I learned many interesting things re-editing the series by Sam Kastensmidt, but they can be reduced to two main points: 1) education in America started out a far more explicitly Christian project than we have any appreciation of today, and 2) likewise, the communist takeover of education has been for far longer than we have any appreciation of today; it has been in the works for a full century. It is not something that suddenly materialized out of thin air in the last decade, nor will it be quickly reversed.
What to do?
First, stop helping the Marxists and other God-haters. Sadly, we Seventh-day Adventists, in our public relations and religious liberty outreach, have sided with the villains of this series. We’ve convinced ourselves that God must be banished from the classroom to satisfy the demands of the non-establishment clause of the First Amendment (“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion . . .). This would have shocked the founding generation; they understood that the state must not support any specific denomination in derogation of the others, but they also promoted explicitly Christian education for everyone, and so should we.
Our constitutional reasoning has been warped by our fear of a Sunday law, but it is time to have a come-to-Jesus moment, such as Ellen White had with A.T. Jones in 1893. Jones was a brilliant man (probably a genius), but he became increasingly extreme on religious liberty issues. In 1893, Jones was arguing against allowing the Bible to be used in public schools, and when Ellen White heard about this, she took the time to write him even though she was traveling in New Zealand, saying (politely, but in so many words), “You are doing more harm than good. Please stop.”
If people want to post the Ten Commandments in classrooms, or pray at football games, or have on-campus Bible clubs, or even if the state wants to go farther than merely posting the Ten Commandments on the wall, and directs that the curriculum shall including a general outline of the Bible and Christianity as part of required cultural and civilizational literacy, that’s great! We should have no qualms about that.
The more that young people are exposed to the Ten Commandments and the Bible, the more likely that they will be interested in, and possibly open to, the Adventist message, part of which is that God wants his children to keep those commandments. Even if we Seventh-day Adventists would never put our own children in the public schools, we should favor such schools being as Christian as possible, if not for the sake of the culture, then at least for the sake of our own mission and message.
Homeschooling and Support for Adventist Education
Homeschooling is the ideal, especially in the younger years. Ellen White tells us:
“It is in the home that the education of the child is to begin. Here is his first school. Here, with his parents as instructors, he is to learn the lessons that are to guide him throughout life—lessons of respect, obedience, reverence, self-control. The educational influences of the home are a decided power for good or for evil. They are in many respects silent and gradual, but if exerted on the right side, they become a far-reaching power for truth and righteousness. If the child is not instructed aright here, Satan will educate him through agencies of his choosing. How important, then, is the school in the home.” Child Guidance, 17.1
The child being taught by his mother at home is the ideal in the early years. I urge people to homeschool and to make whatever sacrifices are necessary to homeschool at least in the pre-teen years.
But here is a grim reality: corporate America’s ruling elites, and their bought lackeys in elected office, want women in the work force, not in the home. They have made it difficult if not impossible to afford a middle-class American lifestyle, with a house and two automobiles, on just one salary. Too many mothers are forced to work, so we will always have a need for Adventist elementary schools and high schools.
A Proposed Curriculum for Adventist Education in grades 1 through 12
A. Greater Academic Rigor Needed
Having grown up in the Adventist ghetto of Keene, Texas, I was always near Adventist schools, and attended them from first grade through college. Sadly, my educational experience seemed little better than babysitting. High School was at least one year too long; whatever our senior year was about, it was not about academics or learning. I solved this problem in college by testing out of the first year with a CLEP test, and graduated from college in three years; I wish something similar had been available in high school.
Adventist elementary schools and high schools need to be much more rigorous academically than they are today; like night and day, only more contrasting than that. Our schools should be at an academic level comparable to the best prep schools in America.
“Higher than the highest human thought can reach is God’s ideal for His children. Godliness—godlikeness—is the goal to be reached. Before the student there is opened a path of continual progress. He has an object to achieve, a standard to attain, that includes everything good, and pure, and noble. He will advance as fast and as far as possible in every branch of true knowledge. But his efforts will be directed to objects as much higher than mere selfish and temporal interests as the heavens are higher than the earth.” Education, pp. 18-19.
“Higher than the highest human thought can reach” surely means at least doing as well as non-Christian, non-Adventist schools. It does not mean settling for second best.
B. Religion
Adventist students need to be exposed to the source documents. Students should spend their 10th, 11th, and 12th grades reading through the entire Bible, starting with the New Testament, and then going back to the Old. Our religion classes tend to pick and choose texts of interest for a simplified religion curriculum, but no attempt is made to read the entire Bible. Such a simplified curriculum might be appropriate in the elementary grades, but no Adventist student should graduate from an Adventist high school without having read the entire Bible.
I went through Adventist schools all the way through college without ever having read the entire Bible. It wasn’t until a year and a half after graduation, when I was 23 years old, that I finally finished reading the entire Bible. I imagine I am typical in that regard. Students must be required to read the entire Bible, and the New Testament twice, in two different translations. Special focus should be on the gospels, so that Adventist students know who Jesus is, and on the Pauline epistles, so that students understand the basics of the Christian religion, particularly righteousness by faith.
