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Education
January 15, 2025
College degrees have never been more accessible. With new institutions proliferating and online learning advancing in sophistication, higher education is no longer the preserve of the elite. At the dawn of the twentieth century, a mere 3% to 4% of adults aged 18 to 21 attended college. Today, that figure has soared to nearly 40%, with over 104 million Americans holding college degrees. But this should provoke a pressing question: has this dramatic expansion truly enriched the world? Are we better off for having filled the academic halls with an unprecedented multitude?
By many measures, this surge has done little more than polish society’s veneer. For the “educated,” debt piles high, while secular dogmas permeate the mind. Christian values are often scorned; socialist sympathies applauded; and licentiousness celebrated, all wrapped in an entitled disdain for responsibility. Parents and students alike, lured by the glitter of prosperity, trade substance for pretense, mistaking polished resumes for virtuous souls. In this Faustian bargain, the devil wears Prada — or at least a crisp suit and an embossed title.
In antiquity, slaves and kings were educated according to their distinct roles and duties. Slaves were molded into unthinking compliance, conditioned to obey orders, adhere to regulations, and complete tasks with mechanical efficiency. Fear and the instinct for survival drove their education, binding them to servitude. In stark contrast, kings were groomed to rule with wisdom, eloquence, and fortitude. They bore the weighty responsibility of protecting their citizens and their property, mastering the art of war, and exemplifying civility. A king was expected to govern himself first, embodying the liberty that enabled others to enjoy their God-given freedoms.
Today, we are far more familiar with the education of slaves than that of kings. Modern academia has deceived many into bondage with serpentine promises of power, control, and prestige. Pride corrodes ambition, dulls the appetite for the good, blinds the soul to beauty, and corrupts the affections.
The professional landscape we navigate is often steeped in the culture of slavery. From infancy, children are taught to pass tests and pursue careers as ends in themselves—a form of bondage masquerading as advancement. People learn to function in the world without understanding its Creator, how it works, or their place within it. This ignorance reduces humanity to cogs in a machine, enslaving them to a system that strips them of purpose and agency.
Academia plays a significant role in perpetuating this dehumanization. It cripples its adherents from realizing their God-given potential. Students are seldom encouraged to think, create, or build. Instead, they are trained to consume, regurgitate state-approved narratives, and survive on mediocrity. They are entertained by trivialities, purchased by paychecks, and seduced by shallow promises of affluence.
Dependent on the State for direction, they parrot its edicts and function within its predefined systems. They do not learn to innovate or ask meaningful questions, leaving them gullible and manipulable. Consensus is their tether, and they lack the categories needed to interpret the world rightly. They are blind to living Coram Deo—in the presence of God, submitting every thought, word, and deed to Christ the King.
"I am sure as I am of Christ’s reign that a comprehensive and centralized system of national education, separated from religion, as is now commonly proposed, will prove the most appalling engineer for the propagation of anti-Christian and atheistic unbelief, and of anti-social nihilistic ethics, individual, social, and political, which this siren world has ever seen."-A.A. Hodge
In our relentless pursuit of affluence, numerous studies reveal a steep decline in educational standards over recent decades. This issue neither exists in a vacuum nor emerged overnight. A poignant example can be found in the seminal report, A Nation at Risk, published by an academic task force in the early 1980s. It sounded the alarm with these words:
"We report to the American people that while we can take justifiable pride in what our schools and colleges have historically accomplished and contributed to the United States and the well-being of its people, the educational foundations of our society are presently being eroded by a rising tide of mediocrity that threatens our very future as a Nation and a people."
The report delivered an even graver warning, equating the plummeting academic standards to an act of war:
"If an 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. We have even squandered the gains in student achievement made in the wake of the Sputnik challenge. Moreover, we have dismantled essential support systems which helped make those gains possible. We have, in effect, been committing an act of unthinking, unilateral educational disarmament."
Such a stark indictment underscores the existential threat posed by our collective failure to safeguard the intellectual and cultural inheritance of the next generation. A society cannot endure when mediocrity supplants excellence, yet the tide of indifference continues to rise.
