August 28, 2018 Show with Dr. Clark D. Stull on “The Erosion of Education in America: Foundations & the Cultural Shifts That Have Undermined It”

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Live from the historic parsonage of 19th century gospel minister George Norcross in downtown

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Carlisle, Pennsylvania, it's Iron Sharpens Iron, a radio platform on which pastors,

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Christian scholars, and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.

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Proverbs 27 verse 17 tells us, Iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.

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Matthew Henry said that in this passage, quote, we are cautioned to take heed whom we converse with and directed to have in view in conversation to make one another wiser and better.

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It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next hour and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions.

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Now here's our host, Chris Arntzen. Good afternoon,

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Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com.

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This is Chris Arntzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Tuesday on this 28th day of August 2018, and I apologize to those of you listening who may have been waiting around for 15 minutes for us to go on the air, but we had a technical difficulty and it's the probably the about the fourth or fifth time in the entire history of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio where I had to shut down everything and reboot it for some reason, but I'm glad that the

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Lord answered prayer and we are back up and running now, and I'm delighted to have on the program for the first time ever,

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Dr. Clark D. Stull. He was born and raised near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

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He earned a bachelor's degree from Duke University, a master's degree from Gordon -Conwell Theological Seminary, and a

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PhD in historical and theological studies from Westminster Seminary here in Pennsylvania.

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During the time at Gordon -Conwell Theological Seminary, he discerned a call to pursue teaching and gave a lecture on Calvin's contribution to education on -site at the

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Geneva Academy in Switzerland. Dr. Stull began his career as an educator in 1983 and since has instructed students in both public and private schools for more than 30 years.

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He and his wife Elizabeth have raised four daughters and it's my honor and privilege to welcome you for the very first time to Iron Radio, Dr.

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Clark D. Stull. Well, thank you for having me, Chris. It's great to have you on,

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Clark, and I'm going to give our email address out right now for those of our listeners who would like to ask you a question on our subject today, the erosion of education in America, foundations, and the cultural shifts that have undermined it.

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Our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N

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Z -E -N at gmail .com. Please give us your first name at least, your city and state of residence, and your country of residence if you live outside the

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USA. Please only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter.

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Before we get into the subject at hand, the erosion of education in America, I would love for you, as I do with at least the vast majority of my first -time guests,

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I have them give a summary of what kind of religious atmosphere, if any, they were raised in and what kind of providential circumstances did the

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Sovereign Lord raise up in your life that was or were used by him to draw you to himself and save you.

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Well, it's a very interesting story and I guess I could begin it with my birth because I would characterize my mother as one who had some vague idea about God but wasn't what we would call a

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Christian who took him very seriously. I was her firstborn and when I was born

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I wasn't breathing properly and they took me away from her. In fact, she couldn't have any contact with me for about 48 hours and that was, as you could imagine, on a new mother very, very hard and I think it was the first time in her life she really wanted to call upon God in prayer as sometimes crises bring us to those pivotal places.

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My father did not go to church and so I grew up in a home where my mom would occasionally take us to an

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Episcopal Church here outside Philadelphia where I grew up. I would characterize the Episcopal Church as a organization which wanted people to believe in God but not necessarily as the core of one's life and when

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I went off to school I was put in the Episcopal Academy which was a prep school and we had chapel on a weekly basis and so it was oriented to the scriptures and to the things of God but I was never told that I had a sin problem and I was never told that Christ was my

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Savior and without putting my faith in him I would have no hope of eternal life. Religion was taught as something to round you out as a sort of a

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Renaissance man, to be part of your life but not dare be the core or central motivating force in it and so I grew up in that kind of atmosphere and then my parents were converted to genuine faith and biblical

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Christianity through an outreach ministry in the Philadelphia area and then I saw them change in their habits and in their dispositions and the friends they've made and we went off to church on a regular basis where it was a church where the

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Bible was preached and taught and believed in and I noticed that change and they, my parents, asked me to watch

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Billy Graham on television and in watching him I understood my need for a Savior and my need to repent of my sin and so through the preaching of Billy Graham that I came to faith in the

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Lord Jesus and that was when I was about 15 years of age and I had a dream very close to that time in the middle of the night and in that dream

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Satan and God were arguing over my soul and in the dream I remember waking up at the end of it crying out

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Lord Jesus saved me and at that time it seemed like an evil presence vanished and left my room in the middle of the night and ever since I felt that I belonged to Jesus Christ and so I have tried to serve him for now nearly 45 years imperfectly but discerning a desire to study the scriptures and become conversant in them as I went to Duke University I decided then to pursue a master's degree at Gordon -Conwell

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Theological Seminary and it was then that I noticed that I had a desire to teach and I felt that was from the

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Lord and wanted then to go into Christian education for my career and so I've been teaching for 30 years in various schools and raising a family and being a husband and trying to serve the

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Lord and that gives you a little bit of my background growing up in what we would call mainline

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Philadelphia it's really a work of a sovereign God to call me into his kingdom because most people on the mainline don't need the

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Lord in their own eyes they have enough money or they depend on their education or their social standing and there are very few people like myself that ever seem to see that they need

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Jesus Christ and so I have to say I'm very grateful to the Lord eternally because I would not have come on my own if it had only been left up to me based on the environment that I was raised in so that's my testimony

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I guess at this point we can go on to other questions well just out of curiosity it seems from your resume here you're brought to your bio sketch that it is very likely that today you are theologically reformed as I am would

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I be correct in assuming that yes and I came to that conclusion just by doing my own personal

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Bible study as a teenager growing into faith reading the book of Romans reading the book of Ephesians reading the

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Gospel of John it just seemed to me inescapable that God has to be central and that's where reformed theology starts and so I became reformed without even knowing the term more or less based on my own

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Bible study yes well it's it's a fascinating to me how many people who wind up staunch

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Calvinists begin their journey through Billy Graham crusades or Bob Jones University neither of which are

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Calvinistic and the Lord draws them eventually very often to the beliefs in the doctrines of Sovereign Grace I can't even count how many people

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I know who are pastors and and I hate to use the word lay people but to look for lack of a better term let lay people alike who started out in those places and then were eventually brought to reformed understandings and so it's always a pleasure to find out those things and I think it also reminds we who are reformed not to be unnecessarily and overly critical of of evangelistic ministries that do not line up with us on every jot and tittle when it comes to our theology because God uses he always uses imperfect evangelism and teaching because none of us on this earth are perfect all right and we only have to remember the thief on the cross that didn't have much theology other than believe in the

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Lord Jesus Christ and he shall be saved right well I want to read an endorsement for your book because my friend that I've known for many years dr.

