Tag: education

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Is this a Great Country . . . or What?

All through my public K-12 education I learned popular anthems like “The House I Live In,” “This Is a Great Country,” and “God Bless America,” along with the old standards (“America the Beautiful,” ‘My Country, ‘tis of Thee”). By 1967, though (my junior year), such guileless flag-waving wasn’t cool. I gave a speech against patriotism to the Rotary Club—not too smart, but truth to power and all that.

Patriotism was an outmoded idea, anyway, the cause of unending wars when we had so many problems to solve at home. Racism, the Feminine Mystique, poverty, the military-industrial complex—what was not to complain about? Shortly after came Nixon and Watergate and general “malaise.”

But you know what? Life wasn’t too bad. Most of us had enough food (even though prices were zooming in the 70s), a place to live (with double-digit interest rates, if you chose to buy), the freedom to move around and find another job if you didn’t like the one you had (we did that a lot). My husband had acquired a B.A. degree at tuition rates we could pay off within ten years. That degree that allowed him access to a white-color job once he got the wanderlust out of his system. Our black friends were no longer segregated—that’s why we could have black friends—no more moving to the back of the bus or “colored days” at the State Fair.

Also, I started reading history, and decided this country was actually pretty great after all. A complicated past, to be sure, but with a form of government that allowed for self-correcting over time. There was plenty of ugliness, but also plenty of hope and upward mobility: more than any other nation in history, anywhere on the globe. I grew up in what would now be considered poverty, yet we always had enough to eat and a roof over our heads and free education that actually educated us a little.

But ever since high school, the only time a certain subset of people—which at one time included me—can speak well of the United States is when they are running for office. Then, it’s the land we love, even though it may have lost its way or forgotten its ideals or listened to the wrong people too long. All this great country needed was the right people to get it back on track. That was the vibe from Barak Obama and Bill & Hilary Clinton, though it didn’t always sound like it was coming from the heart.

Joseph R. Biden is different. When he talks about this great country, I think he means it, as someone who started from a humble beginning and achieved the nation’s highest office—“Only in America.” He’s an old-time glad-handing political animal who knows how to work a room but his Inaugural Address came from a genuine core, however deeply buried.

So I don’t get why he’s promoting Critical Race Theory, unless he doesn’t really understand it. The basic premise of CRT is that the United States is founded on racism (not a bug but a feature) and owes its wealth to slavery, all the way up to the present day. Biden has mandated “racial sensitivity training” (a euphemism for CRT) in all federal agencies and disbanded the 1776 Commission established by President Trump, calling it inaccurate and harmful. The 1776 Commission was intended to counteract the negativity embodied by CRT and the 1619 project, etc.—to restore some balance or to whitewash, depending on who’s talking about it.

I haven’t read the 1776 Report and can’t judge the whitewashing content. But I’ve read parts of the 1619 project and I think it’s both inaccurate and harmful. Has President Biden read either? Because if he has, and still buys into CRT, he can’t believe this is a great country. If the United States was founded on racism, what could possibly be great about it? The only solution is to dismantle our constitutional government and rebuild it from the ground up—which is just what some Critical Race theorists would like to do.

I assume that’s not what Joe Biden wants to do, or other patriotic Democrats. But it suggests that the deep division he wants to unify goes through his own heart (to paraphrase Solzhenitsyn). And through the Democratic party’s heart, and through the heart of America as well. If the USA is as bad as the critical theorists say, it’s not worth saving.

Just make up your mind.  

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Nine Reasons to Read the Bible–Even If You Don’t Believe It

1. It’s unique.  The Bible Creation story is not like any other creation story.  The Bible God is not like any other God.  He’s the only ancient deity to link worship (temples, sacrifices, etc.) to a moral code.  He is absolutely central; a person beyond personality, not a representative of window or fire, not an idea, not a philosophy.  He escapes easy generalities, and so does his book.

2. It’s eerily familiar.  We’re always hearing echoes of it, not only in everyday conversation (broken heart, labor of love, thorn in the flesh, eye for an eye), but in values we take for granted.  Whatever our political persuasion, we agree that the hungry should be fed, the injured cared for, the helpless attended to.  None of these principles were widely accepted in the ancient world.  We believe—or at least we say—that love is the greatest power in the world.  Rameses, Nebuchadnezzar, and Julius Caesar would have laughed at that.  “Love conquers all” is the story told in the Bible’s thousand-odd pages.

3. It’s historically relevant.  Even if you’re skeptical about archaeology finds that support what it says about ancient times, the Bible’s influence on history is well documented.  Those who are certain it inspired oppression, crusades, and pogroms should turn over a few more rocks.  Though it has been misused as a weapon, the Bible is also (and much more logically) the inspiration for revivals, reforms, and rethinking. It directly inspired the greatest surge in literacy, enterprise, and empowerment the world has ever seen (i.e. the Protestant Reformation).  The Enlightenment usually takes credit for those achievements, but without the Reformation there would be no Enlightenment (and after the Enlightenment gleefully kicked away the Scriptural platform it was built on, it collapsed in something called the Reign of Terror).

