The Forging of the American Mind on Our 250th Anniversary | David Goodwin

Episode Summary: 

The quickest way to learn about the culture of a nation isn't to watch its politics. It's to watch how it educates its children.

In this episode, we sit down with author and classical Christian educator David Goodwin, president of the Association of Classical Christian Schools, to explore why education is never neutral and how it shapes a child's worldview, character, loves, and vision of reality.

Drawing from his new book, The Forging of the American Mind, and the bestselling Battle for the American Mind (co-authored with Pete Hegseth), David explains the roots of progressive education, the recovery of classical Christian education, and why Christian parents must think beyond skill-based learning to the formation of the whole person.

In this episode you'll learn:

• Why education is about formation, not just information
• How progressive education reshaped American schools
• What classical Christian education offers parents today
• The role of story, virtue, and discipleship in raising faithful children
• Practical guidance for parents exploring Christian education, homeschooling, and school choice

As Charlie Kirk writes:

"Battle for the American Mind is a must-read. The education fight is the most critical in America."

If you care about biblical worldview, Christian parenting, discipleship, education reform, homeschooling, classical Christian education, or the future of America, this conversation is for you.

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🎙️Featured Speaker: 

DAVID GOODWIN is a pioneer in the classical Christian movement and co-authored the #1 New York Times Bestseller, Battle for the American Mind, with Pete Hegseth. He helped found The Ambrose School in Meridian, ID, and was headmaster there for 13 years, growing it from a struggling small school to over 500 students and building its current facility. He has been the president of the Association of Classical Christian Schools since 2015. He is the editor of The Classical Difference magazine and author of “Discover Classical Christian Education.” His upcoming book, a sequel to Battle…, will offer an insider’s view of why K-12 classical Christian education works.

David currently serves on the Board of Academic Advisors for the Classic Learning Test (CLT) and has served as an advisor for the FOX News documentary “The Miseducation of America,” for the National Association of Scholars “American Birthright” standards, and for the Oklahoma Department of Education. He has been a speaker at various events around the country and has written for publications such as The Federalist, The Washington Times, and others.

David lives in Boise, Idaho, with his wife, Stormy. They have three adult children, one of whom teaches at a classical Christian school. 

📌 Recommended Resources: 

     👉 Matching Challenge: Donate - Disciple Nations Alliance 

     👉 Book: Forging the American Mind: A Year-by-Year Guide for Classical Christian Education – Transforming K-12 Learning: Practices for Teaching Virtue and Wisdom: Goodwin, David, Hegseth, Pete:

     👉 Book: Battle for the American Mind 

     👉 Website: National Association of Scholars 

     👉 Documentary: Watch The Miseducation of America Online | Stream Fox Nation  

     👉 Book: Don’t Let Schooling Stand in the Way of Education A Biblical Response to the Crisis in Public Education by Darrow Miller  

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Episode Webpage

Transcript

David Goodwin 0:02

This was a new idea. This idea that the nation or the dominion doesn't matter. It's personal salvation that matters. So personal salvation had always been part of Christianity, but you were saved into something. And everybody knew you were saved into your community and by extension into your nation. The West is a singularity. It is very different than any other culture. So you have to ask yourself what makes it the West? And if you go back and look at what made it what it is, it's Christianity. The United States was a uniquely Christian nation because our Puritan roots were essentially nationalistic because a nation can be defined different ways, but certainly the way the Puritans treated it, it was planting a nation in the United States who could live faithfully as a dominion of Jesus Christ. Kids ingest stories more readily than they ingest facts. We have seen the failure of secular government. It cannot exist because you cannot have a disconnection between the central beliefs of a people and their unity as a people.

Luke Allen 1:41

For this podcast, we had a special guest join us to talk about uh what makes America unique. And uh a lot of that comes back to the education and the way we see education here in America, as Alexander de Tocqueville, no Alexis de Tocqueville recognized when he came here not long after the Revolutionary War. There's something different about how the Americans are teaching their youth compared to in Europe. And a lot of what he was recognizing is how we put an emphasis on a biblical worldview that applies to all of life and all of people. And uh that's what a lot of our discussion is on today, but I'll let uh dad you introduce our guests in a minute. Uh let's hop

Disciple Nations And Meet David Goodwin

Luke Allen 2:17

into the intro. As Christians, we all know that our mission is to spread the gospel around the world to all the nations. However, our mission, the Great Co-Mission, also involves working to transform our cultures so that they increasingly reflect the truth, goodness, and beauty of God's kingdom. Tragically, the church has largely neglected this second part of her mission, and today most Christians are having little influence on their surrounding cultures. Join us on this podcast as we rediscover what it means for each of us to disciple the nations and to create Christ-honoring cultures that reflect the character of the living God. Before we hop into this today, I just want to introduce ourselves. My name is Luke Allen. I'm one of the co-hosts here on the show, also the producer, and I'm joined by my dad and our host, author, speaker, and writer, Scott Allen. Howdy, Dad. Hey Luke, it's great to be with you again. Yeah, this is fun. We just hopped off a great recording with a new guest here on the show, an author that probably a lot of you are familiar with uh because of his books. Um he just had a new book come out this week, so we invited him on to uh share it with us. Uh his name is uh David Goodwin. Dad, would you mind uh both uh just telling people a little bit more about who David is and then a little bit more about the book and the discussion that we're about to hop into?