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Joel Beakey is one of many who endorsed your book dr. Joel Beakey for those of my listeners who are unfamiliar with him he is president and actually founder of the

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Puritan Reform Theological Seminary in Grand Rapids Michigan he's been a guest on Ion Sharpens Ion radio many times and has written a glowing endorsement for this program and he's also written a glowing endorsement for this book and he says a helpful read in our day of cultural and educational war the erosion of education in America provides insights into how education and schooling both reflect and produce culture and engage in individual and community development this study addresses the shared but descending degrees of responsibility for educating in our culture with the primary and key role being that of parents supported by the church and protected by the state the author illustrates historically how these roles began to shift and perceived importance in America and have now reversed themselves in today's mainstream culture with the state assuming primary responsibility for education and let me repeat that with a proper emphasis with the state assuming primary responsibility for education that should always be something that frightens you the dangers and harmful results from this reversal is multiplied when considering the simultaneous shift of educational foundation from a

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Protestant Christian God honoring one to a secular agnostic man focused approach education is powerful and at the center of the battle for the minds and hearts of our children

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US history demonstrates this truth reading this will strengthen your understanding of why and how and that is

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Dr. Joel Beakey and perhaps if we address this program this book on another program another interview we can read

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Dr. Joey Piper's endorsement and he is also a friend and has been a guest on this broadcast but let us start where you start in this book on the foundational issues what are the primary issues that we are going to be discussing today in regard to the erosion of education in America well one of them is who is the proper agent of education and by Asian I mean who is responsible for the task of educating people and particularly in our case in the educating children so that's a foundational question who gets that responsibility and in the book

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I traced the shift as follows in the early 1800s thanks to a number of revivals that occurred in early

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America if you had asked that question to a group of people parents would have stood up and said I'm responsible for my children's education a hundred years later at the beginning of the 20th century if you had asked a group of people to similar question who is responsible for your children's education most people would have stood up and said the civil government is and that's a profound shift because it's taking education out of the hands of parents and those the parents enroll or employ to be in their place and putting it in the hand of a governmental agency which may or may not be in line with our worldview and the thing that is interesting in the book is to try to discern what is it that led

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Christians to allow government into education in the first place during the 19th century and you can argue both sides of that issue

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I have a chapter on that where some thought it was a good idea and some thought it was a bad idea but as long as the government is supportive of the church and has at its philosophical basis theistic or atheistic worldview it's it's not necessarily a bad thing but once that government departs from that and enters into a diagnostic or atheistic or materialistic worldview then they're going to provide a deficient education the problem in our country right now is we're not educating or nurturing souls in our youth we're just going after minds and in some cases bodies and yet when you fail to nurture a soul you're not educating the whole person and those who founded our educational institutions in the 18th and 19th centuries understood the importance of nurturing a soul and so children were educated to help them be a better service to God as well as to their fellow citizens and now

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God is rendered irrelevant in our education unless you're in some private parochial or Catholic or Christian school and we're reaping the fruits of that and then another one of the foundational issues is what should the content of an education be and during the 19th century the country moved away from a biblical core content and then of course by the 1960s the

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Bible was deemed to be unconstitutional in terms of its being a part of public school instruction it's interesting to think why that decision was made

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I had a teacher when I was in seminary that wrote the various nine Supreme Court justices back in the 1960s when that decision was reached and he told us the story that he only heard back from one of them and that was

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Justice Potter who had voted against the majority decision and in his letter he pointed out or asked the question why did it take nearly 200 years for these judges to reach this decision that suddenly all of a sudden the

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Bible was unconstitutional where it was not seen to be that way for the first 200 years of the

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Republic and only one justice decided to write him back and that was Justice Potter but my teacher went on to say that we were going to reap a whirlwind and he even had someone he knew who had led to Christ in another country when they heard of this decision said to him you've just lost a great deal of freedom in your country because the

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Bible has been thrown out of your public schools and so we discuss the content shifts the

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McGuffey reader might be familiar to some of your listeners our listeners today that book had a lot of biblical content of it talked about personal faith in Jesus Christ for salvation in its early editions but by the end of the 19th century that was removed and only moralism what we might call a behavior based on the

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Sermon on the Mount and other ethical injunctions in the scripture those were the only things remaining and the idea of man as a sinner and God is holy and we're under the wrath of God unless we come to Christ that kind of material was left out of the

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McGuffey reader so there was this shift in content and I can by myself going to school in the 1960s as a young boy do remember seeing that McGuffey reader so it's probably not around much anymore but as late as the 1960s it was part of some schools curriculum so we look at those two shifts primarily as foundational shifts and then also talk about what's going on in parenting and in the family in our country because there's been obviously a shift in that even in the definition of what constitutes a family that is in flux nowadays whereas in previous generations everybody understood that the family was a man and a woman and maybe in the

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South extended laborers but prior to the Civil War but nowadays of course the definitions of family is up for grabs and as a teacher for 30 years

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I can tell you that the parenting skills are not getting any better we see more and more students are dysfunctional in our educational system and that makes it more difficult to stay on track and this is one reason that a road education is eroding is that the family is eroding in our country so those are some of my thoughts on that particular question well one of the one of the problematic issues that involves education is that very often

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Christians act as if their local government -run schools could if we put enough political pressure on them behave as if they are

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Christian institutions of education which that will never happen how do you address the fact that being in a nation that is now multicultural where you have all different kinds of ideologies swirling around here and in fact even much of what is identified as conservatism is unbiblical and at times and at a times anti -biblical and so you have you have people for instance who are conservative many of them will be saying we've got to bring prayer back into the public school now well does a

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Christian parent want a Mormon teacher leading his own children in prayer or a

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Roman Catholic or an Orthodox Jew or a secular Jew or you could go on and on and on I fully support the right of American citizens and their children who are also citizens to have private prayer to have private prayer clubs uninterrupted without any kind of hostility exerted toward them but at the same time if if Christians are going to send their children to public schools which that is even debatable whether that's appropriate or not

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I don't think that they should be demanding that goats lead their children in prayer goats lead their sheep in prayer if you follow what

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I'm saying yeah well obviously I would agree with that and it's not a simple situation

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I don't think we can go back I don't see us coming full circle to a time in America where there was a

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Christian consensus like there was in the 19th century I think we're beyond that we haven't had a large -scale revival in this country for decades

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I would say though that there could be time either before school or at the lunch break where clubs for various faiths could be encouraged within the public arena so you could be dismissed to to meet and have prayer

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Bible study for Christians and for those who are Islamic they could look at the Quran and so on and so forth

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I don't see any conflict of interest there allowing the students to have that type of freedom but I don't think we're going to be able to say from the top down administratively that that we can have something that everybody is going to follow because if we understand these faiths are right they're all exclusive Christianity Islam Judaism right so on and so forth yeah

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I hear on occasion I'm sure you do fellow Christians and fellow conservatives longing for the return of the day when a principal of a school is reading the

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Bible or praying over the the loud speaker but like I said that that to me is a strange thing for a

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Christian to want unless of course the principal is a Christian and unless of course the the other alternative being that the school is identifiably and accurately

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Christian yeah well in an era when the

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Supreme Court said that we were a nation back in 1892 it was the decision that was reached you know you had a sort of a cultural consensus that Christianity was the truth and that it should be promoted but we're so far beyond that now that no one it seems to me argues that we're a

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Christian nation anymore and I suppose you don't want to look at it just in terms of documentation but just what are the people doing you know what religious commitments to the people have and we are so pluralistic as you say and there are so many people from different faiths and philosophical and religious commitments in our country nowadays that it's just impossible to achieve a consensus in my mind and I think that you know we have to live with what we're where we are and that's one reason why homeschooling is on the increase because parents feel they have more control and that's one reason why

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Christian schools are continuing in some parts of the country to thrive in other parts of the country they're having difficulty but at least we have the option of private education but you know the public sphere does have to decide where does the moral uplift come from if we don't have some kind of religious or biblical input if we're left with just the fact that we're every man for himself every philosophical system is equally legitimate we end up where the people were in the book of judges where everyone does what is right in their own eyes and the society suffers and as my wife said earlier today we seem to be shooting ourselves in the foot you know we can't get past these problems where we have schools that don't really offer any hope other than a humanistic hope and we all know that that's kind of a sham we all feel that we're deficient in some way or another and we're blessed when we can cast ourselves into the hand of a loving

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God but when children never hear that I never hear that there's hope to get through difficult situations that's a shame and we're really not doing them a favor yes well

