By SHAUN KENNEY
Education is the transmission of culture, so it has been argued. For myself, I definitely concur with the statement. Once upon a time, America had an education system worthy of the name that was supremely confident in its ability to absorb people from all over the globe: Ireland, Germany, Poland, Italy, China, India, Russia, and so forth.
I mention this because of a conversation this past week about a certain piece of legislation wandering through the halls of the Virginia General Assembly that would require a commission to supervise a determinate and politically charged process.
Of course, processes are good. If one is an avowed Burkean and a true Virginian, traditions are not only the democracy of the dead but they are the tried and true practices that our forefathers bequeath to us as a sort of inheritance.
Yet even the best of processes are worthless in the hands of a vicious people. When Benjamin Franklin was asked what sort of government the Constitutional Convention had bequeathed to the citizens of America, he piqued: “A republic, if you can keep it.”
John Adams likewise counseled that our constitutional processes are fit only for a moral people. Thomas Jefferson likewise quipped that if men were angels, government would be unnecessary. Thus it is no small surprise that, as customs and manners are replaced by legislation and regulations, our transition from a virtuous to a vicious people continues at pace.
In this lies a certain moral that ties us back to education. Parents are the primary educators of their children; the state is merely a ward. As “first teachers” we have a moral duty to pass on our own values, thoughts, experiences, traditions, and virtues — indeed, Catholic culture — to the next generation.
This is no mandate that we can slough off upon the state as we have done in so many other instances (health care, charity, social security, and so on). In a unique way and precisely because of the nature of the family and the act of creation that gives us children, parents alone are responsible for the upbringing of their children.
Thus we return to the American education system. At the moment, the monolith of public education drains not only the moral character of our children but the moral imperative of parents who empathize with the joyless labor of a job — that avocation that enables us to buy that second car, pay the mortgage, take vacations, and buy those extra gadgets that commercialism tells us we must buy.
In short, because we have commercialized our families, we find ourselves in a Catch-22. How many families would prefer to have one parent stay at home? I’d wager that most would. Now how many of us can truly afford this gift? Not many.
Much of this has to do with the way we have structured the American economy. Forty percent of most Americans live paycheck to paycheck, a further 70 percent of Americans have no savings whatsoever. Thus the decision to work is no longer a matter of choice, but one of physical necessity. Work or starve.
Meanwhile, the loving arms of the state are there to pick up the pieces of a materialist society. Far from being the social democratic paradigm that gives families a hand up, we find the social anesthesia of cheap loans, public schools, and a service economy whose entire paradigm is about to be cleaved in two by automation — typically referred to as a Fourth Industrial Revolution.
So where does this leave the future? Where does this leave our children? Even if most parents would nod vigorously that a return to a single breadwinner would be the best option for their children, how much social stability is there when we are thrown upon our own resources and abandon the logic of postmodern culture?
The key factor here is that a conscious decision needs to be made to deprogram oneself from the logic of the American economy. Having the next video game, the newest gadget, paying for cable and Netflix and the cacophony of noise in the media is a distraction at best, but it’s not how our grandparents lived.
There is a certain saying amongst educators that it is better to have read one book deeply than have read a hundred superficially. Better still, it is far better live life intentionally rather than merely participate in it.
This is step one. Step two is a far harder problem to extricate from. Writers such as Romano Guardini remind us that Catholics are both individuals and part of a larger society — specifically the Body of Christ. Neither one nihilates the other. An individual outside of the Body of Christ fails to be a good Catholic in the same manner as one who surrenders their individuality to society writ large. The stark warning between individualism and collectivism serves to remind us how our education system writ large should be challenged and in specific ways.
Here is an example. The Roman writer Quintilian opines that while a private home-schooled education may have more particular benefits to the family, participation in public education is perhaps best for the state. As a proud home-schooling dad of seven, one might (wisely) argue that if I send my children to Caesar for an education, they will indeed come back good little Romans rather than good Catholics.
Thus we are back to Franklin, Adams, and Jefferson. In a good society, such questions about education and the transmission of culture are moot points. In a not-so-good society, such questions are intractable, because no system, no tradition, and no amount of social reform will enact personal reform.
Neither the Soviets nor the avuncularists of the modern liberal democratic order have been able to truly change culture via politics, nor will they succeed in today’s hyper-data driven society.
The key to a good education system remains within the family itself, making selective choices that prioritize the formation of character rather than the chase for material gain (either individually or through so-called social justice). The co-option of Catholic social teaching toward the ends of the latter should be resisted with all our strength; toward the ends of the former we must individually look within our own lives and ask whether we really need all the nonsense with which we surround ourselves.
Does it make better families? Does it create better Catholics?
There are no great answers to these questions, but I hope my thoughts can be placed next to your own for a while. The more we talk about it, the better the chance we will arrive at some cultural revival.
March For Life
Good news! The March for Life is coming and I couldn’t be more excited. About 400,000 Catholics will march in the single longest civil rights demonstration in the history of America, and the press will report on precisely none of it.
Which is all the more reason to remind your friends and family through social media that “Personhood NOW!” is the one thing that scares the hell out of Planned Parenthood (yes, I carefully chose that word because they are truly diabolic).
Also, this is a good time to renew the call for $10/mo to your favorite Catholic and pro-life charities, especially those who are doing the silent but good work that makes a difference.
Believe me, it matters…and if our Catholic bishops had taken abortion as seriously as they took covering up McCarrick’s legacy of sexual abuse? We would have restored the dignity of human life a long time ago…and honestly, in talking to a handful of bishops, I think they are starting to get it.
Send Me Your Thoughts
As always, First Teachers welcomes letters from our amazing readers. Please feel free to send any correspondence for First Teachers to Shaun Kenney, c/o First Teachers, 5289 Venable Road, Kents Store, VA 23084 — or if it is easier, simply send me an e-mail with First Teachers in the subject line to: svk2cr@virginia.edu.
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