4.  It’s a treasury of ancient literary forms.  Poetry, Historical Narrative, Allegory, Practical Instruction, Romance, Apocalyptic Imagery—every style and genre known to the ancient world is easily accessible between these covers, and in a multitude of translations, too.

5. It explains the origins of two of the most consequential people groups in the history of the world: Jews and Christians.  You may not like them.  Often enough, they haven’t liked each other. One was a relatively small group bound by blood and tradition, which had a wildly outsized influence on world history and a proportionate amount of suffering. (The honor of being a chosen people cuts both ways).  The second group is, by design, much more numerous and diverse, bound by faith and a conviction that God loves the world enough to die for it.

6. It tells one Story.  A rambling tale, to be sure–any tale would ramble if it took about 1500 years and at least 39 authors to tell it.  But the general outline of the story is the model for all stories in all cultures.  There’s a setting, a protagonist, an antagonist, a problem, a development of the problem, a climax, and a resolution.  Why do we tell stories this way?  Whether or not the Bible is the origin for the model, it’s a classic example of the model.  And the type of story it tells, of desolation and redemption, still haunts us.

7.  It provides the only objective reason for treating human beings as anything other than random accidents, disposable trash, or interchangeable parts to be manipulated.  The reason is this: the Bible is very clear that human beings are shaped by God to bear his image.  For that very reason, they are not to be willfully murdered (Genesis 9:6) or even carelessly insulted (James 3:9-10).  If the value of humans is set by other humans it can shift at any time.  If that value is set by God, no one can alter it.

8.  It’s the most banned book in history.  It’s too reactionary, too subversive, too authoritarian, too libertarian.  Tyrants fear its revelation of a rival power; anarchists, modernists, post-modernists, communists, utopians, and well-intentioned progressives hate it for the same reason. The book is a scandal and a trouble—aren’t you curious as to why?

9.  It’s still around. And still a best-seller. What explains its remarkable staying power?  Unless you are willing to at least become familiar with it, you’ll never know.

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Sad Kids

At National Review, Mona Charon writes about an extensive study reported in the journal Translational Psychiatry: “Sex differences in recent first-onset depression in an epidemiological sample of adolescents.”  (Here’s an abstract of the study)  The sex difference findings are interesting—teen girls are twice as likely as boys to feel depressed—but the real punch to the gut is in the sheer numbers of kids who manifest severe anxiety, depression, and other forms of mental illness: about one in four.

Could this be due to more awareness of mental health issues, and better reporting? Less stigma or ignorance about depression, or even increased self-dramatizing among teens?  Maybe a little, but a pediatrician responding the Charon’s column on another website added an informal statistic that makes it real.  While reading, he checked his phone for the current status of the Emergency Department in the children’s hospital where he worked.  At that moment, 28% of patients were there for “suicidal ideation.”  “What Mona Charon writes about is the lived experience of every children’s hospital around . . . This is a national crisis.”

People were less depressed during the Great Depression.

People were less depressed during the Great Depression.

The two obvious questions are Why is this happening now? and What should we do?

As to why, social media, family breakdown, economic anxiety, political turmoil (it’s Trump’s fault!), and education all come in for blame.  But what do kids need that they’re not getting? Pretty much the same things we all need, which are

  • Meaningful relationships.  I would trace most of our social problems to no-fault divorce, which made the most essential social bond a matter of personal preference.  Since then, children have had the rug pulled out from under them.  Single-parenting is a huge predictor of all kinds of negatives, from low school performance to relationship failures in adulthood.  In the teen years, when kids begin the transition from parental relationships to peers and others (which should eventually lead to stable marriages of their own), social media is lurking for them.  Instead of bonding with friends, they bond with their devices.  Their real friends are their phones.
  • Meaningful education.  Somewhere in the early 20th century, public education began to divorce brains from souls.  Reductionism took over: humans can dream up whatever metaphysical system they want in their spare time, but at school, we’re all utilitarians.  Transcendence has no place in a melting-pot schoolhouse where not everybody shares the same religion or philosophy.  This wasn’t so obvious in my southern-culture elementary school, with our morning devotionals and music classes, but the trend was in place–it’s the subject of The Abolition of Man, a brief treatise that C. S. Lewis considered his most important work.  The intense focus is on academics now, to the detriment of the arts and even recess.  That’s because we’re educating brains, not people, and the supplementary education kids used to get from church or their parents is less likely to be there for them.
Those three summer jobs were at least as useful to me as the classes I took in school.
  • Meaningful work.  Who likes working?  I didn’t.  My mother had to push me out the door to get a
    job after graduating high school—otherwise, she said, no college.  I didn’t have the best reasons for going to college and no clear idea of what I wanted to do, but it was that or a full-time job.  Horrors!  Summer jobs were bad enough.  And yet, those three summer jobs were at least as useful to me as the classes I took in school: practical experience, being responsible, listening to instruction, getting chewed out when I didn’t.  (“At least you didn’t cry,” said my supervisor after one of those times, just before I escaped to the bathroom and bawled my eyes out.)  Every legitimate job is meaningful because it connects the individual to his community and creates a sense of obligation (as opposed to entitlement).  You show up; you do the job; you get paid.  Less than half of Americans get jobs while still in their teen years, and when they do enter the work force in their mid-twenties, they don’t seem to know what to expect.  I hear about millennials who have to be corrected carefully so as not to ruffle their feathers, and who get frustrated after eight months because they’re not “having an impact.”  Then there are those blue-collar dropouts who simply don’t show up.
  • Meaning, period.  Q: What is the chief end of man?  A: The chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy him forever.  (Westminster Shorter Catechism, Question #1)  What can beat that for significance in life and death?  There you have it all: relationship, education, work—and heaven besides.  Even an atheist, whose philosophy offers him no objective reason for meaning in anything, can find it in family, art, democracy, benevolence, etc.  But it takes a strong will and other advantages, such a good parents, to find your own meaning in life once you’re turned loose to live it.   And if your life ultimately means nothing, why not OD on heroin and end it sooner?
We despise our youth, loading them up with the accoutrements of adulthood without expecting them to act like adults.

