Education

As we have seen in Part I, education in North America at all levels was an indisputably Christian enterprise from the arrival of the Pilgrims in 1620 to the early part of the 20th century. The Bible and other books reflecting a biblical worldview were the foundation of American education, that is, the original common core curriculum. In Part II, we will describe the destruction of the original biblically-based common core curriculum by the humanistic progressive education philosophies of John Dewey and others. The churches were the principal founders of the first colleges and universities in the American colonies and whose purpose was for the training of pastors. During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, colleges and universities expanded their academic portfolios, and the cultural ties […]

There has been considerable discussion in the press and halls of education with regard to The Common Core Curriculum Standards Initiative, an attempt by the educational establishment to standardize and strengthen educational standards and expectations at the elementary and secondary levels. Quoting from the Initiative’s English language arts standards, “As a natural outgrowth of meeting the charge to define college and career readiness, the Standards also lay out a vision of what it means to be a literate person in the twenty-first century.” In developing core curriculum standards, it would be worthwhile for the curriculum designers to spend some time reviewing what it meant to be a literate person in America from the arrival of the Pilgrims in 1620 to the beginning of the twentieth […]