It is well known that the current state of the American education system is appalling. Daily, we read stories about successful students from other countries under far more rigid and disciplined systems of education. The rhetorical questions we ask are: How can we catch up to them? How do we exceed them? Our leaders tell us we must excel in math, science, and technology in order to “beat” the world. But there is another more vital question that is overlooked in the education debate: What should a proper education do for the average American citizen?
In the December and February issues of Reflections, I discussed the Judeo-Christian foundations of American government, and the proper role of love in our society. It is only fitting that education should also be examined within the context of its proper role in a republic; education exists hand-in-hand with the American Judeo-Christian heritage.
Nobody in this nation denies the need for a good education. Its benefits, we are told by figures of authority and power, and by popular culture, are seemingly boundless. The story is always sold to the college student the same way: education means wealth which means happiness. Large houses, large yards, and someone else to look after them has supplanted the more antiquated notions of the American dream – of freedom, self-autonomy, preserving and living the ideals enshrined in the Declaration of Independence. Now, a vacation home in the mountains or at the sea shore is the ultimate goal. Our leaders remind us that investing in education is an investment in the future. And in a popular society which insists that immediate personal pleasure and affluence is paramount to all other values, the path to which education once led has been diverted.
With free will, human beings are called upon to make rational and moral choices in an environment that permits them to do so. An ideal environment, as in a free republic, protects the natural, God-given rights of its citizens and allows them to exercise self-autonomy to make rational, moral choices to better themselves, and their republic. These rational and moral choices, however, do not necessarily spontaneously arise. More often than not they are the product of an education. Such an education teaches not reason, morality, and the construction of such choices – why are they reasonable? Why are they moral?
This is not to discount science, and technology, and the host of other educational pursuits that underpin the American republic. A modern liberal arts education – that touches upon a variety of subjects – is indispensable. An education cannot focus solely exclusively on a particular subject: in an increasingly-globalized and digital world, information is available in seconds and decision-making requires an expansive, rather than contracted sphere of knowledge.
Therefore, according to our Founders – and to Thomas Jefferson – a sound public education was a necessity. Jefferson proposed that basic and essential subjects, ranging from reading and writing to arithmetic and ancient and modern history, should be taught. Higher levels of public education would include subjects such as “Latin, Greek, English, geography, and the higher mathematics,” as Garrett Ward Sheldon notes in The Political Philosophy of Thomas Jefferson (John Hopkins University Press, 1991). And at the university level, education would continue with subjects of “useful sciences” ranging “from physics to philosophy, ethics, and economics.” Religion, too, had its proper role in Jefferson’s education system: “The presence of all religious denominations,” writes Mr. Sheldon, “in the public university would give the students the opportunity to be exposed to all dogmas, from which, Jefferson hoped, they might distill that which was common to them all –the basic ethical teachings of Jesus –to the benefit of the virtuous American republic, without imposing a single religious creed or violating their religious freedom.”
The result of such an education system was not necessarily to create greater wealth and to further the social mobility of each student. Sheldon explains that “the final purpose of this elaborate educational system was to collectively cultivate the individual’s innate capacities, and thereby to promote a more just and harmonious society.” Though personal advancement might be a byproduct of such a system, the purpose was to secure “future order.” Public education, by extension, was not to “merely provide equality of private opportunity (as it has come to be perceived), but was designed to serve the public good.” Only an educated republic can survive by making informed, voluntary, and responsible decisions. An informed citizenry would therefore “intelligently participate in its own self-governance,” Sheldon reveals.
Such an educated public is also a check against government augmentation of power and corruption. “Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers…,” Sheldon quotes Jefferson. “The people themselves therefore are its only safe depositories. And to render even them safe, their minds must be improved.”
Education is therefore not simply a matter of increasing competition among citizens, but a matter of moral, rational, and actual survival for a self-governing people. America's dismal education system not only threatens our standing in the world but ultimately endangers our very rights and freedoms.
-Joe Vigliotti is an award-winning writer residing in Maryland. He can be reached through his website at www.jvigliotti.com.
