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

Live from the historic parsonage of 19th century gospel minister George Norcross in downtown Carlisle, Pennsylvania, it's Iron Sharpens Iron, a radio platform on which pastors, Christian scholars and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.

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

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. Now here's our host, Chris Arntzen.

Good afternoon, 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. 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 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 Dr. Clark D. Stull.

He was born and raised near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He earned a bachelor's degree from Duke University, a master's degree from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary and a PhD in historical and theological studies from Westminster Seminary here in Pennsylvania.

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 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.

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 Sharpens Iron Radio Dr. Clark D. Stull. Well thank you for having me Chris.

It's great to have you on 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.

Our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com c-h-r-i-s-a-r-n-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 USA.

Please only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter. 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, 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 sovereign lord raise up in your life that was or were used by him to draw you to himself and save you.

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 who took him very seriously. I was born and when I was born and in fact she couldn't have any contact with me for about 48 hours.

Bring us to those. My father did not go to church but not necessarily as the core of one's life and when 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 but I was never told that I had a sin problem and I was never told that Christ was my savior and without putting my faith in eternal life.

Religion was taught as something to round you out as a and so I grew up in that kind of atmosphere and then my parents were converted. All of them changed the decisions they've made and watching him I understood my need for to repent of my sin and so through the preaching of Billy Graham that I came to faith in the 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 Satan and God were arguing over my soul and in the dream I remember waking up at the end of it crying out Lord 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 and so I've been with him for now nearly 45 years imperfectly but discerning a desire to study the scriptures and to become conversant in them 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 Lord and that gives you a little bit of my background.

Sovereign God to call me into his kingdom because most people on the main line don't need the 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 Lord eternally because I would not have come on my own if it had only been left up to me.

That's my testimony I guess at this point and we can go on to other questions. Well just out of curiosity.

It seems from your resume here your bio sketch that it is very likely that today you are theologically reformed as I am. Would I be correct in assuming that? Yes and I came to that conclusion.

Just by doing my own personal Bible study as a teenager growing into faith reading the book of Romans, reading the book of Ephesians, reading the gospel of John. I became reformed without even.

Knowing the term more or less. Yes well it's fascinating to me how many people who wind up staunch Calvinists begin their journey through Billy Graham crusades or Bob Jones University, neither of which are 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 I know who are pastors and I hate to use the word lay people but to look for lack of a better term 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 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.

Right and we only have to remember the thief. Well I want to read an endorsement for your book because my friend that I've known for many years Dr. Joel Beeky is one of many who endorsed your book. Dr. Joel Beeky for those of my listeners who are unfamiliar with him he is president and actually founder of the 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 children 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 in 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 the proper evidence with the 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 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.

U .S. history demonstrates this truth. Reading this will strengthen your understanding of why and how. And that is Dr. Joel Beakey. And perhaps if we address this book on another program another interview we can read Dr. Joey Pipe'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. So that's a foundational question. And in the you'd ask that question at the beginning of the 20th century if you had asked most people would.

And that's a profound shift because it's taking education out of the hands of parents or employee 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 and you can argue both sides it's not necessarily a bad thing. But once that government 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. Yet when you fail to nurture a soul you're not educating. The whole person understood the importance of reaping the fruits of that.

And then another one of the foundational issues during the 19th century seemed to be unconstitutional. It's interesting to think why that decision was made. I had a teacher when I was in seminary that wrote the 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 justice potter who had voted against the majority.

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

And so we discussed the content shifts. The mcguffey reader might be familiar to some of your listeners our listeners today that book had a lot of biblical content that 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 another ethical injunctions in the scripture those were the only things remaining. And the idea of man in content and i i can by myself going to school in the 1960s as a young boy do remember seeing that mcguffey reader is the 1960s two shifts primarily uh and then uh in the family in our country because there's been obviously a shift in that even in the definition of what constitutes a family uh that is in flux nowadays whereas in previous generations everybody understood that the family was a man and a woman.

