Oh, goodness. YLCF.org stuck a comment I made on an earlier post into another post and linked my name to this blog. I hope nobody clicks on my name and comes here, because I have said nothing pithy for at least a week. I have thought pithy things, but they required such arduous effort even to compose in my mind, that I have refrained from putting them into words.

Just in case, I would like to say that I have been reading Horace Mann on education. He was an idealist who inspired Massachusetts to introduce this country's first set of compulsory school laws in 1852. In the context of modern schooling, his words are full of bitter irony. He was convinced that free public education for all was the harbinger of Progress, a tool able to do what nothing before had done: change human nature for the better. Here, in his words, is a great summary of the entire American experiment of public education:

"The unrestrained passions of men are not only homicidal, but suicidal . . . As for every new substance there may be a new shadow, so for every new law there may be a new transgression . . . The race has existed long enough to try many experiments for the solution of this greatest problem ever submitted to its hands . . . Mankind have tried despotisms, monarchies, and republican forms of government. They have tried the extremes of anarchy and of autocracy. . . . They have established theological standards, claiming for them the sanction of Divine authority . . . But to all doubters, disbelievers, or despairers in human progress, it may still be said, there is one experiment which has never yet been tried. . . . It is expressed in these few and simple words: 'Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it.' . . . Education has never yet been brought to bear with one hundredth part of its potential force, upon the natures of children, and, through them, upon the character of men, and of the race."

This makes me sad in the very depths of my heart, the same way I feel whenever I think about the Fall. Most of America became possessed with the idea that education might be the panacea for which the entire human race has sought. It could clear away the darkness of ignorance, creating a new, enlightened people. That's us. We are the enlightened race - dumber than ever before.
Then Mr. Mann adds this, to defend himself against people who say his proposed common schools are non-Christian:

"In this age of the world, it seems to me that no student of history, or observer of mankind, can be hostile to the precepts and the doctrines of the Christian religion, or opposed to any institutions which expound and exemplify them; and no man who thinks, as I cannot but think, respecting the enduring elements of character, whether public or private, can be willing to have his name mentioned while he is living, or remembered when he is dead, as opposed to religious instruction and Bible instruction for the young."

Oh, how the times have changed! It is enough to make one very humble indeed. How could Mann have foreseen how his ideas would change the picture of America - into something horrific that he would never, ever have desired? It makes me think about homeschooling now. Back in the 19th century, Mann pushed public education specifically because of the evils caused by parents who did not care in the slightest whether their children ever learned anything. I guess the lesson we should learn is that, in this fallen world, every system has its upsides and its downsides. Anyone who insists that his or her ideas will solve every problem is lying.  ¶ 8:30 AM