The purpose of education is to teach the young how to live
responsibly and effectively.
generations.
How, then , can a free society attend to this criti-
cally important requirement of teaching people to
get along with one another? Clearly, the most power-
ful and effective training center is the family. It is
within the family that the child learns best that he
can ' t have his own way all the time. He learns there
are rules which everyone must obey, and when some-
body breaks the rules, everybody suffers.
But it isn 't just a matter of learning what you must
not do. Even more important, the child learns in the
family the benefits, satisfactions, and wholesome
security that come from being a part of a group where
the members help and make sacrifices for one
another.
The family unit is the primary educative and sta-
bilizing force in the free nation, and the first line of
defense against crime .
The second line of defense is the system of
schooling. If you study the history of education, you
will discover that virtually every society throughout
history, until quite recently, recognized that the
purpose of education is to train the young how to live
responsibly and effectively in their own tribe or
nation.
In our country, the educational system had
followed this pattern . Contrast that to today when the
educational orthodoxy insists that each person is to
decide for himself what is right and what is wrong .
The use of marijuana , once an illegal drug, is now a
commonplace on rriany college campuses among
faculty as well as students, and has moved from the
college on down to the high schools and even the
grade schools.
Except for ascertaining the damage such usage
may do the physical and psychological health of the
individual , college ·and school authorities seem con-
fidently unconcerned about drug usage. The gen-
eralist would urge them to recognize that when an
individual takes up an illegal habit, it tends to desensi-
tize that person to the importance of abiding by other
laws . Once you have crossed that boundary, it is
rather natural to begin to decide which other laws
you will disregard .
The third major seedbed of responsible citizen-
ship in a free society is, of course , religion . The
churches and synagogues, like the schools, used to
help the young understand that there is a difference
between right and wrong. But many of the clergy
seem to have backed away from the Ten Command-
ments and preach from the pulpit what a friend calls
"sloppy agape," an undefined sort of general good-
will, with all the sharp corners of specific require-
ments and sacrifices rounded off to fit just about
everyone.
We are all familiar with the commandments
against murder and stealing, but there is another that
bears on the topic of crime and has a particular
relationship to this audience of business people. I
refer to the 10th one which prohibits coveting a
neighbor's wife, maid-servant, man-servant, ox or ass,
or anything else he may have. God recognized that
some people were going to have more than others,
and this aspect of human reality would be a parti-
cularly fruitful source of misbehavior.
The concept of the welfare state is proof of God ' s
wisdom. The welfare state insists that everyone has a
right to food, clothing, shelter, symphony orchestras,
art galleries, paid vacations, medical attention, and
everything else that constitutes the good life. Of
course, no economy can deliver all these things,
especially if the individual who works hard and the
one who works half-heartedly, and the one who
doesn't work at all , have equal rights to the same
privileges, benefits, and subsidies. The welfare state,
in its concept, amounts to institutionalized covetous-
ness, encouraging people to suppose they have been
wronged if they don ' t have their full share of what has
been promised them .
So what do we do about all this? The generalist
would try to get to the heart of the matter. If it is a
question of rebuilding self-restraints and self-reliance
among the citizens, he might ask, " How about asking
the school boards to consider adopting new policies
which would set a priority first on teaching all the
students under their jurisdiction the fundamental and
unyielding necessity for lawfulness in any society, and
second to teach all students that self-reliance is an
essential ingredient of human dignity?" If such
matters are mandated at the policy level, then every
teacher or every professor has an obligation to try to
deliver on them . In such basic questions of human
behavior, introducing one course or endowing one
professorship won't do much good . The teaching of
values must be a unified and pervasive undertaking. •
Today educational orthodoxy insists each person is to decide
for himself what is right and wrong.
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PLAY METER. August 15, 1984
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