Falling test scores.
Declining proficiency.
Plummeting world rankings.
"Johnny can’t read."
We hear it over and over again.
What has happened to American education?
Our Founders might have a thing or two to say about that.
They were men of varied educational backgrounds. Benjamin Franklin, for example, had only two years of formal schooling. Yet he became one of our greatest Founding Fathers, as well as a renowned philosopher, scientist, writer, and he stablished what became known as the University of Pennsylvania.
Others were born into greater privilege and received a classical education that often included the Greek, Latin, and Hebrew languages.
Yet, what they all shared in common — and what is pointedly lacking in today’s public schools — is a foundation in religion.
Many studied directly at the feet of a minister.
John Adams in the home of his baptismal patron, Rev. John Hancock (father of the Founder of the same name).
George Washington with Rev. James Marye.
Thomas Jefferson with Rev. William Douglas and Rev. James Maury.
James Madison with Rev. Thomas Martin and later — at what is now Princeton University — with Rev. John Witherspoon (the president of the college and himself a signer of the Declaration of Independence). Just to name a few.
But that could not have been done in the public schools, right? After all, the "separation of church and state" clause bars religion from public schools — right?
Well, no.
That phrase, of course, appears nowhere in our nation's Founding documents
I was coined by Jefferson to assure churches that they were protected from state interference (not to protect the state from religion).
But that’s a subject for another day.
The first public school in America was the Boston Latin School.
It was founded under the influence of the puritan Rev. John Cotton, the founder of Congregationalism in America. When Franklin attended, it was headed by Rev. Nathaniel Williams.
Other Founders — including Adams, Hancock, Francis Dana, James Lovell, Robert Treat Paine, and William Hooper — attended under headmaster John Lovell— whose sole criterion for admission into the school was the ability to read verses from the Bible.
Today, of course, bibles are not allowed in public schools.
Parents are not allowed to send Bible verses in school lunches or gather with their own children (even off school grounds) for home-cooked lunches that include religious discussion.
Christian radio is banned from school buses. School bands are prohibited from playing "How Great Thou Art." Bible clubs are shut down while Satanic clubs are allowed.
How far we have fallen.
Modern-day America banishes God from every aspect of our society—most particularly, in our schools. All in the supposed name of "separation of church and state."
Is that what all of this is really about?
Washington described "religion and morality" as the "indispensable supports" of our society. As president, Adams called for an appeal to the Almighty to "smile on our colleges, academies, schools, and seminaries of learning, and make them nurseries of sound science, morals, and religion."
As governor of Massachusetts, Samuel Adams stressed "the great importance of encouraging our University, town schools, and other seminaries of education, that our children and youth while they are engaged in the pursuit of useful science, may have their minds impressed with a strong sense of the duties they owe to their God."
Why?
Because the "purpose" of a "public education," said Adams, was "to qualify you the better to serve your Creator and your country," because our "first great duties" are "those you owe to Heaven, to your Creator and Redeemer" and because education should "imprint deep upon your minds the principles of piety towards God, and a reverence and fear of His holy name."
Richard Henry Lee, the author of the resolution of independence, penned a Thanksgiving Proclamation of the Continental Congress that implored God to "take schools and seminaries of education, so necessary for cultivating the principles of true liberty, virtue and piety, under his nurturing hand, and to prosper the means of religion for the promotion and enlargement of that kingdom which consisteth in righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Ghost."
William Paterson, a signer of the Constitution from New Jersey and a Justice of the United States Supreme Court, declared that "the education of children is a matter of vast importance and highly deserving of our most serious attention.
"The prosperity of our country is intimately connected with it; for without morals, there can be no order, and without knowledge, no genuine liberty."
Franklin described that the teaching of history will "afford frequent Opportunities of showing the Necessity of a Publick Religion."
Gouverneur Morris — who became known as the "Penman of the Constitution" — believed that the "education of the heart, or virtuous habits" and the knowledge gained from "Bibles and sermons" was "more useful" than "the education of the head, or instruction."
Why?
Because, he said, "religion is the only solid basis of good morals; therefore education should teach the precepts of religion, and the duties of man towards God.
"These duties are, internally, love and adoration; externally, devotion and obedience; therefore provision should be made for maintaining divine worship as well as education."
Benjamin Rush, a signer of the Declaration of Independence from Pennsylvania, declared that "the only foundation for a useful education in a republic is to be laid in Religion.
"Without this there can be no virtue, and without virtue there can be no liberty, and liberty is the object and life of all republican governments."
He expressly called for the use of the Bible in our schools, proclaiming that "the great enemy of the salvation of man, in my opinion, never invented a more effective means of limiting Christianity from the world than by persuading mankind that it was improper to read the Bible at schools."
Indeed, the Continental Congress in 1781 approved the petition of Robert Aitken for a "neat Edition of the Holy Scriptures for the use of schools."
And in 1804, the public school board of the District of Columbia — whose president was none other than President Jefferson — directed the reading and use of the Bible in school instruction.
Rush continued, "By withholding the knowledge of this doctrine from children, we deprive ourselves of the best means of awakening moral sensibility in their minds. In his essay, "A Defence of the Use of the Bible as a School Book," he explained:
"We neglect the only means of establishing and perpetuating our republican forms of government, that is, the universal education of our youth in the principles of Christianity, by means of the Bible; for this divine book, above all others, favours that equality among mankind, that respect for just laws, and all those sober and frugal virtues, which constitute the soul of republicanism."
Upon leaving the presidency, Washington implored the nation, "And let us with caution indulge the supposition, that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure — reason & experience both forbid us to expect that National morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle."
- Why exactly has God been banished from our schools?
- Why are more and more parents turning to home-schooling and private schooling?
- Why shouldn’t parents have a choice?
Perhaps Samuel Adams said it best: "Those who are combined to destroy the people’s liberties practice every art to poison their morals."
Mark Boonstra is a judge on the Michigan Court of Appeals. He is the author of a three-volume series, "In Their Own Words: Today’s God-less America . . . What Would Our Founding Fathers Think?" His appearances include Newsmax's "The Chris Salcedo Show," and "National Report," as well as numerous radio shows and podcasts.
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