I am much afraid that the universities will prove to be the great gates of hell, unless they diligently labor in explaining the Holy Scriptures, and engraving them in the hearts of youth. I advise no one to place his child where the Scriptures do not reign paramount. Every institution in which men are not unceasingly occupied with the Word of God must become corrupt.-Martin Luther
Western civilization has captivated generations with its achievements, standing as a testament to human ingenuity and cultural richness. Its architectural grandeur, balanced aesthetic sensibilities, and intellectual contributions evoke admiration that time has only deepened, especially when juxtaposed with the modern age. The West, a paragon of freedom and prosperity, has advanced the highest forms of political governance, law and order, economics, and literature. This legacy is not the product of random chance or mystical fate—it is the fruit of a Christian culture, rooted in an educational philosophy that shaped the minds and hearts of its people to seek, cherish, and establish truth, beauty, and goodness in all things.
The 9th century, often regarded as a dark period in European history, found its light in the reign of Alfred the Great. Alfred's submission to God, strategic wisdom in conquering foes, and commitment to cultural renewal laid the groundwork for reforms whose influence endures. President of New Saint Andrews College, Dr. Benjamin Merkle, captures this transformation, noting: “As peace, piety, learning, and the many arts patronized by the king began to flourish under Alfred’s rule, Britain began to experience a new type of golden age of Anglo-Saxon culture.”
This golden age extended its reach to every facet of life, especially law and justice. Alfred’s reign inspired the development of common law, anchored in his biblical understanding of morality, oaths, and covenants. These principles were not merely reserved for magistrates but were the expectation of every man. Merkle further writes: “Alfred insisted that every Anglo-Saxon man keep his oaths and pledges. Instead of a prohibition of murder, treason, or some other heinous crime, the king saw oath-breaking as the greatest threat to the endurance of his kingdom. Although the prioritization of the keeping of oaths may seem strange to the modern mind, to the Anglo-Saxon it was clear that keeping one’s word stood at the foundation of a civilized society.”
Alfred the Great remains one of history’s pivotal figures, laying the foundation for the values that would define Western civilization for centuries, indeed for more than a millennium.
Central to this reform was the Bible, which served as the cornerstone of education and societal flourishing. When the West cherished Scripture, it thrived. Conversely, the rejection of biblical principles undermines education and hastens the decline of nations. As Christian philosopher Vishal Mangalwadi observes: “Separating God’s Word from man’s literature strikes at the roots of a flourishing tree. The English-speaking world is repeating that folly…No one can understand Chaucer, Milton, Bunyan, Shakespeare, Dickens, or Jane Austen without understanding the Bible.”
Western civilization’s ascendancy is a direct inheritance of this biblical legacy. To neglect it is to risk losing the very essence of what has made the West remarkable—a culture grounded in transcendent truth, enduring values, and a vision of human flourishing.
America’s founders understood that the health and longevity of any civilization depend on the establishment of institutions dedicated to learning and moral instruction. They recognized the necessity of building schools and universities to preserve their faith and values for future generations. One of the early founding documents, New England’s First Fruits, underscores this vision with its call to establish academic institutions—most notably, Harvard University. It declares:
"After God had carried us safe to New England, and we had built our houses, provided necessities for our livelihood, reared convenient places for God’s worship, and settled the civil government; one of the next things we longed for, and looked after was to advance learning, and perpetuate it to posterity; dreading to leave an illiterate ministry to the churches, when our present ministers shall lie in the dust."
Harvard’s early pedagogy, under the guidance of its first president, Henry Dunster, exemplifies the values that shaped its reputation for academic and spiritual rigor. Of Dunster’s leadership, it was said:
"He is a learned, conscientious, and diligent man who has so well trained his pupils in the languages and arts, and so thoroughly grounded them in the principles of divinity and Christianity, that we have, to our great comfort and, truthfully, beyond our expectations, witnessed their progress both in learning and in godliness. Their advancement in learning has been evident through their public declamations in Latin and Greek, as well as their logical and philosophical disputations. In addition to their regular exercises in the college hall, they have consistently presented these in the presence of magistrates, ministers, and other scholars, on set days once a month, as a way to demonstrate their growth in scholarship."
Harvard’s foundation was deeply rooted in the Christian Liberal Arts—a tradition designed not only to train the intellect but to shape character. It cultivated a moral imagination and fostered a commitment to truth, beauty, and goodness. It is no exaggeration to assert that the Christian Liberal Arts were instrumental in building America.
The founders’ vision reminds us that education, when anchored in a pursuit of the eternal and transcendent, becomes the bedrock of a flourishing civilization. By prioritizing both faith and knowledge, they laid the groundwork for a society committed to learning, justice, and virtue—a legacy that continues to shape American culture.
