283 - The Other Mystique

The Other Mystique
By James E. Loder

MRS. PIERSON'S attack ("Theology and Today's Informed Child") on anti-intellectualism in education is hardly novel but it is to some extent warranted. It is hardly novel for public education because students and the entire American public have been drilled on the virtues of intellectual "excellence" ever since Sputnik I. It is not novel for church school education because intellectual content for church school curricula has been a major emphasis ever since the American advent of neo-orthodoxy (Karl Barth's emphasis upon the "Word of God" in particular) and the demise of such Dewey derivatives as George Albert Coe.

On the other hand, the attack is probably warranted, as Mrs. Pierson says, because the remarkable acceleration in intellectual pace actually being effected by the public schools does constitute a challenge to the present church school pace. The public schools are proving the significance of what developmental psychologists such as Jean Piaget have long since recognized. Namely, when the child reaches puberty (incidentally, this is a period in human development not a chronological moment such as "age 12") he begins to use the capacity for "rational coordination." This capacity to be objective and circumspect in the best sense is both the absolutely necessary prerequisite for doing theology and the intellectual outcry for something to think. Furthermore, Mrs. Pierson's article is especially warranted at this time because there is in American theology a growing disenchantment with Barthianism and there is a correlative, though often unjustified, dismissal of the "Word of God" emphasis in Barth's theological method. Partially as a consequence of this change in theological mood, content-oriented curriculum builders are in the throes of re-evaluating their work. One might hope with Mrs. Pierson that their re-evaluation will not capitulate to the anti-intellectual mystique.

However, there is always a problem in making an attack on anti-intellectualism: one must be very careful to avoid intellectual errors. it is difficult to see how Mrs. Pierson can begin with a rather simple appeal to the historical Jesus, age 12, and conclude with an appeal for de-mythologizing Scripture according to the canons of Bultmann. This implied confusion in criteria tends to undermine the force of Mrs. Pierson's statement.

284 - The Other Mystique

Since Mrs. Pierson's article is not a study in hermeneutics, this problem must be subordinated to a second: the problem of the dichotomy between intellectualism and anti-intellectualism. Social psychologist Urie Bronfenbrenner is one among many who have expressed grave doubts about the single-minded pursuit of "excellence" in public education. Citing several studies, Bronfenbrenner asserts that while the pursuit of "excellence" produces more "planfulness" and better "performance" in individuals, it also makes them "more aggressive, tense, domineering, and cruel." Evidently the consequences of pursuing "excellence" are as one-sided as the results of advocating "adjustment." The development of "intellect" in church or school according to the standards of "excellence" is an expression of a modern mystique just as surely as anti-intellectualism, in some quarters, is part of the Christian mystique. Since it is more a matter of propaganda than of progress simply to advocate one mystique against another, it would seem that the dichotomy between intellectualism and anti-intellectualism represents a malformation of the problem for Christian education.

The problem centers not upon how the church can better imitate public educational institutions, but rather upon the interrelationship between rational coordinate thinking, personality development and the socio-cultural order. Analyzing this interrelatedness is no simple matter. Jerome Bruner in The Process of Education makes a major contribution regarding the first two factors but takes little account of the socio-cultural order. Kimball and McClellan in Education and the New America make a significant contribution regarding the first and third factors, but their view of personality development is clearly subordinated to their views of the socio-cultural order. The analytical difficulty in maintaining balance among these three aspects of human action is immense, but it must be faced if church education is to avoid bouncing to and fro between mystiques.

In practice this analytic balance takes the form of education and social action. The necessity for maintaining this balance should prompt Christian educators to take responsibility for enabling religion to find its academically appropriate place in the public schools (in English literature, and American history for example). Within the institutional church, Christian educators seeking to maintain this balance should put "excellence," both as it exists in public education and as it might exist in theological inquiry, in its proper relationship to the study of human values and the redemption of human nature.