Scott Allen 3:27

Absolutely. Yeah, David uh has a brand new book that uh is just out this week. Um the week that we're recording, I should say. It's called The Forging of the American Mind, a year-by-year guide for classical Christian education. It's a follow-up book to his previous uh book, which was um authored, co-authored with um Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, the title of that book that is more well known, obviously, because it's been out for a while, The Battle for the American Mind, Uprooting a Century of Miseducation. Um widely read, very influential book. He wrote that with uh Pete Hegseth. Before Pete Hegseth was a secretary of defense, he was um an analyst and uh uh at Fox News, basically. Uh but just a little bit about David, fascinating guy. He grew up uh in Idaho, grew up on a farm, spent more than a decade um as well in business in big tech, um, and then later helped to found uh the Ambrose uh Classical Christian School in Boise, Idaho. Uh today he is the editor of the Classical Difference Magazine and the president of the Association of Classical Christian Schools, which is a really significant influential network of Christian schools, but um but with a focus on classical Christian education. Um so Dave's wife Stormy is also a writer and editor. They have three children, all of whom were classically educated. So that's a little bit about David that we're gonna speak with your Luke. Yeah.

Luke Allen 5:02

Yeah, this was a great episode. I'm really excited to read this book. I haven't read it yet, unfortunately, uh The Forging of the American Mind. Uh but I think it's probably a great book for all of us to read. It's it doesn't only get into education, it also just talks about what it means to disciple nations and what that looks like practically in a lot of discipling nations, fulfilling the Great Commission. Comes back to making sure that we are discipling our children and the next generations. That's a repeated theme throughout all of the Bible is pass these things on to the next generation. And uh this book I'm sure is gonna do a great job at that. It sounds like a fantastic read. I hope you guys all enjoy this episode. We got into a lot of very ideas have consequences-esque topics today, including the history of ideas that led us to this point, uh where uh modern education is pretty broken. I think we can mostly agree on that, uh, and then how to get back. So I hope you enjoy this discussion with David Goodwin.

Researching Progressives And Miseducation

Scott Allen 5:59

Well, we're so excited to have on today with us uh author and educator, David Goodwin. David, it's great to have you with us. We're so excited to have you this week to celebrate the launch of uh your newest book, The Forging of the American Mind, a year-by-year guide for classical Christian education. David, thanks for joining us.

David Goodwin 6:21

It is such a pleasure to join you. I'm uh grateful for the chance, and hopefully the book will be helpful.

Scott Allen 6:27

I'm sure it will. And David, just as we begin today, um I would like to have you just uh introduce yourself a little bit to the audience because this is a follow-up book to a book that came out, it looks like in 2022, that you co-authored with uh Secretary of Defense Pete Heggseth. The title of that book is The Battle for the American Mind, Uprooting a Century of Miseducation. Um that uh book uh was widely read, very influential. I noticed yesterday that it remains uh the number one Amazon bestseller in the category of cultural policy. So congratulations on that great success as well. Um I guess what I'd like to know is what caused you to follow that book up with the forging of the American Mind. And if you could just give us a little bit of the backstory, um, including uh what led to that first book and your relationship with uh Pete Heggsett. That's very interesting.

David Goodwin 7:25

Well, you know, these things uh come about um through the providence of the Lord over time. Uh in the mid-90s, I got into classical Christian education rather uh accidentally. Uh I grew up in Idaho. We're not exactly uh a bastion of either education or classical education, or at least we weren't in the time that I was growing up. But uh movement started here in the um late 90s up north. I live in the southern part of the state. And one of the schools uh was started here uh inspired by the school in Moscow, Idaho. And I uh early on uh got involved with it, eventually ran the school, and eventually uh developed a book uh that I uh built based on a lecture from a Hillsdale professor that talked about the early progressives in the 20th century and what their contribution to education was. I could sense it was more of a story there, so I went and did some in-depth research on that, um, pulling all of the magazines the progressives had written between uh published between uh uh tw about 1905 and 1920, uh, figuring that there would be very little about education in there. If you know the progressive movement, it it made a lot of uh inroads into things like labor law and um and child child labor and some unions, and you know, it was a very socialist economic type movement. But it turned out that uh there were a lot of education articles in these magazines, far more than I thought there would be. Almost every week they had uh John Dewey or um, you know, uh William Wirt or some progressive writing about the movement. And so I researched that in depth, turned into a book, and then I got a call in about uh January of 2020 from Pete Higgseth. And I typically get calls from the press because I'm the president now of the Association of Classical Christian Schools. Uh that call uh was a typical press call where they want to know more about classical education. I tell them a little bit. And I did that with Pete, and at about the 20-minute mark, they're usually about done, and we wrap up and go. And then near the end, he said, Well, I'm just looking for, you know, a patriotic form of education for kids. And I said, Well, uh, classical Christian education isn't really designed to be patriotic, but it did educate all of the America's founding fathers. So it is a patriotic thing, but it is not about patriotism. And he um stopped for a second and said, Well, you say the Pledge of Allegiance, right? And I said, Well, some of our schools do, but you know that was written by a socialist. Um and uh that put him on his heels a little bit, and he said, I need to know more. So I sent him a couple of chapters of that book. He um read the chapters and said, This story has got to get out there. We I flew out to New York um just in time for COVID to hit. We started work on uh um, you know, this was uh summer of 2020. Um we started work on a documentary called The Miseducation of America. Uh that became the most binge-watched documentary on Fox that year, so they wanted um follow-on the next year. We did the follow-on as well. The end of the follow-on, Pete was uh insistent that I get the book published, but there was a shortage of paper due to the uh COVID thing. And so it was very difficult to get a uh contract, even using the connections that Pete had. And so he said they'll do it if if we work together on a different work that kind of combines some ideas. So I um I took out about half the book, which interestingly, the original book had kind of two um two diverging um forces that had separated um American education. One was the progressives, and the other was the changes that had occurred in the church in the uh 20th century. So the part about the church, uh and the social gospel largely is what it was. That part was uh taken out, and we did uh the book purely on the progressives, and um that became Battle for the American Mind. We uh once again, through Providence, uh, you know, you put the timing in about 2022, and you note that this is when parents were getting a bit itchy that their kids hadn't been in school for a very long time. So when the book came out, Battle for the American Mind, uh it shot to the top of the uh New York Times bestseller list almost immediately and stayed there for four weeks, I think, and then uh stayed on the list the whole summer. Uh and it continues to be a strong seller, as you pointed out uh at the beginning of this. Um because of that, they wanted to follow on. Pete was contracted elsewhere, so I took on writing, you know, I asked what they wanted, and they they wanted, um, they said, hey, we've created all this demand for classical Christian education, so why don't you tell us how to do it? Uh so what I did was I I, you know, when Pete and I finished um Battle for the American Mind, we got to the last two chapters, and on an in a you know, kind of an insider's uh uh hint about writing nonfiction is that you get to the end and you have to end it. You know, it does it's not like you have a climax or something like that. Right? So we get there and what are we going to end this with? And uh I said, Pete, what is it that you did in the military? Because it's the book's called Battle, so let's let's uh let's talk about that. And he said, Well, I was a counterinsurgency officer, and I said, Well, what is that? And he said, Well, we'd go, I'd take uh little um patrols through the various villages in Iraq, I'm sorry, in Afghanistan, and uh my job was to kind of counter what the insurgents were doing. I said, Well, what's an insurgent? And he said, Well, when you have a great disparity between two military forces, and the the one doesn't have the military power to overcome the other, it can form an insurgency, where they just uh basically win the hearts and minds of the people. And uh our job was to try and win them back. And I said, So we're essentially trying to do an insurgency with classical Christian education. That's how we decided to end the book. Well, with a book ending on insurgency, uh, we needed an army field guide. The um book, the new book, Forging the American Mind, is a forewritten by Pete. And that forward talks about the Army Field Guide. So I'll let people uh um read that, but that that's that's what forging the American Mind is. It's kind of a year-by-year guide, or what I call them uh uh you know, the field guide for classical Christian education.

