(A News and Sentinel Op-Ed - Photo Illustration - MetroCreativeConnection)

The report of the National Commission on Excellence in Education entitled “A Nation at Risk” told Congress that American prosperity, security and civility are in jeopardy because the educational foundations of our society are being eroded. Our concern, the report said, “goes well beyond matters such as industry and commerce. It includes the intellectual, moral and spiritual strength of our people …

“Our society and its educational institution seem to have lost sight of the basic purposes of schooling …” Ample evidence was provided to support this claim. The writers of the report concluded: “if an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war.”

The report made no mention of the causes of this dismantling of public education. It did not explain that intervention by the federal government in local education is the primary cause of this “unthinking, unilateral educational disarmament.” It did not mention that the U.S. Supreme Court assisted in this effort with a number of rulings regarding the “separation of church and state.” On the other hand, the Court did not mention that this phrase “separation of church and state” does not appear in any legal or historical document written or signed by the founding fathers. Hence, these rulings violate 30 years of historical precedence and almost 200 years of legal precedence.

A recent Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court declared that “these rulings have a very bad legal history and need to be revisited.”

In addition to the federal government and the Supreme Court, colleges and universities have also assisted in the great dismantlement of public education. One college president said it well: “The campus turmoil of the Sixties brought the exchange of a curriculum of connected principles for a smorgasbord of disconnected courses and programs. The educational consequence of this decentralization is an educated populace who have turned inward and have become disenchanted with academia, morals, and politics.”

George Bernard Shaw defined this kind of “educated” person in “Man and Superman.”

I paraphrase: You are not educated, only college passmen; not dignified, only fashionably dressed; not clean, only shaved and starched; not beautiful, only decorated; not artistic, only lascivious; not loyal, only servile; not prosperous, only rich; not social, only gregarious; not considerate, only polite; not intelligent, only opinionated; not progressive, only fastidious; and not disciplined, only cowed.

This is a far cry from Cardinal Newman’s definition of the educated person as “one committed to reason, a gentleman or person who knows a good person when he sees one.”

The educated person, said Newman, has a “cultivated intellect and brings power and grace to every work and occupation which he undertakes.”

What should we do? We should take back local control of the public schools!

The Supreme Court should repeal all laws based upon the phrase “separation of church and state.”

Colleges and universities should be compelled to offer a coordinated curriculum that, according to Robert Hutchins, former president of the University of Chicago, “frees the mind for intelligent actions, draws out the elements of our common humanity, cultivates the intellect, and disciplines the mind for correctness in thinking.”

What is at stake here? Can we long endure this disconnection of spiritual, moral, and intellectual principles from our school curriculum and remain civilized human beings?

***

Dr. Lewis Rutherford taught at West Virginia University, West Virginia University at Parkersburg and the West Virginia College of Graduate Studies for 35 years.