Well, I have finished my first book for the Summer, John Stuart Mill's On Liberty. Granted, I had already started this book, but nonetheless it is book number one, so I will start the discussion part of the blog. There were two things that were most interesting to me.
1. Mill gives a very concise critique of the Christians of the time, which my roommate Isaiah thought was very good also. The point that he made was that early Christians followed the precepts of Christianity closely, but that while Christians of his time gave reverence to the sayings of Christ, they just followed in most cases the mores of current civilization. I think this is applicable in our time also, not merely for marginal Christians, but for many others. People do not often really analyze the way in which many of the commandments in the Bible apply to their own lives, as they should.
2. Mill makes a distinction between the requirement by the state that individuals educate their children and state education of children. I believe that this is important in that the state generally assumes the role of the educator in the United States, which means that parents do not have very much say in the education of their children if they are a minority in their area and disagree with the methods used or the curriculum taught. Mill suggests requiring education, subsidizing those who cannot afford to give their children education, and then giving examinations in indisputably factual disciplines such as mathematics, history, and grammar while not exercising direct control over schools. I would suggest that this is an excellent way of doing things that would be great for Christian education and would allow religious education in schools while preventing the government from fiddling with religion. Further, the decentralization of education would insulate the system from a proliferation of errors caused by the acceptance of erroneous ideas by central authorities.
Well, that's my take on the book, and a shameless plugging of my political ideals in the second point. (Though of course the book aligns with my political ideas pretty closely)
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This is really interesting, Gavin. I would like to read this book someday.
ReplyDelete1. Did Mill give any specific instance of a Christian precept that the Christians of his day tended to ignore? Did Mill say that society would be better off if Christians applied the Bible's teaching to their lives more carefully? - Or was he simply pointing out an inconsistency?
2. As someone who was educated outside of the public school system, I heartily agree with Mill's distinction between state-supported and state-run education. But decentralizing education presents some problems. Consider the difficulty of setting up satisfactory educational standards. Even subjects that we might like to imagine are "indisputably factual," such as history and biology, might run into controversy - don't you think?
Rachel,
ReplyDelete1. Mill states: "All Christians believe that blessed are the poor and humble, and those who are ill-used by the world; that it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter heaven; that they should judge not, lest they be judged; that they should swear not at all; that they should love their neighbor as themselves; that if one take their cloak, they should give him their coat also; that they should take no thought for the morrow; that if they would be perfect they should sell all that they have and give it to the poor. They are not insincere when they say that they believe these things. They do believe them, as people believe what they have always heard lauded and never discussed." Mill was pointing out that if ideas are just held as true without discussion then the holding of them becomes hollow, as an indication that all things ought to be discussed and analyzed. He may have thought that society would be better, but he does not divulge, he merely argues for free inquiry.
2. Certainly those subjects would still be controversial to an extent, outside of say, mathematics and statistics, but even if the current standardized testing were kept, then there would still be greater diversity in education, and less centralized control. Frankly, the ease of the normal standardized tests, at least the ones I had to take in Oklahoma, leads me to believe this would not be too much of a problem, as their simplicity indicates that there would be enough relatively uncontroversial material to make them from.