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I know that you've already in the the process of the last nearly half hour now you've already basically given a summary of some of what

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I'm going to ask you now but perhaps you could get more detailed backtracking and going back into the golden age of American education of the historical and cultural context of the 19th century so we get an idea of what you would consider the most pristine level of education that actually ever existed in the

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United States or America and how in all the ways that we have departed from that and I'm assuming a lot of it has to do with the fact that no it wasn't very long ago when even though we can't say that America was ever in its majority genuinely regenerate people at the same time we could say that in the majority at least people were got more a lot more

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God -fearing they were more respectful of sacred things more respectful even if they never picked up a

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Bible they treated it with respect typically I'm not saying everybody and and so on you could go on and on so I'm assuming that's why education even in a public sense was was a much trust much more trustworthy institution but if you could tell us more about this golden age well it really starts in the colonial period where you have people that came to this country to the shores of this country for religious freedom and that meant they had a desire to worship

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God and to live out what they felt was his commands and his way of life and they all basically came early in the country from what we would call

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Western Europe and Protestant where there was Protestant theology as opposed to Catholic theology and of course

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Protestant theology is built on the Bible being the source of truth the inspired Word of God God's revelation to man who sorely needs it because on his own man stumbles in darkness and so educators in the early part of the country wanted that light of God's Word to be part of an education and they felt that education without the scriptures was a deficient education and I'm going to read a quote that I have in the book from Samuel Adams in 1790 now most people may be familiar with the

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Adams family because John Adams was our second president and they might be familiar with Abigail Adams they're probably more familiar with a different Adams family that lived in a crazy haunted house well for those who are a little bit foggy on their history

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Samuel Adams was really the driving force in for independence in the New England area particularly in the

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Boston area and in 1790 he wrote this quote let the vines and philosophers statesmen and patriots unite their endeavors to renovate the age by impressing the minds of men with the importance of educating little boys and girls of inculcating in the minds of youth the fear and love of God and of universal philanthropy and in subordination to these great principles the love of their country so in other words

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God first country second so to speak and he goes on to say of instructing these children in the art of self -government without which they can never act a wise part in the government of societies great or small in short of leading them in the study and practice of the exalted virtues of the

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Christian system end quote so here is thinking just shortly before the 1800

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Adams was not alone in voicing that type of philosophy or that type of perspective for education in 1798 a fellow by the name of 20

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Timothy Dwight who was extremely fluent influential in Connecticut and for a while was running the show at Yale University wrote religion and liberty are the great objects of a defensive war can join they unite all the feelings and call for all the energies of man religion and liberty or the meat and drink of the

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Bali body politic withdrawal one of them and it languages consumes and dies if indifference to either at any time becomes the prevailing character of a people one half of their motives to vigorous defense is lost and the hopes of their enemies are proportionally increased here eminently these two are inseparable without religion we may possibly retain the freedom of savages bears and wolves but not the freedom of New England if our religion were gone our state of society would perish with it and nothing would be left would be worth defending that is the president of Yale University in seven twelve he wasn't at that time in 1798 when he wrote these words but he went on to become the leader at Yale in the early 1800s and so you have that kind of thinking influencing graduates who are going to go out into the society and make their mark now that kind of material shared with students nowadays no not at all and so it's no surprise that we're going to reap the kind of deficient society that we have in america right now i mean chris you and i were just talking before we began the public nature of the program today about if you were to ask most americans to recall what they heard on the news with respect to education in the last year it wouldn't be something about science or english or literature or technology it would probably be the gun violence that's going on in our educational system and we are reaping what we're sowing when we have a deficient view of man and so we go back to the golden age of american education there was this god consciousness that was part of the equation and today we seem to be in a society that thinks that god is irrelevant and it's okay if we leave them out of the equation another thought has occurred to me and that is them any professional athlete anybody who's played athlete at any level knows that there are certain physical laws that are work in the universe and that for example where you hit a golf ball kick a football throw a baseball eventually the law of gravity is going to take over and that ball is going to come down to the ground none of us question the physical laws that are at work in the universe the chemist observes them and if he doesn't he's going to create an explosion with gases and he's gonna maybe even kill himself astronomers based their calculations on the physical laws of motions that are governing planetary bodies comets and the like but the problem in our country right now is not that we don't recognize these physical laws the problem is we are blind to the moral and spiritual laws that are operating in the universe man thinks he can make up his own laws his own set of laws and rules in this area and he thinks that any kind of experimentation in this area carries no risk and that is really where we are in this country people do not discern spiritual and moral laws at work in the universe

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God holds us accountable to those just as the physical laws cannot be violated without problems amen we have to go to our first break right now if anybody would like to join us on the air with a question for dr.

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Clark D Stull on the erosion of education in America our email address again is chrisarnson at gmail .com

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chrisarnson at gmail .com don't go away God willing we are going to be right back with more of dr.

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Clark D Stull right after these messages from our sponsors James White here co -founder of Alvin Omega Ministries and occasional guest on iron sharpens iron radio

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Christian books we are now back with our guest today and for those of you who have just tuned in our guest today for the full show is dr.

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Clark D Stull and we are discussing the erosion of education in America of foundations and the cultural shifts that have undermined it our email address is

40:22

Chris Arnzen at gmail .com CH RIS a RN Z n at gmail .com

40:27

please give us your first name city and state and country of residence if you live outside the USA and only remain anonymous if the question involves a personal and private matter we have a listener in Bangor Maine John who asks in your opinion should

40:44

Christians ever send their children to public schools or should I say government schools and if so what are those rare circumstances that you believe it is acceptable for parents to do that well

41:00

I think sometimes it's a financial success necessity now I don't know how much people are taxed in Maine but I know how much we're taxed in Pennsylvania where I live and so we don't have any choice about that and a certain amount of our money is taken to support the system and there is a sense in which sending your children through that system is a matter of stewardship provided that you reteach where you need to and that you supplement what is missing from a theological standpoint in our

41:32

American government schools I don't think it's the best route to go but some people because of other circumstances in their lives might not have the ability to finance a private education there are

41:45

Christian schools that attempt to help people out with that issue by providing scholarships and the like and of course there are those who homeschool there are still people who are

41:54

Christian teachers in our system and that's encouraging but most of what they're going to receive in education like that in the government schools is not going to be

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God -centered and it's going to be deficient in terms of nurturing the soul so it would not be something

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I would recommend but I can see there being a few circumstances where it can be used and I actually have had a couple of our children in the public system and we would be on our knees there were actually more security guards in the halls and there were students and teachers some days it was kind of a difficult situation where they had to go but financially there was no other means for us to do so because my wife is handicapped and we just didn't have enough income to finance a private education at other times

42:43

I was on faculties of Christian schools and then the children could come along with me and that was an ideal situation so that's my answer to that question and if I could

42:52

Chris I wanted to go back to one further thing before we had the break and that was the golden age of American education

42:58

I want to read 1829 now we're honored and almost 190 years removed from that but in 1829 get this the presidents of 40 of the nation's oldest 54 colleges were either

43:14

Presbyterian or congregational clergymen 40 out of the 54 oldest universities and colleges in the country had

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Christian theologians and clergymen running them Wow what do you think that number is today

43:30

I couldn't even guess that shows you how much of a change there has been in terms of who's at the top in our educational system you know

43:41

I refer to in my book the work of George Marsden a wonderful scholar who has now retired but in the early to mid -2000s he came out with a book called the soul of the

43:55

American University the subtitle from Protestant establishment to established non -belief and we need to understand that what's going on in the colleges and universities trickles down through the culture into our secondary and elementary schools

