Education at the Crossroads

Academia is in trouble. The campus has been infiltrated if not besieged by the radical left that has for its chief goal not simply the disruption of the educational system in America but the destruction of the establishment—politically, economically, and socially.

Some of the most prestigious institutions in our country, including Harvard, Columbia, Cornell, California, Stanford, Swarthmore, and Indiana, have been targets of the insurgents. There have been sit-ins, sit-downs, mill-ins, and takeovers. Students have carried guns, wielded meat cleavers, and resorted to mob rule. People have been assaulted, buildings have been burned, bombs have been exploded, obscenities have been mouthed, administrators have been spat on and cursed. Deans have been threatened and intimidated by students and physically removed from their offices. In the classroom teachers have had bananas shoved down their throats to prevent them from continuing their lectures.

In confronting the universities, the dissidents have singled out genuine problems on which to focus their discontent. They point to injustice and racism in American society. They demand an end to the R.O.T.C. They call for black study programs, and for reform of the institutional structures to allow students a role in selecting faculty, organizing curriculum, and teaching classes. It would be silly to suggest that there are no real grievances; it would also be silly to say that the radical left is composed of God-honoring, love-inspired, reasonable people.

Generally the response of administrators and faculties to the student outbreaks has been disappointing. Some years ago, during the heyday of McCarthy, when liberalism was challenged by what has been called the extreme right, the reaction of faculties and administrators was quite different. They refused to break ranks; they united solidly in opposition to McCarthy and fought back vigorously and victoriously. Now, however, confronted by the radical left centered in the Students for a Democratic Society, the educational liberals seem to be meeting the challenge with irresolution, acquiescence, and fear, if not panic. Repeatedly they have capitulated without waging a battle.

Al Capp, the author of “Li’l Abner,” in a commencement address at Franklin Pierce College analyzed the SDS confrontation at Harvard, which among educational institutions is considered the fairest of the fair. His indictment was deadly, his argument convincing. In particular he pointed to Professors Rosovsky and Galbraith. Galbraith, who is national chairman of Americans for Democratic Action, is a political and economic liberal who before the Harvard debacle called for restructuring of the university. Rosovsky, who was born in Danzig, fled from the university there in the 1930s when it was invaded by the Nazis. During the early sixties he taught at Berkeley. When the crypto-fascists made the going hot on that campus he defected to Harvard. Then when the top blew off Harvard, this liberal, in the words of Capp, “gave up the chairmanship of his department and started packing.” And Professor Galbraith announced he will take a break from Harvard and expects to rusticate at Trinity College in Cambridge, England, for a year—while the restructuring goes on and the pieces are put back together. What the small group of radical students did at Harvard seems to have been a logical outgrowth of the views of these two men. Yet it seems that at the strategic point these professors would rather flee than fight, would rather switch than smell the smoke of Harvard’s conflagration.

Sidney Hook, a professor of philosophy and onetime champion of left-wing causes, condemned the Cornell faculty for caving in under student pressure:

We have believed that once we follow due process we can correct any inequity that develops. The alternatives are mob rule and lynch law.

But the Cornell faculty abandoned the process by which its own committee reached the conclusion. On a Monday it sustained its committees; on a Wednesday it reversed—on the very same evidence.

Secondly, what is unforgivable in the action of the Cornell faculty is the reason it reversed itself—and yielded to force. It acted in panic, out of sheer fear of the consequence of adhering to its own principles [U. S. News and World Report, May 19, 1969].

As we examine the causes for campus conflict today we cannot deny that there is a substantial gap in American life between what is and what ought to be. Our nation suffers from unresolved tensions and hatred and strife, from the compromise of civil rights, from inequalities in employment and educational opportunities. Millions of us are deeply troubled and perplexed by the United States’ involvement in the war in Viet Nam. War itself remains a compelling moral question; many ask earnestly whether it ever is legitimate, and if so, what distinguishes a just war from an unjust one. We are uneasy about pockets of poverty in the midst of great affluence and confess that this is a disgrace to us all. We are disheartened over the unethical conduct of some prominent in business and politics, and even in the Supreme Court of our land. But all these problems are only symptoms of our disease.

Underlying the immediate causes of campus agitation is the basic question: What is our life-and-world view? Does life have meaning and significance? What should our value system be? On what foundation does it rest, and what sanctions should support it? These questions are really one question, a spiritual question. And because it is spiritual it cannot be asked by science or answered by unaided human reason.

This spiritual crisis that lies at the heart of campus ferment has to do with the loss of authority, of a fixed point of reference from which men can get their bearings. The campus is the place where this problem cannot be dodged, where the struggle is never-ending, where the battle is won or lost. Education involves a search for truth and the development of guiding principles. Today academia is in trouble because it has lost the spiritual foundations that once undergirded it; no longer is it controlled by a consistent, integrated, comprehensive world-and-life view.

