The question is often asked, “why now?” in regards to the many cultural issues that are discussed today. I have heard it numerous times in the past few days concerning transgender issues.
Why after all these years must we discuss locker rooms and restroom arrangements? Why must we discuss gender reassignment surgeries? Why must we discuss whether or not to call a baby a boy or a girl?
Some will say that the reason for the discussion now is that research has come out that proves that humanity is non-binary. But, as one looks at the whole idea of non-binary humanity, they find the idea was created by rather radical thinkers of the 1950’s-1970’s and was not scientific at all.
So, why now?
A Trip To School
It has been a while since I have been in a school to do something other than watch a game or a concert. In other words, it’s been a while since I’ve sat down in a school while thinking about public education. This happened while I attended a school board meeting. Here’s news coverage of the meeting.
This school board meeting was a hotly anticipated one, not really by conservatives in the area, but it was by those of a more liberal flavor. So, I sat in a meeting that would typically have 50 people, but today had a 2/3 full auditorium. I am happy to report that nothing got out of hand. I don’t think anyone ever felt threatened. And that allowed me to sit and think about what I was hearing. And as I did so, I heard this question “why now?” from one of the school board members.
The first speaker of the night was a concerned parent. It was a common concern in our country. The concern was about books in the school district. And it was a valid concern because, apparently, graphic depictions of fellatio are found in books in the school district while “To Kill A Mockingbird” has been banned. And to the credit of the school board, they believed that this was atrocious, and I feel confident this won’t be the case for long. But the rest of the speakers were there on behalf of allowing transgender students to use the restroom of their choice.
When the school board members were allowed to talk, one of them asked the question, “why now?”. Why is now the time that this restroom discussion must take place? Why is it that what had been done for the previous many, many years is no longer acceptable? Why is it that the method that worked for so many years does not work anymore?
And here is why.
The moral system that society lived under has changed. And so, the task of the educator and the education system as a whole is supposed to change as well.
A Word From C.S. Lewis
I left the meeting and read a short book that I have read three times before about education. It was C.S. Lewis’s book, “The Abolition of Man”. I read it because I felt that here was much in it that applied to the moment that I had just lived in and wanted to give it a fresh read.
For Lewis and most of human history, education has been seen as a moral activity. Education is the way one inculcates the morals of society into the pupil who will hopefully grow up to be a productive member of society. So, it was not the job of the teacher to teach from a new morality, but to teach based on the “older system” that was handed down to them. In other words, the educator was not to just make stuff up as they go. There could be advancements in the morality of a society, but these advancements would spring from the “older system” and not as a result of the destruction of the “older system”.
“In the older systems both the kind of man the teachers wished to produce and their motives for producing him were prescribed by… a norm to which the duty teachers themselves were subject and from which they claimed no liberty to depart. They did not cut men to some pattern they had chosen. They handed on what they had received: they initiated the young neophyte into the mystery of humanity which overarched him and them alike. It was but old birds teaching young birds to fly.”
C.S. Lewis, “The Abolition of Man” found in “The Complete C.S. Lewis Signature Classics”, C.S. Lewis Pte. Ltd., 2002, p. 485
I must note, this is a historic view of education put in a rather eloquent description. And in this understanding of education, the teachers are producing pupils according to the moral system that has been handed down from one generation to the next.
I would argue that this is what we had up until very recent times. Why is it that we all understood that certain books could not be permitted in a school district that consists of minors? And why did we all understand that biological men were to use the men’s restroom? Because we were not just making stuff up as we go. We were, for the most part, all operating with an assumed moral system that had been handed down to us. That is not to say that all of our teachers in the past were Christian, but that they were operating in a society that overwhelmingly accepted the truth of the standard handed down to them.
Lewis wrote this book in 1943 and the changes in society and education were becoming evident to him. And so, he understood that things would not always be this way. Notice what he says will happen in the very next line. And note that the word “Tao” simply means that older system that has been passed down.
“This will be changed. Values are now mere natural phenomena. Judgements of value are to be produced in the pupil as part of the conditioning. Whatever Tao there is will be the product, not the motive, of education. The conditioners have been emancipated from all that. It is one more part of Nature which they have conquered. The ultimate springs of human action are no longer, for them, something given. They have surrendered-like electricity: it is the function of the Conditioners to control, not to obey them.”
C.S. Lewis, “The Abolition of Man” found in “The Complete C.S. Lewis Signature Classics”, C.S. Lewis Pte. Ltd., 2002, p. 485
What Lewis saw in the curricula and education of his day was that the educational system was no longer the steward of the ancient wisdom passed down from one generation to the next, but the maker of ethics and civilization itself. He sees society as having “emancipated” itself from the “older system” and creating something new.
Why now? Well, the answer to that question is very simple if Lewis is correct. And I believe him to be so.
The “older system” of morality is in the process of being torn down and society is raising a new system. And as this takes place the entire society is expected to go along with the rebuilding of a new system. That is also why these debates receive so much passion. Those who hold to the new system have their own morality and set of moral judgments that they live and move from.
Those who adhere to the “older system” of morality are considered evil by those who hold to the new system of morality that is floating about. The liberals were disgusted by the transgender bathroom discussion because their newly created value system considers those who hold to the “older system” as a wicked and bigoted group.
And the scary thing is that it is the people of the new system that are conditioning mankind into the image that they desire. They are forming children to like what the new system believes they should like and to behave as the new system believes they should behave.
“The Conditioners, then, are to choose what kind of artificial Tao they will, for their own good reasons, produce in the Human race. They are the motivators, the creators of motives.”
C.S. Lewis, “The Abolition of Man” found in “The Complete C.S. Lewis Signature Classics”, C.S. Lewis Pte. Ltd., 2002, p. 485
I wouldn’t say that all teachers adhere to the new morality and are conditioners for it, but having viewed the “Libs of Tic Toc” Twitter feed, I know that many of them are. But I am saying that we are in the middle of a change in society that began slow and is now moving very quickly.
We are slowly being conditioned to think according to the new system. According to the old standard, the radical ideas that many people hold to today were thought criminally evil in the 1950’s-1970’s. But they were thought of back then, and the few followers they had have grown exponentially. What started slowly is now moving very quickly. The slow conditioning to the new way of thinking is now happening rather quickly. They have produced in more and more people that newly created system of morality as they’ve torn down the old.
Why is sexually explicit material in a school library? Because the librarian now believes that it is a moral good. That person has been conditioned to believe that is the case.
Why are some teachers within the education system in total disagreement with that? Because they adhere to the “old system” that has been passed down to them from the past.
Why do some people think men have the right to enter into women’s spaces because they “feel like a woman”? Again, it’s because those people have been conditioned by the new morality to believe this is right, loving, and kind. They believe it to be righteous.
Why are we seeing more and more of these issues today? Because the number of people conditioned by the new morality is growing.
What Does That Mean For Us?
Education is not a neutral ground. The children in an educational system are being taught a morality. The question is not whether but which. Which morality are our children being inundated with from the time they enter school to the time they leave every day? And the answer this question is not an easy one to figure out.
I come to this question as a Christian who believes that a lot of the morality of the past in our country has come to us from a Christian heritage. The beliefs handed down to us from the past are those that come from a Christian worldview even though many people of the past were not Christian. It is the Christian worldview and view of morality that both built the West and is currently being thrown off.
At the Federal level our school districts are being molded into the new morality. Dictates from on high are coming down that affect everything from what new teachers are being taught to what is allowed within a school. These things are teaching something to our children.
When the government says that homosexuality or transgenderism is to be handled a certain way, that teaches something to our children. It teaches the students what is to be thought of as good and beautiful according to the new morality. Some people may not be influenced by this, but more and more they will be the outlier, and this will be increasingly difficult.
At the very local level a teacher may be a Christian and is able to assert her Christian worldview within her classroom. She will have a tremendous influence on the children left in her care and this will be an overall good. That teacher will be able to affirm the good and beautiful and teach that to the students. But what she is able to teach will likely be limited by the dictates of the government which is working to tear down the old system and put in place the new.
When I put all this together, it means that a government school is becoming an increasingly dangerous place to educate our children. Some local government schools may not be as infected by the new system as others. But all are growing increasingly infected. The Christian worldview is being torn down as the new system, created by the whims of society are being built up with increasing speed. It means that parents need to evaluate whether it is safe to put their kids in public school. It might be okay to have your child in a certain school district today and that not be the case in a couple years. It means that people who care about their community need to show up and elect school board members who will not allow the destruction of the “old system” and will fight the building of the “new system”. The children created from this government school will be the adults who work in your community. Therefore, the education that goes on in a government run school should matter greatly to us. It will determine what our community looks like for years to come.
As believers we have an obligation to educate our children in the fear and admonition of the Lord (Ephesians 6:4). This is no small task and it is definitely not something that can be done in a couple minutes every day. It is an all-encompassing task. The term used here is “paideia of God”, and we know what the phrase means. A Roman citizen was supposed to raise their child in the paideia of Rome and in so doing taught that child how to be a faithful Roman citizen. It was an all-encompassing education. That child was to learn how to work, what they were to honor, what they were to love, what they were to find beautiful, and what they were to believe. As I said already, it was all-encompassing. And Paul use that phrase to say that Christians are to raise their children to be faithful members of God’s Kingdom. Parents are to make sure that their children are taught to value what a Christian is to value, love what is truly lovely by God’s standard, and how to live according to God’s Word. And if your child’s school becomes a hindrance to that, then you need to find a way to educate them differently.
R. Dwain Minor
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