Educating to Responsibility

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By Joe Renfro, Ed.D.

At this time in America we need to turn from educating toward a development of irresponsibility back to cultivation of responsibility in education in the total realm of learning.  There are two basic ideologies which at present are much in conflict in educational thinking. There is the traditional, once strongly influenced and spawned by cultivation of the Judea-Christian prospective, and the other is progressive, that has become dominant in American learning, a type of education that moves the populous toward socialism.  It takes away individual responsibility replacing it with societal responsibility that ultimately gravitates into individual irresponsibility.

We are observing our nation going down the drain, and the contemporary focus is to blame society and culture for fading of academic achievement in the past half century. Attacks on individual irresponsibility are very much in vogue at this time, so as to be politically correct. In the September 13, 2022 Washington Examiner there is an article by Kaylee McGhee White entitled Families Know the Education System is Failing Them, where among other things she observes that the public is concerned about the political agenda that has highjacked the education system.

Woke subjects such as critical race theory and gender ideology are now commonplace in the classroom, and families are starting to experience the effects of these ideologies of at home.  Indeed, an alarming number of young girls have identified themselves as ‘transgender’ in recent years, and the spike in anxiety and depression among that population is no coincidence.

In an article entitled “Under God’ under attack … again” by Jerry Newcombe, WND, August 16, 2022 he recounts an interview that he had had with Jewish Rabbi, Rabbi Daniel Lapin, an orthodox rabbi, who had many positive things to say about Jesus.

In one of Newcombe’s media programs Rabbi Lapin told the viewers:

The easiest way to answer the question of whether life on planet earth is better because Jesus walked Jerusalem or not is very simple, and that is: Just watch the way people vote with their feet. Watch where the net flow of immigration is in the world today. Is it from Christian countries to non-Christian countries or the other way around? It is so obvious.”

Newcombe went on to observe that:

It was the Christians who founded America, and they did so seeking religious freedom. They then extended that freedom to others, in measures of tolerance far beyond what was found in virtually any other country in the world at the time. And now the left wants to take away the foundation that was the source of it all.

From an interview for the Providence Forum film  on America’s Judea-Christian heritage, we can see that Dr. Oz Guinness, a British native, said: “I think the Christian roots of the U.S. matter supremely, because of the deep crisis America is in now. There’s no question that America is as deeply divided as at any time since just before the Civil War. … The deepest division is between those who understand the republic and above all freedom in the light of the American Revolution, which was largely – but sadly not consistently – biblical, because of the Reformation, and not those who understand American freedom in the light of the French enlightenment and the French Revolution.”

In a nutshell, the American Revolution was pro-God. The French Revolution was anti-God.

Guinness went on to add:

And if you look at the ideas going through America now –   postmodernism, political correctness, tribal politics, identity politics, the sexual revolution, and currently the rage for socialism – they all go back to the French Revolution, not the American.  And by tearing up the Jewish and Christian roots, America is really at a crisis moment. Will those roots be restored or are they going to be replaced and repealed and America will be a very different country?                        

Education not only is the acquiring of knowledge, but it is as well is the motivator and incubator of the development of character.  The goal of leftist thinking is to  erase Judo-Christian heritage and replace it with thinking that our freedom and granted to the state, not by our “Creator” as is stated in the Declaration of Independence, but  it is granted by the authority of the state and the politically elite.

Christian influence was very much an important characteristic of the development of  educational thinking from the early days of our nation on up to 1960s, but here we see a real shift taking place! Many of you who are older remember those below aged 30  were all hung up on what was called “the generation gap”  The Lord Jesus said, “Work for the night is coming, when no man shall work.”  John 9:4 and the Bible says “Everyone shall give account of himself unto God.”  This thinking was once dominant in America and a call to responsibility but  the Progressive group looks at this as antiquated.

The renowned brain surgeon, Ben Carson, who is a leading thinker in America in our day in his best selling book, Created Equal, observes that:

Unlike many other organs of the body, the brain has not achieved full developmental material at birth.  One of the reasons that newborn babies sleep for such a long time is that brains are still rapidly developing  and need these times of respite to facilitate cellular development and synaptic networking.  In fact, cerebral maturating continues well into the twenties. It is during the time of brain maturation that an individual is most receptive to inputs that affect their self-image and character.”

This speaks of the development of character and self-image of people primarily in our schools although Carson was writing at this point in his book on another area. Masses have confused self-image.

The liberal forces talk a good line, but the results are very much negative. No society, after all, has ever promised more than in Stalin’s  1936 Constitution of the USSR.— or subsequently treated more abysmally. Despite its claims to the contrary, liberal thinking really is very much contrary to Judea-Christian thinking.

Liberal, Progressive counter-traditional thinking that is dominant in contemporary education has created confusion very much in our society; as well as lower academic achievement in comparison with many other nations.  If you look at the charts you can see this decent from the mid-sixties. Our nation is   devoting more and more money each year, but it is not doing the job.  More and more people are going to college, much financed by government loans, but we are falling short in respect to cultivating responsibility in their lives.  Look at what has happened in our land as at the turn of the century we were about six trillion in debt as a nation and just under one President we doubled that from all the indebtedness acquired by all the presidents combined over the history of our nation.. All the administrations with forth-three different administrations,  has especially since the turn of the century has escalated to over thirty trillion indebtedness and moving faster down the drain, more than ever before in history.

