Today is one of the feast days of St. Thomas Aquinas in the Catholic Church, and Aquinas as an influential and innovative philosopher and an early advocate of popular sovereignty was important for all of Western civilization, even non-Catholics. One of his quotes is, “The purpose of theology is threefold: to refute error, to teach sound morals, and to contemplate truth.” But I think we can apply that threefold definition not just to theology, but to learning more generally.
Now, it is true that some branches of learning, as for instance geometry and algebra, might not be directly connected to morals, whereas, say, history and literature are. But for most branches of learning, including some of the sciences, it is necessary that a teacher guide his instruction and his students by right morals. Furthermore, he ought to set for himself and for students a goal of refuting error and illuminating the truth.
Let me explain further what I mean, and less abstractly. I had a history professor in college who was very elitist and racist and was perfectly convinced that slavery wasn’t evil. His account of the Civil War to his students, therefore, was entirely influenced – and egregiously biased – by his rejection of the argument that no man should own another man, especially not based purely on skin color.
Or take a very different sort of college than the one I went to, a college or university where there is a “gender studies” program or where professors encourage students to hate Israel. If a professor is antisemitic, that professor’s morals and rejection of truth will, of course, distort everything he teaches. The same goes for a professor who believes that a man can become a woman.
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Why do leftists insist on throwing out classic literature in favor of woke slam poetry and CRT grievance stories? Why do they rewrite biology and history books? Why have explicit pornography in elementary school? Why do they so aggressively try to label every hero of the past as either a villain, a feminist, or a homosexual? Why vilify Christianity and Judaism but glorify Islam and Satanism? Leftists understand what conservatives did not seem to grasp until just the last few years; namely, how terribly important one’s politics, religion, and morals are to shaping education and therefore our future.
It is an interesting and nearly unprecedented fact about our time that we have no truly great artists, poets, and fiction writers, and precious few great inventors, actors, and composers. That does not mean, of course, that there are not many people with the genius or talent to be great, but mainstream culture, from poetry to music, does not emphasize excellence or genius. If we have the equivalent of a Michelangelo, a Beethoven, a Virgil, a Charles Dickens, a Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, or a G.K. Chesterton, they are buried in relative obscurity. We are a mediocre and puerile culture rapidly becoming downright corrupt and inane.
I do believe conservatives are increasingly awake to this danger, but it is not enough to identify the problem; we also have to fix it. We have before us the monumental task of identifying the lies and immoral biases in our own educations before moving forward with a renewed, reformed, and refocused education for the rising generation. Thomas Aquinas was right – we ought to refute error, teach sound morals, and contemplate truth.
