{"id":1818244,"date":"2023-01-21T08:10:04","date_gmt":"2023-01-21T13:10:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1818244"},"modified":"2023-01-21T08:10:43","modified_gmt":"2023-01-21T13:10:43","slug":"how-wokeness-is-coming-for-classical-christian-education","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/how-wokeness-is-coming-for-classical-christian-education\/","title":{"rendered":"How Wokeness Is Coming For Classical Christian Education"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">16<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fhow-wokeness-is-coming-for-classical-christian-education%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1818244&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47-->\n<div><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/01\/school2-e1674154236484.jpg\" class=\"ff-og-image-inserted\" alt=\"image\"   style=\"display:none\"><\/div>\n<p>It\u2019s been a good year for classical Christian education. Threefold more school starts have been made, and a book about classical education ranked No. The New York Times bestsellers list ranked No. 1; Fox Nation will soon release season 2 of its popular series about classical Christian education. \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/nation.foxnews.com\/watch\/4d3026afac582920e79526395dee8147\/mode\/restart\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">The Miseducation of America<\/a><a href=\"https:\/\/nation.foxnews.com\/watch\/4d3026afac582920e79526395dee8147\/mode\/restart\/\">.<\/a>\u201d Naturally, growth brings attention. It is not common for someone to have ties with our movement at this time. <em>\u2014 <\/em>One of our own <em>\u2014 <\/em>A growing divide is brought to the forefront<\/p>\n<p>Jessica Hooten Wilson, an online journalist, asked the question, &#8220;What is your favorite thing about January 12?&#8221; <a href=\"https:\/\/currentpub.com\/2023\/01\/12\/is-white-supremacy-a-bug-or-a-feature-of-classical-christian-education\/#comments\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">\u201cIs White Supremacy a Bug or a Feature of Classical Christian Education?<\/a><a href=\"https:\/\/currentpub.com\/2023\/01\/12\/is-white-supremacy-a-bug-or-a-feature-of-classical-christian-education\/#comments\">\u201d<\/a>\u00a0It is not surprising that she experiences pressure in her main academic environment at Pepperdine University. \u201cI experience regular pushback from those who perceive [classical Christian education] as white, Western-only, and male-dominated.\u201d She proceeds to cast aspersions on a few people and organizations \u2014 including, indirectly, mine. Her accusations are used as a pretext to her thesis. \u201cIf the classical Christian school movement is to survive \u2014 let alone flourish \u2014 we must oppose all forms of racism and misogyny and stand with the beauty, goodness, and truth that we hold up for our students.\u201d I\u2019ll take her up on that charge.<\/p>\n<p>Hooten Wilkinson is a staccato note that appears at the end to a new tune in our circle. She praises groups that she believes are doing the right things in her article. So far, I\u2019ve heard no one publicly state the thesis so clearly as she does: \u201cWe should peruse the authors of the works and, if applicable, the editors or introductory writers to ensure an assortment of voices \u2026 as well as an equality of both sexes. If we look at the table of contents of a textbook or a reading list for a semester and find not a single woman or person of color in that list, then that curriculum is misrepresenting the classical Christian tradition.\u201d<\/p>\n<h2>The Classical Canon<\/h2>\n<p>The classical canon has been a source of many cultural influences for the past three millennia. It was created by philosophical, literary, and theological authors. Learned scholars have also created lists of those who merit it over the course of the same time. \u201ccanon\u201d status. It is unclear if there are minorities or women in Cassiodorus\u2019 list of authors (400 A.D.), or Leonardo Bruni or Battista Guarino\u2019s lists (humanists from the 1400s) \u2014 they don\u2019t use those categories. Mortimer Adler, along with his 40-strong team of renowned scholars, chose the most well-respected list of books based on their contributions to history. \u201cthe great conversation.\u201d Adler\u2019s merit-based criteria required a work to have changed the course of history and to have developed the collective Western mind. What Adler\u2019s team did not do is look to race or sex as criteria.<\/p>\n<p>The Western classical tradition has long included people of every race and sex in a particular way: The tradition deals with a body of texts that address the universal truths about the human condition, rising above our culture\u2019s current quest to silo everyone into an intersection of identity. <\/p>\n<p>Whatever your identity may be, the long journey toward Aeneus\u2019 destiny amplifies the tension between duty and desire. It&#8217;s hilarious to see twins living in the same place, unaware of each other. \u201cA Comedy of Errors,\u201d No matter what your race, gender, or sexual orientation. Hooten Wilson might tell our young women and minorities that they can&#8217;t fully converse with these texts if their voices aren&#8217;t represented there. Our schools should not sacrifice universal human dignity in the name of token inclusion. Hooten Wilson&#8217;s criteria only includes women and minorities. Some, like Kimberle Crenshaw, will not be satisfied with this attempt to diversify our reading lists \u2014 there will always be one more disaffected group.<\/p>\n<h2>Get sucked into Old-Fashioned Racism &#038; Sexism<\/h2>\n<p>By Hooten Wilson\u2019s standard, we must scrape and scrape until we find a \u201cfair\u201d Representation of \u201cdiverse\u201d contributors. \u201cI am especially excited about the number of women that we added to the Middle Ages list. \u2026 Classical schools should look through their reading lists to make sure women and persons of color are not excluded from their curriculum.