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I think many people are kind of blind to the influence of that but you know that was just something that came to mind based on what

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I would have considered the Golden Age where God was central to the training of the mind and the soul and American education of course as we know now people view religious doctrine and religious convictions to be divisive and then they can be divisive they don't have to be that way but they can be divisive and so let's exclude religion altogether it's just too complicated to try to make it part of the mix and we're better off if we or are we really better off if we exclude it so great we go well

45:00

John and Bangor Maine please give us your full mailing address because you have won a free copy of the book we are discussing the erosion of education in America foundations and the cultural shifts that have undermined it by our guest

45:14

Dr. Clark D Stull and this is compliments of our friends at ICFUS publications who were generous enough to bless us with some copies for those of you who write in questions let's see here we have we have

45:38

Charlie in Carlisle Pennsylvania and I have to enlarge

45:44

Charlie's font because it's a very small font on his email and while I'm doing that if anybody would like to join us with a question of your own our email address is

45:55

Chris Arnzen at gmail .com okay Charlie in Carlisle Pennsylvania asks do you believe the classical method of education is superior to the traditional methods used in today's schools very good question you

46:11

I know have experience in both what is your answer to Charlie well first of all it might depend on how you define the word classical some people might define that somewhat narrowly others more broadly

46:22

I'm not sure exactly what your listener has in mind by his definition but what

46:29

I would say is that children at different ages learn in different ways and this is what a typical classical education recognizes children when they're young at the elementary age learn through memorization they learn from parroting back what they hear they learn facts they learn figures in middle school there's a shift in intellectual development that enables them to begin not just to parrot back what they hear and heard in elementary school but it begins for that it'd be they begin a stage where they try to put things together and where they want to see different sides to issues and that begins what

47:09

I would call a synthesis rather than just rote memory you are trying to piece things together in some kind of coherent and logical form and then in high school the idea of a classical education is based on your ability to synthesize arguments present them in a winning way or convincing way and that's what we call rhetoric in classical education the idea of trying to persuade people to see things the way you do

47:35

I think that's a valid and very good way of educating somebody I think it helps students learn how to think

47:43

I have a colleague in public education who says we're just teaching students how to pass the test and do well on the test we end up teaching the test we're not actually helping students learn how to think in this day and age where there's so much emphasis on test scores of course if you learn how to think logic should be part of the process part of the education there's so many arguments which appeal to celebrities in our culture and since when have celebrities become officials or authorities on particular subjects there's so much appeal to fear that is out there and that's the logical fallacy as well so there should be logic somewhere in the curriculum and I don't know any public schools nowadays that teach logic anymore and it seems that anybody's subjective argument that anybody comes up with within their own soul within their own mind is viewed just as valid as the next person's subjective argument and there's very little appeal to objective authority to something beyond oneself ultimately and from a

48:45

Christian point of view appeal to divine revelation which alone informs our mind our sinful mind of what is really true that's just missing in a non classical education so I think it's a good approach

48:57

I don't think it's the only approach and I would also like to say this and that is I think there's an element in American education which says if we just get the right method in place or we just have the right

49:11

X's and O's everything's going to turn out all right and it's almost as if the school has a messianic mindset to it you know we just do it a certain way everything is going to turn out all right and I think that's a little scary to go down that far in that direction

49:28

I think there are a lot of approaches in education I also believe that schools do not bring out all the types of intelligence that are in young people

49:37

I think we tend to draw out what I would call an academic or book intelligence in many of our schools but where is focus on interpersonal relationships there are people that are highly intelligent in a sense of the word and dealing with other people there is mechanical intelligence

49:56

I am not particularly blessed with that but I have a brother who had a hard time from an academic point in school but he could take a car apart and put it back together again by the time he was 18 and he went on to show doctors how to use surgical equipment in the operating room and things like this because of this mechanical intelligence but that would have not been fostered in a traditional school or perhaps in a classical school there's musical intelligence there there are a variety of things and we need to keep that in mind so that we don't become too tunnel -visioned in saying that this is the only way we should go about it yes

50:31

I think classical education has a lot going for it and it's preferable to so many others but I wouldn't want it to be held up as a messianic type of option we have let's see here we have

50:47

Susan Margaret in Dauphin County Pennsylvania and Susan Margaret says for my entire life and I'm sure for many years prior the thought of being a high school dropout was considered something similar to blasphemy even to the non -religious is it really the case today that that is such a horrible option if the child who is leaving high school early legally can pursue a job or career where they will receive the needed experience in excelling and becoming very successful in this job if those opportunities arise in their lives well that's a wonderful question and there's actually one of the the 19th century educators and theologians that I give some attention to in my book

51:40

Southern Theologian by the name of Robert Dabney addressed that very issue and he argued for different educations for different destinies or different gifts in life he did not think that a farmer needed to be educated in 19th century

51:54

British literature and so what this person who has asked us about I think is right on target

52:06

I don't think there should be a stigma with dropping out of high school particularly if that high school is not helping that particular young person develop their

52:15

God -given talent in a particular area the traditional approach would be in some schools to separate children based on whether they really have the what they need and have the ability to go on to further academics or whether they should go into vocational school and develop mechanical ability

52:31

I mean if you have the ability to be a plumber mechanic that's a wonderful calling I'm so thankful for my mechanic not a believer but he does very good work and we need people like that and increasingly it seems that those people are harder to find in our culture where there is such an emphasis of you know going on to college and finishing high school

52:52

I wouldn't say quit because that education can be valuable in other ways in terms of worldview and learning how other people think and all that but I I think there have been number of people in American history have done very well that haven't finished through high school

53:07

Thomas Edison is one of them he basically his sixth grade teacher told his mother that he was beyond hope and so he is not the only one but he comes to mind as someone who because he had he wasn't on anybody else's wavelength let's put it and there are some children like that they are extremely gifted in one particular area

53:31

I mean I know the not personally but I know of the first violin chair in the

53:37

Philadelphia Orchestra goal for his mother had for him was to become a great violinist and she started him on that track when he was four years old he did not go to high school when he was 10 he commuted from South Carolina up to New York City weekly for lessons with the top violinists in New York City and now he he's in his 50s

54:00

I believe now but he has been the principal violin for the Philadelphia Orchestra for a number of years you know there's all sorts of roots depending on how your child is gifted and and what goals you think are best for him or her

54:13

I don't want to come entirely abandon this thought this train of thought here when we go to our midway break so I just want to have a couple of more questions asked in regard to that when we return this is our midway break it's the longer the normal break please be patient with us this is a break required of us by grace life radio 90 .1

54:33

FM in Lake City Florida because they need this elongated break in the middle of our program to air their own commercials and public service announcements to localize

54:43

Iron Sharpens Iron Radio to Lake City Florida especially since they air this program twice a day in a rerun format both in morning and evening drive time so take this time please to write questions for our guest dr.

54:56

Clark D Stahl and also use this time to write down the information provided by our advertisers because that will enable you to more successfully and more frequently patronize our advertisers which will consequently elongate the existence of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio most likely because we depend upon their advertising dollars in order to survive as a program so if you'd like to join us on the air with a question for dr.

55:22

Clark D Stahl our email address is Chris Arnzen at gmail .com Chris Arnzen at gmail .com

55:28

and by the way everybody who has written in so far is getting a free copy of the book that we have been discussing by dr.

