Is Education and Information REALLY the Same as Knowledge and Understanding?

IS EDUCATION AND INFORMATION REALLY THE SAME THING AS KNOWLEDGE AND UNDERSTANDING?

Our Thesis, in this Brief Article, is that Purely Materialistic Education Must Lead to Moral Tyranny!

Several times - in my hearing - British Prime Minister Tony Blair has stated what he feels that the British people need most,

In fact, along with Blair's continual desire to discuss “public services” (which he apparently feels have improved under the Labour government) education is a topic which Blair appears to frequently return to (it could certainly be asked why Blair does not seize on some Grand Vision which he sees the British people as fulfilling and which might prove more motivating and inspiring in a land which shows a record disinterest in politics and politicians - but thats another topic!).

Many years ago I heard a politician, in talking about the squalor and deprivation which he had witnessed in large parts of Africa, state that 'Africa primarily needs education and information!'. I always remember that 1960s quote because it appeared to sum up a new wave of evangelism which we were apparently starting to send to Africa – materialistic evangelism! We had previously sent Africa the Christian gospel, but now we started to send them a 'gospel' all about economics, education and information. Now, of course, the African people have needed some of those things as well – I do not deny that – after all, what good would the gospel do you if you faced starvation within weeks? But my problem was with the materialistic influences which were not intended to supplement the spiritual, but to replace the spiritual.

African children are always eager to learn

African children have always been eager to learn, but was it Christianity which taught Africans to build schools and hospitals or materialistic Darwinism?

We have entered an age in which the Christian gospel is no longer seen as the answer to human suffering because all human suffering is now reduced to the physical, materialistic, circumstantial and immediate. We look at apparent physical needs – which is fine – but we refuse to contemplate moral/spiritual/metaphysical factors which might lie behind the surface, yet could be at least partly a factor. An example? If a man believes in God, he will have a strong desire to provide for his family and to be a responsible citizen because this is part and parcel of all religious experience and teaching. That man will also be more likely not to be entirely selfish but to also consider his neighbour - others outside of his immediate family – that just comes with the territory! However, if his religion is occultic and superstitious perhaps involving animism, fatalism, or whatever else (true of much of Africa prior to the arrival of Christian missionaries), then while that man may still certainly want to clothe and feed his family, that concern will be tempered by harmful and negative influences; he may now not see his neighbour in such a good light but may see him as a competitor who he needs to get the better of, perhaps through 'spells', shamanistic practises or whatever else. This is just a very simple illustration of the large part that religious experience, or the attitude towards religion, plays in deciding what sort of societies people will tend to form. There is no point in anybody saying, 'Well, we will just evaluate these influences without religion' since - as just about every anthropologist tells us - it is impossible to separate religion from human existence and experience - after all, even atheists are taking up a specific philosophical position in response to religion!

Within a hundred years of the first Christian missionaries arriving in Africa, schools and hospitals were springing up in many places because those missionaries and their converts believed that every human being is made 'in the image of God'! The drive came from people who were commited to a spiritual ideal (belief in the Lord Jesus Christ). Today we tend to shrink from acknowledging this, yet it is a truism which is undeniable. Perhaps we should be very thankful that those early missionaries were not 'evolutionary missionaries' who taught 'the survival of the fittest' and the teaching that people are some kind of meaningless biological/chemical accident – if so, Africa would surely have changed very little!

Yet many modern social and political observers and commentators feel that the problems which exist in the modern world can be readily solved by economics (money, in other words), and by education (by which they certainly mean non-spiritual materialistic education). In this way, they appear to promote the concept that education and information are more important than knowledge and understanding! Yet education is meaningless without evaluation, comprehension and understanding. I think I can best illustrate this by comparing the human mind to my computer; my computer can process millions of pieces of information in an hour – the information is then stored and can be located on its hard drive very quickly when needed. In that way, it might be said that my computer is experiencing a very high standard of education and is simply stacked with information! Yet my computer has no real knowledge, discernment or understanding!

Education and information, then, are not – and never can be - the same things as knowledge, evaluation and understanding! Yet we now live in a politically-correct society which tells us that we should not pass on our own knowledge and understanding to others in case it offends – just give them the facts! We are assuming that any knowledge or understanding is culturally-conditioned and (even worse!) might have religious underpinnings; so our schools offer sex education without a clear teaching of morals, and we have souless television programmes which see no harm in filthy language and nudity. The whole attititude of the modern liberal media appears to be: just research all the facts and give that to the people – no matter where the facts may point – but be cautious of evaluation, unless it is wholly negative and be especially cautious of morals because of the danger of religious influence.

Many books, but can books ever be enough?

A good library will contain many thousands of books - but can books alone succeed without knowledge, discernment and values?

Secularism states that religion should have no place in civil affairs, but when we bow to it's dictates and divorce any concept of God from just about everything which we do, we reduce ourselves to computers with all information and all education, but no feelings, no considerations, no moral evaluations, no genuine concept of love or the divine. Is this healthy? Is it even wise?

In this manner, we forget all the lessons of history and how nothing of real lasting value was ever achieved by those who believed that materialistic education and information funded by good economics should be ends in themselves. We forget how the greatest artists, architects, musicians, political and religious leaders – people who have made a real difference to the quality of life of all of us - were inspired by the metaphysical and the divine – in short, by a belief in the supernatural.

But has not godless materialism also produced great leaders? Sure, it has given us Karl Marx, Adolf Hitler, Josef Stalin, Mao Tse Tung, Pol Pot and several others.