Public School and the Nature of Things ? Russell and Duenes

In a recent post I suggested that any discussion of gay ?marriage? ought to begin with questions about the nature and purpose of being human and the nature and purpose of human sexuality. Of course, to suggest these kinds of questions today is to be an outlier, to put it mildly, even in Christian circles. But why?

Peter Kreeft puts it well in a recent essay in Touchstone Magazine (Clashing Symbols: The Loss of Aristotelian Logic and the Social, Moral and Sexual Consequences), wherein he concludes:

By far the most radically changed area of morality in both belief and practice is sex. We routinely speak of ?the sexual revolution.? We do not use that word for any other aspect of ethical change. For today, most people find the traditional language about ?unnatural acts? not only politically incorrect and offensive, but literally incomprehensible. This is because they no longer accept the legitimacy of the very question of the ?nature? of a human act . . . Who today still debates issues like homosexuality, contraception, masturbation, divorce, adultery, or even incest, pedophelia, and bestiality, in terms of the ?nature? of sexuality, the ?nature? of femininity and masculinity, and the ?nature? of marriage? Traditional Roman Catholics. No one else.

Kreeft is largely correct (though I am a particular non-Roman Catholic who attempts to debate these issues in such terms). Yet how does this relate to public school education? Here?s how.

Do you imagine that ?the nature of homosexuality, masturbation, contraception, divorce, adultery, etc? has even a remote possibility of being broached in the public schools? Do you think your son will sit in a classroom where the ?nature of femininity and masculinity? will be the topic? Do you think your daughter at the public school will engage her social studies class in a discussion about the ?nature and purpose of marriage?? These things are hardly, if ever, discussed in Christian schools. How in the world would they ever be discussed in public schools?

Will they be discussed in the church youth group, or really, in any other venue in typical evangelical church ministry, do you suppose? Based on the students I had at my own Christian school, my hunch is no. Further, do you think that most Christian parents, even conscientious ones, can make up for this lack by teaching their children to think and engage in such terms, when everything in their public school education ignores it? Some may, but my suspicion is that most won?t. I suspect it?s not dinner table fare, and once the soccer games and the piano lessons and the social life kick in, when might serious attention to these questions happen? The tide mitigating against it, coming from the public school priorities and their wrongful framing of all issues, will prove too strong. Our children will fail even to know that they are being trained to NOT think that there is a ?nature and purpose? to such things. He or she will largely come to think of issues from the godless starting points and frames of reference which the public school education is inculcating in him or her.

No doubt the gospel can go forward without many Christians being able to articulate the nature and purpose of the things God has designed and created, but I submit that our souls are impoverished in the process, and we forsake a very important way of loving our neighbor. For we allow our faith to become largely ghetto-ized and privatized, which may cause our neighbor to think Jesus irrelevant and narrow. Further, I think our children will ultimately find the command to love God with all of our minds a more daunting task.

-D

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Source: http://russellandduenes.wordpress.com/2012/11/16/public-school-and-the-nature-of-things/

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