And maybe in the south extended laborers. But prior to the civil war but nowadays of course the definition of family is up for grabs. And as a teacher for 30 years 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 is eroding. Is that the factory. So.

Those are some of my thoughts on that particular. Well one of the one of the problematic issues that involves education is that very often christians act as if their local government-run schools could if we put enough political pressure on them behave as if they are christian institutions of education which that will never happen.

Uh how do you address the fact that being in a nation that is now multicultural uh 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 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 christian parent want a mormon teacher leading his own children in prayer. Or a roman catholic or an orthodox jew or a secular jew.

Or you could go on and on and on. Uh i fully support the right of american citizens and their children who are also citizens uh to have private prayer to have private prayer clubs uninterrupted without any kind of hostility exerted toward them.

But at the same time if a if christians are going to send their children to public schools which that is even debatable whether that's appropriate or not. I don't think that they should be demanding that uh goats lead their children in prayer.

Their goats lead their sheep in prayer if you follow what i'm saying. Yeah. Well obviously i.

Would agree with that uh. And it's not a simple situation and 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 christian consensus like there was in the 19th century.

I think we're beyond that decades. I would say though that there could be time either before. Yeah i i hear on occasion. I'm sure you do fellow christians and.

Fellow conservatives uh longing for the return of the day when a principal of a school is reading the bible or praying over the uh the loudspeaker. But like i said that that to me is a strange thing for a christian to want unless of course the principal is a christian and unless of course uh the uh the other alternative being that the school is identifiably and accurately christian.

Yeah well the supreme court said that we were a christian nation back in 1892. Uh you know you had a sort of a christianity was. You don't want to look at it just in what are the people. A consensus in my mind.

Um and i think that that's one reason why homeschooling is on the increase. Because why christian schools are continuing in some parts of the country having difficulty. 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 uh religious or uh biblical input.

If we're left with just the fact that uh 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 as my wife just said earlier today we seem to be shooting ourselves. And you know we can't get past these problems where we have uh schools that don't really offer any hope other than a humanistic hope.

And we all know that in some way or another and loving god. But when children never hear that and never hear that there's really not doing them a favor. Yes. Well i know that you've.

Already in the the process of the the last uh nearly half hour now you've already uh basically given a summary of uh some of what i'm going to ask you now. But perhaps you could get more detailed uh backtracking and going back into the golden age of american education the historical and cultural context of the 19th century.

Uh so we get an idea of what you would consider the most pristine level of education that actually ever existed in the united states or america. And how and 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 it wasn't very long ago when even though we we can't say that america was ever in uh its majority genuinely regenerate people. At the same time we could say that in the majority at least uh people were got more a lot more god fearing.

They were more respectful of sacred things more respectful even if they never picked up a 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 uh it really starts in the colonial period where you.

Have people that came to this country to the shores of this country and that meant they had a. And of course protestant theology is built into man's sorrows and 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 action.

And i'm going to read a quote that i have in the book from samuel adams and most people may be familiar with the 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 samuel adams was really the driving force in for independence in the new england area particularly. 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 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 christian system.

End quote just thinking. Just 1798 a fellow by the name of timothy white who was extremely fluent influential in connecticut and for a while was running the show it joined. They unite all the feelings and call forth all the energies of man meet and drink of the bali.

Time becomes the prevailing character of their enemies are proclaiming the freedom of savages freedom of new england. And nothing would be left 1798 when he wrote these words. But he went on to become you have that kind of thinking influencing graduates who are going to go out into the society and make their mark.

Now is that kind of dudes nowadays. No not at all in america right now i mean public nature of the program today about if you were to ask most americans to recruit gun violence the golden age of american education.

There was this god consciousness that was part of the equation. And today we seem to be another 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 there the chemist observes them and if he doesn't he's going to create an explosion with gases and he's going to maybe even kill himself. Astronomers based their calculations on the physical planetary.