And that’s what we do: turn them loose.  A 16-year-old girl gets mixed messages about empowerment and victimization, while she longs for a loving relationship; a 19-year-old boy is told he’s toxic and unnecessary, while he inarticulately searches for some dragon to slay.  We despise our youth, loading them up with the accoutrements of adulthood (sex, cars, phones) but not expecting them to act like adults.

What to do?  Rescue them, one at a time.

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Back in the Lifeboat

Try this thought experiment:

You’re the captain on an ocean liner.  While en route to Europe your ship strikes an iceberg and starts sinking fast—so fast that the majority of passengers are drowned, and of the remainder almost all have panicked and piled into lifeboats that capsized or failed to launch or met some other tragic end.  A handful of passengers are left—twelve, to be exact—and one inflatable raft that will hold only seven (including you.)  Who would you choose to be in the boat with you?  There’s the brilliant but arrogant doctor, the young musician who speaks no English, the combat vet who hears voices, the muscular cage fighter, the alcoholic carpenter, the disabled tech genius . . .

Forget it.  As soon as that raft inflates there will be a mad dash for it, and you’ll be reduced to throwing out the weakest six.  Better bulk up, or you may be one of them.

Of course, the “Lifeboat Game, or Problem, or Exercise, was never meant to be a real-life scenario.  We heard about it back in the 1990s, when “values clarification” was an educational buzzword.  Nothing much was clarified, unless it was sneaking reinforcement for a utilitarian worldview, for the only objective criterion for a seat on the boat was the perceived usefulness of the passengers.  Take the drug-dealing doctor over the Baptist co-ed in a heartbeat, even if the girl was traveling to France for one last visit with her dying grandmother.  And what good is a twelve-year-old recovering from leukemia?  Unless you can eat him once he croaks.  Even as a theoretical exercise the Lifeboat Game was repugnant at best and destructive to human values at worst—if it’s still used in classrooms we don’t hear about it.

Women and children first! Oh wait–can they fix a leak? Fight off a shark? Perform an emergency appendectomy?

But a version of it recently surfaced in North Carolina, when a history teacher asked students to decide which four of the following they would allow in their bomb shelter during a nuclear attack:

  • A 35-year-old White male construction worker who is a racist
  • A 40-year-old Black female doctor who is a lesbian
  • A 50-year-old White male who is a Catholic priest
  • A 25-year-old Hispanic male who is a lawyer
  • A 30-year-old Korean American female who is a former college athlete
  • A 20-year-old white female who is pregnant, has a two-year-old son, and is on welfare

It’s the old “values clarification” shell game, this time with a racial/political edge.  Instead of, “Who’s the most useful?” kids also get to determine, “Who’s the least worthy?”  Because, obviously, if you pick the racist White guy (who might be helpful when it’s time to rebuild), what does that say about you?

The teacher only meant to provoke lively dialogue in the classroom, but real-life parents—both black and white—complained, quickly and loudly, and the exercise disappeared with apologies.  Parents rightly pointed out that there were better uses of classroom time, such as learning civics or algebra, but there’s also something creepy about activities that force us to assign value to people rather than ideas.

Because when we’re looking at functions, sexes, and colors, we’re not seeing people.

Because when survival is understood as the ultimate value, love, courage, and sacrifice take a back seat—or they stay aboard the sinking ship, to go down singing “Nearer, My God, to Thee.”

But what’s the harm if it’s all theoretical?  Some theoretical alleyways should be avoided because bad things happen there.  When people are seen as units to be evaluated, not to help but to eliminate, pogroms and ghettos and extermination camps may not be far behind.  Not always, but never without the lens of functionality or race or creed.  We tend toward that kind of evaluation anyway; why encourage it?

Here’s an alternate exercise:

You love to cook, but your latest dinner party fell through when all the guests cancelled at the last minute.  Outside your downtown apartment are an Asian dance instructor, a Black single mom pushing a stroller, a homeless white guy, a gay couple waiting for the bus, a Hispanic nurse getting off her shift, and a white Christian homeschool mom with her ten-year-old son.  How will you persuade them all to come in and share your dinner, and what will you all talk about?