Taking every thought captive for obedience to Christ (2 Corinthians 10.5)

Disciplines
Radicalizing Education
Education the world over needs a radical overhaul. That, at least, is the view of Jay Griffiths. Writing in the 8 June 2016 edition of Aeon, Mr. Griffith decries what he describes as the “colonised” state of education, especially in the developing world and among native peoples, and calls for the return of native and naturalist instruction to the traditional Western curriculum (“Schooled in nature”).

Mr. Griffiths explains that Western education imposes a materialistic and economic burden on native peoples, robbing children of their heritage, and forcing them to grow up into a worldview different from that of their forebears. Lacking any sense of mystery, spirituality, natural beauty, and human dignity, colonizing education practices a kind of “intellectual apartheid” as it bends young minds to the service of nationalism and economics. Mr. Griffiths’ focus is mainly on developing world cultures, but, with relevant adjustments, the same could be said of education in America.

“Radical education,” as Mr. Griffiths uses the term, focuses on learning from nature, from the stories of one’s forebears, and from one’s own mind and body, with a view to finding one’s place, not as a consumer in society, but as a servant and giver. For those committed to “radical education,” their core curriculum is arranged under such headings as nature, story, ethics, respect, balance, creativity, spirit, insight, and gift – what Mr. Griffiths summarizes as “The art of being human.”

He insists that education everywhere is “manacled to corporations” and makes children “colonised subjects in the empire of the school” who are being groomed to live as “earners, consumers and debtors-to-be.” He calls for a generation of educators who will “snatch their children away from a toxic ideology that damages nature, and human nature.” Children, he insists, need to be taught that they are uniquely gifted for the purpose of honoring nature and their fellow human beings, so that they can find their place of service for good in the world. Every child is both uniquely gifted and is a gift to the world. In a radical education framework, the idea of “gift” is significant: “Gift is a lovely word: it has lightness and lift, it is an open-handed and open-hearted word. And it shines, this word, lighting your path…”

Mr. Griffiths blames the Catholic Church for imposing a truncated form of education on many in the developing world, cutting them off from nature and their heritage to teach religion and life from a sterile, non-relevant, and foreign perspective. The same could be said for public school education in America.

Mr. Griffiths asks, “What do you get if you decolonise education?” He answers, “The best of both hemispheres,” and he seems to mean not just the creative and logical hemispheres of the brain, but the intellectual, technical, and practical hemisphere of Western education and the poetic, natural, traditional heritage of native cultures.

The goal of radical education is to fit people for fruitful living on earth, in society with all kinds of other human beings. Mr. Griffiths insists that our current approach to education cuts children off from nature, mystery, their inner aspirations and unique gifts; minimizes the importance of learning to be respectfully and creatively human; and imposes a burden on children that crushes rather than liberates. He sees such education as an edifice that threatens to crumble under its own unsustainable weight.

He quotes a British radical educationist who says, “The kind of education I want results in affecting [children’s] relationship, as adults, with the Earth, so that in time we move from a society of taking to a culture of giving, in a society of relatedness.”

American public education – and much, if not most private school learning – has capitulated to the Marxist view of the world. Marxism, we must remember, is first of all an economic theory of history, and only secondarily a political system established to expedite that economic view. Marxism insists the people are entirely material in composition and aspiration, and for society to be just, all must be equal in their material attainments – from each according to his ability to each according to his need. It has no place for religion and insists that all creativity must serve the political and economic agenda of the whole society.

American education has embraced this economic view of life, and sponsors a course of study designed to fit learners for productive life in a materialistic economy and a progressivist polity. Only so much of heart, mystery, faith, art, or human decency is allowed into the curriculum as is useful to prepare young people to be debt-burdened consumers.

American education needs to be radicalized; not however, by eliminating or replacing the present curriculum, but by exposing it as the religious course it is. American schools are secular churches, drumming into children of all ages the belief that a person is primarily homo economicus, that markets and politics are the prime movers of individual and social wellbeing, and that progress toward equality of wealth for all is the essential meaning of justice. Christians have been complicit in allowing this curriculum to deprive children of the wonders of creation, the mysteries of spirituality, the glories of our Christian heritage, and the gifts of creativity.

Radical education movements are springing up in developing countries all over the world, as Mr. Griffiths reports. Whether such a movement – perhaps inspired and led by Christians? – will ever surface in this or other Western nations, remains to be seen.

For reflection
1.      Do you agree that American education has become wedded to an economic and political agenda? Is this a good thing? Why or why not?

2.      Is the education churches offer young people sufficient, clear, and capable of fitting them to see through the religious agenda of American schooling? Explain.

3.      As those who are called to make disciples of Jesus as a way of life (Matt. 28.18-20), all Christians would seem to be part of a movement of “radical education.” Do you agree? What is your role in that movement?

Next steps: As disciples, Christians are literally “learners” throughout their whole lives. Meditate on Ephesians 4.17-24. What is your present approach to “learning Jesus”? How might you bring more breadth and depth to your learning? Talk with some Christian friends about this question.

Today at The Fellowship: Part 1 in our present ReVision study, “Time for the Kingdom”; a brief video introducing our booklet, If Men Will Pray, calling men to a fuller and more consistent life of prayer; a Crosfigell call to take up the work of ministry right where you are; and our newest books, The Kingdom Turn and The Poetry of Prayer. We also encourage you to download this week’s PDF of our Scriptorium study of Acts 9 (Part 8).

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