“In the last several years, Americans have been sensing that something is seriously wrong with the current crop of young people,” Annie Holmquist, editor of Intellectual Takeout, wrote in 2017.
Young people are likely to have the most education credentials any generation has ever received, are technically-savvy, and have a wealth of knowledge at their fingertips, Holmquist said.
“But in spite of these factors, today’s students seem to exhibit a character that is high in sensitivity and low in knowledge,” she said. “Why are our students turning out like this?”
Camille Paglia, a Democrat, feminist, and college professor, believes the problem started in the earliest stages of education in America’s public schools.
“I’ve been teaching now for 46 years as a classroom teacher, and I have felt the slow devolution of the quality of public school education in the classroom,” she says.
Paglia notes that teachers at elite institutions are unable to see this decline in knowledge because their students often come from private schools and wealthy homes, which presumably still retain some elements of rigorous education. The great majority of students, however, can be described in the following way.
“What has happened is these young people now getting to college have no sense of history – of any kind! … No world geography. No sense of the violence and the barbarities of history. So, they think that the whole world has always been like this, a kind of nice, comfortable world where you can go to the store and get orange juice and milk, and you can turn on the water and the hot water comes out. They have no sense whatever of the destruction, of the great civilizations that rose and fell, and so on – and how arrogant people get when they’re in a comfortable civilization. They now have been taught to look around them to see defects in America – which is the freest country in the history of the world – and to feel that somehow America is the source of all evil in the universe, and it’s because they’ve never been exposed to the actual evil of the history of humanity. They know nothing!”
Paglia continues, “There’s one exception to this, however. Even while today’s students have not been taught knowledge, they have also been taught not to bully a person on the basis of their race, class, gender, or any other trait. On the surface, that seems like a good thing.”
But Paglia implies that such a lesson (against bullying) gives students a high level of sensitivity and a stilted view of the world and its problems. She fears students are pushing their country toward a situation similar to that of ancient Rome in its last days.
John Adams (1735-1826) said that the failure to teach truth, combined with the dumbing down of education and the embrace of Epicurean pleasures and teachings is one of the things most likely to bring “punishment” to America.
“The Bible is the history book of the universe,” says “Answers in Genesis.” If we teach young people about the accounts, wisdom, and salvation recorded in the Bible, they will learn about life.
Youth Leader Chris Cherry says, “We don’t teach the Bible for head knowledge — it’s not a textbook. … We teach the Bible because it is one of the core pieces that awakens youth (and all folks, for that matter) to the presence of God in the world.”
Mark Yaconelli says, “Our first task as youth ministers is to be with young people just as Jesus was with people. … We are also called, like Jesus, to be teachers.”
The quality of public school education has declined, as far as teaching Bible truths. Patrick Henry said, “The Bible is worth all the other books which have ever been printed.” Parents, pastors, and youth leaders, please teach the Bible to young people!
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