I have a shirt that has written on the front of it,  ”Liberals are great at math…They divide the country,, they subtract jobs…they add to the debt.”  There is a lot of truth with the writing on my shirt, and sad to say I can’t wear it or turn it up side down when I go on to vote.

Hugo Gurdon in his ”Letter From the Editor,” in the Washington Examiner, September 6, 2022 publication in respect to Student Loan Forgiveness proposed by our current President observed that: “The debts will not be forgiven. Only the borrowers will be forgiven.  The debts will have to be paid off by people who did not borrow or benefit from the money.” This would be the tax payers! 

What about those who have faithfully been responsible and paid the debts they rightly owned on their Student Loans? Does this cultivate responsibility in our land or irresponsibility?

Student Loan Forgiveness, however, is not the only attack very much part of progressive thinking.  The progessives, springing from the psychology and philosophy of Behaviorism attacks what was one basic to learning in our land on up the 60s, and it has helped to create the springboard of faulty halo for them.

The Education Lottery is praised highly by Leftist thinking. It has been observed also that the so-called Education  Lottery is really something that promotes all education: reading, science, math. But is teaching gambling, and is a responsible way to use one’s money. The lottery pictures itself as a savior in providing more money to education, but the damage to society is far greater that the supposed gains.

Eeducation to cancel student debt and the illusion of wealth through the lottery, or to promote the lottery by saying it for education is faulty thinking. Those who play the lottery, hoping to get rich, actually are the mathematically illiterate.

Watch out for thinking that you get something for nothing, but this has become a stable in many in our society. It is a real example of breeding irresponsibility

The Lord Jesus said, “Work for the night is coming, when no man shall work.”  John 9:4 and the Bible says “Everyone shall give account of himself unto God.” This is a call to responsibility!

It has been said, “You can dodge responsibility, but you cannot dodge the consequences of dodging our responsibilities.”  A man was applying for a job, and the employer asked him “Are you responsible?”  He replied, “O yes.   When I worked on the farm, and the cows got out, Farmer Jones, said I was responsible.”  And when I worked at the service station, and it was robbed because I had not locked properly,  Mr. Smith who owned the station said, I was responsible.   Responsibility can be used in two ways—to do your duty or to be blamed.   This is much like discipline—to find order or to be punished. We need to find not meaning to be punished, but the other one. We need to see responsibility as a motivator.

Abraham Lincoln said, “You cannot escape the responsibility of tomorrow by evading it today.”  Back in my seminary days during one summer, I was the co-director of Camp Pioneer, a YMCA camp up on the other side of Helen, Georgia.  My office was in the supply room, and I was over all the supplies.  There was a problem with the door and it wouldn’t stay shut.  A skunk started sneaking into it.  It needed fixing, and why I didn’t do it, I don’t know. But I just kept putting up with it. 

One day the skunk was beneath my desk, and it wouldn’t go out, and needless to say, I couldn’t go in my office.  The counselor who taught riflery said he could shoot the skunk in the head, between the eyes, so the skunk would be killed before he could spray his odor.  I let him!  I listened to the wrong advice from the expert.

You would not believe how awful the office smelled, after washing and spaying every thing.  I was held responsible, and after a few weeks I found it much more advisable to back to school at seminary and study Greek in the summer course.

We live in a time when all we hear about “rights, rights, rights.”  But it is not right, for rights need to be balanced with responsibility.  There is the Energy crisis. There is the Education Crisis, There is the Environmental Crisis. There is the Economic Crisis, and there is the Educational Crisis which basically we seek to solve by putting more money into a plan, but much of it is a moral and character crisis that progressive thinking is promoting it, as in their thinking we no longer need the truth of the Judea-Christian foundation of our land.  Truth to them is what we create, not what really is!

We need to turn back to the founding principles of our land—ONE NATION UNDER GOD, “endowed buy their Creator,” and away from ONE NATION UNDER THE ELETE WHO PROFESS TO KNOW  WHAT IS THE TRUTH,VIEWED THOUGH SOCIAL REVOLUTON AND SEEK IMPLATE IT THROUGH EDUCATION.   The experience of Christ can especial motivate and empower people in learning and greatly attack the state of irresponsibility with INDIVIDUAL RESPONSIBILITY.

II Timothy 2:15 says, “Study to show thyself approved unto God, as workman that needs not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.”  The Lord Jesus gives us the best guide for learning as the said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.”  Making this statement central to learning can move us  toward responsibility and away from irresponsibility, weaving his presence through all learning: WAY- PROCESS; TRUTH-CENTRAL IN THE PROCESS; and LIFE-THE VITALITY OF IT ALL! It is to realize Christ’s statement, “You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free!”