Almost all of us recognize that there has been a tremendous dumbing down of our culture. But while reading a book last week about the founding of our nation, I was stunned to realize just how far we have fallen.
It’s not that I was completely unaware of how great the gulf was between then and now. In fact, back in 1991, I noted that, “When Harvard University (originally Harvard College) was founded here in 1636, students [who were just teenagers] were required to be competent in Latin – able to read, write and speak Latin prose and verse ‘with tolerable skill and without assistance’ – as well as being grounded in Greek grammar in order to be admitted to the school.”
A large percentage of our high-school grads today couldn’t pass tests like this just using the English language, let alone Latin and Greek. In fact, the same could be said for many of our college grads, and I blame our flawed educational system more than I blame them.
Still, I was shocked back to reality by some of what I read in Matthew Spalding’s book “We Still Hold These Truths: Rediscovering Our Principles, Reclaiming Our Future.”
He wrote, “Colonial America was a highly literate society, despite its overwhelmingly rural population. The two books likely to be found in every home were a well-worn copy of the Bible and a volume of Shakespeare, Milton, or other great literature.”
In fact, one reason children went to school was so they could learn to read their Bibles.
Of course, it’s true that the great majority of American homes also have Bibles today, but only a small percentage of them are “well-worn,” while our ignorance of the classics is probably at an all-time high. After all, dear old William doesn’t tweet well, and when’s the last time you heard John Milton by rap?
Spalding continued, “By all accounts, the American Founders were an especially well-read and well-educated lot. They were avid and conscientious readers of the many articles, journals and pamphlets regularly circulating in the colonies. Much of their education in political ideas came from reading and debating the major political works of the day, such as Paine’s ‘Common Sense,’ Jefferson’s ‘A Summary View of the Rights of British America’ and John Adams’ ‘Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America.’”
This is quite a distance from today’s sound-bite driven culture, which feeds right into our emotionally influenced, intellectually weak political and philosophical discourses. (A perfect example is President Obama’s “Love is love” tweet on the heels of the Supreme Court’s disastrous decision to overturn the Defense of Marriage Act.)
But here’s what really shocked me in Spalding’s book:
“More than anything,” he wrote, “Americans were steeped in history. ‘The minds of youth are perpetually led to the history of Greece and Rome or to Great Britain,’ observed Noah Webster of early American education. ‘Boys are constantly repeating the declamations of Demosthenes and Cicero, or debates upon some political question in the British Parliament.’”
Perhaps you should reread this paragraph a few times to let it settle in.
Today, many college students can’t identify Ronald Reagan when they see his picture, let alone intelligently discuss American history, not to mention that of ancient Greece and Rome. Yet Webster wrote that, “The minds of youth [were] perpetually led to the history of Greece and Rome or to Great Britain.”
Today, many (most?) of our high-school students (or college or even grad students) would have a hard time spelling Demosthenes (or even Cicero), let alone identifying them, let alone quoting them. Yet Webster informs us that, “Boys [were] constantly repeating the declamations of Demosthenes and Cicero, or debates upon some political question in the British Parliament.”
If you want to do a reality check, see what our kids are posting on Facebook or Instagram, and contrast that with Webster’s description.
Today, according to a page on DoSomething.org, “One in four children in America grow up without learning how to read,” and, “only 20 percent of eighth-graders … admitted to reading recreationally ‘almost every day.’”
And, “As of 2011, America was the only free-market OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) country where the current generation was less educated than the previous one.”
And what are the implications of our growing illiteracy?
“Two-thirds of students who cannot read proficiently by the end of fourth grade will end up in jail or on welfare. Over 70 percent of America’s inmates cannot read above a fourth-grade level. … Nearly 85 percent of the juveniles who face trial in the juvenile court system are functionally illiterate, proving that there is a close relationship between illiteracy and crime. More than 60 percent of all inmates are functionally illiterate.”
How far this is from “constantly repeating the declamations of Demosthenes and Cicero”!
The truth be told, many of these inmates have two strikes against them before they make it out of the womb, perpetuating the vicious cycle of familial and educational breakdown, a cycle that we must somehow find a way to break before our nation is broken beyond repair.
The bottom line is that America will never recapture its greatness until we fix our failing educational system – some authors actually call it criminal – and regain our esteem for the Scriptures. (Spalding notes, “In 1984, two professors studied the sources cited by the founding generation in their major writings between 1760 and 1805. Their findings are revealing, to say the least. The most-referenced work by far was the Bible, accounting for 34 percent of all citations.”)
Otherwise, the only remaining question will be HLCWG? (This is my just created acronym for, “How low can we go?”)
