The American Education Train

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The educational situation in America can be compared to a train, often with boxcars of learning standing still attached to no engine, or having continual changes with all types of different engines to pull them, or actually having them move in reverse in many ways.

American public education has become sidetracked in many ways, particularly as our schools have deviated from the Judeo-Christian supports of duty and reverence that were once cultivated as part of learning in American education.   It seems like our public educational system in our primary and secondary schools is much like a railroad hub, where there is much activity and little progress in the long run.

Much of this, I feel, is because our educational focus has increasingly been devoid of any positive focus on an ultimate commitment or to God, who is the ultimate source of all knowledge, the omniscient One.  Proverbs 1:7 says: “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge.”   And II Peter 1:3 applies that by saying we are to “Add faith to virtue; and to virtue knowledge.”

Overall, the two tracks to educational thinking have been—one, student centered and the other–subject centered learning.  Our contemporary educational leaders, it seems, have found no way to positively tie the two together, so as to make a sound support for the trains of learning to move with the speed and consistency needed.  The crossties of secularism do not do the job, for they fail to produce the needed inner commitment to develop students’ reverence and responsibility, which becomes a part of the learning experience when faith in God or, at least, an ultimate concern is a central ingredient.

Alfred North Whitehead, the great philosopher and scientist, who died in 1947, wrote in his essay on “The Aims of Education”: “A religious education is an education, which inculcates duty and reverence. Duty arises from our potential control over the course of events. Where attainable knowledge could have changed the issue, ignorance has the guilt of vice. And the foundation of reverence is this perception, that the present holds within itself the complete sum of existence, backwards and forwards that whole amplitude of time, which is eternity.”

Whitehead’s essay, which was written before the breakdown in morality and the decrease in educational achievement in our public schools that began to shape the American educational dilemma in the sixties, talked very much about the problem of “inert ideas.”  He said: “In training a child to activity of thought, above all things we must beware of what I will call “inert ideas”—that is to say, ideas that are merely received into the mind without being utilized, or tested, or thrown into fresh combinations.”

Behaviorism, I feel, is such an idea, “an innate idea,” as Behaviorism developed much from the study of animals by B.F.Skinner. But the human being is very much more than another other animals, a rational creature, and as the Bible says, is “created in the image of God,” not here just by accident or the survival of the so-called fittest. This explains the missing link in a much better way, for the Bible gives the key, as it says, “God breathed into man the breath and he became a living soul.”  In this context is the call to do our duty to God, ourselves and to all creation, so as to realize the reverence to being continually conformed into his image.  This is beyond the thinking of behaviorism!

The human mind provides a learning field far beyond that of other creatures on earth, although Behaviorism does not see it this way.  The scientific progress of our day does not disprove God, but it only affirms that we are in God’s image, able to unlock his secrets of creation and become knowledgeable of God’s immense universe.  And isn’t it interesting (maybe most distressing) to see our fallen condition, that even with all the scientific progress, we still don’t have moral fortitude to live together, with ourselves, and the rest of the world?

The behaviorism that is so much a part of our public education sets the standards very often in what is taught, in the ways that it is taught, and with the appropriate rewards for what is taught that is an inert idea that helps to create a learning environment void of God.  It neglects seeing learning as its own reward. All students don’t fit into the same mold, and learning is not only what the educators pour in, but really basically what the students are able to discover themselves in the quest for learning.  You can’t move very well on just one track, and contemporary American public education is very much subject centered learning that can be measured by testing.

John Watson, the father of behaviorism and predecessor of Skinner, helped to define the study of behavior as the essential and measurable basic to the learning environment.   He is widely known for his Little Albert study and his “dozen healthy infants” quote, as he said:  “Give me a dozen healthy infants, well-formed, and my own specified world to bring them up in and I’ll guarantee to take any one at random and train him to become any type of specialist I might select–doctor, lawyer, artist, merchant-chief, and, yes, even beggar-man and thief, regardless of his talents, penchants, tendencies, abilities, vocations, and race of his ancestors.” We are trying to do this in public education, spending untold amounts of money on an educational system seeking to do this, but which is not working.

The public school teachers each are to write objectives and create lesson plans to show the acceptable learning environment and how the students are to be taught each objective.  It is central to accountability.   It is very much on the subject centered focus, so as to keep this rail in good shape, while the crossties connecting it to the student centered focus are very much neglected and the student centered rail is rusty and very much wobbly with no moral foundations.  Short-term learning for the tests takes place, but long term learning for living is very much neglected.

The whole focus in American primary and secondary education is presently on accountability, making the schools, the administrations, the teachers, all accountable—although little is being said about the students, the parents and the society itself.  Many say that learning in school is no longer fun or exciting, but it is what you must put up with to get an education.  It is much like the train, just sitting there with no progress or moving about in various, random ways.

I feel that the subtraction of the religious dimensions in contemporary American education is one reason our land is slipping so much academically.  If you look at the statistics, you can see that when American church membership was at the highest point in our history in the late fifties and early sixties, when religion was very much accepted as vital in the learning process, that is when we excelled above all the other nations in the world in academic achievement.

We have lost the sense of duty to learn and the foundation of reverence, and things have begun to slip.  The education world seems to accept as ultimate the stupid notion that all is naturally evolving by a mindless force to continual progress, void of a dependency on a Supreme Power, and you can observe how this subtracts from any commitment to duty or to reverence! God could have used any means of creation he saw or sees fit for creation of life, but to credit it all to chance is at the root of much of our educational dilemma. The track of destiny is removed, which means that ultimately we go nowhere, and the eternal is blacked out.

The education train is rolling all about, costing more money than ever imagined before, but it isn’t doing the job in the public primary and secondary schooling.  Isn’t it about time we take Behaviorism off the throne and put the One who should be there in its place, the True Engine of Learning, “the way the truth, and the life”, or at least to admit the engine of Behaviorism is not doing the job and be open to explore other avenues?

The objective material of subject centered knowledge can comes together with the personal material of student centered material with the motivation of realized duty and reverence to “the complete sum of existence, backwards and forwards, that whole amplitude of time, which is eternity,” as Whitehead suggested in his work,  “The Aims of Education.”

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by Joe Renfro, Ed.D., Educational Columnist, Radio Evangelist, Retired Teacher and Pastor, 5931 West Avenue, Lavonia, Georgia 30553,  706-356-4173, joerenfro@windstream.net

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