Scott Allen 14:10

Fantastic. Yeah. I talk a little bit, if you don't mind, David, about uh it's fascinating that, yeah, uh these in God's providence, right, these things happened at the same time where you did the research um you found out about the major shifts in education in the United States, public education with the progressive movement, um uh you know, at the turn of the century, the beginning of the 1900s, late 1800s. Um you were learning and uh becoming much more convinced that we needed to get back to the roots, the biblical uh Christian roots of education in our country that was that was that was critical, and then that happened during COVID uh at a time when, yeah, the the the

Classical Christian Education After COVID

Scott Allen 14:52

schools were in crisis. What's happened since then with classical Christian education or just Christian education in general? Just give us your your bird's eye view of that since COVID. Is it I I it my sense is it's just exploded. Is that kind of what you're seeing?

David Goodwin 15:07

It did grow rapidly. We're starting to see that growth kind of uh tail off a little bit. People have short memories. Right. But uh the uh school choice movement has come on strongly. So uh within the next uh year or two, the combination of the federal tax credit for education and uh in about 19 states uh some amazing school choice programs that actually grant uh a pretty substantial amount of tuition to any parent, not just parents who are poor or in need, but pretty much universally grant it at least to anybody of middle income. And so uh that could again spark uh the movement. And I think that it's necessary for the movement to um get about 10 percent more share than it currently has. So if you look grossly at the 50 million uh school children in the United States, about 10 percent of them, or 5 million, are in um private schools. Um we want we want to see that go to about 20 percent.

Speaker 1 16:11

Yeah, mm-hmm.

Speaker 2 16:12

Yeah, uh, which adds uh you know quite a few more private schools. We think you will need around 5,000 private Christian schools in those 19 states. And so the hope is that that it will s will spark a new uh rise and growth and and parents will and and this book is really intended to help parents see why. Um I think probably the biggest uh the the biggest factor for parents is that they like me, I mean I had the same experience, they have no ability to imagine what education can be because they've never encountered the uh classical Christian form.

Scott Allen 16:54

Well, yeah, and we want to get into that and talk about that because you're right. It seems like there's still maybe before we jump into that, just that the there still seems to be a bit of a barrier, doesn't it, with a lot of evangelicals and and committed church-going Christians, when it comes to the subject of education, there's there i I don't know, how can I say there still seems to be a lot of naivety, uh just a lack of of kind of focus on this as a really important topic, especially related to discipleship of their children. You know, the it uh in many of the churches that I have attended, it's not uh it's just not addressed. You know, the the kind of the assumption is that, yeah, it's you know your kids will go to, you know, go ahead and go to the schools, the public schools. Um and many parents, I think, still kind of focus on test grade scores, college admissions, sports.

Speaker 2 17:45

Uh what should they be focusing on instead that they're not well first off, it's it's hard to blame parents because um where else, in what other area of your life does there's just an automatic enrollment in the public school. And a big yellow bus shows up and it's free, and your child goes out with every other kid in the neighborhood, gets on the bus, the state takes them away and returns them seven or eight hours later, six or eight hours later, and um you go through that routine and you get your uh standard holidays every year. It's a very Marxist kind of construct when you say it the way I said it, but most parents have no idea because it's just easy. It's the way things have gone.

Scott Allen 18:34

And it's what we've known. It's what I did. You know, that was my experience exactly. It's yes, we're in a bubble. You're right, we're in a bubble. Uh-huh.

