Our society has arrived at a precarious point. After several generations of philosophical ambiguity, we have finally arrived at a point where the youngest among us lack the ability to recognize the most essential and seemingly obvious truths. And rather than helping humanity to grapple with reason in a dexterous way, modern education has sought out ways clutter and confuse the youth with baseless and unsubstantiated inquires. Don’t get me wrong, I am a firm believer in critical reasoning and the Socratic method, but both of those assume the human ability to understand and accept certain truths. Unfortunately, we have managed to raise a generation of children who are truly open to every idea at once. Even those which fundamentally contradict each other.
There certainly is a lot of gray in modern life (and ancient life too for that matter), but as humans with finite understanding we examine the gray through the lens of greater surety. This, by the way is why tradition is so important. In the absence of guarantees tradition provides us with possible answers by which we govern our own actions and those of society. And when those traditions are rooted in our faith they provide a wonderful standard and foundation for daily life and behavior.
All this brings me to education. Modern society has determined to provide its students with an atmosphere conducive for the asking of questions without the confining answers of faith and tradition. This is less true of private and religious schools in particular. And it’s not because public school teachers are less competent. Our society and our government has tried to level all playing fields by removing traditions from the public conversation. The result has been a generation that asks questions without the ability to comprehend the answers. In short we have left this generation to wander without providing any moral answers to the questions we have encouraged them to ask.
For this reason, I’m a passionate advocate for religious and parochial education. Religious schools are able not only to teach critical reasoning, but also to provide an intellectual foundation of faith, tradition, and academics to their prospective students. The result is a student capable of reasoning to the root of a question but also ready to supply some possible answers.
I think there are a number of schools in the Tyler and East Texas area which do a great job providing both excellent academics and religious formation. To read my thoughts on one of those schools click on either of the following links, ( http://www.tylertxdirectory.com/48922/christian-heritge-school-in-tyler-tx/ or http://www.tylertxdirectory.com/49254/christian-heritage-school-in-2016/ ) or visit the school’s website at http://chstyler.org/ .