Knowledge, Wisdom, and Education
“Education is useless without the Bible.”—Noah Webster
The greatest crime of the current American education system is in forgetting that education involves teaching the whole person, not just putting “knowledge” into students’ heads. Education must teach knowledge, wisdom, and virtue—a human being needs all of those to be a productive member of a civilized society, and if any of the three is lacking among a growing portion of a society, then civilization will deteriorate in that society, and one will see increasing decadence, savagery, barbarism, and brutality.
A certain amount of knowledge is necessary to function in life, and everybody gains some knowledge as they grow. Wisdom is how to use that knowledge. Without knowledge, wisdom is impossible. Without wisdom, virtue cannot exist. And without virtue...well, we are back to the point made in paragraph one: a society will descend into decadence, savagery, barbarism, and brutality.
Because America’s educational institutions are doing an increasingly poor job of mis-educating America’s youth—not teaching the vital knowledge necessary for a civilized society to exist, and certainly is not teaching wisdom or virtue, we are now seeing the horrid consequences on the streets of our cities and in the halls of our highest institutions (White House and Congress). “The fear of the Lord,” Solomon said, is not only the “beginning of wisdom” (Proverbs 9:10), it is “the beginning of knowledge” (Proverbs 1:7). The first thing a person should learn, once his learning abilities are enabled, is to “fear the Lord.” I don’t have to state the obvious that such is not happening in most homes in America, and around the world today. And again, the results are manifest.
Noah Webster was exactly right. “Education”—knowledge, wisdom, virtue, morality—is utterly impossible if the source of those things, God and His word, are omitted. Man’s “wisdom” is obviously insufficient, and besides which man’s “wisdom” are we going to accept? Yours? Mine? Trump’s? Biden’s? Hitler’s? Man will never agree on a human-originated “wisdom” because everybody has their own ideas of what it would entail. God knows that, which is why He gave us His word.
And the fact that we have the light in our hands and refuse to look at it is certainly not His fault. The wise see the consequences abundantly about us.