My children's school district superintendent recently published a piece titled, "The future of our educational system is being shaped today." He posits that the district's mission is to help students be "effective critical thinkers, problem-solvers, researchers, communicators, and responsible citizens, is right on track," and I agree with him. However, he prefaces the topic with recounting a trip to China where he met students who said, "American students don't work very hard. We're going to take your jobs." The implication was that an important part of the motivation for this mission is for our children to be able to compete for jobs against their peers living in China.
I recently had the privilege of listening to Andy Crouch speak at Gordon College. Andy is Executive Editor at Christianity Today and popular speaker and author on sociology and Christianity in America. One of his themes was that a Liberal Arts education is about developing whole human beings who are able to bear the burden of responsibility that comes with being a free (liberal) person. He goes a step further in saying that this valuing of the whole person implied in the Liberal Arts tradition stems from a recognition that all people are image-bearers of God. At its foundations, it is this perspective that motivates the Liberal Arts tradition. Without it, as reflected in college demographics today, the Liberal Arts tradition will fade away.
Our school district is one of the best in the country and has gone above and beyond what we would have hoped for in caring for and training our children. We are very thankful to be part of this district and we believe its mission is aligned in many ways with this Liberal Arts focus on developing the whole person. I worry, however, that the mission is in danger of becoming skewed if its underlying motivation is to create graduates who will be able to effectively compete for jobs with the Chinese. I hope instead our district's mission will continue to build on its roots in the Liberal Arts tradition, simply honoring the reality that all students are "fearfully and wonderfully" made.
Wednesday, March 19, 2014
Tuesday, March 18, 2014
The Dulles Brothers - a System of Global Governance
Influential in American Foreign Policy and the global political economy for over four decades, the Dulles Brothers, Allen and Foster, reached the pinnacles of their power in the 1950s as Director of the CIA and Secretary of State respectively.
They arguably played a critical role in not just fighting the Cold War, but starting and escalating the Cold War in a way that likely would not have happened without them. They very directly deposed foreign leaders from Guatemala to Iran and were instrumental in leading the US into the Vietnam War. A fundamental principal of their approach to US foreign policy was a belief that the world is and should be run by a cadre of international elites.
As Foster told the International Chamber of Commerce in Berlin in 1937, "It is a well ordered domestic economy which provides the greatest assurance of peace, and the problem of international peace is but an extension of the problem of internal peace." They were founding members of the Council on Foreign Relations whose one-word Latin motto "ubique," meaning "everywhere," spoke volumes of their belief that it was only through international capitalism tied into all workings of society in all corners of the globe that international peace and stability would be achieved.
None of the above is necessarily flawed reasoning. But regardless one's worldview, a governing system left unchecked in the hands of humans will become corrupt. It is only by a set of values that transcend the governors and the governed that a system will be just. As James Madison, America's fourth president said, "You must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself."
In the name of effective (probably even "just" in their eyes) global governance, the Dulles brothers perpetrated fraud and supported cronyism of epic proportions. They made policy that directly benefited their business clients and their friends or made it in retribution for slights of their clients and their friends. Those on the right side became incredibly wealthy and powerful in the process. Those on the wrong side were deposed and bankrupted or on a grander scale died in unjust wars or suffered poverty through a flawed system.
Then is the right answer to work to remodel global political economic systems around universal truths? A topic for another discussion, but this I believe is the definition of a society and the reason societies have been birthed and the way they have been governed from time in memorial. Yet we still are where we are today, so there must be something more to the answer that we have yet to fully grasp..
Much of the thinking above is derived from Stephen Kinzer's "The Brothers: John Foster Dulles, Allen Dulles, and Their Secret World War"
They arguably played a critical role in not just fighting the Cold War, but starting and escalating the Cold War in a way that likely would not have happened without them. They very directly deposed foreign leaders from Guatemala to Iran and were instrumental in leading the US into the Vietnam War. A fundamental principal of their approach to US foreign policy was a belief that the world is and should be run by a cadre of international elites.
As Foster told the International Chamber of Commerce in Berlin in 1937, "It is a well ordered domestic economy which provides the greatest assurance of peace, and the problem of international peace is but an extension of the problem of internal peace." They were founding members of the Council on Foreign Relations whose one-word Latin motto "ubique," meaning "everywhere," spoke volumes of their belief that it was only through international capitalism tied into all workings of society in all corners of the globe that international peace and stability would be achieved.
None of the above is necessarily flawed reasoning. But regardless one's worldview, a governing system left unchecked in the hands of humans will become corrupt. It is only by a set of values that transcend the governors and the governed that a system will be just. As James Madison, America's fourth president said, "You must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself."
In the name of effective (probably even "just" in their eyes) global governance, the Dulles brothers perpetrated fraud and supported cronyism of epic proportions. They made policy that directly benefited their business clients and their friends or made it in retribution for slights of their clients and their friends. Those on the right side became incredibly wealthy and powerful in the process. Those on the wrong side were deposed and bankrupted or on a grander scale died in unjust wars or suffered poverty through a flawed system.
Then is the right answer to work to remodel global political economic systems around universal truths? A topic for another discussion, but this I believe is the definition of a society and the reason societies have been birthed and the way they have been governed from time in memorial. Yet we still are where we are today, so there must be something more to the answer that we have yet to fully grasp..
Much of the thinking above is derived from Stephen Kinzer's "The Brothers: John Foster Dulles, Allen Dulles, and Their Secret World War"
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
