Letters to a Post-Christian Nation 6 – Education. New Life

Dear Fellow Citizen,

It’s nice to be back after the Christmas break and the summer holidays. As the school’s restart let me ask you – Is there anything more important in our civic society – than education? What do you want for your children? A good education! People, if they can afford it, will pay lots of money to ensure that – some people even choose their house according to the schools around it. But what do we mean by a good education? What is the purpose of education?

If it was just to provide information – then we don’t need schools – we have the Internet. Is it just to provide somewhere for the kids to go when we are at work – a kind of baby-sitting service? Is it to socialise our children so that they get friends and learn how to live with other people?

Monoversities

Sadly, there is a trend in contemporary society where some in power see schools as a vehicle for social indoctrination, where the ‘values’ of those in power are instilled in young children. Schools have moved away from the notion that children should be taught ‘how’ to think to one where they are taught ‘what’ to think. When I went to the University of Edinburgh in 1979, I loved the diversity of viewpoints, the arguments and the fact that I did not know the political views of most of my lecturers! A couple of years ago I was at a University in Australia, and I realised that I could say what 90% of the students in the class would say about any given political subject. Ironically, for institutions that claim to be about diversity, there is a considerable lack of diverse opinion in many higher educational institutions in Australia. Many of our universities should now be called ‘monoversities’.

Christian Schools in Australia

Which is why it is so amazing, and so encouraging, that there is much more diversity in schools in Australia. Almost 25% of Australian children are taught in independent schools – the vast majority of these Christian. Christian Schools Australia for example – (https://www.csa.edu.au/CSA/About-Us/Our-Mission-and-Strategy.aspx) has more than 200 schools across Australia, employing 13,500 staff and educating more than 86,000 children. And the numbers are increasing – because many parents who are not necessarily Christian recognise the value of a Christian education.

Not everyone is happy with this. Those who believe in a kind of diversity where only their views are permitted, or a tolerance which will only tolerate what they believe, are furious about this. They complain that such schools are divisive and intolerant – and insist that true unity and tolerance will only come when their values are the only ones permitted. They must have had a really bad education to think that this contradictory position actually makes any sense!

I have noticed this in my study of history – in general atheists don’t build schools. Churches and Christians do. For example, all Britain’s ancient universities were started by churches. John Knox stated that where there was a church there should be a school and out of that principle one of the greatest education systems in the world was established. Atheists, cuckoo like, want to take over schools which were founded on Christian principles. The same is in danger of happening in Australia. We need, for the sake of our children, to preserve Australia’s Christian education system – and to expand it.

Neutral Education?

Our atheist secularists regard their position as so obvious that anyone who disagrees with it, must clearly be either stupid or evil – religious people who are clearly in need of remedial education. At first glance their position seems perfectly reasonable and strong. Andrew Copson of the British Humanist Association, as intelligent and persuasive an advocate as you can hope to find, puts the case well: “The message was, and still is, simple: all state schools should be equally inclusive of all pupils and staff, with no one group being given special privileges. Schools should not proselytise or discriminate against anyone on the basis of their religion or belief, in admissions, employment, curriculum, ethos, or assemblies.” Who, except the most stupid bigot, could be against that simple message? Equally inclusive, no special privileges, no proselytization, no discrimination because of religion or belief. Let’s all sign up now to this secular nirvana.

Well, I would. If it were not for the elephant in the room. The problem is that having a ‘secular’ education complete with ‘secular’ values and no other education being allowed, gives special privileges to secularists. It proselytises for those who believe that religion should have no place in public life, and it discriminates against those of us who do not want our children to be taught opinion poll, state enforced moralism. Andrew Copson and others take it as a given that ‘secularism’ is neutral. I take it as a given that there is no such thing as neutrality when it comes to philosophy, morality, how we think about life and especially the concepts of good and evil. The irony is that those who think their values are the ‘neutral’ ones tend to be more fundamentalist and dogmatic than the fundamentalist theologians! And therefore, more dangerous.

Natural Born Atheists?

One of these dangers is that reason goes out of the window. Take for example the argument that children are natural born atheists. It still astounds me that this is regularly trotted out on atheist websites, chat boards and tweets as though it were a self-evident truth. The reasoning in so far as it goes, is that because atheism is not a philosophy but just simply a ‘lack of belief in God’, then babies must be atheists because they don’t believe in God.

There are two ways to answer this. The first is to accept the premise and to point out that in the same way babies are not scientists, readers or speakers of Chinese (even ‘Chinese’ babies). They have to learn and mature. So we can accept that the infantile and immature position is that of atheism. But we would hope that babies would grow up and became mature theists! The second is not to accept the premise and to point out that none of us are born with a ‘tabula rasa’ (a blank slate). But all of us are born with cognitive capacities and are hardwired for both morality and God. Of course, our environments influence all of us. As Andrew Brown put it in The Guardian “in an environment where religion is regarded as weird and old-fashioned, children grow up atheist because that’s what their parents are. They don’t think about it. They may have profoundly superstitious and unscientific beliefs, but they will think of these as rational and atheist because that’s what – they know – all decent people are.” Is Stephen Hawking an atheist because he has thought through the issues, or because his parents brought him up with an atheistic worldview?

But here is the rub. More recent studies have shown that if you leave children to themselves, they will grow up as intuitive theists and creationists. Even Richard Dawkins admits that children have to be ‘educated’ out of their natural theism. Little wonder that the more militant atheists are desperate to get hold of the education system and to use it to instil only their atheistic philosophy. They are so blinded by their ideology that they cannot see that the best bulwark against fundamentalist Islam, or extremists politics of either right or left, is not fundamentalist atheism, but rather biblical Christianity, with its God given notion of all human beings created equal in Gods eyes and its understanding that there is much more to this world than might, power and chemistry.

We are to ‘suffer the little children’ to come to Jesus and not hinder them. We must not let the Trojan horse of fundamentalist atheism destroy our Christian education system and poison the minds of our children. I don’t want my grandchild to be just another brick in the atheist wall…. I prefer her to be part of the living stones of Christ’s Church and Kingdom.

Wouldn’t you prefer an education system which was truly tolerant, diverse and allowed children to receive a broad education in a loving Christian context?

Yours,


David

Scots Kirk, Hamilton, Newcastle