In early America, education was inextricably linked to Reformation orthodoxy. Its world view was grounded in Scripture. Nearly all our institutions of higher learning were once connected with the churches and drew their distinctiveness and their vitality from the Christian faith. But through the years constant and often unresisted erosion has worn away these foundations of belief. The extent of this erosion is suggested by an incident at Harvard. Herbert Bloch, professor of Greek and Latin, offered a resolution to the faculty to unite around the university’s symbol Veritas (truth). He drew a clear distinction between truth and the lie. The Alumni Bulletin reported that the “motion was passed by a voice vote, but not unanimously.” Here was a faculty that could not agree that it existed to pursue and perpetuate truth. Some members, it seems, wished to vote for the lie!

No longer can it be said that schools like Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and Columbia are committed to the distinctive life-and-world view that undergirded them at the time of their founding. Practically all the church-related institutions have become thoroughly secularized and have enlarged their ideological base. Students are presented with a wide range of ideologies cafeteria style; to accept one is to reject and deny the others. Atheists, agnostics, theists, humanists, Marxists, existential nihilists, naturalists, and pragmatists vie for the minds of students. As a result, secular education has no single unifying principle on which to stand. This not only leads to conflict among those whose ideologies are antithetical but also sows confusion among the students who have come to learn. At best the resultant ideological stance will be sub-Christian, at worst anti-Christian. Moreover, academic liberty has been advanced to a point where all too frequently it becomes license. Under the guise of freedom the viewpoints and the sanctions formerly normative in our national life have been effectively undermined.

The erosion that has taken place in institutions of Christian origin is not the whole story, however. Nineteenth-century America witnessed the rise of state education. Land-grant colleges sprang up all over the country, and some are now numbered among our great universities. Because of constitutional limitations these schools were secular from their beginnings. However, some of the great educators in these institutions were Christians. Even those who were not often held to the Christian ethic. For almost a hundred years state institutions as well as private ones, even though they had no formal commitment to orthodox Christianity, nevertheless operated in a context of adherence to ethical values and moral sanctions that had their roots in the Christian faith.

Today American education has lost its historic Christian foundation, and both secular and formerly Christian institutions have surrendered the ethical and moral sanctions that sprang from it. The Christian world-and-life view has been abandoned. The result is the wild scramble we see on every hand. Nobody is sure of anything; everything is in a state of flux. Idealists whose thought life is rooted in intuition and subjectivism are found on every campus. Left-wing radicals, disgusted and disillusioned by the apparent inconsistencies of current culture, want to destroy the system that nurtured them even though they offer no viable alternatives to replace what they wish to destroy.

Some suggest that the youth of America will be satisfied when the war in Viet Nam is ended, when racism has been abolished, when inequality has been stamped out, and when poverty has been eliminated. This is, of course, unrealistic. History teaches us that when one problem is solved, other problems—either new or previously unnoticed—appear to take its place. Removal of the present symptoms, welcome as it will be, will produce no permanent cure.

The attack by the radical left has induced a reaction from the radical right. This reaction seems to be gaining momentum and could bring about at least a temporary end to the worst offenses of the radical left. But a turn to the radical right is no solution either. It is simply a reverse form of totalitarianism and another dead-end street. A decisive response to the radical left through the rational use of law and order is an immediate necessity. But it can be only ameliorative, not curative.

Nor is a return to the previous status quo the answer. If it were possible to go back to the situation that existed several decades ago, we would only be going back to what led to our current problems.

The essential ingredient missing in education today is a theocentric life-and-world view. If educators do not sense that God and his revelation must be brought into the educational processes and that all learning finds its integration and unity within this theistic focus, then the disease that has overtaken education will not be cured.

Yet for secular education to introduce theistic priorities into the heart of its institutional life is probably more than we can expect. It would involve an admission of error and shortsightedness, a turning to God and to the Scriptures by thousands of educators. Perhaps the institutions can be delivered from their sickness only if there is a large-scale spiritual awakening such as England experienced in the days of the Wesleys and Whitefield.

But while we pray and work for this, let us also try to increase the influence of the Christian institutions of higher learning we now have. Let us promote and encourage and strengthen them more than ever before. Let us urge their faculties to forge an apologetic literature that will demonstrate compellingly the validity of orthodox Christianity. Let us use these Christian institutions as seed beds from which a host of trained young people can go out into secular institutions. Let Christians infiltrate secular schools even as proponents of secular ideologies infiltrated many onetime Christian institutions. Let us also use every medium available—including television and radio as well as the printed page—to reach the educational world with the Christian message. And let us recognize that the one sure method of securing the objectives we have in mind is to persuade men to commit themselves to Jesus Christ for regeneration, and to the Word of God as the true source and the final authority for life.

God’s Holy Spirit waits in every age to manifest his power, which transcends every human device, every program, every desire. Let us pray not only that we may be filled with that Spirit but that the Spirit may be shed abroad in the hearts of men everywhere for conversion, for commitment, and for the grace to bring God and revelation into the center of all learning and every institution.

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