55:36

Clark D Stahl so if you have not given us your mailing address yet please email that to us as soon as possible don't go away

55:43

God willing we will be right back right after these messages from our sponsors have you been blessed by Iron Sharpens Iron Radio we remain on the air because of our faithful sponsors and because of listeners like you there are four ways you can help first do you know potential sponsors who may wish to advertise their goods or services on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio second whenever possible purchase the products or use the services that our sponsors advertise and then let them know that you heard about them on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio thirdly you can also donate to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio by going to our website at iron sharpens iron radio .com

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I should say and mention Chris Arnzen of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio now we just have a few announcements as far as special events that are coming up before we return to our discussion with Dr.

01:05:16

Stull first of all next week I have orchestrated two events that are going to be held in Jacksonville Florida or that area first of all on Thursday I'm sorry on Friday September 7th at 630 p .m.

01:05:37

the Gordon Conwell Theological Seminary Jacksonville Florida campus will be hosting an event that I've arranged for them featuring my friend dr.

01:05:48

James R White of Alpha and Omega Ministries and his friend dr. Michael L Brown of the line of fire radio program they will be discussing a house -mended

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Christian unity in a culture of outrage that's at Gordon Conwell Theological Seminary's Jacksonville Florida campus

01:06:06

Friday September 7th 630 p .m. for more details go to Switzerland community church org they are one of the sponsors of this event

01:06:15

Switzerland community church org and you will see all the details that you need to attend that event then the following night

01:06:23

Saturday September 8th 630 p .m. as well I have arranged a formal debate that dr.

01:06:30

White and dr. Brown are both involved in they are on the same team this time they have debated each other on many occasions but they are going to be on the same team debating two professing

01:06:42

Christians and ordained ministers who are also homosexuals and who advocate that activity as being something acceptable to God the theme of the debate is is homosexuality consistent with New Testament obedience and that again is

01:07:01

Friday I'm sorry Saturday September 8th 630 p .m. this time it will be held the event will be held at the

01:07:07

Switzerland Community Church in Switzerland Florida a suburb of Jacksonville for more details once again go to Switzerland community church org

01:07:16

Switzerland community church org and then coming up in November on the 9th and the 10th of November the

01:07:24

Alliance of confessing evangelicals is having their annual Quaker town conference on reform theology the theme this year is the glory of the cross it will be held at the

01:07:34

Grace Bible Fellowship Church in Quaker Town Pennsylvania speakers include David Garner Ray Ortlund Richard Phillips Timothy Gibson and Carlton Wynn for more details on this event

01:07:46

November 9th and 10th at Grace Bible Fellowship Church in Quaker Town Pennsylvania go to Alliance net org

01:07:51

Alliance net org click on events and then scroll down to Quaker Town conference on reform theology then coming up in January I am once again going to be manning an exhibitor's booth at the g3 conference that you've been hearing about the g3 stands for gospel grace and glory it's being held at the

01:08:14

Georgia International Convention Center in College Park Georgia which is a suburb of Atlanta they are expecting between four and five thousand people to attend

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Thursday January 17th through Saturday January 19th they are also having a

01:08:28

Spanish -speaking edition of the conference on Wednesday January 16th so tell your

01:08:33

Spanish -speaking and bilingual friends about that event as well but as far as the English speaking event is concerned it will be on the mission of God the biblical understanding of missions and the speakers include dr.

01:08:45

James R. White Paul Washer John Piper Stephen Lawson Vody Baucom Mark Dever Conrad M.

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Bewe Tim Challies Phil Johnson of John MacArthur's grace to you ministry Todd Freel of wretched

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TV and wretched radio and Stephen J Nichols the president of a

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Reformation Bible College the college founded by the late R .C. Sproul and Ligonier ministries and there are many more on that roster if you'd like to register for the g3 conference go to g3conference .com

01:09:15

g3conference .com I strongly recommend that if you have a business or parachurch ministry that you not only register to attend the event but register for a exhibitors booth or I say an exhibitors booth shows you how much my education did for me and you can have an exhibitors booth there in the crowd amidst the crowd of between four and five thousand people so I strongly recommend that you do that if you have something worthwhile to promote amongst that large crowd of Christians g3 conference .com

01:09:48

g3conference .com last but not least if you love this show iron sharpens iron radio you would hate to see it go away if you love the topics and guests that we cover that are sometimes very rarely if ever heard anywhere else then please go to ironsharpensironradio .com

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click support then click click to donate now you could also advertise with us as long as whatever it is you're promoting is compatible with the theology and the teachings and the beliefs that we express here on this program you don't have to believe exactly as I do but you need to be promoting something that's compatible with what we believe and you can send me an email to chrisarnsen at gmail .com

01:11:40

and put advertising on the subject line chrisarnsen at gmail .com that's also the email address where you can send in a question for our guest today dr.

01:11:49

Clark D Stull about the erosion of education in America that's chrisarnsen at gmail .com

01:11:56

and dr. Stull before we move on to another question I just wanted to ask have you clarify some things when it comes to a parent giving their child the freedom or even encouragement to leave high school or obviously we could add to that not enter into college or or a form of higher education they would want to make sure that there is automatically in place something valuable and constructive for that child to do not to just become a juvenile delinquent and be further attempted by drug use and drunkenness and all kinds of wicked and deadly activity we the parents would want to make sure that this child actually has a skill or something that they are going to be using and even helping the family perhaps financially it's this is not just to give a free pass for children to have an eternal vacation on this earth but if you could well certainly

01:13:00

I don't isn't the Proverbs say you see a man skilled in his craft he will stand before kings yes and you know

01:13:07

I believe God has gifted every person in some way we're all made in the image of God and it may take a while to discern what those gifts are and sometimes they're latent rather than obvious but it's

01:13:20

I think the job of parents to just try to discern in their children where those gifts are we had you know we raised four daughters and I can speak from personal experience we had two of them who knew exactly what they wanted to do when they entered high school with their careers and we had two that had no idea what they wanted to do when they entered high school and what you try to do at least from my perspective is to try to see what they're good at and where their strengths are a lot of our education seems to be trying to make everybody look like everybody else and you know having a rabbit on the swim team is really counterproductive but God can give us wisdom as parents and we're going to see some of our own abilities or lack thereof show up in our children because of the genetics of the situation and yeah one of the goals as we try to educate our children is to set them up well in life that's certainly dear to every parent's heart we can only do a certain amount it's really up to the

01:14:23

Lord to take them once we launch them let me share a personal story of how

01:14:29

God can work it started off rather grim with our fourth child she graduated 10th academically in a class of over 750 students and we would have thought with that kind of standing she would have been offered a scholarship to go to some particularly well -known school or college like one of her older sisters had been who had a similar academic

01:14:52

Brent Benton a similar gifting intellectually but she received no offers to go to a school that she wanted to go we tried to immersive

01:15:02

Pennsylvania as secular as it is had some connections there as they didn't take her and she ended up going off to Penn State and because she made the decision so late she was put into a room with other late decision -makers and they

01:15:16

I guess over enrolled and she had a freshman room with seven other girls that she had to negotiate with Wow what they did was they turned a lounge into a big bedroom with bunk beds and so there were seven girls in that room she had to face the disappointment of nobody saying to her yeah we'd like you to come here some money to help make it work like her sister her older sister had experienced she got off to a very poor start emotionally my wife and a dear friend of hers went up to visit her to sort of get an eyewitness of you of what was going on and we nearly had to bring her home the situation was that difficult

01:16:02

Wow but we we encourage her to stick with it because and this was in my case the freshman year where I went to Duke was the most difficult and I got increasingly better as I went along and we said to Jessica you know hang in there keep your grades up and think about transferring and it's just amazing the way