Speaker 2 18:42

It's so funny to me. I don't know if you're following this right now, but on social media, there's all these videos of people here for the FIFA Sky games, World Cup. All these foreigners are uh wanting selfies with school buses because it's such an American thing, and they've never seen one. They thought they were a joke. I mean, when you think about it, just abstract yourself. This is a bus, but it's not like a bus you would find in Europe or in South America or something. It's painted bright yellow, and it has this funky flap door that opens in these weird seats where two or three kids can kind of squish together. They're not individual seats. And when you look at it, it's a very unique kind of thing. It's the largest transportation system in the world, the the American public school bus system. And um when you look at our education system, it's a multi-trillion dollar institution, but at least in gross spending every year, it's as big, depending on the year, it's as big or bigger than the Defense Department. So I joke with Pete that he's got the two biggest, uh, the two biggest uh elements right here, uh education and department of war. Yeah, uh we have to keep that department of war, you know. That's um it's the new name. So in any event, um I I think what parents are typically uh lulled into is just it's so it's so big. It's a more than a trillion dollar uh industry. Uh these, you know, we have iconic yellow buses that pick up the kids. I mean, it's hard to imagine oneself not in that system. And I think for those who read Battle for the American Mind, I I mean I just did a book signing in Chicago uh yesterday, the day before and yesterday. And people came up to me one after another. Your book, meaning the one that Pete wrote with me, um, your book changed everything for me. I pulled my kids out and I put them in the, you know, so it's like that book seemed to have caught a fire in the in the hearts of a lot of parents. And and if you haven't read that, I would encourage you to read that one. Um, one nice thing about doing these uh bestsellers is they get fairly inexpensive over time. So I think it's like around 10 bucks in paperback right now. Um on Amazon. So a battle for the American Mind has mobilized a lot of parents, and we hope it mobilizes a lot more. Forging the American Mind will convince you, if you haven't been convinced, or at least I hope it will convince you, that this is a very different thing. Uh far from yellow school buses and six periods a day with bells that ring at 55 minutes, and uh, you know, school lunch rooms with steel trays and um, you know, uh lots of veggies and all the stuff that is school lockers. Um, all those trappings are really um just that. They're trappings. They've trapped you into this system.

Matching Challenge And Sponsor Break

Luke Allen 21:44

Hi, friends. I wanted to invite you to help the Disciple Nations Alliance meet our $50,000 summer matching challenge. Many of you are listening to this podcast because you care about a biblical worldview, about discipling the nations, and helping Christians live faithfully in every area of life. And that's exactly what the DNA exists to do. Last year, an independent impact study confirmed what we have been hearing again and again from people around the world. The DNA's training is helping Christians break free from a compartmentalized faith to applying biblical truths to their family, work, church, community, and culture. When Christians embrace a biblical worldview, they live differently. And when believers live differently, that transformation ripples outward. Now through August 15th, your gift can help us meet this $50,000 challenge and multiply this impact. To give, just tap the link in the show notes that says matching challenge. And thank you so much for standing with us here at the Disciple Nations Alliance. And now for a word from our friends over at the Center for Biblical Unity.

Speaker 22:46

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Christian Roots Of Western Paideia

Scott Allen 24:18

Yeah, it's kind of a factory and industrial type of system, too, isn't it? Yeah. You you know, one of the major themes of both of these books, I believe, David, is is the idea that education isn't about information, it's about formation, um formation at the deepest levels of our worldview and our our life, really. Can you talk a little bit about the difference and move into what makes in in your case, classical Christian education so different, so special?

Speaker 2 24:48

Well, the new book talks about this, uh Forging talks about this somewhat. Again, we take things for granted way too easily. And I just, if you take anything away from this as a listener, uh don't take stuff for granted. Just clear your mind when you start reading this. The West is a singularity. There's never been anything like it in history. And some people say, well, yeah, because it it's the culmination of a lot of history, uh, though the Western civilization is. But in fact, it's really not. It's only one small part of the world, and it's only um pertinent, you know, in Europe and you know, roughly the Americas. And of course, it's it's since spread throughout the world, but at its heart, the West is a singularity. It is very different than any other culture. So you have to ask yourself what makes it the West? Well, what I say in Forging the American Mind is it's the golden thread that made the West the West. The reason why we can talk through technology and you know, we have cars sitting outside that we drive to and from work with, and um not just that, but the reason that the nuclear family looks the way it does, the reason churches look the way they do, the reason why people um, you know, that this a lot of this you see in these FIFA um social media posts where people are saying they they leave like stores put displays outside in front of the store and people don't steal it, right? This is all a product of the West. And Tom Holland in his great book, Dominia.

Scott Allen 26:24

I was just thinking of Tom Holland's book as you were talking there, right? Yeah.

Speaker 2 26:27

Yeah, he makes this point. He said the West is like nothing else. And if you go back and look at what made it what it is, it's Christianity.

Scott Allen 26:37

So what caused Tom to get outside the bubble to do that? And and Tom, as a historian, did that by looking back at Greek and Roman culture as they were actually practiced and said, it looks nothing like the modern-day England that I'm living in. So uh what caused the difference? I was just reading a post yesterday from a missionary in Japan, and he was saying something different. He said, you know, Americans take for granted just how deeply shaped American culture is from the Bible in a way that like rural Japan is not, and just how much work it requires missionaries in Japan to do to just do pre-evangelism, just to make the gospel make sense, because it's it's so deeply it's the culture is so deeply different.

Speaker 2 27:20

Yes. And and we don't I think you have to spend a little bit of time in other cultures even to comprehend that. But that's a whole nother story. So essentially what Tom Holland says is that Christianity, the dominion or the idea in the medieval age that Christianity should take dominion over the earth because that was the call of our Lord when he said he was the king. Um that's the call of our Lord. Um I take it a step further in this book and say the the real golden thread, Tom Holland is right, but the golden thread is education. And it starts in about a thousand AD. Um, there was lots of education before that, but the Romans educated, the Roman educational system was built around developing free citizens who could debate politics and not be persuaded by a tyrant. So, in some sense, that's a fairly narrow category. And that was the dominant form of education, even up through about Alcuin, who was a monk who basically educated most of England and then went over and educated Germany in uh you know the 800-900 time frame, six, seven, eight hundred time frame uh AD. And then you have this period of kind of Rome completely dying off at the end as the as the Muslims overtook much of Europe, uh Rome was kind of cast off, and uh the everybody was fighting for their lives, and then you emerge in about a thousand, and by 1100, you've got the crusades. And so what's happening in this time frame is that education is spreading, the Muslims have been pushed back, the uh barbarians like the Slavs and Ostrogoths and all of those have been Christianized. And so now you have ground where uh these people, um, I don't know if you've ever seen the um movie Kingdom of Heaven.

