Chapter Three - Education
Former President Johnson, addressing the National Education Association at Madison Square Garden in 1965, said: "Education, more than any single force, will mould the citizen of the future. That citizen, in turn, will really determine the greatness of our society."
President Nixon warned: "We live in an age of anarchy both abroad and at home.... Here in the United States, great universities are being systematically destroyed."
But since education moulds the future citizen, why are the CENTRES of the dissemination of that education being destroyed? And further, why are those receiving this education doing the destroying?

Because there is something drastically WRONG with modem education!
Schools and campuses have become the nation's greatest centres of seething unrest and dissatisfaction, the most fertile ground for radicalism, confused values, instability and anarchy! Our most famous institutions of higher learning find growing support among students and faculties for civil disobedience, moral and sexual decay, looseness and drug experimentation! Campuses were the targets of over half of the nearly 41,000 bombings, attempted bombings or threats of bombings in a recent fifteen-month period!
Instead of disseminating knowledge capable of solving the nation's mounting problems, education, itself, has become a MAJOR CRISIS! As much as any problem facing us, the problems of education are tearing away at the stability of the nation.

Teachers, as well as students, are frustrated, angry, dissatisfied and are striking out! The concept of leading a purposeful life is fading!

Money Hasn't Been the Answer
Unparalleled in history, Americans (and other nations) have poured billions upon billions of high priority taxpayer dollars into behemoth modern education facilities - from grade schools to university. Parents hoped that this educational system would make up for all their lack of training, in preparing youth for a successful life.
Civil and government leaders have looked to modern education to equip and inspire youth with proper goals, values, knowledge, understanding and self discipline to strengthen their communities and nation.
But something has gone wrong. Education has NOT produced what everyone hoped it would. Something is radically missing in modern education!
Modern education has failed to provide solid goals and values that its youth could rally behind individually and nationally. The Romans fell into the same educational trap. Contrary to later developments, education in early Rome was closely related to clear-cut goals and values. It was clearly character and purpose oriented. It was education to meet clear-cut responsibility toward the family, the community and the nation; a preparation to meet realities head-on with strength and ability.

Later, in the Republic, under the influence of Greek culture, elementary, secondary and higher schools of rhetoric and philosophy were established. The latter were based on the works of so-called great pagan authors, especially Homer. The Romans wanted to be as cultured as conquered subjects and vassals - especially Greeks. Therefore, they set up schools after the Hellenist type to rival those in the East at Athens and Rhodes.

Did Not Build Character
But gradually, with the influence of wealth, ease and commercial life within the Empire, character training became forgotten.
"The Roman Schools (leaving out of account the philosophers) did not profess to do anything more than inculcate a particular branch of learning. They did not claim to build character, to teach religion or patriotism or morality, and some ancient teachers were notoriously ill equipped for such teaching….
"Yet there was certainly a feeling abroad that a school master should be something more than a mere instructor, that he should take the place of a parent, perhaps even supply that moral guidance that some Roman homes conspicuously failed to provide" (Roman Civilisation, p. 208, the section by M. L. Clarke, edited by J. P. V. D. Balsdon).

Looking at the education of Roman youths in the first century of our era, "we find several conditions of good education sadly lacking. The moral, social and intellectual climate was not healthy; there was no grand conception of the education of the whole man" (E. B. Castle, Ancient Education and Today, P.124)

"Character" Not Education's Business
Failure to "educate the whole man"? Schools that have little or no emphasis on "character," "morality," "religion," "patriotism"? How similar to the approach of modern public education.
Several years ago, an elder educator noted that American institutions of higher learning were turning out "splendid splinters" instead of well-rounded educated men and women. He said, "Nine-tenths of our faculties are bores, simply because they are nincompoops outside of their specialities."
Following the pattern of later Rome, a state university professor (formerly a college president) said recently: "We're not in the business of building character. I doubt if some of us are qualified."

Just develop the ability to absorb materialistic knowledge is the modern concept of education.
"Colleges are not churches, clinics, or even parents. Whether or not a student burns a draft card, participates in a civil rights march, engages in premarital or extramarital sexual activity, becomes pregnant, attends church, sleeps all day or drinks all night, is not really the concern of an educational institution."

Meanwhile, Morals and Values Collapse
Students are increasingly told there are "no absolutes," no solid values to guide every action or decision in life.
Is it then surprising that two out of every three college students think it is not wrong for men and women to engage in premarital sex - especially as long as participants say they are "in love"? One poll said even in those cases where participants do not claim to be "in love" half of all those surveyed still accept the idea of premarital sex.
A recent Gallup poll of college students showed that three out of four held the opinion that marrying a virgin was not important. Educators have been in the forefront of the moral and sexual revolution! Modern education must take its share of guilt for destroying true values!

Irrelevant Education
"It gets pretty depressing to watch what is going on in the world," said a University of California senior girl, "and realise that your education is not equipping you to do anything about it."
She is not a radical. She has never demonstrated. She, and millions like her, will graduate with honours and profound disillusionment.
Recently, John Fischer, editor for Harper's Magazine, wrote that the fragments of knowledge that most youth fritter away precious years to receive are only "bits and pieces which don't stick together and have no common purpose.... The typical liberal-arts college has no clearly defined goals. It merely offers a smorgasbord of courses, in hopes that if a student nibbles at a few dishes from the humanities table, plus a snack of science, and a garnish of art or anthropology, he may emerge as `a cultivated man' - whatever that means" (Harper's Magazine, Sept., 1969).

Useless Knowledge, Wasted Time
Now see the shocking parallel in the Roman record: "On the whole we are compelled to admit that at the most glorious period of the empire the schools entirely failed to fulfil the duties which we expect of our schools today [written in 1940]. They undermined instead of strengthened the children's morals, they mishandled the children's bodies instead of developing them, and if they succeeded in furnishing their minds with a certain amount of information, they were not calculated to perform any loftier or nobler task"
In other words, the bits of knowledge Roman children learned did not relate with any high ideal of personal character, national goal or system of values.

Continuing, the historian Carcopino writes: "The pupils left school with the heavy luggage of a few practical and commonplace notions laboriously acquired and of so little value that in the fourth century Vegetius could not take for granted that the new recruits for the army would be literate enough to keep the books of the corps.... Popular education then in Rome was a failure" (Jerome Carcopino, Daily Life in Ancient Rome, pp. 106-107).

What do we see today? High school and college graduates who cannot read, write or spell, who can't get a good job, who are unprepared to earn a living, who are often so physically unfit they cannot pass minimum army inductee regulations!

Much to Unlearn
As for higher education, the Romans paid undue attention to rhetoric in training men for higher offices as lawyers and administrators.
"So, far from preparing young men for practice in the courts ... the schools [of rhetoric] accustomed them to a thoroughly unreal atmosphere and sent them into the world with much to unlearn" (Roman Civilization,p. 209, section by M. L. Clarke).

Again Roman historian Carcopino tells us, " ... the Romans saw no long-term usefulness in disinterested research ... they made a collection of the results research had achieved, and lifted science ready-made into their books, without feeling any need to increase it or even verify it" (Carcopino, Daily Life in Ancient Rome, p. 113).

In other words, Roman students gullibly swallowed anything poked at them as "knowledge," but rarely ever checked its veracity.
The philosophic school of thought even circulated the idea that there was no such thing as unchangeable truth. The Roman governor, Pilate, confronting Jesus Christ who brought up the matter of the concept of truth, reported: "What is truth?" (John 18:38,) Pilate was a product of Roman education. He, like many sophisticated students today, didn't believe in unchangeable truths or values!

Undermined the Empire
With this education and the overemphasis on luxury living and materialism, the minds of Rome's educated citizens were dulled.
"In this atmosphere of indolent contentment the privileged classes, and especially the urban middle class, came to find their ideals in pleasure, the pursuit of gain.... Creative genius dwindled ... [which education should have sparked]. No new artistic discoveries were made ... the pen, the graving tool and the pencil produced highly spiced work, able to attract and amuse the mind but incapable of elevating and inspiring it" (M.Rostovtzeff, Rome, p. 322).

Historians remark with astonishment, that apart from a few religious writings, no outstanding literary works were produced in the 400's A.D. Yet, that period was filled with monumental events.
There were no great men or works of literature to inspire others to high levels of accomplishment - no Abraham Lincolns, no Winston Churchill's. And today, the works most able to attract and amuse the mind are works either of pornography or of violence, or the writings of radical leaders.

But Rome was indifferent: "Under the brilliant exterior of the Roman Empire we feel the failure of creative power... We feel the weariness and indifference which undermine, not mearly the culture of the state, but also its political system, its military strength, and its economic progress" (Rostovtzeff pp.322-323).
Uninspiring education and materialism had warped the time-honoured values of the Roman Empire!

World crisis, a Product of wrong values
A tree is known by its fruits. What have been the fruits of modern education - both of ancient and modern? Has education solved mankind's ills?
Look at the world today! We still have war, violence, hate, prejudice, fear, poverty, sickness, superstition. And today, failure to solve these problems is much worse than ever before! Today the big question is that of SURVIVAL!
Today's sick, chaotic world of divisiveness and violence, with no solutions in the offing is the product of its LEADERS. But its leaders - the politicians, government officials, scientists, captains of industry and business and the theologians are products of modern education.
In 1964, Dr. Benjamin E. Mays, president of More house College in Atlanta, Georgia, said at a conference
at the University of Michigan: "We have more educated people than at any time in history; we have more people with college degrees, yet our humanity is a diseased humanity.... It isn't knowledge we need; knowledge we have. Humanity is in need of something spiritual."
Yet, paradoxically, God says, "My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge..." (Hosea 4:6). The lack being described here is not in material, scientific knowledge however - it is in the knowledge of the true values. It is a lack of knowledge of God and His way of life. This kind of knowledge the world has rejected.

There is IMPORTANT knowledge besides material knowledge!
Obviously there has been a Missing Dimension in education. Education should answer the most important questions of all: What is man? Why is he here? What motivates him? What is the purpose of life? What are the laws and principles that regulate success?
Rarely are these questions pursued. And if an individual seeks to find answers to such questions in modern education, he usually is quickly discouraged or ridiculed by learned teachers and professors. They quickly tell him that there aren't any ultimate answers. "You have to set values for yourself," or, "values change with time and society." "There are no absolutes," he is told.