Assuming Nothing by Assuming Everything: The Metaphysics of Education
Both of my parents were educators. My mother taught elementary school until I was born, and my father taught secondary mathematics for a few years more. In addition to homeschooling me and my four younger siblings, they also sold Saxon math books. So, I grew up in a home where educational concerns were discussed on a regular basis.
Now, I am starting my own family. With the birth of our first son earlier this year, my wife and I are working through decisions concerning education. Should we use public or private schools, or should we homeschool? If we homeschool, how should we prepare, and how should we teach?
At the core of these concerns lies an important truth: “In the structures of schools and curricula there are embedded . . . all sorts of assumptions about how we know the world and about the place of knowledge in human societies” [1]. These assumptions include the inescapable questions concerning God’s existence, human existence’s ultimate meaning, and man’s relationship to others and nature—each an important metaphysical issue [2]. But how important are they to our children’s education? And what are the risks involved in our choices?
Education: A Material and Spiritual Endeavor
Education is the means by which one generation explains reality to the next, a reality that isn’t limited to the material world. For as soon as we begin thinking about humans we arrive at spiritual questions, questions of first things, and ultimately the question of God. We cannot try to understand the world around us without addressing the center of all spiritual life [3].
Thus, education encompasses not only the many particulars of the world, but also its overarching meaning [4]. When we attempt to sidestep the cohesive element of an ultimate meaning for the splintered parts of existence, we actually sidestep reality and thus the ultimate goal of education.
Abraham Kuyper contends that logic requires ultimate meaning too: “Our higher consciousness demands that this connection be explained by means of a rational system, so that we can perceive how everything fits together and what purpose that system serves” [5]. Thus, without a rational framework for the varied parts of the universe, we have abandoned reason and education [6]. But is this important or effective before college, what about as early as elementary school?
Assuming Everything: The Principles Behind Education
While our worldview congeals during early adult-hood, it is during infancy and childhood that we begin to “absorb reality in a primitive way.” In fact, according to Luigi Giassani (among others) the most influential time in the development of one’s character begins at the age of thirteen or fourteen: “It is then that we become aware of our selves and of the total meaning of the reality that surrounds us” [7]. Thus, the age at which education best forms concepts of ultimate meaning lies before college. If so, from where does the greatest threat proceed?
Certainly, evolutionary biology courses and teachers openly hostile to Christianity have detrimental effects on children. However, the greatest danger comes from curriculum. Curriculum is the syringe through which information is delivered into the mind of the student. It is curricular decisions that form textbooks. Therefore differing textbooks reflect differing curricular philosophies. Highlighting this point, C. S. Lewis opens The Abolition of Man by stating, “I doubt whether we are sufficiently attentive to the importance of elementary text-books” [8].
A curriculum is designed to convey knowledge to the student. As Ken Myers points out, “How we teach, how we approach the conveying of knowledge, is shaped by assumptions about the nature of human knowing and the shape and source of human wellbeing” [9]. Thus, an author’s worldview is conveyed through his text regardless of intent (but more often with intent). Therefore, the matter of education and curriculum boils down to an understanding of reality [10].
For the Christian there is only one true foundation to the understanding of reality. Kuyper makes this point crystal clear: “The flower of true science possesses its root in the fear of the Lord, grows forth from the fear of the Lord, and finds in that fear of the Lord its principle, its motive, its starting point” [11]. When a Christian educates in a manner that ignores or even diminishes the actuality of God, he demolishes his foundation for existence.
Authors of curricula that differ on reality’s foundation will differ in their conclusions about reality’s nature. These conclusions are what students will be taught as the truth of reality, because curriculum also functions as a filter. A curriculum chooses what information to allow and to discard, often without even recognizing differing views (or, at best, disparaging differing views). Christian teachers can soften but not eliminate the effects of non-Christian curriculum, because teachers are taught and often times required to teach the curriculum provided. But can’t we just train our children to compartmentalize the information they get at school, church, and home? Doesn’t the “neutral” education system allow us to form our own ultimate meanings?
Assuming Nothing: The Risk of Education
Despite common perception, there is no such thing as a “neutral” education. Kuyper accurately viewed the “neutral” Dutch school at the turn of the nineteenth century as a “sect school of Modernism” [12]. The claim of neutrality is a denial of the inherent metaphysical attributes of education [13]. In fact, this claim is a metaphysical statement in itself, because all things relate to God and ultimate meaning. Obviously some things relate more closely and have a greater effect; however, when we choose to teach any one thing over another, we have made an unavoidable metaphysical decision.
In attempting a “neutral” education, we divorce meaning from our subjects. Thus at the very least, what the student learns is that reality is highly fragmented and devoid of meaning. Stratford Caldecott states that while we may “have to teach subjects individually,” there is an “underlying connection between them.” If we don’t bring this out we’re not educating the person as a whole [14]. When the whole person is not addressed in education, the student is left to attempt piecing together reality as best he can on his own. Is this an acceptable tact?
