Reader: Teach logic and critical thinking in school again

Published 2:22 pm Friday, April 23, 2021

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To the Editor:
I was disappointed to find out that public education will be short changed and students will be brainwashed and indoctrinated by the new President Biden administration. Local public schools should be accountable to the families they serve, not politicians. Parents and teachers deserve the greatest voice in education. God has given parents the responsibility to educate and instill values and morals in their children. The U.S. spends more per pupil than any other country but ranks near the bottom in science and math among industrial nations.
Isaac Watts’ book, “Logic or the Right Use of Reason” was taught for over 200 years in American schools. Watts rightly believed that if a person couldn’t reason correctly, then he couldn’t interpret the Bible accurately, nor distinguish truth from error. Mental clarity helps us to have moral clarity. Being able to recognize good and bad thinking is necessary for citizens in a free society. John Adams said, “Liberty cannot be maintained without general knowledge of the people.” Schools need to go back to the teaching of logic and critical thinking and the memorization of facts. Christianity is more than logical but it’s logical. Elijah used logic when he said, “If the Lord is God, follow Him, but if Baal is god, follow him.” Christianity is the only religion that prevents all evil pride because it’s the only one that requires no works since Jesus did everything on the cross to pay for sin, Jesus gets all the glory. Since pride is evil Christianity would be the logical religion God would use to have a relationship with sinful people. C.S. Lewis said, “God is no fonder of intellectual slackers than any other slackers!”
We have more fake news than ever before because we have fewer Christians working in the major media and Hollywood than ever before. The globalist controlling the media microphones decide who plays the heroes and villains to best promote their anti-America socialist agenda. So we need to use logic and critical thinking more than ever and tune up your baloney detector. These people in Hollywood and the major media think that all knowledge begins and ends with them but like Job’s friends are, “darkening counsel with words without knowledge.” Almost none of them correctly predicted that Trump would win. None predicted COVID-19 and that we would be wearing masks for a year. As Jeremiah asked, “Since they have rejected the word of the Lord, what kind of wisdom do they have?” Paul writes in Ephesians that people are “darkened in their understanding and ignorant ” due to the hardening of their hearts. One of the curses God allows on evil countries like America is madness/insanity according to Deuteronomy 28:28. Romans 1 declares that a nation that rejects God over and over will become vain, useless, futile or foolish in their thinking. Despite claiming to be so wise and so smart the nation will become so foolish in their thinking that they will accept deception, lies and false teaching. So lack of moral clarity can hurt our mental clarity.
The main places America has lost common sense and wisdom is in not listening to old people and not studying and memorizing the Bible as much as we once did. The Bible is the best selling book in history. Logically you would expect a book written by God to be the best selling book in history. Before 1963 a class in Bible was required to graduate from most schools. I took a class in Bible when I was attending Elizabethton High School. CBM Ministries did Bible stories in all Carter County schools until the ACLU sued and had them removed in 1988. President Franklin D. Roosevelt said, “I feel that a comprehensive study of the Bible is a liberal education for anyone.” President Theodore Roosevelt said, “No educated man can afford to be ignorant of the Bible.” President John Adams said, “The Bible is the best book in the world. It contains more than all the libraries I have seen.” The Christian is called to be innocent and shrewd. (Matt. 10) Christians are called to test or prove everything. (1 Thess. 5) All Christians are commanded to study and search the Bible because it’s a source of knowledge superior to all others (2 Tim. 3, Acts17, etc.) If Christians study the Bible and pray and ask God to give them wisdom (James 1) then we can obey the command to love God with our minds and we will have more common sense and wisdom then any other people. God commands Christian parents to rear their children “in the fear and admonition of the Lord,” and no government agency — absent clear abuse — ought to interfere with it. There’s one kind of news that’s completely believable and always true and it’s the good news of Jesus. The Bible teaches that the only way to heaven is to have faith in the sacrifice of Jesus as your only way to heaven and belief in the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus. This will offend some people. “It’s better to offend people into heaven then to flatter people into Hell!”

D.D. Nave
Elizabethton

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