Two types of rewards can result from a particular action.
One is less than the other — a perk compared to paradise, an accessory compared to a treasure. It could be a trophy from winning a tournament, whereas the true reward is the victory itself. Victory is what one fights for, what each moment in the competition is aiming towards, whereas the trophy is the accolade that accommodates and materially represents the victory. It is how perfection, not fame, is the true reward for the practicing pianist; friendship, not favors, for the devoted friend; perspective, not leverage, for the one who observes; and marriage, not money, for the one who loves.
In the same way, the genuine reward for the student is not job security, a position, or money, though money may come as a result of it. These are merely perks and ought not to be the true objective of education. Knowledge is the true reward for the one who studies.
It appears to be that in America, however, the objective of education has shifted away from knowledge itself, and the statistics show it.
In mathematical literacy, the United States ranks in the bottom third of the 36 countries the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) analyzes. In literacy, 54% of 16 to 72-year-olds lack literacy proficiency according to the U.S. Education Department, and just 31% of eighth graders meet literacy standards according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP).
These statistics should be no surprise to those who are aware of the curriculum – a curriculum in which humanism’s voice has grown prominent. Humanism is the philosophy that humans have an intellect sufficient to define morality for themselves, suppressing divine purpose and promoting situational ethics to guide daily life. But situational ethics and absolute ethics are incompatible in the world in which we live – a world with absolute truth.
In 1933, a group of philosophers and academia wrote The Humanist Manifesto, in which they outlined their goal to eliminate religion from human life, yet in doing so, they merely replaced it with religion of their own — their morality being that which derives from human experience, their salvation coming from what the human alone can do, and their god being the individual human.
Humanism has pervaded American society and its educational curriculum with little resistance. It’s even become the norm.
There was a time when the Supreme Court acknowledged the importance of “assuming the existence of a belief in a supreme allegiance to the will of God,” regarding the status of a conscientious objector, but in 1970, it reduced the standard from this belief in God to having “political, sociological, or philosophical views, or a merely personal moral code.”
In 1961, the Supreme Court acknowledged “secular humanism” as an official religion and a year later, it outlawed optional and religiously neutral prayer in public schools. Our legal system gradually, then quickly, began erasing God and any reverence for Him from the education system.
Thus far, humanists, through the legal system, have accomplished everything that they have fought for — an abolition of absolutes in education, a student body sheltered from theological truths, and a secular society. They understand that the war over the future of society — how a person views himself and what a person knows about life — is waged and won in the public school classroom, by way of the legal system.
America’s education has become more arbitrary and dangerously relative in the face of an objective truth.
Can an education, one in which the primary goal is the transmission of knowledge itself, be true if the source of knowledge is outcasted? Is it possible to have a truly liberal education if the primary contention to secularism is silenced?
Educational reformist John Goodlad said, “The first education question will not be ‘What knowledge is of the most worth?’ but ‘What kind of human behavior do we wish to produce?’”
It’s replacing the primary reward of education, knowledge, with a mere perk — human behavior. It’s substituting the treasure with a mere accessory.
Perhaps the reason for this trend is due to the very thing knowledge reveals when it is the primary reward. Perhaps when striving for a “liberal arts” education, one in which the purpose is to learn about the truth of human life in the realm of sociology, mathematics, philosophy, and science, one ends up in a place that is unappealing to the self — the human god — for it points instead to a divine God.
Perhaps when striving for the true reward of the “liberal arts,” one finds that instead of seeking relevance, there is a peaceful purpose; that instead of the glorification of a perk, there is a lasting treasure; and that instead of an earth made into a heaven, there is a Heaven made into a home.
Perhaps a true “liberal arts” education would point to Calvary, challenging the idols of this world—including the ones we’ve made of ourselves—to accept its truth.
And perhaps, without Calvary in the curriculum, learning becomes an aimless pursuit of perks.
