\"Cloistered Virtue\" and Democratic Freedom: Role of Education for American Christianity

¶ … philosophy of education through a historical and then through an explicitly Christian lens, with a focus on the political role of education, and the Christian philosophy of John Milton. Milton's 1644 works Areopagitica and Of Education are invoked to justify the true Christian purpose of education as being exposure to the sort of free expression and free exchange of ideas that are guaranteed in America under the First Amendment.

What would a true Christian philosophy of education look like? The answer might actually be surprising to the majority of Americans who identify themselves as Christian and seek a Christian education. In 2014, frequently Christian education can seem retrograde, a form of ressentiment and indoctrination that derides Darwinism and has a greater interest in upholding a political consensus than in embodying the ideals set forth by Christ Himself. I propose to examine a Christian philosophy of education through a somewhat unique lens -- that of the greatest Christian writer in the English language tradition, the poet John Milton. Milton is most famous today as the author of Paradise Lost, an epic poem on the theme of Adam and Eve's expulsion from Eden, still routinely assigned to college English majors. However it is worth noting that in his own time Milton was a distinguished theologian, political activist and polemical writer, and even had some connection to colonial America. Politically Milton would rise to become a high-ranking member of Oliver Cromwell's protectorate government in England, but he was also connected with early religious figures in the American colonies. In particular, the founder of Rhode Island -- and the establisher of the first Baptist Church in America -- Roger Williams was a close personal friend of Milton, and would tutor Milton in the Dutch language while Milton tutored him in Biblical Hebrew. Indeed, Williams's biographer Edwin Gaustad notes that Williams's "friend, the poet John Milton, published a treatise calling for freedom of the press at the same time that Williams published his treatise calling for freedom of religion" (Gaustad 2005, 59). I bring these facts into discussion because it is Milton's treatise on freedom of the press (entitled Areopagitica) as well as his other writings on education that I will use as the lens through which a Christian philosophy of education can be examined. Understanding its relevance and connection to American freedoms in the earliest days will help to demonstrate the vital and enduring relevance of what Milton himself can add to the understanding of a Christian philosophy of education. It is worth noting, however, that this examination will fall into two parts: first I will approach the philosophy of education as a subject in itself, and then I will approach it again, from the angle of specifically Christian education, using Milton's writings as a philosophical guide.

Obviously education exists in most world cultures, under every conceivable religion. The question is what cultures hope to achieve by education. Looking at one of the world's oldest cultures, China, and its ethical code of Confucianism, it is worth observing that education plays a crucial role. Gutek (2011) states that "Confucius believed that human beings had the power to create a beautiful pattern of their humanness through education" (14). This "beautiful pattern" referred to by Gutek is, of course, nothing more than a system of social organization. In Chinese history, for example, it is worth noting that Confucianism presents an ethical code, but is not by definition a religion, because it makes no particular claims about God or anything beyond human understanding: instead, Confucius presented a system of relationships and hierarchies that would make social existence function more efficiently. In particular, however, Confucius emphasizes social hierachies in a way that would be utterly inappropriate for a twenty-first century democratic society: to understand that peasants automatically owe obedience to an emperor may, in fact, be a useful educational goal for the society that is reflected in Confucianism, but it is utterly pointless in a society with a different social structure. The Confucian philosophy of education is meant to provide a structure to a very specific society, and indeed the only way in which religion ever seems to be manifest in the Analects of Confucius is to discuss the duties of rulers themselves, and whether or not they maintain a hold on what Confucius describes as "the mandate of heaven." In other words, this classical Chinese educational system describes a society so rigidly hierarchical that the only person who is answerable to God is the emperor -- all others are instructed to concentrate on being answerable to the emperor, and to their immediate duties (such as obedience to parents). The idea seems to be that, if society is run according to this order, all will be harmonious. There is not a lot of room for individual initiative, individual self-discovery, individual salvation, or any other concerns that an American reader -- raised in a strongly individualist culture -- might have about this educational system.

