Thursday, September 07, 2006

"Modern" education

I just read an article on Yahoo! that is relevant in so many ways to our American, "enlightened", culture. (You can read the full article here). From that article, I copied this quote:

Traditional education is obsolete and fails to teach students the skills of problem-solving, critical thinking and effective communication, which they need to succeed in the 21st century, principal Shirley Grover said in an interview.

"It's not about memorizing certain algebraic equations and then regurgitating them in a test," Grover said. "It's about thinking how math might be used to solve a quality-of-water problem or how it might be used to determine whether or not we are safe in Philadelphia from the avian flu."

It almost sounds logical, but it is crafty in design. Those "algebraic formulas" are memorized in order to give a basis from which the mathematical thinking can grow. In other words, what is being said here is that we can expect tomatoes to grow where we haven't planted any seeds. You have to have the basics in order to go to the next level of complex thought. This "new" education robs the kids of the basics.

But that is the way of our society. You don't need the basics to jump to the right conclusion. We can assume that people are going to live correctly in an orderly society without any basis. We have all seen in the last 30-40 years where that kind of thinking has gotten us.

The Bible is not our moral compass and school shootings start to occur. Prayer is banned in schools and cheating on tests sky-rockets. The Ten Commandments are deemed religious and not the basis for law, and murders and thefts and adultery are at an all-time high. Is it any wonder? You have to have the basics before you can move on to the conclusion.

You can't build a house that will last without a foundation. You can't have a culture that is good without God. They are the same thing. This idea that the ends are more important than the means is just not Biblical. And in our culture, we have already begun to reap what is sown in this flawed philosophy.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I remember when our kids were going to school, and the values were changing (that was 25-30 years ago). Modern education was beginning to teach that memorization wasn't necessary -- that's what calculators were for, and every child had to have one. Why take the time to know the tables when "progress" has made it so much easier? We fought that as long as we could, but "progress" won out. Think about it: how often do we have a calculator with us when a problem must be solved? And that's true about the Bible as well. If we don't know the basics, how can we make decisions based on it?