Scott Allen 29:12

I do remember that. Yeah, it's about the Crusades, right? Mm-hmm.

Speaker 2 29:16

Right. And the title of the movie says it all. This whole time period believed that uh the call of Christ was to take dominion over all the nations uh for the sake of the gospel and the king, right? The true king. And so they set out about doing that. And it did involve the crusades, but the education that they put in place at the time also started, they invented the university. This is something very few people realize, is that in 10,000 years of human history nobody had a university, now we have a university. What makes it different than, say, a court school that you would have in Persia or something prior to that? The difference was that the university aligned monastic Christian theology with worldly institutions like law, like medicine, like you know, medicine and hospitals, like the organization of people groups into counties and into districts. All of this was done by the church. The church fa, you know, fabricated out of whole cloth the way the road systems worked. And they started building, well, Tom Holland talks about this. There's an ingredient that needs to be there that had never been there before. And that was the optimism of Christianity, Christianity that we could, by obedience to Christ, bring about the greatness of the West that became the greatness of the West. Then, of course, much later in the Enlightenment and and then with Karl Marx, uh, Holland also points out that Marx was really a product of Christianity, a distorted project project, but a project nonetheless of Christianity, because he had that same optimism. But it was a humanist-driven optimism that utopia could be created economically and in other ways by man on this earth without God. And so we've seen what that yielded. Um, and much of the killing and death in the 20th century was the result of Marx and his ideas. But that very early idea in the Middle Ages that we can educate children to be f uh free thinkers who align themselves with Christ, not free as in liberated to do whatever they want, but the freedom to live in Christ. And then they could take that freedom and apply it to every institution, from marriage to uh, like I said, government, law, every print and and of course now we we screech that that's Christian nationalism. Well, yeah, that's what it was, but it wasn't one nation. It was every nation. Every nation could be Christianized, and Christianization of that nation was the task of the church in those days, and that's how we got the West.

Scott Allen 32:11

Well, i I mean, you're you're speaking to the Discipled Nations Alliance here, David. That's uh exactly what we believe that uh the Great Commission goes beyond individual salvation and has implications and ramifications for culture. We believe that's what Christ intended, and that education is absolutely central to that. Um But uh like you, I think it's it's just it's far too often either taken for granted or neglected in the church. So um thank you. Thank you for your work and to get the word out that this cannot be taken for granted any longer, and uh we need to reclaim that. Luke, I'd like to bring you in. I know you've got some critical questions here. What uh what questions do you have for David today?

Revivalism And The Social Gospel Shift

Luke Allen 32:56

Yeah, thanks, Dad. Yeah, that was I think you're gonna make a lot of people mad when you said education really began around a thousand AD. Because I know a lot of people in the classical world like to point back to the Greeks when they when they talk about classical education. And yet I totally agree with you. I just read the book How the Irish Saved Civilization about uh St. Patrick and the impact that he had on uh bringing the Bible into all areas of life and as a true counterinsurgent, right, coming into the the very pagan world of Ireland and then traveling from there out to uh not him, but the people that followed him out into all of Europe and essentially discipling the nations um in a way that we had not seen before in history. And I think from there it's probably the seed beds for the modern education. Um and then this is like you said, something that Christians did well for hundreds and hundreds of years across many nations, this kind of counterinsurgency of going and making disciples of all nations through education, through all areas of life, really, um, until about a hundred and fifty years ago when we really came to more or less a screeching halt. That's that's a little bit of a broad generalization. But I I'm bummed that in the Battle for American Mind, you said you took out the history about the social gospel and the impacts that that made on education really downstream. Could you talk a little bit about that section that you took out? Because I I do think, at least for what we do, uh that had huge ramifications on the optimism of the church, on the engagement of the church in society, on uh now our our worldview as many Christians of the importance of education. Uh a lot of that changed when we had this reaction to the social gospel.

