The Fourth of July used to be one of the premier American holidays. People celebrated it because they understood the principles behind the resistance to taxation without representation and the potential for government overreach. Those were lessons we used to know. Things have changed.
But if you were to take a survey of our current knowledge of America’s founding and the principles upon which it was based, you might get a variety of responses, few of them heartening:
If some of our Founding Fathers could appear to us now to explain the those principles, I wonder how we would receive their wisdom?
And if anyone should ask why we have degenerated to this level, I would offer this as one of the reasons:
Education has been stripped of the Biblical, eternal values; they’ve been replaced by a new set of values that goes under the guise of teaching children how to think, not what to think. But if you look carefully at what is being taught, you will realize there is no such thing as value-free education. Values are always being taught; the question is which values.
Along with the expulsion of Biblical principles from our education, we also don’t expect too much of our students. We wouldn’t want to damage their self-esteem by giving them failing grades. I can speak from experience that an unhealthy percentage of college students are shocked when they don’t get an A. The problem must be the professor; he expects too much.
This dumbing-down has affected our entire society. A recent study of how congressmen speak, for instance, is most revealing:
Yes, quality education still exists, but you have to know where to find it. In the meantime, I’m going to do all I can to educate this new generation in the basic Biblical principles that undergird all knowledge, understanding, and wisdom. We need a new declaration of independence from the likes of Jersey Shore, Bill Maher, and Jon Stewart.