Dr. Chris Schlect, a Senior Fellow of History at New Saint Andrews College, provides a composite definition of the Christian Liberal Arts: “an education that draws upon educational authorities from the past as it cultivates liberating intellectual habits in order to impart Christian virtue and piety.” He further expounds on the concept of virtue, explaining:
"Virtuous graduates are those who exhibit those excellences that are proper to human nature. These virtues include the cardinal virtues of prudence, justice, temperance, and fortitude, as well as the theological virtues of faith, hope, and love. Piety and virtue are universal human qualities that are accessible to people of all eras, ethnicities, and intellectual capacities. So it is with an education that promotes these qualities."
Dr. Schlect also explores the historical roots of the term liberal arts, noting its origins in classical antiquity. He states:
"The term ‘liberal arts’ originated with Cicero and indicates a class of arts associated with liberation—but liberation from what? Cicero, like many intellectuals in classical antiquity, disparaged human activity that served the material necessities of food, clothing, shelter, and procreation. The liberation they associated with the liberal arts was freedom from having to perform subsistence work. Thus, many Roman teachers characterized the liberal arts as the arts taught exclusively to freemen."
The emphasis on freemen reflects an ancient perspective that linked education with human flourishing. Freemen possessed not only the practical independence to shape their lives but also the culture and intellectual foundation to enable the flourishing of the communities and spaces they inhabited.
A Christian Liberal Arts education anchors students in history, enabling them to live faithfully in the present and shape a purposeful future. In contrast, modern education revises history, trivializes the present, and breeds a paralyzing fatalism about the future. The Christian Liberal Arts teach the power of philology—how words shape ideas that, in turn, shape the world. Modern education, however, confines students to jargon tethered to isolated fields of study.
A Christian Liberal Arts student learns the origins of mathematics and its purpose; modern students memorize formulas as ends in themselves. The former cultivates virtue, while the latter panders to immorality under the guise of happiness. Leaders who create opportunities emerge from Christian Liberal Arts, whereas modern education churns out entitled consumers.
Christian Liberal Arts education integrates all of life, equipping students to subdue and steward every aspect of creation. Modern education narrows focus to job-specific skills, perpetuating ignorance of broader intellectual and moral realms. Christian Liberal Arts foster lifelong learners, while modern approaches yield students who are intellectually inert and unprepared to learn independently.
Above all, the Christian Liberal Arts train students to understand their place before God, recognizing His Lordship over all of life. Modern education, by contrast, severs reality from the divine, teaching its adherents to live by lies. The former cultivates freedom; the latter inculcates fear. Christian Liberal Arts graduates pursue vocations with confidence and versatility, while those shaped by the modern zeitgeist often flounder outside their narrowly specialized fields.
The purpose of a Christian education would not be merely to make men and women pious Christians: a system which aimed too rigidly at this end alone would become only obscurantist. A Christian education must primarily teach people to be able to think in Christian categories.-T.S. Eliot
The idolization of survival, convenience, and affluence are telltale signs of a weak and miseducated culture—one that fundamentally lacks the fear of God and the necessary framework for true human flourishing. When academics are reduced to a mere pursuit of credentials for social and financial status, they fail not only individuals but society as a whole. Education must instead be understood as the process of enculturation—forming God’s image-bearers to live as free people capable of comprehending, delighting in, and wielding wisdom for the purpose of building a distinctly Christian culture in the world around them.
The ancient Greeks captured this vision in their concept of paideia—a cultural immersion designed to shape individuals to think and live as citizens of Greece. Similarly, Christian education calls for students to drink deeply from the rich waters of wisdom, equipping them not only to absorb knowledge but to share it persuasively and compellingly. The goal is not merely to produce graduates with impressive diplomas but to cultivate individuals of moral character who approach every facet of life with a distinctly Christian lens—the only truly truthful way to view the world.
Christian education, therefore, is not merely about adding a Bible or religion class to the standard curriculum. It involves integrating a Biblical worldview into every subject, making Scripture the foundation and framework for all learning. It’s not just about employing Christian teachers but ensuring that every discipline is taught from a Christ-centered perspective.
Education that honors God begins with the acknowledgment of His omniscience as the source of all knowledge (Proverbs 1:7). In cultivating the Christian paideia, we answer His call to exercise dominion, to be fruitful and multiply. Christians are charged with filling the earth with the knowledge of God’s glory, building His kingdom on earth as it is in heaven.
Such an education forms the bedrock of a flourishing culture—one where God’s people transcend mere survival and embrace the call to conquest. It reflects the majesty of Christ’s lordship in every sphere of life, manifesting His reign in education, art, science, governance, and beyond.
