whether someone agrees or disagrees with him on those issues. Truth is transcendent and immutable, not individually constructed and interpreted. Therefore, in order to overcome Poststructuralism, make the quest for objective truth the highest goal. Realize, too, that achieving this goal will always require hard work and deliberate, even aggressive, effort rather than just sitting back and complacently accepting whatever is set before us.
Jefferson expressed this truth when he declared, âIf a nation expects to be ignorant, and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.â 10 You can have truth and security; or you can have an unworried oblivious ease; but you cannot have both at the same time.
The antidote to Modernism is to learn about and understand the past, not just the present. Unfortunately, this is becoming difficult for two reasons. The first is a growing lack of knowledge about even the most basic facts of American history among those who have been educated in our governmental school system. For example, for citizens who have been trained with our current educational methods:
⢠65 percent do not know what happened at the Constitutional Convention.
⢠88 percent cannot name even one writer of the Federalist Papers .
204
⢠40 percent cannot name an American enemy during World War II.
⢠81 percent cannot name even one of the federal governmentâs powers.
⢠70 percent do not know that the US Constitution is the supreme law of the land. 11
Because our educational system now graduates students lacking even minimal proficiency of the simplest facts, whatever extravagant charges Modernists may make about Jefferson or any other historical figure or event seem plausible. The general public is simply no longer knowledgeable enough about history to recognize the claims as false. Regrettably, much of this growing historical illiteracy is actually a direct result of current education laws.
For example, federal laws such as âNo Child Left Behindâ require student accountability testing in order for schools to secure federal funds, but that testing covers reading, math, and science, not history. Most schools instruct their teachers to focus on teaching students the subject matter covered in the testing, whether mandated by state or federal law. History is rarely a part of that focus, so it receives minimal attention.
The second impediment to historical literacy is evolution, which is not simply a science controversy but rather a philosophy-of-life debate. Even attorney Clarence Darrow, who argued the case for evolution in the famous 1925 Scopes trial, 12 acknowledged that he was arguing it as âa death struggle between two civilizations.â 13
When evolutionary belief is applied to law, it results in the âliving Constitution,â asserting that what was written two centuries ago is not applicable today and that judges must allow the Constitution to evolve to meet todayâs needs. Constitutional history, therefore, becomes irrelevant, and has largely been dropped from legal studies in most law schools.
205
When evolutionary belief is applied to education, it results in the constant seeking of new methodologies of instruction, even if the old ones still work well. Consequently, traditional âoldâ math instruction that involves memorizing the math tables is discarded and replaced with ânewâ math. Of this, a US senator correctly observed:
This new-new mush-mush math will never produce quality engineers or mathematicians who can compete for jobs in the global market place. In Palo Alto, California, public school math students plummeted from the 86th percentile to the 56th in the first year of new math teaching. This awful textbook obviously fails to do in 812 pages what comparable Japanese textbooks do so well in 200. The average standardized math score in Japan is 80. In the United States it is 52.
Jefferson expressed this truth when he declared, âIf a nation expects to be ignorant, and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.â 10 You can have truth and security; or you can have an unworried oblivious ease; but you cannot have both at the same time.
The antidote to Modernism is to learn about and understand the past, not just the present. Unfortunately, this is becoming difficult for two reasons. The first is a growing lack of knowledge about even the most basic facts of American history among those who have been educated in our governmental school system. For example, for citizens who have been trained with our current educational methods:
⢠65 percent do not know what happened at the Constitutional Convention.
⢠88 percent cannot name even one writer of the Federalist Papers .
204
⢠40 percent cannot name an American enemy during World War II.
⢠81 percent cannot name even one of the federal governmentâs powers.
⢠70 percent do not know that the US Constitution is the supreme law of the land. 11
Because our educational system now graduates students lacking even minimal proficiency of the simplest facts, whatever extravagant charges Modernists may make about Jefferson or any other historical figure or event seem plausible. The general public is simply no longer knowledgeable enough about history to recognize the claims as false. Regrettably, much of this growing historical illiteracy is actually a direct result of current education laws.
For example, federal laws such as âNo Child Left Behindâ require student accountability testing in order for schools to secure federal funds, but that testing covers reading, math, and science, not history. Most schools instruct their teachers to focus on teaching students the subject matter covered in the testing, whether mandated by state or federal law. History is rarely a part of that focus, so it receives minimal attention.
The second impediment to historical literacy is evolution, which is not simply a science controversy but rather a philosophy-of-life debate. Even attorney Clarence Darrow, who argued the case for evolution in the famous 1925 Scopes trial, 12 acknowledged that he was arguing it as âa death struggle between two civilizations.â 13
When evolutionary belief is applied to law, it results in the âliving Constitution,â asserting that what was written two centuries ago is not applicable today and that judges must allow the Constitution to evolve to meet todayâs needs. Constitutional history, therefore, becomes irrelevant, and has largely been dropped from legal studies in most law schools.
205
When evolutionary belief is applied to education, it results in the constant seeking of new methodologies of instruction, even if the old ones still work well. Consequently, traditional âoldâ math instruction that involves memorizing the math tables is discarded and replaced with ânewâ math. Of this, a US senator correctly observed:
This new-new mush-mush math will never produce quality engineers or mathematicians who can compete for jobs in the global market place. In Palo Alto, California, public school math students plummeted from the 86th percentile to the 56th in the first year of new math teaching. This awful textbook obviously fails to do in 812 pages what comparable Japanese textbooks do so well in 200. The average standardized math score in Japan is 80. In the United States it is 52.
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