I recently finished historian David McCullough's book The Pioneers in which he recounts the history of the settlement of Marietta, Ohio and surrounding territories in the late 1700s. It's very interesting, but one thing in particular that stood out to me was the importance the early founders of the region placed on the establishment of schools and colleges.
To the leaders of these frontier colonies, men like Rufus Putnam, Samuel Hildreth, Manasseh Cutler, and, most notably, Manasseh's eldest son, Ephraim, to name but a few, placed enormous value on the cultivation of the mind despite the exiguous circumstances in which they lived.
This was especially interesting given the attitude which prevails in many quarters of our society today where even the poorest among us have so much more of the amenities of life than did these early pioneers. We might describe this unfortunate state of mind as the Pink Floyd "We Don't Need No Education" attitude.
What's the difference between people scraping out a living on the frontier, possessing very little of the goods of life, beset by Indians and disease, their lives filled with grief, pain and worry, who nevertheless treasured their books and their schools, and those of us today who squander and disdain the amazing learning opportunities which surround us everywhere we turn?
No doubt there are several possible answers to this question, but one which I think should not be overlooked is that the early pioneers were steeped in a Christian worldview which saw learning as a form of obedience to the commandment to love God with all one's heart, soul and mind.
For these men and women, learning about the world God had made, reading literature which inculcated Biblical values, and nurturing a deep appreciation for both was a way of loving God with all their minds. Even studying the ancient pagans like Plato, Aristotle, Cicero and Marcus Aurelius yielded important insights into the truth of their own faith.
Things are otherwise today. Our secular culture has a much greater appetite for hedonism and entertainment, especially entertainment that stimulates the senses, than for intellectual growth. A lot of us are like the narrator in Paul Simon's "Kodachrome," almost addicted to the pleasure to be found through the lens of his camera and disdainful of "all the crap" he learned in high school.
Secularization has made us more materialistic and more effete that our pioneer ancestors. In many quarters of our culture we seem to have lost the love of learning that drove those hardy souls 240 years ago to build schools as soon as their own homes were under roof.
It's a loss that may well be crucial to our very survival as a nation for as Thomas Jefferson noted, "Any nation that expects to remain ignorant and free expects what never was and never will be."