this book raises for me concerns the possible connection between American xenophobia, and our hard-heartedness towards warfare and the suffering of “foreigners” and the decline in American literacy.
for pleasure on a daily basis. When we do read, it is on average for 17 minutes per day.
Below is an excerpt from Inventing Human Rights (emphasis mine):
(Novels) drew their readers into identifying with ordinary characters, who were by definition unknown to the reader personally. Readers empathized with the characters, especially their heroine or hero, thanks to the workings of the narrative form itself. Through the fictional exchange of letters [the epistolary form of novel was especially popular] taught their readers nothing less than a new psychology and in the process laid the foundations for a new social and political order. . . Novels made the point that all people are fundamentally similar because of their inner feelings, and many novels showcased in particular the desire for autonomy. In this way, reading novels created a sense of equality and empathy through passionate involvement in the narrative. Can it be coincidental that the three greatest novels of psychological identification of the eighteenth century – Richardson’s Pamela (1740) and Clarissa (1747-48) and Rousseau’s Julie (1761) – were all published in the period that immediately preceded the appearance of the concept of “the rights of man”?
. . . Empathy only develops through social interaction; therefore, the forms of that interaction configure empathy in important ways. In the eighteenth century, readers of novels learned to extend their purview of empathy. In reading, they empathized across traditional social boundaries between nobles and commoners, masters and servants, men and women. As a consequence, they came to see others – people they did not know personally – as like them, as having the same kinds of inner emotions. Without this learning process, “equality” could have no deep meaning and in particular no political consequence. The equality of souls in heaven is not the same thing as equal rights here on earth. Before the eighteenth century, Christians readily accepted the former without granting the latter.
Professor Hunt’s observations raise troubling questions about the demise of literacy and the liberal arts in American education.
I fear that the increasing turn towards “professionalization” as opposed to cultural literacy in education will pave the way for a harsher, more xenophobic, aggressive, inhumane vision of the world for American society.
His most recent post, titled “The Appallingly Bad History Taught at Fundamentalist Schools,” is a review including brief excerpts of a new book by Kathleen Wellman titled Hijacking History: How the Christian Right Teaches History and Why It Matters (Oxford, 2021).
Here is a brief excerpt, but I encourage you to look at the blog — or, better yet, buy the book — to see the long list of shocking, Right-Wing punditry that passes for “objective” American history in far too many private, Christian schools:
If you know anything about history, this post will make you laugh and/or cry.
And/or make you angry.
And the latter emotion is particularly appropriate.
In her book, Hijacking History: How the Christian Right Teaches History and Why It Matters, Kathleen Wellman (Professor of History at Southern Methodist University) reports on world history textbooks produced by Abeka Books (published by Pensacola Christian College), Accelerated Christian Education [ACE], and Bob Jones University Press [BJU]. These textbooks are popular among fundamentalist homeschoolers and are often adopted at fundamentalist Christian schools.
Wellman heroically examines these texts in great detail. Why did she subject herself to such a painful task? As she notes in her introduction, these fundamentalist textbooks
have an influence that has extended far beyond the confines of fundamentalism . . . Their views, as indeed the textbooks insist, increasingly define American Christianity. These curricula’s narrative of Christian history has been grafted onto right-wing political and economic positions. And right-wing political interests have promoted these views. (2)
Here are just a few examples from Hijacking History:
“These textbooks label [ancient] Africa the Dark Continent . . . ‘the fear, idolatry, and witchcraft associated with animism’ [Abeka text] prevented African economic and cultural development” (74).
“The Abeka curriculum claims the Greeks made no progress in science, even though Greek scientific works set the standard for virtually every science for over fifteen hundred years . . . [More generally, Greek] civilization was fundamentally flawed, and their efforts ultimately produced no benefits.” (83)
The continued replication of the repulsive racist, colonialist, imperialist trope describing Africa as “the Dark Continent” illustrates both the longevity and the currency of a western imperialist mindset in certain sectors of American society.
Furthermore, aside from the fact that the African continent was once populated by thriving, complex, urban-centered civilizations, I am stunned to discover that there are history textbooks asserting that the ancient Greeks never produced anything of “any benefit”?!
My, oh my.
No wonder Donald Trump has hoodwinked so many conservative Christians in
Raphael’s “The School of Athens” depicting Plato and Aristotle in debate
this country (many of whom are heavily invested in the Christian school and home schooling movements).
No wonder many parents are raising a ruckus and protesting at local school board meetings against Critical Race Theory and multiculturalism in the classroom. These are the families fleeing public schools for the same Christian academies and home school networks now using horrible history texts.
And the dumbing down of America, particularly American evangelical-fundamentalism, continues unabated.
We are well into the dark ages of American cultural history.
Thucydides could teach them all a thing or two about history, while a little time with Aristotle could help them learn how to use their minds.
we need to strengthen liberal arts education in this country, not gut it as is currently happening everywhere.
What was the original spark of humanitarian instinct that eventually gave rise to a document like The Universal Declaration of Human Rights?
It is difficult today for us to imagine a time when the fictional novel was a new invention, a new form of literature. It is also difficult to understand the novel’s wild popularity among the masses.
readers of novels learned to extend their purview of empathy. In reading, they empathized across traditional social boundaries between nobles and commoners, masters and servants, men and women. As a consequence, they came to see others – people they did not know personally – as like them, as having the same kinds of inner emotions. Without this learning process, “equality” could have no deep meaning and in particular no political consequence. The equality of souls in heaven is not the same thing as equal rights here on earth. Before the eighteenth century, Christians readily accepted the former without granting the latter.
book by Kathleen Wellman titled Hijacking History: How the Christian Right Teaches History and Why It Matters (Oxford, 2021).
describing Africa as “the Dark Continent” illustrates both the longevity and the currency of a western imperialist mindset in certain sectors of American society.