\u201d The spirit of our time should not lead Classical Christian education into old-fashioned racism and sexism. This spirit was not nurtured by our tradition as Hooten Wilson asserts, but by the Frankfurt School.<\/p>\n<p>In the 1930s, Columbia University was home to a group cultural Marxist scholars. The Frankfurt School was established to eliminate Christianity&#8217;s influence on our culture. Their thickly veiled product called critical theory deliberately divides us by whispering one small lie, presented in two axioms: For a person to relate to anything, or gain from anything \u2014 in this case an intellectual tradition \u2014 it must have elements that \u201clook like them\u201d Match their \u201cidentity.\u201d The second axiom, &#8220;If something doesn&#8217;t contain&#8221;, follows. \u201cdiverse and inclusive\u201d It is either racist or misogynist in some elements. These fruits of critical theory travel down a circuitous path from the Frankfurt School, to Hooten Wilson\u2019s proposal, to a few classical educators who take incremental steps toward critical theory \u2014 all of this under the trendy label of \u201cinclusiveness.\u201d<\/p>\n<h2>Classical Christian Education: True Liberation<\/h2>\n<p>Classical education was created to, and has, liberated the minds of countless people groups in history, and it is capable of doing the same in America today \u2014 and beyond. It has been at center of the movement for freedom, education, and individual rights without regard to race, class or sexuality. If we let the very toxin that infects progressive education get into our classrooms, we\u2019re doomed. This toxin has been propagated by those who are against our tradition. Is it a good idea to drink it?<\/p>\n<p>My daughter just graduated from New Saint Andrews College. This is one of the institutions that those in Hooten Wilson\u2019s camp label \u201cmisogynist.\u201d The college seeks out to respect and uphold traditional Christian femininity. This is a disgraceful statement for feminists who seem to despise femininity. Misogyny? My daughter brought her friends over to my house for Thanksgiving. I can recall listening and thinking. \u201cWhere do these women come from? They\u2019re strong, bright, extremely well-read, fluent in ancient languages, and honoring of Christian truth \u2014 including their God-given womanhood.\u201d All were strong women. They were all faithful, happy and confident. I don\u2019t think any of them would want Hooten Wilson\u2019s prescription for <em>They<\/em> Read the entire list<\/p>\n<h2>Is Racism a Flaw or a Feature of Classical Christian Education:<\/h2>\n<p>The Frankfurt School\u2019s purpose was to deconstruct. They used a variety of techniques to do this. \u201cbug\u201d Critical theory and all its descendents are part of our educational system. Some in our movement now offer a batch of code that has this bug embedded deeply within it \u2014 in the form of reading lists. By Hooten Wilson\u2019s reckoning, these groups are heading in the right direction. We are not. Our institutions will continue to follow her example by adopting coded terminology like \u201cKingdom Diversity\u201d? Oder will the code be recognized as a virus? \u201cNo thank you. The classical Christian tradition is above all that nonsense \u2014 and the nonsense of white nationalists, by the way. May a plague be on all your racist houses.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>If classical Christian education is to survive, it has to reject the foolishness of our age and embrace Christ\u2019s way alone. Christ\u2019s church favors neither Jew nor Greek, male nor female, slave nor free. <\/p>\n<p>Humanities are great because they unify. They are universal. Non-Europeans and women are contributing in large numbers to classical Christian education. My goal is to make sure that every child can join the great conversation, without any barriers. <\/p>\n<p>\u201cIdentity,\u201d however, won\u2019t fit here. You can check it at the entrance. We are Christ\u2019s. We are classical. People who desire to be loved by the spirit and culture of our time will eventually become addicted and die from its poison.<\/p>\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator\" \/>\n<div class=\"article-author-description fst-italic\">\n David Goodwin is The Classical Difference magazine&#8217;s editor, president of The Association of Classical Christian Schools and co-author of The New York Times No. #1 best seller<br \/>\n<a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Battle-American-Mind-Uprooting-Miseducation\/dp\/0063215047\">&#8220;Battle for the American Mind.&#8221;<\/a> You can find him here<br \/>\n<a href=\"https:\/\/davidgoodwin.substack.com\">Substack<\/a>.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It\u2019s been a good year for classical Christian education. Threefold more school starts have been made, and a book about classical education ranked No. The New York Times bestsellers list ranked No. 1; Fox Nation will soon release season 2 of its popular series about classical Christian education. \u201cThe Miseducation of America.\u201d Naturally, growth brings &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1817426,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cndimages.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/IMG_2758-scaled-1.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[547],"tags":[5458,4592,13102,4726,5152,3819,6227],"class_list":["post-1818244","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-bongino-report","tag-bongino","tag-christian","tag-classical","tag-coming","tag-education","tag-report","tag-wokeness"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cndimages.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/IMG_2758-scaled-1.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1818244","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1818244"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1818244\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1817426"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1818244"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1818244"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1818244"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}