Today’s educational system is flawed on many levels. Let me give you some context to that statement. I grew up as a home schooled student until the 8th grade when my parents decided to send me to a Christian school. Four years later I graduated and went to my first secular college in Albany, NY. I am now finishing my 5th year of schooling and have noticed some pretty predictable yet alarming trends among secular education.

What I am talking about today is the concept of morality. Right and wrong is not taught in the classroom any more. I hope that does not surprise you. What has replaced mom and dad’s black and white concepts of good and bad is the concept of “moral reasoning”.

You see, while we are teaching the next generation to do whatever they please, we all still like to feel good about ourselves. This is where moral reasoning comes into play. The basic tenet of this philosophy is that morality is something that can be reasoned out in our head and not something that is taught.

Psychologist Lawrence Kohlberg is one of the key players in instituting this form of moral thinking. He rejects character education and rather implies that students must not learn rules, but must instead learn how to reason out their own rules. While this makes us feel good about our sin, because we “reasoned” that it was okay, this is teaching the next generation that they can participate in any type of immoral debauchery as long as they can justify it in their head.

This is exactly what was taught in my classroom less than a week ago!

It is better disguised than what I have portrayed though. To teach this method, a moral dilemma is imposed on the class and a discussion determines the morality of the situation. The situation usually is presented to imply that honesty may not be the correct course of action, and that stealing or killing may in fact be a legitimate answer to the dilemma.

I attend pharmacy school, so this was the example that was presented to me in class:

A man’s wife is dying of a rare form of cancer and there appeared to be no cure until a druggist recently discovered a rare form of radiation that could possibly cure the cancer. It only cost the pharmacist $200 to obtain, but he is selling the cure for $2000, far above what it originally cost him. The man tried everything to collect the money, borrowing from anyone who would lend him a dime but could only scrape together $1000. The druggist refused to lower his price.

Should the man steal the drug?

The problem here is that without some moral standard, the issue gets cloudy very fast. About half of my class said they would steal the drug! Those that said they would steal used various ways of justifying it, but under Kohlberg’s model, any way of justifying it was good enough because their reasoning was their morality.

Of course the man should not steal the drug. Why? Stealing is wrong! It’s a sin! I don’t have to reason that out or think about because I have a moral standard that surpasses my own reasoning. The Bible is the key for deciphering right and wrong and knowing what is moral or not. Exodus 20:15 says very plainly, “Thou shalt not steal.”

Our education system is undermining future generations by teaching them that morality is relative. The new 21st century mantra is: Do what you want as long as you can justify it in your head!

That’s exactly what the Devil wants us to do. In the garden of eden the serpent was doing this almost 6,000 years ago. He questioned God’s moral code and tried to help Adam and Eve justify their disobedience with some absurb form of moral reasoning. I wonder how that ended…

Base your life on the real moral standard: The 1611 King James Bible!

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