High school students should read through Ellen White’s entire five-book conflict of the ages series. We were assigned Desire of Ages in our freshman year, and I think possibly Patriarchs and Prophets and Great Controversy later on. To this day I still have not read Prophets and Kings, nor Acts of the Apostles (although I have read “Sketches from the Life of Paul, the smaller book AA expanded on).
C. Languages
We need to begin the teaching of modern languages by the seventh grade; every student should be required to take one foreign modern language, and preferably two. Because of the extent of the British Empire and the tremendous international influence of the United States in the post-WWII era, English has become an international language. But that doesn’t mean American students should bask in ignorance. Foreign languages are culturally enriching, and a very good discipline, even if not strictly necessary to get by in life. Spanish, French, and German are suggested because of their importance within Western Civilization, but the way things are going, Mandarin might become the next necessary international language.
In addition to the modern languages, Adventist students should be taught the scholarly languages (Hebrew, Greek, and Latin) beginning by the eighth grade. Every student should be required to take two of the three scholarly languages. A student planning a career in the ministry or in Adventist academia should take Hebrew and Greek. By the time an Adventist minister-in-training reaches the SDA seminary at Andrews, his biblical language skills should already be at an advanced level, because he will have studied them beginning in elementary school and throughout high school.
One of my Greek teachers, Ingo Sorke, was taught classical Greek in elementary school in Germany, so learning biblical (koine) Greek for purposes of the Adventist ministry was no great stretch. By contrast, I was trying to learn Greek for the first time at age 50, and finding it very tough sledding indeed.
D. Mathematics
Algebra and geometry should be mastered by the 9th grade, advanced algebra, statistics and trigonometry by the 10th grade, and calculous and differential equations by the 12th grade.
David’s sad math story:
When I graduated from SWAU, I went to U.T. Austin to study graduate economics, intending to get a Ph.D., but my math background was too weak. I took calculus for the first time as a graduate student and failed the course. (The second time through, I got a “B.”) After a year, I dropped out of UT’s graduate economics program without even getting close to a master’s degree, much less a doctorate, and went to law school—which I was much better prepared for. But, alas, I was denied my first career choice because in all my years of Adventist education, no one made me take the difficult classes and learn the difficult things they should have known I needed to learn. (Mathematical economics is a product of physics envy, and largely nonsense, but that’s a story for another day.)
E. Science
Because so many Adventists go on to become physicians and nurses, science is the discipline in which most Adventist high schools are strongest. Biology, chemistry, and anatomy & physiology are offered in all Adventist high schools, with two of those three being required of all students. Some Adventist high schools offer a year of Physics, but I would suggest offering two years to college-bound students, with emphasis on Newtonian or classical Physics the first year and quantum or Einsteinian Physics the second.
Many Adventist high schools also offer “earth science” but we ought to be sure to teach geology and the fossil record from a creationist/flood geology perspective, carefully emphasizing how things like the “Cambrian explosion” and the general absence of transitional fossil forms fit with creationism and flood geology, but not with the atheistic origins myth. Ellen White was very clear that we must teach earth science without any hint of long-ages geology:
“Infidel geologists claim that the world is very much older than the Bible record makes it. . . . And many who profess to believe the Bible record are at a loss to account for wonderful things which are found in the earth . . . These, to free themselves of difficulties thrown in their way by infidel geologists, adopt the view that the six days of creation were six vast, indefinite periods, and the day of God’s rest was another indefinite period; making senseless the fourth commandment of God’s holy law. Some eagerly receive this position, for it destroys the force of the fourth commandment, and they feel a freedom from its claims upon them.” Spiritual Gifts v. 3, pp. 90-92. Reprinted in Spirit of Prophecy v. 4, pp. 85-89.
“We need to guard continually against the sophistry in regard to geology and other branches of science falsely so-called, which have not one semblance of truth. The theories of great men need to be carefully sifted of the slightest trace of infidel suggestion.” R&H, March 1, 1898.
I would suggest my own book “Dinosaurs – An Adventist View” as a text for junior and senior high school students; I know it has been used for that purpose. We should not teach “man-made global warming,” which, although it masquerades as a pseudo-science, is but a Marxist stratagem for imposing totalitarian control.
F. History and Civics
By the 7th grade, students should have mastered the basic outline of American history. State histories and state government should be studied in each state during the 8th grade (Texas has a uniquely glorious and fascinating history). State capital cities should be memorized.
World history should begin with the creation of Adam and Eve and the antediluvian world, discussing differences between the antediluvian world and the present world, including the much greater intelligence and length of life of people who lived before the Flood, as well as shortly thereafter. Obviously, no history that endorses long-ages geology and Darwinian origins for the human race should ever be used. World History should be studied in the 10th or 11th grade from a suitably Christian and creationist source, such as James Ussher’s “Annals of the World.”