Speaker 2 34:36

Would you mind just you know you've got a 17, let's say 1750. Uh prior to that time, if you take all the flags of Europe, um most all of them have Christian references on them. You've got the the Saint flag of St. George, the cross of St. George is the English flag. You've got even the French flag at the time, we the French flag we now have is a post-revolutionary flag. The French flag at the time had three Fleur de Lun uh elements on it for the Trinity. Um you go across Europe, you'll find that it the fundamental assumption in 1750 was that whoever the king was of your nation, he was under King Jesus. Um that was just recognized universally. Any war that happened, anything that happened had to be justified in those terms. The Thirty Years' War, the War of the Rose, all these things that we hear about, and were often used as excuses for jettisoning Christianity, but they all pointed to the fact that Christ was king, and we needed to recognize that. And we have just war theory coming out of that, a lot of good stuff happening. So that's what you got going into the revolution in the United States. And uh United States was a uniquely Christian nation because our Puritan roots were essentially nationalistic. It was uh the idea that they're in their community, their nation, they could live, because a nation can be defined different ways, but certainly the way the Puritans treated it, it was uh planting a nation in the United States, a nation of their people, who could live faithfully as a dominion of Jesus Christ. And so they, when they were planted here in the 1600s, were not outside of the norm. But by 1820, they found them, you know, that idea set started to fall outside the norm. And what caused that? To your point and your question, the church in America in the 1820s, uh in the in the 17 uh seventies, let's say 1770s, 1790, right in that area, the you and a little before, you had the Great Awakening, right? Jonathan Edwards, Wycliffe. I mean, this was the time period where uh I'm sorry, not Wycliffe, uh um Whitfield. Whitfield, yeah, Whitfield. Um the church, you know, the church uh uh uh had this great awakening, and and in by the 1820s, 1830s, the church uh uh almost wanted to spark a new awakening. And so um you have the camp revival meetings, uh the Charles Finney uh you know revival meetings. This was a new idea, this idea that um the nation or the dominion doesn't matter, it's personal salvation that matters. So personal salvation had always been part of Christianity, but you were saved into something. And everybody knew you were saved into your community and by extension into your nation, and that that that made you part of the church, the universal church, as Augustine put it in the three three three nineties or four early four hundreds, uh, the city of God and the city of man, they cohabitate together, but they're different things. And so it wasn't a division between a separation of church and state. It was the unity of church and state in two in two forms of sovereignty. And so by the 1820s, you have Charles Finney and uh all these new religions. Mormonism jumps up out of there, the Shakers, uh, you know, just all these new religions form uh around personal salvation. And then uh by the 1860s, you have uh Washington Gladden. Most people don't know his name, but he's probably the most influential American on the current church because he was the father of the social gospel. And the idea of the social gospel in the 1850s, 1860s was that we Christians fought too much about doctrine. We should just focus on living like Jesus lived. So what does that do? That turns Jesus uh into mostly a great teacher, not a king. And so when Jesus gets relegated down, down from king to great teacher, he I don't know if you've ever been in uh in the I I don't remember which chamber, if it's uh the Senate or the House in the congressional building in Washington. Around the rotunda at the top, they have the great teachers of the world, and Moses and Mohammed and all of the great teachers are carved into that. And you see that, you know, because that's about when the rotunda was built, uh, you see that idea of Washington Gladens, this idea that we we have great moral teachers, and suddenly you've lost the authority and dominion of Jesus Christ, and you're down to basically trying to teach people how to live like Christians in a very narrow sense. Not live like Christians in a national sense, not live like Christians in a dominion sense where Christianity matters every day, but in a much narrower form. And that carried on, created the mainline denominations. Uh that was uh Washington Gladden's legacy was the creation of the mainline, not really creation of them, but the decadence of the mainline denominations, which have all gone apostate at this point. And then you have the evangelical movement and the Billy Graham movement of the 20th century carrying on Charles Finney. All of this just it's not that any of it was false, it's that it lacked a core truth that was omitted. It it was like suddenly the essential nutrient that keeps us alive was taken out of our diet as Christians, and we no longer get it, so we start to decay. We don't know why we're getting sick. And that's what happened to Christendom. And so I bring that originally in the book, I had that overlaid with then the progressives taking over instead of Christianity with regard to dominion and um utopia taking over as opposed to the kingdom of heaven on earth. Uh and they're very different things. They sound similar, right? Both are um designed to be uh a better future for people. Uh as it's often said today, human flourishing is the the objective. And this is one of the things I've I've talked a lot about with classical education. I'd like to get away from that term in classical education, because the problem with the term human flourishing is either side can use it. Right? If our goal is human flourishing, either side can use that. The progressives can say that's what we're seeking with our utopia, and the Christian can say that's what we're seeking with our kingdom. So I prefer, we use the term, and I use in the book a lot, paidea, because uh the direct call of scripture in Ephesians 6 is to raise our children in the fear and admonition of the Lord. That is the paideia of the Lord, is the actual literal Greek there. Uh in the first book, we talk about how paidea is a misunderstood concept, and uh, in the second book I explain how and why.

Luke Allen 41:49

That's that's so interesting. I hope you kept those files from when you omitted those from the Battle for the American Mind. That might need to be a future book. Um but this concept of Paidia, tell us a little bit more about it. Here at the Disciple Nations Alliance, we always use the term biblical worldview. As far as I can tell, those terms are pretty similar. Um how would you describe this question? Well, of course, the words and maybe where they differ.

Speaker 2 42:11

Uh descends to us from the German language and it comes out of the 19th century. So it's a little bit more analytical and wooden than uh what the Christian cosmology, which is uh the word I sometimes use, it kind of means the same thing. Um, but there's an element, and and the best I can describe it is to describe one aspect. I don't know uh if your listeners know who Mortimer Adler was. Mortimer Adler, I cite in the book, and we go through a lot. He was a great classical teacher. Uh he developed the great books of the Western world. Uh he does uh amazing work that we talk about in the in the new book, Forging the American Mind. Um and so uh the first edition of the The Great Books of the West were very much in line with worldview. They were talking about ideas and and and how those ideas came to us through time and what presumptions, underlying assumptions, basic premises that we think about, and how all those are shaped through our paidea, through the great raising up of those things. Um I think that's very worldview-ish, and I think that's where worldview is a correct but narrow term. Um, because when Adler, who was a secular scholar, uh very pround one uh in his day, uh in 1980, so this was when he was an older man, he uh became a Christian. And he re-looked at that set and he said, you know, we missed something. It's very good at developing idea, you know, kind of the flow of ideas and the way people think. It doesn't deal with myth. It doesn't deal with story. It so when you think about it, any fact, any knowledge that you have can may mean two terribly different things depending on the story that you believe. If you believe that, you know, I was at a conference recently, and I don't want to get too egg-headed here, but uh the discussion was on Milton's Paradise Lost. And um that story, of course, uh is about the fall of uh Eden and the actual outworking of uh Satan and Raphael, the angel and Adam and Eve. And so it's a whole story about the fall. And as Christians, when we read that, who's the hero? God, right? God's the hero in the way we read the story. But the Luciferian tradition sees Satan as the hero because he's the one in Paradise Lost who is seeking to liberate man from this uh tyrannical God. And which, you know, that's why the same story can be read two ways by two different people, depending on the myth that they have deeply set in their souls. What and when I say myth, I don't mean falsehood. I mean the deep-set narrative in our souls. So this is what classical Christian education sets out to do. It's not just a worldview, it's a construct of a myth. And that myth is the true myth. When I say myth, I'm not talking about true or false. I'm saying it's the way we see the world. The true myth is that of creation, fall, redemption, and um the the rebuilding of the world in in Christ. That's the true myth.