To look at a more specifically American model, then, it is necessary to look for classical American examples. In this arena, Thomas Jefferson may be the closest thing that the United States has to a Confucius-like sage (if this suggestion is not an insult to Benjamin Franklin). Jefferson provides us with a highly useful example, because Jefferson is interested in examining the philosophy of education from a purely secular standpoint: given his strong insistence on the separation of church and state, for which he was such a profound legislative advocate, it is no accident that for Jefferson the question of education is about what it would be most purely useful from the standpoint of the state itself to promote by means of education. If we understand from Confucius that, in some sense, every educational platform or syllabus is inherently, if not always openly, an endorsement of some view of the pattern or order which this society hopes to impose upon its own citizens (on the micro level) and upon the world at large (on the macro level), then Jefferson's view of education is a good example of what the generation of Founding Fathers had in mind philosophically. This is the generation that wrote the U.S. Constitution, the legal basis on which the nation still stands, and it would be unwise to assume that these were men without religion: instead, they were men of differing religions who wished to create a country that was founded (among other principles) upon a principle of religious tolerance and acceptance. (We will return to this subject when we look more closely at Roger Williams and John Milton.) This is, of course, why the U.S. Constitution contains no invocation of God in its text, and no reference to religion except in the negative sense -- in the clause that specifies "no religious test" shall ever be required to hold governmental office. These general tendencies are reflected in Jefferson's writings on education. For a good example, we can examine Jefferson's "Bill for the More General Diffusion of Knowledge," which institutes by legislation an educational system in Jefferson's home state of Virginia. In this document, Jefferson offers some rationale for the purpose of education at the outset:

[E]xperience hath shewn, that even under the best forms, those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny; and it is believed that the most effectual means of preventing this would be, to illuminate, as far as practicable, the minds of the people at large, and more especially to give them knowledge of those facts, which history exhibiteth, that, possessed thereby of the experience of other ages and countries, they may be enabled to know ambition under all its shapes, and prompt to exert their natural powers to defeat its purposes (Jefferson 1778)

The basic principle here is one of maintaining a self-perpetuating status for the tolerant form of government which Jefferson endorses. The goal is not indoctrination, but rather the enlargement of all knowledge for the purpose of skeptically analyzing political power and maintaining an awareness of when it has codified itself as "ambition" and "tyranny." Historically speaking, it is crucial to note the date of Jefferson's legislation here, which falls between the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution. The American Revolution is fresh in his mind -- and it is worth recalling that the British crown, whose rule over America was overthrown by Jefferson's generation, was itself the temporal authority of a state-established church, the Church of England. The specific avoidance of religious precept in education for Jefferson and his generation stemmed from a specific and pained awareness that even religious matters could be perverted by allowing them to slip under the control of the direct source of political power. This was, after all, the earlier rationale for the Protestant revolt against the Papal authority of the Catholic church -- conceived of as a kind of Christian-themed monarchical tyranny -- and for Jefferson's generation, the King of England was no less than the Pope of Rome a form of religiously-sanctioned despot. It was therefore understood as fairly self-evident why the government of a new nation which had just escaped from under the yoke of such a system would avoid things like the endorsement of any specific religious creed (or even God) in its official founding documents. Jefferson's point in the "Bill for the More General Diffusion of Knowledge" is that those who are unaware of history are doomed to repeat it: that is why his legislative intent and emphasis is placed upon the knowledge of political systems, and how easily they may slip into tyrannical forms of social control due to the "ambition" of rulers.

It is at this point that we may turn our attention to John Milton. Milton's role in English history and government would have been a relatively recent memory for the generation of founding fathers in America -- as noted, Milton was actually close friends with the early Baptist leader of colonial America, Roger Williams, the founder of Rhode Island. But more to the point, Milton had a political role in a revolution a little over a hundred years before Jefferson was writing: in other words, Jefferson was closer in time to Milton than we are to Jefferson nowadays. And it is worth reviewing a little history about the English Revolution of the early seventeenth century, because to a certain extent it provides important context for the foundation of America and for the foundation of the American educational system. The English Revolution -- like the American Revolution a little over a hundred years later -- was a revolt against the tyranny of monarchy itself. In the case of the English Revolution, however, there was an added religious element: King Charles I of England was deemed to be insufficiently committed to separating the Church of England from the Church of Rome. Those who wished for a Christianity more fully purified of the Vatican's influence were known as "Puritans" -- Milton was one of their number, as were most of the early founders of colonial New England, who found it easier to pursue their own religious liberty on a different continent than to attempt to navigate the state control of religion under the English monarch. Thus it is worth noting that Milton was philosophically and doctrinally closely allied with the founders of colonial America -- and indeed was close friends with the founder of at least one American state. However, the course of the English Revolution was substantially more violent than the later American Revolution: it ended with the Puritan party executing King Charles I, and declaring an end to the English kingdom and the establishment of a "commonwealth," an explicitly non-monarchical form of representative government. This would have a substantial influence on the early United States as well -- of the thirteen original colonies, the three largest and most influential -- Massachussetts, Pennsylvania, and Virginia -- are to this day not "states" of the United States, but "commonwealths." The term in each case was derived from the government of England after it had deposed and beheaded King Charles I, and established a "commonwealth" under Oliver Cromwell. In Cromwell's government, Milton held a high-ranking position as "foreign language secretary" -- a position not unlike that of a Secretary of State, except that Milton's role also entailed a substantial amount of written justification of the government and its policies. So we can see Milton's role in the English government in the seventeenth century as being not unlike that of Jefferson's or Madison's in the American government in the late eighteenth century -- Milton frequently published pamphlets on various subjects in the same way that the founding fathers issued the Federalist Papers and other such documents.

