Ignition for Education

The foregoing section gave the first reason why the Creation Paradigm is best realized, and why education is best practiced, in a liberal democracy. Liberal democracies prioritize the individual, rather than forcing conformity to religious or political orthodoxy, or to authority beyond that of laws that are necessary to protect all of the citizens. Massive pressure towards conformity can exist in a liberal democratic society, for sure. Majorities can be tyrannical, and sometimes they attempt to capture the state as an instrument of their tyranny. In the last section, I showed how this is being done in Florida. But conformity and majority tyranny are not aspects of liberal democracy. They are the darkness in human nature re-asserting itself. It will do so under any system of government, and good people are called to resist it under any system of government.

Liberal democracy is the political philosophy that gives priority to the individual; that gives her the right to self-realization—to self-creation. It does this by guaranteeing her freedom of thought and expression, along with a say in how she is governed. It gives her choice in her economic pursuits, including the choice of entrepreneurship. It gives her the right to self-educate by guaranteeing freedom of association and freedom of the press. And, historically, it has also given her a right to formal education at the public expense.

It is also the only context in which education can flourish. An authoritarian society, whether traditional, fascist, communist, or theocratic, or just reflexively conservative, may teach a student literacy, mathematics, science, and history, but they will teach with ideological slants. History will be the constructions of the past that best suit the political expediencies of the authorities. Assigned literature will not challenge her to think in divergent ways.

So-called education in an authoritarian society will try to force her into a mold. It will tell her not just what to think but also what her social role should be, whether that of a mother and a homemaker, or of a cadre, or a soldier, or a believer and proselytizer. Where she shows signs of creativity, she will be told to use it in the service of the state’s objectives—to create religious poetry or music, or something like Soviet-Realist art, to create goods and services deemed a priority by economic planners, or, if she has scientific or technological talent, to use them perhaps in the service of the state’s military or space-faring objectives.

Or, given that I’m using feminine pronouns, she might, if she lives in an authoritarian society of a traditional or religious nature, be told to stay home making dinner and babies.

In any case, she will be shaped, stifled, and set to work.

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A diluted but none-the-less damaging approach to education can seep into liberal democratic countries. It happens when we teach children to be “patriotic,” and this turns out to mean that they should love their country as those in power define it, and not as they believe that it ought to be. It happens when we allow education to be shaped by gender norms. And it happens when religious schools teach dogmas that are offensive to science, to women, to those who do not conform to gender norms, and to those who believe in other religions or none.

Liberal Democracy, understood and valued by its citizens, is the proper context for education, because children learn in a society that gives them the right to learn, by giving them freedom of thought and expression, of association and of the press, and the right to a free formal education; in a society that, while allowing individuals their dogmas, refuses to impose dogmas or conformist molds on its citizens of any age.

If liberal democratic instinct runs deep in the citizens and their leaders, education will be crafted to encourage the development of each child as a unique individual. And, of course, the products of such an education are likely to be adults in whom liberal democratic instinct runs deep, not because they have been indoctrinated but because they have been afforded the right to self-create and will be inclined to extend that right to others. In other words, Liberal Democracy and education guided by the Creation Paradigm are two sides of the same coin.