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Title: Recovering the Lost Tools of Learning, An Approach to Distinctively Christian Education

Author: Wilson, Douglas

Format: Paperback: 128 pages

Publisher: Crossway Books (April, 1991)

ISBN: 0891075836

Review Date: June 14th, 2007

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Rating:

Book Description: A critique of the modern education system from a Christian point of view.

Review:

Having felt as of late that I did not received a very good education in the public school system, I have been reading some material on modern education.  I think Wilson has a good eye for criticism, based on what I have read of his works so far.

Surprisingly, he does not advocate that Christians take over the public school systems.  He makes a case that bringing prayer and Bible study back into the public school system is not the best approach.  In fact, he claims it is tyranny.  He points out that as Christians, we do not like it when the secularist remove religion from the public school system, so why should we as Christians, turn around and trying to force it on them.  We are doing the same thing, but in the name of God.

He also has some good thoughts for people who lobby for a more Christian public school system.  He recalls an example, where he was speaking with a woman who protested that the school her children were going to celebrated Halloween.  Wilson points out that it is a rather silly event to protest, and then goes on to ask why we would get offended by some witches and goblins on one day of the year, and not offended that God is ignored the rest of the year.

Even teaching methods used by the modern system are not safe from attack.  Wilson is very critical of the 'look-and-say' system of reading.  The 'look-and-say' method has a student just say a word instead of trying to sound it out.  This method replaces phonics in most schools.  I remember dealing with the 'look-and-say method.'  The more I thought about it, it was my mother who taught me phonics.  Wilson points out that the school system was able to create an dyslexia epidemic by teaching this method.  Students did not know how to sound out words that were unfamiliar with them, and the 'look-and-say' method only works when there is an authority figure present.

If you have any liberal friends, they will often complain that the school system does not get enough money.  Wilson addresses this issue:

"Fortunately, money being the quantifiable thing that it is, this is one suggestion that can easily be checked.  Lack of money does not appear to be a factor in the decline of academic achievement.  For example, in the school year 1959/60, the total expenditure per pupil in the United States was $1,699, while in 1985/86, the figure had risen to $3.937 (and these amounts are in constant 1985/86 dollars).  And what was happening to text scores over a portion of the same period?  In 1966/67, the SAT average for college-bound seniors was 958.  By 1985/86, the scores had fallen to 906.  In other words, text scores are falling, money is being spent furiously, and the lack of results is beginning to look like a permanent fixture."

Of course Wilson does not critique with out offering a better alternative.  He advocates Christian schools, and to a certain extent home schooling, to get the educational job done.  His reason for this position is that a private school will be able to choose its own curriculum.  A curriculum not based on the modern teaching system.  Wilson, who started a small Christian school, thinks that the medieval teaching system is one of the best that we have.  Dorothy Sayers, a friend of Lewis, wrote an essay regarding the application of the medieval system to the modern world.  (This essay is contained in an appendix of Recovering the Lost tools of Learning, you can also read it online here).

One last comment on this book.  Wilson says that our current generation will have to pay a double portion to recover the ground that the previous generations lost.  Yes, you have to pay for public schools with your taxes, and you will have to pay to have you children in a private school (or to home school them), but he reminds us that we must look on it as an investment in our children, and not as money down the drain.