Once Milton is situated in this historical context, it becomes far easier to see what his relevance is to the philosophy of education -- and more specifically to a Christian philosophy of education. In its revolt against monarchical religious tyranny, the Commonwealth government of England was precisely similar to the later governmental system adopted in America by the Founding Fathers. The chief difference, however, was that Cromwell, Milton and the English Puritans were overall more explicitly Christian in their goals and intentions. However, Milton was also a profound and dedicated philosopher of education -- with explicitly Christian purposes. I think a closer examination of Milton's educational philosophy will help us to understand why Jefferson and the other early American thinkers implemented the sort of government they did, but will also show us that a true Christian philosophy of education -- of the sort that Milton developed -- might not look like what the twenty-first century might imagine it should look like. In other words, we still have a lot to learn from Milton.

For a start, it is worth noting that the most prominent living scholar of Milton's work, the Duke University scholar Stanley Fish, has argued that the purpose of all of Milton's writing is explicitly educational. Fish writes, in his legendary study of Milton Surprised by Sin, that "Milton's purpose is to educate the reader to an awareness of his position and responsibilities as a fallen man, and to a sense of the distance which separates him from the innocence once his" (Fish 1971, 1). In other words, Milton holds to a fairly standard Christian notion of original sin -- in works like Paradise Lost, Fish argues, Milton will allow his readers to make mistakes and misunderstand the meaning until they are corrected in the next line, as a way of underscoring to his readers that they inhabit a fallen world, and that true understanding will always be attained through struggle and error. Indeed, in Milton's 1644 treatise Of Education, he more or less explicitly links his educational philosophy to the notion of original sin, when he writes

The end then of learning is to repair the ruins of our first parents by regaining to know God aright, and out of that knowledge to love him, to imitate him, to be like him, as we may the nearest by possessing our souls of true virtue, which being united to the heavenly grace of faith makes up the highest perfection. (Milton 1644, Of Education)

Milton uses the word "end" here in the sense of "goal" or "purpose" -- the true purpose of education is to attempt to overcome the fallenness of humankind as a result of original sin, and to attempt to become closer to God through learning. This is more or less exactly the structure of Paradise Lost as Stanley Fish describes it in Surprised by Sin -- the goal is pious and conventionally Christian.

It is, I would argue, the means to that end -- the educational process which Milton wishes to expose us to, in the pursuit of that rather conventional Christian goal -- which may strike twenty-first century Christians as surprising. We noted earlier that the colonial American proposals for freedom of religion -- which had been advanced here by Milton's friend and colleague Roger Williams -- were published alongside Milton's legendary defense of the freedom of the press in Areopagitica. It is in this work, I think, that Milton provides the basis for a Christian philosophy of education which is sorely in need of revival in the Internet age. Milton's Areopagitica has more or less become enshrined in America under the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution: he wrote it while at work in the Commonwealth government, and it was essentially an argument for the freedom of thought, debate, expression, and the press. Milton was arguing the rationale whereby the new non-monarchical government should not do what the monarchy had done, and maintain oversight and censorship of everything that is published. In other words, Milton is arguing for the proliferation of argument and publication -- four hundred years before there was an Internet, he is calling for the kind of grand cacophony of opinion and argument that we see flourishing on the Internet today. And what Milton does is to offer an explicitly Christian rationale for the freedom of ideas and expression: