As you’re probably very aware by now, Americans on social media have been in a frenzy this past week after the Loudon County Public Schools in Virginia canceled Dr. Seuss, citing racial ‘undertones’ in his writings.
This came as a result of a recent study on diversity in youth literature that was released just ahead of Read Across America Day, better known until only recently as National Dr. Seuss Day because since 1998, it takes place annually on his March 2nd birthday to promote literacy around the country.
With pressure from the advocacy group, Learning for Justice, President Biden was also accused of joining the cancel culture bandwagon when he broke tradition and did not include Dr. Seuss on the Read Across America reading list. Just five years ago, President Obama celebrated this day calling Dr. Seuss “one of America’s revered wordsmiths.”
He said:
“Theodor Seuss Geisel—or Dr. Seuss—used his incredible talent to instill in his most impressionable readers universal values we all hold dear.Through a prolific collection of stories, he made children see that reading is fun, and in the process, he emphasized respect for all; pushed us to accept ourselves for who we are; challenged preconceived notions and encouraged trying new things; and by example, taught us that we are limited by nothing but the range of our aspirations and the vibrancy of our imaginations.And for older lovers of literature, he reminded us not to take ourselves too seriously, creating wacky and wild characters and envisioning creative and colorful places.”
As you can see, President Biden’s is a complete shift in direction from the White House’s former position just five years ago; and though attempts to censor books and ideas are not new, both the kind and degree of censorship in our media and education system, today, has become much more radical than it ever has been. At this point, it’s not a stretch to say the dark, dystopian worlds of Orwell and Huxley are upon us even now.
Classical Christian Education is a light for the coming dark age.
In the inaugural episode of the Consortium Podcast, my colleague, Joffre Swait, and I discussed a recent WSJ opinion article titled, Even Homer Gets Mobbed, in which Meghan Cox Gurdon discussed the “sustained effort” in our nation to “deny children access to literature,” “especially those [works] in which ‘racism, sexism, ableism, anti-Semitism, and other forms of hate are the norm.’”
On the surface, perhaps one might think this is a good thing. After all, good parents are careful about what they put in front of their children’s eyes, right?
We certainly don’t disagree that thoughtful parents will use wisdom when, how, and at what ages they will introduce various concepts and ideas to their children. But what Gurdon observed in the article is something very different than wisdom—or even overprotective parenting.
She, like those upset by the cancelation of Dr. Seuss, observed just one realm of postmodern activism that seeks to censor books that don’t affirm their group identity and ideology.
For example, one such activist, the Young Adult novelist, Padma Venkatraman, believes no author in the western tradition is valuable enough to spare. She asserts that, “Absolving Shakespeare of responsibility by mentioning that he lived at a time when hate-ridden sentiments prevailed, risks sending a subliminal message that academic excellence outweighs hateful rhetoric.”
Another such teacher “complained that many classics were written more than 70 years ago,” and argued thus: “think of US society before then and the values that shaped this nation afterwards. THAT is what is in those books.” If Homer, Hawthorne, and Shakespeare are this dangerous to the postmodern agenda for education, then it is no wonder why the Bible remains a taboo in public schools.
At the risk of sounding like an alarmist–if I haven’t done so already–Gurdon is correct to observe that within these “antiracist” identity groups, “The subtle complexities of literature are being reduced to the crude clanking of ‘intersectional’ power struggles.”
I would further opine that with this kind of biased censorship on classic literature which is growing and spreading faster than COVID-19 ever did, we are on the precipice of another dark age, one potentially darker and more ominous than those four hundred years or so between the fall of Rome and the European cultural reformations of Charlemagne and Alcuin.
In short, the postmodernists are making a sustained effort to not only rewrite history but to eliminate it altogether. This is the only way forward for those who believe truth is relative and that an existential view of the world means we must create our own reality.
The pundits of this ilk continue to argue that since human beings have been randomly thrown into being, it is up to each one of us to make our own reality. These Nietzschean souls firmly believe the culture must heroically rise above traditional thought and morality and let individuals create their own identity if they are to avoid the nausea of nihilism.
But in order for them to realize such a reality, the traditions they believe have enslaved human beings, traditions like Christianity, need to be torn down; and to do this one needs to acquire power. Power is acquired through identity groups, who in turn are themselves torn down when the next identity group gains enough power.
History teaches us that without being checked, this destructive revolutionary pattern of postmodern thought will continue, ad nauseum, until society becomes chaos and we enter a new dark age–or a strong man–a despot–intervenes to end it all.
But there is a light for this dark age—the light of the gospel, which can never be extinguished. And the best vehicle for advancing this light is the church militant and its historic approach to education, specifically classical Christian education. Historically, wherever the gospel went, the academy soon followed. But it’s up to each generation to revive and foster this kind of cultural flourishing.
Classical Christian education is the light for the coming dark age because it leads with the gospel of Jesus Christ to engage those perennial human questions of all ages. Believing that Christ is over culture, the classical Christian imagination views those truths attained to by the virtuous Pagans as not in competition with the Truth, but more like a path leading upward into the fullness of Truth as revealed in Christ (John 1:1 cf. Acts 17:22-31).
In the second place, classical Christian education is the best vehicle for advancing the gospel light in a dark age because it allows students to contemplate and evaluate the various competing worldviews about the big ideas of life within the contexts of their genesis and on through to their end. We’re talking about the big ideas like virtue, courage, wisdom, justice, goodness, truth, and beauty, etc. In other words, it allows students, under the guidance of a faithful tutor, to conceptualize the myriad ways in which the evangelium really is good news over against the ideas that create a world that is dark and hopeless.
Finally, classical Christian education cultivates human flourishing by providing a biblical lens by which students can engage the famed Delphic oracle propagated by Socrates, γνῶθι σεαυτόν, “know thyself.”
You see, Socrates noted there was a difference between simply existing and flourishing as a human being who is living the good life. To this end, he famously noted that the unexamined life was not worth living. Following in that vein, St. Augustine noted that one cannot truly know oneself without first knowing God. As he declared in his Confessions, “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.”
By ascertaining a liberal arts education, students cultivate a knowledge of God, then themselves, and finally, from that perspective, a knowledge of the cosmos and their place in it. Rooted in the tradition of the seven liberal arts of the trivium and quadrivium, students who gain a classical Christian education develop that robust worldview possessed of a free man who understands the gospel as applied to the human condition in the context of an ordered cosmos.
Only a Christian person educated in this manner will fully come to comprehend in both doctrine and deed, what Jesus meant when he said that all the Law and Prophets hangs on these two commandments: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” -Matthew 22:37–39
Very well stated. It certainly does seem as if a new Dark Age is descending upon us, one that our society is eager to embrace. It’s time to guard these classical works in our homes, churches, and seminaries so future generations can emerge from the cave of ignorance. Thanks for a great article.
Thanks for reading, David. I agree we must guard good books so future generations have access to these ideas. Ayn Rand’s work, Anthem comes to mind.