01:16:23

God works and I didn't see this but it was such a beautiful thing her sister came alongside of her and said you know

01:16:32

Jessica you have we won the biology prize when you were in high school why don't you decide you're going to major in environmental science

01:16:40

Jessica still didn't really have any idea what you want to do major in environmental science and apply out in California which is the home of the environmental movement and see what happens to make a long story short in May she called us she was finishing up her first year at Penn State said

01:16:59

I've applied to two schools in the Los Angeles area one of them is Occidental College the other is the

01:17:05

University of Southern California pray because I'm gonna find out very soon whether they're gonna take me or not and June 1st we got news that the

01:17:13

University of Southern California was going to accept her with a scholarship of $54 ,000

01:17:19

Wow praise God I mean it was such a beautiful thing and I think sometimes in life this is more of a pastoral point but it's also educational sometimes in life we go through very difficult things and almost as if to qualify for a wonderful blessing on the other end and so Jessica went out there and ever since she's been out there not that a bed of roses is good for a spiritually necessarily there always are some things probably that the

01:17:49

Lord puts in our lives to keep us on our knees but her life has taken off in California I would have never been offered two jobs simultaneously when she graduated this past May she was offered two jobs and she was given a job where the company hired her along with four other

01:18:10

USC graduates her terms of her employment carried full benefits and five weeks vacation and she only has a bachelor's degree so this is just how

01:18:21

God can work if you discern where you're and I can't take credit for this is really her older sister said pursue environmental education her job is actually with a consulting firm that advises utilities in Southern California how to handle environmental issues and as you have heard in the news of course that's always a concern in California yeah just to before we move on entirely to a different aspect of our discussion one of my favorite

01:18:51

TV hosts is Tucker Carlson although I don't always agree with him but Tucker has been saying a lot lately that a lot of parents and young men and women are wasting their time and money by going to college or sending their kids to college do you think that this is that going to college even though you we just heard a remarkable story about your own kids you think going to college is been an overblown venture in its level of importance for many if not most kids especially because of the erosion of these institutes of higher education what they have become over the last decades well former student of mine who has kept in touch

01:19:40

I taught him last year he's now at the University of New Hampshire I think he's thankful he's there but he just emailed me a few days ago and said

01:19:48

Dr. Stoll I had to sit through a session where homosexuality was promoted it was actually done in a play format with two girls and one of the girls on the side character in the play was a

01:19:59

Christian and she was ridiculed for her position in the play I think if we have that kind of values that our college campuses that it really does question the value of what's going on there now you can go to a school with a particular eventual career in mind and our secular schools may train you to be an excellent chemical engineer or something like that and that's a worthy thing so I wouldn't say yes or no

01:20:26

I think it I would say it depends it might sound like I'm trying to sit on the fence I do think that colleges become a commodity in our culture but it's also statistically shown that you can make more money with a college decree often than you can although that may be changing again

01:20:44

I think it depends on the gifting of the child and where you see God taking them where that what goals they have for themselves there's no question in my mind that the value of a college education is not as great as it used to be and I think the evidence is is obvious because so many people have to go on to master's degrees nowadays of course you have to go to college to get a master's degree but it's difficult to land a really good job without a master's anymore it seems and then how long do you delay you know starting your family

01:21:15

I'm observing that people in their 30s are now doing what used to be done in their 20s right yeah and I think there are a host of reasons for that but part is the fact there's so much education that's required to get in place these days there's the debt that college students are bringing into potential relationships that would move towards marriage which of course in my generation thankfully my wife and we didn't bring any debt into our family that made it so much easier getting off the ground so I would say yes and no it depends on the situation you know it also you have to say that what you get out of college is largely dependent on what a student puts into it right there are students that go you know as a teacher

01:21:57

I'm often asked oh dr. Stoll what school should I apply to what school is the best for me and part of my answer is well it depends on what you do when you get there and how you take advantage of opportunities and things that are presented to you and so in that sense there's no one perfect school but I do think as parents we are so intimidated by the cost these days and I know parents in their 30s they're telling me

01:22:23

I hope this bubble breaks in this college tuition thing like the housing market bubble burst in the 2008 area because they can't see themselves working out $60 ,000 a year for an education and so many people pursue the athletic scholarships now because that's one way of getting around those fees and yet I know a family where their daughter got one and then while in play for soccer during her freshman year she sustained a concussion had to be sidelined did not recover quickly from it and the scholarship was rescinded afterwards so yeah it's just there's not

01:23:03

I'm not sure there's one prescription I can offer to people but it's not certainly what it used to be in terms of the value

01:23:13

I mean I went to school at Duke for $5 ,000 a year back in the late 1970s and if I sent a child to Duke nowadays it would be $70 ,000 and our wages have not kept up with that rate right inflation yeah when

01:23:26

I went to college it was $40 a credit and I paid for it well let's get into homeschooling a very important topic to many

01:23:35

Christians and non -Christians but especially it seems Christians are involved in this let's have some pros and cons in relation to homeschooling well the pros first of all parental control you're in charge of the curriculum and the content you're in charge of the pace it's wonderful if you enjoy history where you can actually take field trips to go to Independence Hall for example down in Philadelphia to look at the

01:24:05

Constitution Center and the documents that were the founding documents of our country if you're into science you can take field trips to various planetariums and or perhaps a nuclear power plant and all those kinds of things you can also team up with other homeschooling families and do things corporately and go to Gettysburg and study the

01:24:22

Civil War and you can go when you decide is best for you and those those are all pros you get to tailor the curriculum and the content to the pace of your individual child some children learn quickly some need more review and don't get it the first time around and then you also minimize the wrong kind of learning that goes on in schools and by that I'm talking mostly when children get to junior high age and high school age where they begin to turn on each other and ridicule each other if they're different from who they are and they don't until they mature they don't appreciate the differences and other people and how that can contribute to one's life so you can eliminate in a large measure the wrong kind of learning that occurs in peer groups that's a pro

01:25:09

I don't see many cons unless the parents are are deluding themselves about their ability to pull it off I don't think every parent may feel comfortable in doing it and if you are going to do it it's wise to have some kind of standard that you have that the students whether it's a standardized test or something outside of your own internal workings in your home that the children can take and you can see where they are in their reading compared to their peer group in schools where they are in their mathematics you don't want to leave any gaps and so you have to be careful from that about that from a homeschooling perspective but let's face it a lot of people in our colonial period were homeschooled there were small tutorial arrangements that could be arranged where you would have a traveling tutor come for certain subjects but much of the tutoring was locally based and done within the home in the colonial period for sure and look what we produced you know some really tremendous statesmen and leaders amen well we have to go to our final break right now it's going to be more brief than the last one so if you'd like to ask a question

01:26:24

I would do so now because we are rapidly running out of time our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com

01:26:32

chrisarnson at gmail .com please as always give us your first name your city and state and your country of residence if you live outside the

01:26:41

USA please only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal private matter don't go away we'll be right back with Dr.

01:26:48

Clark D Stull after this last commercial break so don't go away

01:27:08

James White here co -founder of Alvin Omega Ministries and occasional guest on Iron Sharpens Iron radio

01:27:14

I'm so delighted my friend Chris Arnson will be heading down to Atlanta for the next G3 conference from January 17th to the 19th 2019 where I'll be joining a very impressive lineup of speakers on the theme a biblical understanding of missions speakers include

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01:27:46

that's g3conference .com Chris Arnson host of Iron Sharpens Iron radio here

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I want to tell you about a man I have personally known for many years his name is Dan Buttafuoco Dan is a personal injury and medical malpractice lawyer but not the type that typically comes to mind

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I love it and Chris Arnson was there last year he's been there I think every year it's great to see him there you and I actually did some recordings in the lobby at that place which is a highlight tons of stuff going on yeah tons of great speakers and no matter where you are in the building you will hear

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01:36:39

.nyc have a great day we're back and this is the final segment of our interview today with dr.