Leaving the formation of a unifying meaning for reality to the student has disquieting consequences. “[I]f young people have nothing to guide them in choosing one theory, one ‘working hypothesis,’ over another,” Giussani contends, “they will either invent skewed ones or embrace skepticism. The latter is a much easier route, because skepticism does not even require consistency with one’s initial hypothesis” [15]. By not educating children about ultimate meaning, we educate them to be relativists. And the only possible result of a relativistic worldview is the skepticism that we encounter every day in the world and even in our pews.
Unfortunately, many Christians and even Christian educators continue to deny the magnitude of a “neutral” education’s effects, claiming that any deficiencies can be overcome by “good parenting.” However, counteracting the effects of a “neutral” education is extremely difficult.
C. S. Lewis believed that the way in which we educate our children is of the utmost importance precisely because it is children who are being taught.
The very power of [textbook authors] depends on the fact that they are dealing with a boy: a boy who thinks he is ‘doing’ his ‘English prep’ and has no notion that ethics, theology, and politics are all at stake. It is not a theory they put into his mind, but an assumption, which ten years hence, its origin forgotten and its presence unconscious, will condition him to take one side in a controversy which he has never recognized as a controversy at all [16].
It is impossible to fight what is not obvious to the child. They may tell a parent about the teacher who denies Jesus’ perfection or shows ambivalence concerning the morality of extra-marital sex. But will they have the presence of mind to recognize that their text-book has simply assumed a Darwinian understanding of grammar and mathematics? Important battles will be lost without even realizing there was a battle to be had.
Conclusion
So, how shall I and Megan educate our children? We have concluded that public “neutral” schooling is incongruous with a Christian worldview [17]. We do need Christian teachers in public schools. But more importantly, we must have Christians on school boards and in positions to make serious changes in curriculum choices.
Christian schools must be taken on a case by case basis. Not all seem to grasp the importance of rigorous education on the one hand, or the metaphysical assumptions of curriculum on the other. Both are needed.
Our plan is to homeschool, using educational settings and curriculum that highlight the ultimate purpose of man—to love God and enjoy Him forever, as the Westminster Catechism states it. If this can be done while embracing rigorous educational standards, we will have assumed nothing by assuming everything.
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[1] Ken Myers, “On Education and Human Nature,” Mars Hill Audio Journal 116, Published 09/01/12 accessed at https://marshillaudio.org/catalog/volume-116.
[2] F. Leroy Forlines, The Quest for Truth: Theology for a Postmodern World (2001, reprinted Nashville, TN: Randall House, 2006), 1.
[3] Abraham Kuyper, Wisdom and Wonder: Common Grace in Science and Art, ed. Jordan J. Ballor and Stephen J. Grabill, trans. Nelson D. Kloosterman (Grand Rapids, MI: Christian’s Library Press, 2011), 56.
[4] Luigi Giussani, The Risk of Education: Discovering Our Ultimate Destiny trans. Rosanna M. Giammanco Frongia, (1995; repr., New York: The Crossroad Publishing Company, 2001), 50-51.
[5] Kuyper, 69 [emphasis his].
[6] This point also explains and describes the proliferation of relativistic postmodern thought in what had previously been a nation characterized by Christian ideals.
[7] Giussani, 51-52.
[8] C. S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man, or Reflections on Education with Special Reference to the Teaching of English in the Upper Forms of Schools (1947; repr., New York: Macmillan Publishing Company, 1955), 13.
[9] Myers.
[10] Luigi Giussani’s point about the evaluation of education is helpful here: “[T]he value of an education is measured by how closely and obediently it follows reality, how much attention it calls to it, and how closely it follows even its faintest indications” (Giussani, 51).
[11] Kuyper, 51.
[12] James D. Bratt, Abraham Kuyper: Modern Calvinist, Christian Democrat (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2013), 70.
[13] Metaphysics is the philosophical study of the ultimate composition of reality.
[14] Stratford Caldecott, interview by Ken Myers, “On Education and Human Nature,” Mars Hill Audio Journal 116, Published 09/01/12 accessed at https://marshillaudio.org/catalog/volume-116.
[15] Giussani, 8.
[16] Lewis, 16-17.
[17] While personal, this conclusion results not only from serious study, but also our experiences within the public school system. Megan attended public school until her senior year of high-school, we both attended public universities, and Megan is a licensed Special Education teacher, who has spent a great deal of time in public schools over the past five years. We do believe that Christian teachers are needed in the public school system, but that it is an incredibly dangerous place for Christian children in which the definite cons outweigh the possible pros.
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