The report continues, "If unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war. As it stands, we have allowed this to happen to ourselves."
This is despite the fact that good, dedicated parents, teachers and administrators across America are helping children and running schools the best way they can. So what is the problem? To best understand the conundrum let's take a look at history.
In the classical period of ancient Athens, education was concerned with wisdom, virtue and truth. But times changed. Some people asked, "What is ultimate truth?" and "Who defines virtue?" They concluded that wisdom for one person may not by wisdom for another.
This schism gave birth to a new philosophy called skeptical humanism. The group that headed this up called themselves Sophists. The Sophists sought wisdom of a more practical type. The science of rhetoric, for example, turned away from questions of how to speak truth, towards how to persuade people - whether or not the argument was true.
Abandoning the quest for ultimate truths, education came under the control of Sophists. A world view of relativism was born.
Preferences replaced laws, personal gratification replaced virtue. The best example of this found in the credo of the mathematician Protagoras; "homo mensura" --man is the measure of all things. In other words, man is his own God.
History has repeated itself. The current American education system is deeply rooted in relativism. This kind of relativism goes hand in hand with today's current politically correct versions of tolerance and open mindedness.
Allan Bloom in his bestseller, The Closing of the American Mind explains, "Relativism is necessary to openness... which all primary education for more than fifty years has dedicated itself to inculcating." Bloom continues, "The best they can do is point out all the opinions and cultures there are and have been. 'What right,' they ask, 'do I or anyone else have to say one is better than the others?'" (p26).
This alleged openness is not openness at all; it effectively closes the mind. Openness actually produces a shallow conformist since it leads students to believe that "out there in the rest of the world is a drab diversity that teaches only that values are relative, whereas here we can create all the life-styles we want. Our openness means we do not need others. Thus what is advertised as a "great opening" for students' minds is really a "great closing" (Bloom, p.34).
By contrast, true openness is a virtue that allows and encourages us to reason and seek a higher good. False openness lease its followers to deny the power of reason and accept virtually anything.
America's modern curriculum has succeeded in cutting traditional moral and religious values from what our students learn while cleverly making teachings appear neutral: but make no mistake, the search for 'ultimate truth' is long gone from the American educational system. When religion is removed from history, what is left is a distortion of the historical record. Concerned adults should realize that an education that ignores moral and religious values cannot qualify as a quality education.
A good man or woman is a well-rounded individual, sound of mind, strong in body and healthy in spirit. On the other hand, an individual who has all the practical knowledge to achieve what he wants, but lacks the moral character to know and choose the right ends, is a menace to society. Recent corporate scandals are evidence of this fact.
A 1998 follow-up study conducted by the U.S. Department of Education underscores the point here perfectly: the report focused on test scores in science, math and reading, and patterns in dropping out of school and college attendance. Completely missing from the study is whether or not any of these students has any sense of personal conviction about his or her place in the world.
Educational reformers have spent two decades trying to make changes in use of class time and teacher salaries, without even pausing to consider whether the whole philosophical underpinnings of the American public school system have been separated from the Truth that schools were originally created to teach.
To deliver America from its educational crisis, the transcendent truths and moral order must be restored to education.
