The Gospel Coalition

In a note I received from my friend John Seel, he offered these strong, thoughtful words on American education:

The dedication and achievement of international students and schools are setting higher and higher standards for American educators. We may complain about the near obsessive work habits of Korean students or lament the “loss of childhood” of Chinese children, but our complaints fall on deaf ears. Go ahead play your video games, watch your TV, check your Facebook account, hang out with friends at the mall: you’re being by-passed.

International students are not interested in childhood games, but adult realities. They do not celebrate coddling, but capability. These foreign students are positioning themselves for global influence in ways that Christians students and schools have not even begun to think about. The lax attitude of American parents toward educational aspiration is an indication that Pax Americana is over. When the average American father cannot be counted on to have read one book per year, we cannot expect much more from their offspring. When Americans no longer care about learning, thinking, and reading, Americans will soon lose their ability to lead.

Thomas Friedman in his book, “The World is Flat,” argues that global competition is being driven by China and India. As one Chinese official put it, “Your average kid in the U.S. is growing up in a wealthy country with many opportunities, and many are the kids of advantaged educated people and have a sense of entitlement. Well, the hard reality for that kid is that fifteen years from now Wu is going to be his boss and Zhou is going to be the doctor in town. The competition is coming, and many of the kids are going to move into their twenties clueless about these rising forces.” Compare the findings of Friedman’s book with Jean Twenge’s “Generation Me: Why Today’s Young Americans Are More Confident, Assertive, Entitled — and More Miserable Than Ever Before.” The iGeneration is on the verge of a cohort-wide reality check. Twenge writes, “We’ve given them this cotton-candy sense of self with no basis in reality.” Millennials, she found, are the most narcissistic generation in history.

Every Christian school aspires for educational excellence. They promote leadership among their graduates. These are largely vacuous words. “Excellence” is a term that is only meaningful in a context. “Excellent” compared to what? “Leadership” among whom? Casual gym membership is not what is required of an Olympic athlete. How many Christian schools use the Stanford Achievement Test as an instrument to determine their academic achievement? This is an instrument that compares them with low achieving public schools. Of course, they look good compared to such a measure? How many use the Educational Records Bureau’s CPT-4 instrument, which is used by independent schools that expect high achievement? The answer is very few. Compared to these schools, Christian parents would be shocked to find out how poorly their children are being educated.

Actually, the story may be worse than expected. A large-scale government-financed study concluded that students in conservative Christian schools fare the poorest in comparison with public schools in the study of math, having students that fall as much as one year behind their counterparts in public schools. Another study found that conservative Christian schools lag behind all other schools, public or private. Eighth grade students fared no better than the average public schools in reading and significantly worse in math.

And none of these instruments measure Christian school students against their international peers. Against this group, all American students are falling behind. When we decide that it is time to stop feeling good about ourselves and face reality. Then, and only then, will education in America begin to improve.

If the evangelical church is to have any meaningful voice in the circles of elite global influence, then it will need to do more than address its latent anti-intellectualism. It will have to make the life of the mind a spiritual responsibility of faithful apprenticeship to Jesus.

American schools are raising a generation of intellectual wimps. A large percentage of these are evangelical intellectual wimps. There is plenty of blame to go around. We’re all culpable at some level. But for Christ sake, his apprentices need to get off their duffs and do their homework. Intellectual sloth is a deadly sin.

Wow! Thoughts?