Can education be neutral?
By Dr. Noel Weeks
Presented to a Seminar held during the Queensland State Assembly of the Presbyterian Church of Queensland, May 1991
If you asked the average person who has some connection with education (like a state school teacher) the above question, you would probably receive two different answers. Some people would affirm the possibility of an affirmative answer, and may continue by saying that that is what the state school offers: an education without any sectarian bias. You might also receive a negative response from somebody who would deny the possibility of objectivity. Since there is no objectivity, since there is always bias, then education cannot be neutral. However, they may well go on to affirm that only certain biases should be tolerated. The state has a responsibility to prohibit, for the good of society, teaching from certain points of view.
I think you could also make some generalisations about the sorts of people who give those different answers. There would be exceptions of course, but one can still make generalisations. Older people would be more likely to affirm the possibility of objectivity than younger people. People with a science background would tend to lean towards objectivity, and people with a humanities background would tend to deny it.
Objectivity
In the post-Reformation period, Europe was devastated by wars over religion. Against that background, the search was carried on to find an approach on which all men could agree regardless of their individual religious commitment. We may call what' was presented as the solution "science", "reason" or something similar. What is crucial is that it appeals to what is supposedly both valid and accessible to all. It may take various related forms, one being a stress on investigation and the discovery of facts. That is the empirical method, somewhat influential in English philosophical history, and hence quite common in Australia. Another path would emphasise reasoning more; that is the appeal to truths of reason which are obvious to all. In popular discussion, mathematics is the example cited, with the laws of mathematics held out as universally valid and accessible to all.
When Australian governments set about constructing a state school system, they relied upon this tradition. They claimed to construct a system which would not favour one particular sectarian position, but be open to all. Yet there was a particular Australian flavour to the attempt. Influential groups in Australia have feared the undercurrent that derives from convict and poor Irish roots. They have feared a streak of lawlessness in the Australian character. For this reason, the teaching of morality, and religion as a support to morality, has been seen as an important prevention to anarchy.
In the original plan, but falling increasingly into neglect, we find an attempt to teach a non-sectarian morality and non-sectarian religion in state schools. Most proponents of this attempt to put state schools above religious divisions would yet affirm that they are not indifferent to religion. They mean this sort of religion.
I would like to deal with various consequences of this view.
A Theological Consequence - Deism:
If one takes the various components I have sketched, one can almost predict the result. Man's reason searches for knowledge of a world that one may discover by empirical or scientific investigation, and in the process, one is careful to exclude any religious factors for fear of sectarian controversy. As a result, one must find a world from which God has been excluded from the outset. The earlier form of this belief was deism, that is, that God created the world to run by laws, but then left it strictly alone. If God did anything in the world, it would create a religious issue, an issue decided by faith rather than by reason.
Deism in turn, has consequences. One of these is a denial of the deity of Jesus, for any coming of God into our world would create a religious issue.
I occasionally meet Christians who want to defend an atheistic methodology in science. They say that the very nature of science should be narrow, and to exclude all religious questions. We can have our science here and our religion over there in some other department. In case you have encountered that position, I ask you to think through a series of steps. Scientific methodology
can be valid only if its presuppositions do not clash with the world it investigates. One presupposition is that God does not act in the world at any time after the original creation. If that is true, then Jesus is not God!
Often, the atheistic methodology seems to work in science because of the long-suffering and patience of God. Science depends upon the regularity and repeatability of the operations of the cosmos. God commands that such regularity continues (e.g. Jeremiah 33:1922; 31:35,6). Hence, because of God's patience, science, like other human activities dependent on the stability of creation, may continue. Science is not possible because God is excluded from the cosmos, as the Deists would argue. It is possible because God, at this time, directs the operations of the cosmos in a certain way.
The Scientific Consequence: Evolution.
If there can be no action of God in the world except perhaps to create laws, forces, or "atoms" at some very distant beginning point, then God cannot create distinct kinds of animals. That makes biological evolution a necessary consequence. It is very important to realise that Darwin did not invent the notion of evolution, but simply came forward with a seemingly plausible mechanism.
I encounter people who see as their prime goal getting creation taught in state schools. I have no objection to this aim, but think they are attacking only a part of the picture. It is not a question of evolution only. All of science has been placed into an artificial framework. At first, God was retained to be the origin. An origin that is inactive forever after is of no practical consequence. Hence, the move from Deistic science to atheistic science, is quite to be expected.
The consequence is that in our non-Christian schools, the pupil is taught to see the creation around him as an area from which God is excluded. The historian of Science, Kuhn, has stressed the way the framework in which science is taught and the unspoken assumptions of the teacher influence the pupil. Perhaps there is no better illustration of the pervasive influence of those assumptions than what is happening with the environmentalist movement. A world from which God has been excluded is a world where moral considerations are not relevant. Generations of students have thus been taught to see the physical and biological environments as amoral. The environmentalist movement recognises that there are moral issues involved.
However, they came out of an education where morality was excluded because God was excluded. Since God, who is above the creation, has been excluded, the environmentalists try to introduce religion and their morality from below. They stress pantheism, and are thus opening the door to the other religious influence from below, Satan.
