The Messianic Character of American Education eBook R J Rushdoony
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Rushdoony's study tells us an important part of American history exactly what has public education been trying to accomplish? Before the 1830s and Horace Mann, no schools in the U.S. were state supported or state controlled. They were local, parent-teacher enterprises, supported without taxes, and taking care of all children. They were remarkably high in standard and were Christian. From Mann to the present, the state has used education to socialize the child. The school's basic purpose, according to its own philosophers, is not education in the traditional sense of the 3 R's. Instead, it is to promote "democracy" and "equality," not in their legal or civic sense, but in terms of the engineering of a socialized citizenry. Public education became the means of creating a social order of the educators design. Such men saw themselves and the school in messianic terms. This book was instrumental in launching the Christian school and homeschool movements.
From the Dust Jacket
"Man does not live by bread alone"'; this language may be excluded from the public classrooms by court order, but the problem which is here involved for education cannot be avoided. The nature and the character of society, thus of education, hinges on the accepted concept of man; and, whatever this concept is in a given society, it can be based on an article of faith.
This book will be bitter medicine, indeed, to those who see the answer to today's problem in more education, unless the question "for what?" is confronted and resolved.
What the educationists have forgotten is that the sense of meaning and purpose in life which they take for granted was bought with the blood of saints from the time of the prophets and Jesus until this day. And the end is not yet in sight. By taking for granted that which can only be acquired by faith, the rationalist tradition of American education has severed itself from its roots, and indeed is paying the penalty for trying to "live by bread alone."
The Messianic Character of American Education eBook R J Rushdoony
I've never read anything that explains the intellectual and utilitarian protestant roots of progressive education etter than this book. It is outstanding, unique, and worthy of the five star rating. I wish that Rushdoony was still around today. Someone with his vision and leadership would be welcome.Product details
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The Messianic Character of American Education eBook R J Rushdoony Reviews
This book is a very complete history of public education in America. It includes biographical sketches of every influential thinker including Europeans who have influenced U.S public education. The author is a theologian as well as a scholar in the field of education. He places education in the United States in the greater context of ancient and medieval educational theory and practice. His insightful philosophical observations in his introductory materials and his epilogical comments are worth the price of the book. Any one taking the standard undergraduate course in "history of education" would greatly profit by using this book as parallel reading. Any one seeking to know why the American public school system, once dominated by Protestant theology and ethics, has become theologically "neutral" and dominated by a humanist theology and ethic should consider Rushdoony's point of view.
Rushdoony's "The Messianic Character of American Education" was originally published more than half a century ago and goes into more detail on some of the ideas he presented in his earlier "Intellectual Schizophrenia." Whether you agree with Rushdoony's conclusions about the nature of American education in general or, more particularly, his evaluation of specific figures and his Christian Reconstructionist perspective, Rushdoony makes many perceptive points about the philosophy of American educators and thinkers such as Horace Mann, William James, John Dewey, J.B. Watson, Edward Lee Thorndike, George Counts, and others. His analyses of these figures function well as a general overview and critique of their positions.
The "Messianic Character of American Education" was originally published more than half a century ago (1963) and expands the ideas presented in Rushdoony's earlier work, "Intellectual Schizophrenia." Whether you agree with his conclusions regarding the nature of American education in general or his evaluation of specific figures, and whether you agree with his Christian Reconstructionist perspective, Rushdoony makes many insightful points regarding the philosophy of American educators and thinkers such as Horace Mann, William James, John Dewey, J.B. Watson, Edward Lee Thorndike, George Counts, and others. While these analyses are not in great depth, they are a good overview and critique of the views of these various thinkers.
This book, originally published more than 50 years ago (1963), is a compendium of information on the history of educational philosophy in America. It vastly expands on some of the ideas Rushdoony presented in his earlier work, "Intellectual Schizophrenia" (1961). Whether you agree with all of Rushdoony's conclusions concerning the nature of American education in general or what he says about specific figures, or, in particular, whether you agree with his position as a Christian Reconstructionist, Rushdoony makes many perceptive points regarding the philosophy of American educators and philosophers such as Horace Mann, William James, John Dewey, J.B. Watson, Edward Lee Thorndike, George Counts, and others. Although some of his analyses may be superficial (but going into greater depth would have meant either writing an unwieldy book or ignoring many of the currents that have shaped educational philosophy in America), they still function both as an overview and as a decent critique of the various positions examined.
This is a thick book 400 pages, every one densely packed with names and philosophies of education covering the last 200 years in American education. This book appears on several reading lists (for example in Doug Wilson's Recovering the Lost Tools of Learning), as a devastating critique of the philosophy of the American education system.
This book is "an historical and analytical study of the philosophies of education in state education in the United States." (x) He starts out with a couple of chapters of historical introduction, stretching all the way back to Rome and then later Scholasticism, and explains how "the university gradually developed its concept of academic freedom, that is, an independent authority for reason and scholarship which made it responsible to none other, and its concept of the redemptive, authoritative and power-endowing nature of knowledge, of reason, of university and school." (17)
He then jumps into the American history of the philosophy of education, and doesn't come up for air until the end of the book. 21 of the 28 chapters are each devoted to a particular figure in this history, starting with Horace Mann, and including men like William Harris, Francis Parker, Wiliam James, G. Stanley Hall, and John Dewey.
Each chapter is heavy on original source quotes, so you can read for yourself the sort of language and philosophy that has shaped education in America. This is important, because if you couldn't see it with your own eyes, you would be tempted to write Rushdoony off as a crackpot conspiracy theorist. His title "The Messianic Character," put me on guard initially, that maybe he is taking this a little too far, but page after page, quote after quote, from figure after figure and eventually you cry out "Okay! I get it! your point is incontrovertible."
This history of American education has been shaped by men and women who believed in the innate goodness of man, and his ability to reach utopia through education. They themselves use religious, messianic, salvation language when describing the process of education, specifically apart from the God of the Bible. When you see how these men were the professors of teacher's colleges, and held positions in federal and state Education departments, you see how we have reached our present condition.
I appreciate the hardcore presuppositionalist reconstructionists for this they boldly take on ungodly philosophies from the foundation up, and spare nothing in exposing them for what they really are. The Bahnsen/Stein debate is another classic example of this. While I don't agree with the solution that they posit (theonomy, reconstructionism), their critiques are devastating and extremely helpful, and pave the way for a more truly Biblical solution. I want them on my demolition team, even if I don't ask them to help me rebuild -)
One final note, Rushdoony is hard to read. His sentences are often tangled syntactical messes, and his paragraphs often extend for 3-4 pages in length. Here's an example that I noted for it's sheer convolutedness
"In Idealism, God, however exalted in rhetoric, nevertheless, especially since Hegel, labors mightily merely to bring forth the new universal, man. In Horne, this strange "God" was still on the stage; in Dewey, having brought forth the child of destiny, man, this "God," like a salmon whose life ends with spawning, faded quietly out of the picture."
Dozens of names, dates, places, and quotes, combined with the difficult style of Rushdoony's writing, makes this a laborious read. Nevertheless, if you want to understand the history of the philosophy of American education, this is the book to tackle, if you must!
Really interesting history. Brilliant writing.
I've never read anything that explains the intellectual and utilitarian protestant roots of progressive education etter than this book. It is outstanding, unique, and worthy of the five star rating. I wish that Rushdoony was still around today. Someone with his vision and leadership would be welcome.
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