(The following is an edited version of remarks given by Ron Hoch, Head of School, to the full faculty and staff as they began preparations for the 2020-21 School Year.)
We are currently experiencing a unique combination of crises in the United States. There’s a global pandemic with it’s attending challenges: illness/death, rise of poverty and hunger, economic uncertainty coupled with an increasing wealth disparity, high unemployment, and vehement debates on how to properly respond. On top of that this past summer has seen protests in countless cities across the country concerning police brutality and racism. In some cases those protests have led to riots and looting. And, at the time of this writing, we are less than 60 days away from a contentious election that only promises to grow more fierce in the days ahead.
I think it’s safe to say that in the United States we are more passionately divided around more issues than at any other time in living memory.
This confluence of events has revealed an even larger tragedy — one that is simultaneously more dangerous and more deadly than the pandemic, the economy, the civil unrest, and politics combined, because it compounds and exacerbates each of these issues. Yet, this tragedy has gone unnoticed by many. The fact that it has gone unobserved is, in itself, a part of this larger tragedy. Like gossamer, it needs to be viewed from a certain angle to be seen. Unfortunately, many are unequipped to look from the proper perspective and so are blind to it. I call this tragedy Western Intellectual Suicide.
Western Intellectual Suicide is why we can’t agree on what science says about COVID-19. It’s why we are so divided on the health and economic ramifications of the pandemic. It’s why we can’t have a civil and meaningful (i.e. leading to proper change) discussion around racism. It’s why saying (or not saying) “Black Lives Matter” is so contentious. It’s why we can’t have any meaningful dialogue regarding which statues rightly deserve to be torn down, and which deserve to remain standing. It’s why we increasingly live in echo chambers and hunger/thirst after confirmation bias.
In short, we have lost the ability to think critically … to suspend judgement … to listen to opposing viewpoints … to analyze ideas … to engage in genuine dialogue … to respect those with whom we disagree … to draw our own conclusions … and to distinguish between the truth and a lie. We could trace the source of Western Intellectual Suicide to various philosophical developments (Descartes, Bacon, Hume, Kant, Nietzche, Derrida and a host of others all had a part to play), but practically speaking it is the result of a decades-long failure in our educational system.
The intellectual suicide of the West began practically when we stopped teaching children to know truth, to value beauty, to desire goodness, and to seek wisdom; when we stopped equipping children with the tools necessary to think critically and to respect others simply because they’re fellow image-bearers. It started when we stopped encouraging students to find joy in learning; when we elevated the economic outcomes of education over wisdom and virtue.
The good news is that this tragedy has a solution: Classical Christian Education. This unique pedagogy — which Redeemer utilizes — equips learners with the tools they need to break out of echo chambers, to engage in meaningful dialogue, to think for themselves, and to communicate ideas winsomely. With it, we train our students to think critically, use logic, evaluate ideas for their own merit, to distinguish between truth and error, and to doggedly pursue truth. We work toward the hope that all of our graduates would embody truth, goodness, and beauty — so that they enter the world as both wise and virtuous.
But Redeemer doesn’t dispense a generic classical education. We impart a Christian classical education. We don’t teach a nondescript, least-common-denominator form of virtue. Nor do we provide students with a world-wise form of wisdom. Rather, we cultivate in students a genuinely Christian form of wisdom and virtue — one that is rooted in the person and work of the Creator-King. As such, it is the wisdom and virtue that transcends time, locality, and individual context. It is the wisdom and virtue that we were created to embody. It’s the wisdom and virtue that the world so desperately needs.
In this way Redeemer Classical School is contributing to the Intellectual Resurrection of the West. Each lesson we teach and every interaction we have with our students carries them further up and further into this new life. Because of this, our students are prepared to be a part of the solution. They will be ready to promote and defend truth, goodness, and beauty in a world that is ravenously hungry for it, but has lost the ability to see it, let alone find it.
As we embark on a year unlike any other in our lifetimes, let us not forget our calling as a school, nor the God who equips us to fulfill it.