American Religion

We say that people make a religion of something, usually as a metaphor and with some humor.  I was speaking to an English co-worker about my reading up on cricket a few years ago, just to have an idea about how it is played.  “If you haven’t understood that it’s a religion, you haven’t yet understood it” he told me. Or in the American South, football.  Americans “have a love affair” with their cars or with guns, but we say that “Money is a religion” to many, even with reference to “The Almighty Dollar.” I didn’t say it was always humorous, or kindly humor.  I have called liberalism a religion among my Arts & Humanities tribe.  We say that she worships power, or that he would sell his soul for a commission.

I propose that education is our religion, and not as a mere metaphor.  Schools are the churches, at the younger levels. At the collegiate level, departments are more like denominations than individual schools are. State universities teach very similar things in aggregate, but classical studies is different from chemistry is different from history.  There has long been some objection to parents sending their young children to private schools, but nothing like the objection to homeschooling. That was considered to be no schooling, to be undermining the foundations of society. Yes, people wanted to support teachers and their unions, who have a vested interest, but the intensity of opposition was out of proportion.  I suggest that because homeschooling often occurred in the context of religious belief, it was the attempt to opt out of the culture’s real religion that set off the heresy bells.

When libertarians try to remove or weaken credentialing or licensing, they encounter resistance because those in the profession have a self-interest to protect, certainly. But the outrage and horror at the suggestion carries some sense that blasphemy is being uttered. The people who have received an education on the subject are the experts, even if the education is outmoded, irrelevant, and inaccurate. It’s their ticket.  They followed the right steps. It is a world in good order.  It is not just the default position that those who got training know more – a reasonable starting point – but that the training should still hold weight even after it has been shown to be unnecessary. Even when we know it’s useless, we cling to it.  This tells us it has a deeper meaning and significance.

  

The amount of money we spend, to the point of voluntarily impoverishing many; in addition, what we spend at the local level; the insistence we all have that we are experts on the subject; the requirement that all children be trained, combined with some suspicion that one can go too far and lose touch with the common folk (though we are proud when it is our children who do so); we have suspicion of informal education yet also admire some who engage in it, much as we fund seminaries while praising simple saints.