Scott Allen 45:39

So just to just to clarify, so Pidea is is a is a term that you would kind of equate with this broader understanding of story, the story of reality, if you will, right? Okay. And that's a little different from your understanding of worldview, which is like you say, more analytic, more ideas based, um kind of presuppositions. This is this is a grand narrative. Is that yeah, is that the way that's true? So and how does it how does that intersect how does that what in your own words, just briefly, how do what how does that need to shape our understanding of education or or the way we do education?

Speaker 2 46:16

Well, uh because kids ingest stories uh more readily than they ingest facts. And those stories, the children's books like uh Pinocchio, like um uh you know, the great children's stories from the scriptures uh that we can draw, uh stories about Little House on the Prairie or um um, you know, Tom Sawyer, all of these stories that we have children read in schools contribute to the myth of their general view of all of history. So we're trying to reinject stories like the the um the St. George and the Dragon. I mean, that was one of the central stories uh of the Middle Ages. It was the central story of the Middle Ages. That's why so many uh the flags of St. George are from the Republic of Georgia all the way to England, all over Europe, is because that was a central myth. So we need we're seeking in classical Christian education to restore the myths that make the West.

Scott Allen 47:20

And it's and I'm I'm hearing there too, um, you know, when you talk about stories and and focusing on really powerful and beautiful stories, Lord of the Rings or um, you know, St. George and the Dragon and some of these great stories that need to be part of education, that it goes beyond there's the three words, uh, you know, the logos, pathos, ethos, that Paidea is a come you know, it's encompassing all of that, right? It's not just logos and ideas, but we're trying to reach and that's what stories do, right? They touch our heart, right? That's the emotions and um and the sense of right and wrong, ethos, all of it. So there this is this comprehensive formation that education accomplishes that you're trying to get at.

Speaker 2 47:59

Exactly. Well said. Well, that you can't.

Luke Allen 48:05

And that's why education started early.

Speaker 2 48:07

If I can comment on that really quick, the reason we make the mistake of pointing to the Greeks is because in the late 1860 in the 1860s, they told us that it was the Greeks that created the West. Nobody believed that before 1860. Well, I shouldn't say nobody. No serious scholar believed that before 1860. Uh that was a uh Jakob Burkhart is the one who wrote the article that just launched the idea that the Greeks and Romans are the uh progenitors of the West. The Greeks and Romans were respected by the medievals, and therefore they were used by the medieval. They were their works were cited heavily by the medievals, but they were always Christianized. And it's the cre, you know, if you ask, why don't we have gladiatorial games with slaves being slain and animals eating them? Why don't we have babies thrown out on the lawn and suit and in the sewers? You know, a lot of the civilization that we have is because the the Christians Christianized Greece and Rome. So we still study a lot of that in classical Christian education. We depend on Cicero for the five canons of education of rhetoric, uh the pro-gymnasmata from the Greeks and the elements of rhetoric, all these various things, but only because they were Christianized by the church.

Roadmap For Families And Self-Education

Scott Allen 49:24

Let's talk about the new book just briefly as we wrap, we're gonna have unfortunately running out of time. I'm sorry to say this is one of these great conversations. I would love to just keep going on. But the the book is forging the American mind. And um, I guess the question I'd have is after people read this book, what habits or practices would you like to see them begin to use or successfully kind of cultivate in their understanding of education the way they educate their children?

Speaker 2 49:51

Well, the book is a roadmap. Uh parts three and four are um basically a walkthrough K through twelve. So you learn lots of techniques, they're very practical. It even shows little diagrams of how to train children how to write, how to curse it, write cursive, right? So it touches on a lot of things. Now, you couldn't teach right out of this book directly because it it's uh you know not long enough to entail all that. But it does touch on everything and give you places to research. The very last chapter of the book, I anticipate your question, which is what do I do with this? And it's uh the last chapter articulates how an adult can self-educate, because most of us weren't classically educated, and it does actually list specific works to read and things to do to become a classical Christian.

Scott Allen 50:39

Okay. And if if you could say, what is one takeaway that you hope people who read your book will have after finishing it and a practical step that they could take? Is that would that be it? Or what how would you describe that?

Speaker 2 50:51

I hope it's a transform. I talk in the book a lot about mental models uh and the transformation of the mind, and you know, Romans 12 talking about transf uh be transformed by the renewing of your mind. That's my wish for this book is that people would be transformed as their mind is renewed and they see the world in a way that they'd never seen it before. And it's a beginning, you know, the book is a little thicker than Battle for the American Mind, but it's really just a beginning. It's like the Army Field Guide. It it will tell you the essentials of what you need to know to get started, but it isn't going to fight the battle for you. You're gonna have to pick up, roll up your sleeves, and uh move into the territory.

Scott Allen 51:28

Wow, what a I I can't wait to read it, honestly. It sounds like such a powerful book. Both of these books. Uh I'm thinking of a parent maybe who is listening to our podcast and they uh would love to have their child be um join join a classical Christian school, um, but it's difficult. Maybe they're a single parent, they can't afford the tuition. Um what steps could they take apart from that to begin to disciple their own children? What how would and I'm sure this book would help them in that, right?