If students are learning Latin, they can study Roman history from the primary sources. Later Roman and early medieval history should use Gibbon as the text. Geography needs to be reintroduced and required, so that students will quickly be able to find any country on a globe or map, and be able to state the language spoken in that country.
Civics needs to return and replace the “social studies” (socialist studies) that the Frankfurt School Marxists imposed upon America in the late 1960s and early 1970s, which was intended to, and has had the effect of, crippling America’s ability to govern itself. By the eighth grade, students should have read and studied the constitution, and understand everything needed to ace a citizenship test, including the three branches of government, the bicameral legislature, the number of representatives (435) and senators (100) and the terms of each (two years and six years), the responsibilities of the state vs. the federal government, the subdivisions of the state including county and city government, and special governmental entities. Class trips to the state capital should be made by the end of the 8th grade and to Washington, DC, by the end of the 10th grade.
G. Economics
The basics of political economy need to be taught at the high school level, including explaining such concepts as scarcity, the free market system, the price system and supply and demand.
Students need to understand how the profit motive serves the greater good: it is not out of altruism that the baker bakes bread, the cobbler makes shoes, the builder builds houses; no, we eat, walk around shod, and live in houses because the people who make these things want to earn money to support themselves and their families. The founder of economics was the Scottish moral philosopher Adam Smith. In his 1776 classic, The Wealth of Nations, he put it this way:
“It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities but of their advantages.”
Self-interest is universal, but altruism is rare; hence you want an economic system built on harnessed self-interest, not on altruism.
Students should be taught how entrepreneurs anticipate the needs and wants of consumers and develop products and services to meet those demands. Example: consumers did not know that they would want a handheld device that would operate as a telephone, a camera, a texting and emailing communications center capable of countless applications and uses, but entrepreneurs like Steve Jobs knew that they would, and that the technology to affordably mass produce such a device was quickly becoming available.
In a mature free market system, entrepreneurs anticipate the wants and desires of the consumers. Those who successfully anticipate what consumers want (and are willing to pay for) become very rich, but the market takes away the capital of those who miscalculate, and entrusts it to entrepreneurs who will use it to produce what consumer want the most, which is indicated by high profitability.
A socialist system that does not allow free markets to determine prices makes economic calculation impossible, and leads to waste, want, and eventually economic ruin. The communist central planner may have the best intentions in the world, but he has no way to find out what he needs to know in order to properly allocate resources: the knowledge, the millions of data points, that are reflected in the prices derived through free markets.
H. The Arts
I just realized I’ve left out the arts, and me the son of two musicians. Needless to say, I favor music galore, including band, choir, bell choir, and orchestra beginning by the 6th grade. There is little better for students than to be trained to make beautiful music, little so God-like and nearer to the heart of God, little that will produce such a life-long blessing! Instruction in music is second only to instruction in religion.
By the 10th grade, students should encouraged to explore the visual arts, including painting and sculpture.
Film/video production should be taught by the 12th grade, with everything that entails, including editing, sound engineering, set design, graphic design, script writing, etc.; the multiplicity of Adventist satellite and Youtube channels are always hungry for content, and Adventist young people who are interested in that field should be trained to produce that content.
Two Tracks are Needed, pre-college, and Trades
Many European countries have a two-track system segregating students by whether they will pursue a trade or go on to college and possibly to the professions. This system, which is immensely rational and practical, should be implemented in Adventist schools.
The idea that everyone needs to go to college, or can profit from a college education, is false. College has become far too expensive, and the last thing we want to do is to encourage students to incur $50,000 to $200,000 in guaranteed student loan debt which might haunt them for the rest of their lives.
Schools need to clarify the bifurcation between those headed into trades and practical arts and those headed for college, and the two tracks need to diverge by the beginning of the 11th grade. Those headed into the trades need to spend at least a year in very practical, realistic shop settings; if such realistic labs are not available on campus, students should be apprenticed to local tradesmen.
Students on the trades track should be encouraged, if they so desire, to spend part of their 11th and 12th grades pursuing the course work and practical experience required for fulfilling the certifications or licensure required in many trades. (The typical state licenses about 150 occupations; Texas licenses 207 different occupations. These barriers to entry are demanded by established workers to protect themselves from competition and keep wages high—and in states such as Texas, the sheeple legislators go along with it.)
The trades includes, electrical, heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC), plumbing, the building trades (such as foundations, framing, drywall, cabinetry, trim, masonry, roofing, etc.), information technology and computer repair, auto-mechanics, small appliance repair, tree removal, landscaping and lawn maintenance, etc.
There is great dignity in working with your hands. Christ was trained as a carpenter. Students who display aptitude for the practical arts over and above academics need to be encouraged and trained accordingly.
College
I was going to discuss college education at this point, but this article is already too long, so college will have to be held in abeyance for a later time. Suffice it to say that if my program for elementary and high school education were followed, few students would need college.