01:36:46

Clark D Stull on his book the erosion of education in America foundations and the cultural shifts that have undermined it our email address is

01:36:55

Chris Arnson at gmail .com if you have a question for dr. Stull chris arnzen at gmail .com

01:37:02

we have a listener Ronald in Eastern Suffolk County Long Island who says repeatedly throughout the program you have mentioned the abandonment of Protestant education

01:37:16

I was wondering what your assessment is if you have any of Roman Catholic private schools in this day and age well

01:37:26

I wish I had something to say on that but I haven't been able to talk with anybody in that system what

01:37:32

I like about their system is their worldview they will share for example belief in the triune

01:37:39

God creator Redeemer that a education that ignores

01:37:44

God is deficient Catholics are going to affirm that so I find a lot of common ground with them and particularly in how they analyze culture

01:37:53

I'm very grateful for my Catholic brothers and sisters and the fact that our culture is moving away from divine revelation the only quarrel

01:38:03

I might have is that they might depend too much on church authority and yet that is being undermined with some of what we hear that has gone on and the

01:38:13

Catholic Church in terms of their priests and recent years but I do have friends that not so much in education but are evangelical

01:38:23

Catholics and they were a great blessing to me in earlier part of my life and it's wonderful to see that arm of education still

01:38:34

I trust thriving although I know in the Philadelphia area it's harder and harder for Catholic schools to keep up and running but the church is well endowed financially and if they step in they can keep that arm of their ministry going

01:38:49

I could say I can actually only speak about Catholic parochial schools in the elementary or grammar school years from personal experience going back to the late 60s and 70s because I before becoming a born -again believer was

01:39:11

Roman Catholic I was raised Roman Catholic was an altar boy and spent those first eight years of elementary school in the

01:39:22

Roman Catholic parochial school and I can say that I loved the

01:39:28

Catholic school that I went to had still have many fond memories of my friends there I have many fond memories of the nuns who educated me with the exception of a couple and even the priests

01:39:41

I have to say that I'm not an ecumenist I would not necessarily automatically regard

01:39:47

Roman Catholics as my brothers and sisters but I know that there are some that are who believe in the biblical gospel rather than the gospel of Trent but the the thing that was a glaring negative point to me when

01:40:03

I went to school and I can only imagine it's worse today is that what for instance in science classes we were taught by our they called them lay teachers because they were neither nuns priests or monks as some private schools will have my lay teachers in science taught us that don't believe the

01:40:27

Bible when it comes to science or the origins of man or of the even the origins of the universe it's fairy tales we evolved from apes etc etc etc

01:40:41

I was taught that even back in the 19 the late 60s and in the 1970s so I don't even know what they're teaching now and I mean and of course it would probably go from parish to parish it would it would differ yeah well there that's a whole nother issue and from a time actually

01:41:01

I could argue the other that if you look at the fact that most proteins you have to have at least nine at 99 amino acids to generally make a protein and they all have to be in the correct sequence and if they don't line up in the correct sequence you're not going to get that protein made and without proteins you don't have any functions in the cell now what is the probability that 99 proteins are all going to line up in the right order by random chance which is where evolution takes you right it is mathematically impossible and there's all sorts of arguments from science that you can make that cry out for a designer for a creator who knew he was doing

01:41:41

I just want to share this one thing this is this will blow you away if you've never heard of it Chris I hope

01:41:47

I can do it in the time we have remaining the number eight in the scripture is not significant we know the number seven is the number three is the number two is the number of witness but the number eight only comes up in one context in the

01:41:57

Bible and I would think most Christians have no idea where it is it only comes up in the book of Genesis and it comes up in the commandment that God gave to Abraham to circumcise his children his male children on the eighth day of life now why eight it's got arbitrary does it really make that much difference most people nowadays are probably circumcised on the second or third day of life if they are it took until the 1950s before science understood why

01:42:31

God put that number in and here it is the hormone that clots the blood in a person's life is at its highest level on the eighth day of existence it gradually goes up through the early week of your life and then after the eighth day it gradually goes down to where it levels off and so God knew what he was doing when he told

01:42:59

Abraham to circumcise his son on the eighth day of life Wow yeah I heard the first time

01:43:05

I had heard that was from I don't know if you've ever heard of Brad Harab but he is the founder of Focus Press and he is medically trained and puts on seminars all over the

01:43:18

United States perhaps globally he's out of Franklin Tennessee but he brought that up at a recent seminar that I attended and that is actually quite remarkable let's before we run out of time move on to the involvement of education and the state did you hear me dr.

01:43:47

Scott yeah do you have a particular question or anything that you want to say that the primary importance of this discussion well part of the part of the book

01:43:57

I devote a chapter to this is to what degree should Christians allow the state to have an hand in education and there are people on both sides of this issue

01:44:08

I think biblically speaking we would say that parents have the primary responsibility but that the state can come alongside and yet it depends on what the philosophical foundation and basis is that's guiding the practice of the state as to whether it's going to be helpful or not what's going on in state education right now

01:44:30

I want to read for your audience what a colleague of mine in a very fine public district here outside of Philadelphia wrote a couple of years ago and she wrote this elementary teachers more and more need to teach how to tie children's shoes how children teach children how to tie their shoes blow their nose with a tissue cover their mouths when they cough we must be shown we must show our students how to engage in games how to compromise how to be graceful in victory we are now responsible for seeing children eat enough but not too much we must teach which foods are healthy and encourage students to eat them while at school we make certain they exercise we now individualize teaching and assignments for those deemed gifted and for those who struggle and have trouble reading writing and adding or multiplying we develop behavior plans for kids who call out who strike out who act out we have special groups for and activities for children of divorce students who are new and for those who have difficulty making friends we do all this well without forgetting for a moment that there is a curriculum and our students need the skills on which they will be tested and recess retested

01:45:40

I am so stressed for time to accomplish all this that I shovel spoonfuls of yogurt into my mouth while preparing earthworms for a science lesson

01:45:48

I wonder what it would be like to leave my work behind when I go home I imagine strangers actually looking impressed when

01:45:55

I mentioned my profession teachers used to close their classroom doors and teach in a way they found effective it's not so private anymore outside sources are dictating what

01:46:05

I teach who I teach and how I teach and after years of judicial decisions there are students now with serious challenges that are in regular classrooms we more and more there is a reliance on teacher proof curriculum and assistance that teaching be uniform so much so that I think all my creative juices have been sapped now

01:46:28

I read that so that people understand what teachers are up against in the government schools they are trying to do parenting they are trying to teach they are trying to socialize and if you have as we do in Pennsylvania individual education plans for students if you have 20 students in the classroom and you're trying to teach to each one of the individually it's an impossible task you have to aim for some kind of middle so what's going on in government education and the fact that it's no longer based on Christian worldview and the fact that it's thought to be non -religious is actually wrong any non -religious position is actually a religious position and disguise it's just a very difficult environment and I think the decision in our history to allow government and education has proven to be one that maybe has not been wise because as you know

01:47:28

Christians are marginalized now in the public sphere we live in a society where religion is thought to be private and it doesn't have any public exposure or should have any public discourse or dimension to it anymore so I just feel that the move towards public education has not been the benefit

