The Power of Education
What is the point of education? Why do people teach? At the core, it is to shape the thoughts, views and beliefs of the pupils. When a man gets up and tells a group of students ’these things are so’ he does it that the pupils would believe him and act accordingly. Good pupils do.
The teacher wields immense power to shape his or her pupils; he controls the content, he chooses the emphasis, he throws the subtler cues of passion, apathy, love, or disdain along with the material.
The principle goes far beyond the classroom. The teacher student relationship exists when one person is interacting with information created by another. All media is a facility for this relationship.
Lee Iacocca once said, “In a completely rational society, the best of us would be teachers and the rest of us would have to settle for something less, because passing civilization along from one generation to the next ought to be the highest honor and the highest responsibility anyone could have.”
Iacocca seemed to be under the impression that passing civilization to the next generation is what a government-run educational system does. He was wrong. The educational system we have in America is not there to pass civilization along, but to shape it. It’s effects have been disasterous.
In large part, we have John Dewey to blame for that. He rightly understood the power and influenced the structure of the American educational system to become an effective engine for “social progress” while ensuring that the system clamors for a monopoly on the enterprise.
He lauded the Soviet communists for fully monopolizing education and turning it into an effective engine to aim the spirit of society to their own ends.(Foley 2022)
The problem is not so much the engine or the mechanism, but to what end it is harnessed.
Who gets to set that ultimate aim and spirit of education and on what basis? God does, on his own authirity. If the basis is anything other than the infallible word of God, the society on the receiving end of this influence progresses to misery and destruction.
When the teacher knowingly or unwittingly injects lies into the education process, the results are invariably disastrous. At one point in time, Satan taught Eve something false about God and about her, it took the death of the Son of God to redeem people from the effects of that lie.
What does a parent do with this? Stop listening to lies, stop putting our children under the influence of liars. God charged the fathers with educating their children. Start teaching them the truth ourselves.
Second, use the influence you do have to break down lies. A society that God gave over to its lusts, progresses to misery and destruction by His decree.
In times past he was gracious to send revival and to reset societies by means of granting the new birth to wide swaths of people. We can only pray that he would do so again, look to his word for what ought to be our ultimate aim and spirit, make it so, and as we have opportunity, teach the truth to others.