day no. 16,399: immoral education is worse than none at all

"The education of children for God is the most important business done on earth. It is the one business for which the earth exists. To it all politics, all war, all literature, all money making ought to be subordinated; and every parent especially ought to feel, every hour of the day, that next to making his own calling and election sure, this is the end for which he is kept alive by God — this is his task on earth." — R.L. Dabney

Educating a soul is second only to saving one and the two are not unrelated. Christ commanded us to teach the world what He commanded. This begins with our children. Nothing short of the full counsel of Christ will suffice for an education. Calculus cannot hold a candle to Christ. Calculus may get a plane off the ground, but it can't get a soul into Heaven without Christ.

"The training which does not base duty on Christianity is, for us, practically immoral." — R.L. Dabney, On Secular Education

What is morality without the Maker? From where does it come and on what can it stand? There is no such thing as a secular morality. The myth of neutrality is a Trojan horse for licentiousness. Neutrality never favors the brave. It always capitulates to the craven.

"To educate the mind of a bad man without correcting his morals is to put a sword into the hands of a maniac." — Dr. Griffin via R.L. Dabney

An immoral education is worse than none at all. It only teaches the immoral how to be better at it. It provides hacks to hacks and work-arounds to ne'er-do-wells. It teaches natural born killers how to hide the bodies and introduces sexual misfits to more crevices to consider.

"It is virtue, then, direct virtue, which is the hard and valuable part to be aimed at in education. If virtue is not settled in the student, to the exclusion of all vicious habits, all the education in the world will do nothing but make the student worse or more dangerous." — John Locke

Virtue is the one thing that must be taught. It cannot be obtained by default. It will not spring up from within. It must be impressed upon from without. Education presupposes ignorance. It is predicated upon leading someone to somewhere they weren't going to go otherwise. It assumes that there are goods for which a taste must be acquired. If virtue is not taught, viciousness cannot be curbed. If correction does not find a student, corruption cannot be countered.

"The virtue of the citizen is the only basis for social safety and the Christian religion is the only adequate basis for that virtue." — George Washington via R.L. Dabney

The triune God of the Christian religion is the only foundation of love and order. Nothing else can hold a world together, let alone a small society within that world.

"We need the best men to teach our children. But the best are true Christians, who carry their religion into everything... Therefore the tendency [of secular education] must be towards throwing public schools into the hands of halfhearted Christians, or of contemptuous unbelievers." — R.L. Dabney

A Christian wanting to make a difference in the public, government school system can only keep their job if they don't. If they begin to make a difference, they will be asked to find a different employer. The only Christians who keep their jobs in government education then are those who live out their Christian faith so halfheartedly as to make no difference. They draw no fire from their anti-Christian co-workers and cannot disagree too openly with the anti-Christian curriculum they teach their students. If they teach their students anything about Christ, it’s that He isn’t all that important and can be set aside when it comes to certain things, if not most things, and certainly the most important things like life and learning.

"Public education has not produced an educated public." — G.K. Chesterton

Nor did it desire to. Christianity, alone, is the basis and telos of educating anyone, let alone everyone. It is the only justification for doing it in the first place and the only destination to which it can be justified in continuing on with. Public schools graduate public fools. And this is not a bug, this is a feature; this is not an accident, this is the point. A state educated public is eager to be enslaved. They are easier to convince, corral, coddle, and cast off. 

"But nearly all public men and divines declare that the State schools are the glory of America, that they are a finality, and in no event to be surrendered. We have seen that their complete secularization is logically inevitable. Christians must prepare themselves then, for the following results: All prayer, catechisms, and Bibles will ultimately be driven out of the schools." — R. L. Dabney, On Secular Education

In summary, public schools have not failed — they have done exactly what they set out to do: they have raised up generations of godless citizenry who give unto Caesar that which is God’s, that is to say, they look to the State instead of the Lord.