Do not let the apparent success of science blind you to the consequences when students are trained to see the world not as the creation which displays God's everlasting power and divinity (Romans 1:20), but as they very world from which God is excluded.
Man:
I mentioned earlier a second way of answering the question of whether education can be neutral. 1 would like to sketch why that second approach has arisen. Once you exclude God and all religious or moral considerations from your study of the world, then man becomes a particular problem. The common path was to view man as a mechanism or an evolved animal. The two alternatives are not necessarily mutually exclusive. Life can be seen in mechanical terms. That way of viewing man has, in turn, its own consequences.
Creativity:
Machines do not have creativity. They are pre-programmed, even if the program is very complex. Further, if one knows the program, it is possible to predict the actions of the machine, or what actions by the outside observer would make the machine act in predictable ways. Thus the machine analogy leads to the denial of originality to man. We may think we have our own ideas but really do not.
If we are pre-programmed, or are destined to act in predictable ways by the impact of environmental input upon that program, then we have no responsibility. We could not choose the way we act. There has therefore been reaction in the name of freedom and creativity. If you remember that the direction being opposed was seen as a movement of reason and science, then you will see the further problem. The reaction has to be irrational. It has to set up an opposed duality of freedom over against determinism and imagination over against reason. This reaction is tied into the tendency to emphasize feeling over reason.
In a world in which creativity is given the highest value, and in which feeling is elevated above reason, morality has no place. Here is why the pursuit of scientific objectivity and the pursuit of irrational freedom can exist together within the same school, and often within the same curriculum. They have a common enemy: the Christian view of a morally responsible man who lives within a world created and ruled by God in his providence. If morality is dead, then there is no right or wrong. If there is no right or wrong, then there is no certainty as to truth.
This conclusion must eventually destroy the original starting point: that man could discover truth by means of reason and scientific research. One sees that some people have reached that conclusion, but such is the prestige of science, that the acid of relativism is only just beginning to corrode it.
Consequences for the Humanities-:
One finds that in the Humanities, especially in areas requiring imagination, the consequences of the denial of truth and reason are being felt. They are especially strong in the Fine Arts and the study of literature. If there is no "right" way to do things, then other areas become affected. There is no point to teaching rules of grammar or spelling, or rules of any sort.
The Consequences for Society:
If there is no right and wrong, then there can be no rule of law in society. Society is faced with anarchy. Hence a purely pragmatic ethic has been invented. Society, for its own self-preservation, may allow certain things and disallow others. In doing this, society is not enforcing any law or standard, for there is no such law or standard. It is being arbitrary. At the moment one of the arbitrary rules is tolerance. However we should realise that the long term logical consequence of this position is totalitarianism. That logic has already been played out in the development of the Weimar Republic into Nazi Germany.
Faced with anarchy in society and with no absolute to which to appeal, Humanists have put a particular emphasis into the school: it is to be the place where people, having no moral reason to cooperate, are to learn to work together. It is therefore very important to Humanists that all children attend the same schools, and is also the reason why student group work has become the fad in some schools.
School and Society:
You may be thinking that all I have been doing so far is to give an intellectual history of our times, with very little reference to schools, and you would be largely correct. However, it is that intellectual history that has shaped schooling. Schools reflect the dominant ideas of our time. If those dominant ideas are non-Christian, then schools will promote ideas and behaviour antagonistic to the Bible; and I would suggest, for the most part, that that is what we see. In the sciences, an artificial world is constructed, a world emptied of God. In the Humanities, the relativistic ideas that there are no standards are taught. Even the Christians in the system are in a quandary. They can see that what is happening is not right, but they need help to see the whole picture, and to see the need to present a distinctively Christian position. The church has to recognise and oppose the dominant non-Christian intellectual forces in our culture, and by doing this, to give help to the Christians seeking to meet the challenge where they work and live. It is no use us saying we do not like "dirty" books in English classes if we have no answer for the position which says that there are no standards for what is "good" literature. We cannot bring in Creation to biology classes and leave untouched the non-Christian assumptions in other sciences.
In this talk, I have tried to explain why education is where it is. In the next, I will try to lay out, briefly, a framework for Christian education.
Finally, I will mention something to correlate with the problem mentioned earlier of the functioning of states with no ethical standards. John Dewey was convinced that American democracy had a problem. He was anti-Christian, believing that religion was disproved. He knew that left society without a common ethical basis. Hence he believed that children had to learn together at school in order to learn by experience how to live and work together in a democracy. This involves children having to learn cooperatively in groups. We may note then, that a common approach to pedagogy in primary schools springs from one man's conviction that Christianity has been disproved and superseded.
Conclusion:
In this talk, I have deliberately raised many issues to illustrate the fact that on point after point concerning the education of children, issues arise to which a biblical position gives a clear and distinctive answer. That answer is not of relevance to education only. For example, questions of environmentalism come up. We as Christians have to apply a biblical approach to education. If we fail to do this, then we will fail to apply the biblical approach elsewhere also, and thus will fail in our responsibility to teach our children to apply biblical principles.