My website designer is a Long Island
woman, honest, blunt, and thoughtful.
She remarked that she was afraid
for “our future,” because of what she sees as emotional debates on both sides
of the fence - on important, complicated issues.
We agreed that many people seemed
to enter debates on important issues and jump straight to bumper sticker slogans,
emotionalism, and fast solutions –
as though complicated problems with
long histories will yield to a shotgun approach.
Our country was founded on the
premise of an educated, thinking population of free people. I’ve been reading “Lincoln’s
Battle With God: A President’s Struggle With Faith and What It Meant For
America,” by Stephen Mansfield. The book has me wondering, how well do we Americans
think and reason today?
The passage that struck me most
forcibly was an explanation of the educational environment in Lincoln’s time.
Here’s the excerpt:
“We should remember that the
early English settlers in the New World left England accompanied by fears that
they would pursue their “errand into the wilderness” and become barbarians in
the process. Loved ones at home wondered how a people could cross an ocean and
live in the wild without losing their literacy, the learning, and the faith
that defined them. The early colonists came determined to defy these fears. They
brought books, printing presses, and teachers with them and made the founding
of schools a priority...The American colonists were so devoted to education –
inspired as they were by their Protestant insistence upon biblical literacy and
by their hope of converting and educating the natives – that they created a
near-miraculous culture of learning.
This was achieved through an educational
free market. Colonial society offered “Dame schools,” Latin grammar schools,
tutors for hire, what would today be called “home schools,” church schools,
schools for the poor, and colleges for the gifted and well-to-do. Enveloping
these institutions of learning was a wider culture that prized knowledge as an
aid to godliness…
The intellectual achievements of
colonial America were astonishing. Lawrence Cremin, dean of American education
historians, estimated the literacy rate of the period at between 80 and 90
percent. Benjamin Franklin taught himself five languages and was not thought
exceptional... George Washington was unceasingly embarrassed by his lack of
formal education, and yet readers of his journals today marvel at his intellect
and wonder why he ever felt insecure. It was nothing for a man – or in some
cases a woman – to learn algebra, geometry, navigation, science, logic,
grammar, and history entirely through self-education…instruction which might
take place in a log classroom and on a dirt floor…”
If the bulk of our citizenry
doesn’t have the patience or discipline to work though complicated knowledge or
thought processes on our own, where does that leave us in governing ourselves through
our political process in America?
I understand why my friend is
fearful – hers is a legitimate concern.