Speaker 2 52:00

It certainly would. Um it there there's so many options out there today that um, you know, parents um if you're a single parent and you don't have the economic means, um there are organ, you know, a lot of these state programs are gonna be helping those those folks very much. There are already programs out there. ACE Scholarships has scholarships in many states that they offer to low-income kids. So don't just, I mean, it's like anything else. Um if you go along with a crowd and you do what everybody else does, you're gonna end up where everybody else is. And there's a lot of despair out there. And there's these days we we're tense, we're at each other's throats, it's it's a desperate time, and we don't want to send our kids down that same road. So take the time to do the research and see if you can find a school and see if they can give you um give you what you you know enough to keep you in your school. Um I think there's a documentary coming out uh in about six months called American Kairos. American Kairos. This documentary is timed to coincide with this uh school choice movement in the United States. It is, I'm I I am not directly um involved in it, but I was interviewed for it and then I found out what it was and I watched it. And it chronicles the lives of many Americans from all walks of life from all over the country and their experience when they lifted up the hood and found out what was going on in their public schools. And um the stories are heart-wrenching, the stories are amazing. Uh the American Kairos, keep your eye out for it, watch that, because it will um it it will change the way you see America's public schools, and hopefully forging the American mind will give you the hope to find a school that that can um turn your child towards the Christian paidea.

Scott Allen 53:54

I think it's a good a good point that you're bringing up that a lot of these schools, Christian schools, um, they want to make it, they they're they're going to bend over backwards to try to help you to get your kid in and to stay in that school. There's a and there's opportunities for that that maybe you need to explore. I just

School Choice, Pluralism, And Confidence

Scott Allen 54:09

a quick question. I'm I'm just curious your reaction to this, because uh we raised our kids homeschooled in Arizona, and just as we were leaving up here to Oregon, they implemented the program that you're talking about where um uh school choice was uh this you know was funded for everybody essentially. And so we took advantage of that even in our last couple of years of homeschooling down there. Um and at the time I thought, oh, this is great. You know, I mean nobody's we we've always paid taxes, and so we've contributed to the funding of public schools, but then we've had to homeschool our kids on our own dime, you know, and here's here's a program that says, no, what you're doing is valuable and will contribute to the education of your kids uh publicly. I I have noticed that people are becoming alarmed at that because in states like Texas and other places, um, Muslims, right, are taking just a lot of advantage of this to set up kind of sharia-based schools as well. What what any thoughts on that? Uh I mean, so this is uh it's freedom for Christians to use state money to educate um, let's say, students in a Christian worldview, but it's the same for Muslims to educate people in Islamic worldview. Any thoughts on that, David?

Speaker 2 55:17

Well, it it demonstrates the bankruptcy of pluralism, the two-dollar word for the idea that our government can be neutral. It cannot be neutral. If you don't like the term Christian nationalism, then think of it as Christendom. But what I can tell you is uh we have seen the failure of secular government. It cannot exist because uh you cannot have a disconnection between the central beliefs of a people and their and their unity as a people. And so the um the problem we have with Sharia law and those sorts of things are that we have not been serious about being a Christian nation, and we need to be more serious about being a Christian nation. But in the short term, I have to say, um, all right, uh if if we can build Christian schools and they build Muslim schools, I am quite confident which system is gonna win because Christ has already told us what the answer is. So let them do it, and we'll build our Christian schools, and we'll, you know, the the the only danger would be if we build squishy Christian schools that try and hold on to the progressive model but put a Bible class and a and a chapel into the into the school. We need worldview in the term that you used earlier, what I would say is paidea. We need that to be the central purpose of all Christian schools. So that because that worldview will, you know, God gave educations, the responsibility of education to the fathers. And if you're a Muslim father, that's your responsibility no less than it is if you're a Christian father.

Scott Allen 57:03

Absolutely.

Speaker 2 57:04

Just so happens that uh, you know, you God's gonna hold you accountable for how you do that, and I wouldn't want to be in the Muslims' um shoes when that happens. But I think it's their responsibility and it's the wrong thing to do to have the government try and take over the responsibility of education.

Scott Allen 57:23

Well, a hundred yeah, a hundred percent. I I uh I one of my pet peeves is a lot of our Christian schools they don't have that holistic paidea concept when it, you know. So for them, Christian schools means basically a a model of the public school with prayer, you know, at the beginning, and um, you know, we don't teach evolution or or something like that. But they don't they don't have a concept of, you know, we we've gotten away. Uh the church has gotten away from this kind of full-orbed, holistic concept of Christianity. Uh as you're right, it's progressed into this kind of personal uh faith kind of model. Obviously, you know, as we always have to say, that's so important, right? People need to be born again. But uh yeah, we do. Yeah, go ahead, David.

Cut Glass Faith Versus The Diamond

Speaker 2 58:09

Pete and I in the book, we give the example of what the progressives did was like one of those uh movies where somebody steals uh the hope diamond or some great diamond, and they replace it with a piece of cut glass on the pressure plate because they and that pre the the metaphor in the book was that the progressives initially replaced Jesus and the Apostles' Creed with the um Pledge of Allegiance and Americanism in the early progressive schools because people would buy that, they wouldn't have bought marks being put on the pressure plate. So what's happened now is that Christian schools have come along many years after they've stolen the real diamond, and they see this shiny piece of glass on that pressure plate, and they think, oh, we just need to polish that up a little bit because it's gotten tarnished over the years, and so we're gonna take that piece of cut glass and we're gonna turn it into a diamond. You'll never turn it into a diamond. It's gonna be a cut glass. That's all it will ever be, and it cannot perform the function of the diamond. Wow. Well, which is classical Christian education.

Scott Allen 59:15

Amen. Well said, I love that analogy. And David, I want to thank you for the work that you're doing to help Christians and all of us kind of rediscover the diamond and and build, once again, rebuild, let's just say, a distinctly Christian form of education. Thank you for all you're doing. Thanks for the books. And the new book is Forging the American Mind. I want to encourage all of our listeners to check it out as well as David and Pete Heggs' previous book. Both of these are so important. If you've if you're interested in education, you've got school-aged kids, you need to understand this. It's vital. David, thanks for the time today. We're so grateful, and may God just bless you and the and the just give you great success with the new book.

Speaker 2 1:00:00

Good to be with you guys today. Good to be in the fight with you. All right, God bless you.

Scott Allen 1:00:03

Take care.