But the problem is spiritual laws there man thinks he can make up his and he thinks that any kind of experimentation in this area carry and that is will do not discern the spiritual and moral laws at work in the universe.

God holds us accountable to those. Just as these 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 clark d stole on the erosion of education in america our email address again is chris arnzen at gmail .com.

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And for those of you who have just tuned in our guest today for the full show is dr clark d stull and we are discussing the erosion of education in america foundations and the cultural shifts that have undermined it.

Our email address is chris arnzen at gmail .com. Chris arnzen at gmail .com 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 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. I think.

Sometimes it's a financial necessity now. I don't know how much people are taxed in maine but i know how much we're taxed and there is a sense in which sending your children through that system is where you need to.

I don't think it's the education. There are still people but uh most of what they're not centered and it's going to be uh deficient in terms of nurturing the soul. So it would not be something i would recommend but can be used and be on our knees.

Uh there were teachers some days i was on faculty along with me and that was an ideal situation. So that's my answer to that question. And if i could chris i wanted to go back to one further thing before we had the break and that was sure the golden age of american education 1929.

Now we're 100 and almost 190 years removed from that. But in 1829 of the nation's all were either presbyterian. What do you think that number is today. I couldn't even guess uh that shows you how much of a change there has been in terms of to in my book the wonderful uh of the american university wow went on.

In the colleges and universities we know now all together. It's just too complicated to try. Great. We go. Well uh john.

And banger main 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 dr clark d stall and this is compliments of our friends at ichthus publications who were generous generous enough to bless us with some copies.

For those of you who write in questions um let's see here we have uh let's see we have uh charlie in carlisle pennsylvania. And uh i have to enlarge charlie's font because it's a very small font on his email.

If you and while i'm doing that if anybody would like to join us with a question of your own our email address is chris arnson at gmail .com. Okay uh 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 i know have experience in both. Uh what is your answer to charlie. Well first of all it might depend on.

How you define the word classical. Uh some people might define that somewhat narrowly others more broadly. Uh i'm not sure exactly what your listener has in mind by his definition but what i would say is that children at different ages learn in different ways and this is learned through memorization.

They learn from parroting back what they hear. They learn facts they that enables them to begin not just to heard in elementary school but besides the issue that begins what i would call these 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 see things the way you do. I think that's a valid and very uh good way of educating somebody.

I think it helps students learn how to think colleague and public ed just for not actually in this day and age if you learn how to think uh there's so many arguments which parties in our culture there's so much uh somewhere in the curriculum.

And i don't know any public schools and it seems that anybody's subject within their own soul is the next person's subjective argument. And there's very little appeal to objective authority to something beyond oneself informs our mind our sinful mind of what is really true in a non-classical education.

I think it's a good approach. 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. Everything is going to turn out to use an education in many of our schools i am not particularly academic point in school.

But he could take a car by the time he was 18 and he went on to uh show doctors how and things like this because of his 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 just i think classical. We uh have let's.

See here. We have susan margaret in dalton 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 some attention to in my book uh southern theologian by the name of robert dabney addressed that very issue and he argued for different educations for him.

He did not think that the farmer needed to be educated in 19th century british literature and is not uh helping that particular young person develop what they need and have the old mechanical. So thankful for my mechanic uh not a believer but he does.

And we need people like that harder to find that education can be people think and all that. But i i think there have been a number of people in american history that the school thomas edison is one of them.

And so uh he is not the only one on anybody else's way extremely gifted in one particular area. I mean i'm not personally but i know of the his mother had for him. 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 i don't want to entirely abandon this thought this train of thought here when we go to our.

Midway break. So i just want to have a couple 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 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 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 uh take this please to write questions for our guest dr clark d stall 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 clark d stall our email address is chris arnzen at gmail .com.

Chris arnzen at gmail .com. 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 clark d stall. So if you have not given us your mailing address yet please email that to us as soon as possible.