01:47:49

I do think there need to be exceptions for parents who are delinquent who parents are for whatever reason in jail or whatever with those children need to have some school they can go to but to promote the government as having all the answers in education

01:48:04

I think it's foolish it's best left in local hands best left with her as parental control and quite frankly best left in the hands of teachers not administrators my colleagues in secular education tell me administrators are dictating what's going on and these administrators have never actually been teachers themselves and I think that leads to oversight and some difficulties

01:48:26

I'm also concerned that what's going on in our public education now is the children are taught in early age they can choose their gender never before has this ever been done that education can be viewed in such a subjective manner that young children can be taught whether they wish to be male or female despite the physiology and all the other things that go along with that I think it's a very serious move in the wrong direction of course and in fact it's ironic isn't it that for over a century secular humanists have been mocking

01:49:04

Christians for being anti science and now it's quite obvious that secular humanists liberals and leftists are the ones that are anti science because they are defying pure and provable and obvious scientific fact when they start telling us that a child can choose any gender that he wants to be well that's true and what you know it seems that we're left with an educational system that is basically one that promotes human fulfillment and is based on human potential and if God is ruled out of the picture then why not pursue whatever path you think is correct for yourself you fulfill yourself and of course that ultimately will probably lead to misery in the long run unfortunately unless we have the light of scripture informing our minds and our souls we're going to go down probably such an unprofitable path by the way

01:50:01

I love this quote by Vody Baucom I'm not sure you're familiar with Vody Baucom but he's going to be one of the speakers at the

01:50:09

G3 conference coming up in January and he is a real powerful

01:50:14

Reformed Baptist preacher who is currently living in in Zambia Africa he's on the faculty at the

01:50:23

African Christian University there he said we cannot continue to send our children to Caesar for their education and be surprised when they come home as Romans right well

01:50:38

I love for you to conclude with as much as you can in regard to the role of religion and faith in formal education well let me start with where I start that chapter in my book by quoting

01:50:56

Martin Luther and of course we are just a year past celebrating the 500th anniversary of Luther attaching his 95 theses to the church door at Wittenberg and what a monumental day that was in God's providence and Luther had this to say about that very issue

01:51:19

I am much afraid that schools will prove to be great gates of hell unless they diligently labor in explaining the holy scriptures advise no one to place his child where the scriptures do not reign paramount every institution in which men are not increasingly occupied with the word of God must become corrupt and Luther certainly understood the issues education is not neutral and yet I think many people think it is and every system of education has a philosophical basis it has a value structure that's part of it and even the atheist holds a view which cannot be proved in scientific terms and so he is essentially adopting a religious position of course the word religion we might think of worship and things like that but the word the

01:52:14

Latin root of the word is actually something which binds and so there are certain physical philosophical commitments and values that are affirmed and submitted to that bind one to go in a certain direction and every educational system and institution has that at its base it's sometimes openly acknowledged but other times not so if we have a system where there's no divine revelation to appeal with we end up again as I said earlier in the program with humans deciding what is right in their own eyes and that yields eventually to some kind of chaos in society of Charles Hodge the great educator at Princeton for 50 years and by the way when would the last time of this happened when he taught from Princeton he began in 1822

01:53:05

Chris and he finished in 1872 he retired after 50 years on April 24th of 1872 the entire town of Princeton shut down business that day it was a

01:53:19

Tuesday I think and they honored Charles Hodge the theologian at Princeton University when was the last time a town shut down in American history to honor a theologian

01:53:33

I'm somewhat of a theologian and I have a difficult time finding work in this day and age theology has been banished from the educational classroom in our public schools and we've gone over why and all that but as we're trying to argue to the detriment of its students and its constituency

01:53:52

Hodge felt that the secular approach to education was peculiar to his particular time late in life and he felt it would be destructive for society and only the grace of God is and an economic my parent economic prosperity is holding us together

01:54:08

I think at this point but you know you don't want to base your life on material possessions that's that's not transcendent and so in any event there has to be some type of faith guiding the practice in in school whether it's acknowledged or not and without a biblical view we're presenting a deficient education well

01:54:36

I just have time for one more question we have Christian in Suffolk County Long Island New York who says do you have a preference as to which model is better in regard to private

01:54:51

Christian schools there are some that require both parents to be Christians there are some that require one parent to be a

01:54:58

Christian and there are some that require neither parent to be Christian and they have more of an evangelistic or missionary model in mind with the latter do you see any strengths or weaknesses in one of those in particular or do they all have their positive points well based on 1st

01:55:17

Corinthians 7 I would place myself in the camp where you want one of the parents to be

01:55:22

Christian if that's the case the scriptures say that the children are holy to the Lord and that being the case it's fitting for them to have an education that has a

01:55:32

Christian world and life view I don't think it's necessary that both I mean it's great if both parents are that way but it's not necessary to as far as educating the children of people who don't seem to understand the significance of Christianity I don't have any problem with children coming to the school for that purpose they can be educated for the

01:55:52

Lord whether their parents are believers or not that might create an interesting discussion

01:55:58

I taught in Louisiana many years ago and was familiar with one student who came to the school as an unbeliever and heard the

01:56:08

Bible presented in the plan of salvation presented in the school share that with his parents and they became

01:56:14

Christians so it was a wonderful story God doesn't often work that way but it is possible for that to occur and again if we really have the best interest of any child at heart we'd want to see that they're brought up with a knowledge that God does exist we're made in his image we have a relationship with him through Christ we're here to serve him not ourselves and we're here to glorify him and enjoy him forever and that will provide such a healthy foundation for any student that you can build on I think and that's of course where our was 200 years ago and sadly we've left that so far one other thing

01:56:57

I do bring up in the book is and this has to do with more of the state role that you were getting at earlier we have

01:57:05

Gerard College here in the Philadelphia area Gerard College was begun with funds from the state of Stephen Gerard who had spent time in France and had been by the principles of the

01:57:15

Enlightenment which for our listeners means that God was basically not included in the system of society and the like and was rendered to be irrelevant

01:57:25

Gerard wanted a college or a school established with his money that he left from his estate where religion was to be excluded totally excluded this was the early 1840s his family and relatives were horrified and they sued get this they sued to prevent that from happening the case went to the

01:57:48

Pennsylvania Supreme Court in 1844 and the court decided in favor of the family that the

01:57:58

New Testament should be part of an education now I ask you if such a case went to court today what do you think the outcome would be yeah well we are out of time now and I want to make sure that our listeners have the website of Icthus publications who published this book the erosion of education in America that's

01:58:21

Icthus publications comm which is spelled ICH th us publications comm you can also get that through our sponsors

01:58:30

Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service at CV BBS dot -com CV as in Valley BBS is in Bible Book Service dot -com and also

01:58:42

I want to remind you that coming up next month which will be here before you know it on Wednesday September 12th we have

01:58:50

George Sipion speaking on a related topic to our discussion today he is the author of the battle for the biblical family and then on another

01:58:59

Wednesday the 19th of September we have Charlie Liebert of six day creation calm and Garish youth and Mike Endress who are from the

01:59:10

Christian School of Grace Christian Academy in Carlisle Pennsylvania and they are also going to be discussing

01:59:16

Christian Christian education I want to thank you dr. Stull for being our guest today I want to thank you for your patience as we were going through technical difficulties in the beginning of the program

01:59:25

I look forward to your return to the program and maybe next time you'll be sitting right next to me in the studio

01:59:30

I want to thank everybody who listened especially those who took the time to write and I want you all to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater