At the 1904 World’s Fair in St. Louis, an exhibition by Missouri Synod schools was given a gold award. The synod’s chief theological organ, Lehre und Wehre, boasted of the endorsement, thumbing its nose at secular critics and citing the praise of one Dr. R. Tombos: “Here we find the completeness of the exhibit which is so missing in the public schools. . . . I even fear that the accomplishments of the public schools do not always bear comparison with those of the Lutheran congregational schools.” (Endnote 1)
In his history for the seventy-fifth anniversary of Trinity Evangelical Lutheran Church, Milwaukee, Pastor Heinrich Spengeler relates this triumph before parading the accomplishments of his own school, a gold standard for the synod. He recounts with relish that the school had been accredited in 1912 by the municipal superintendent of schools. At the time, accreditation was seen as a golden ring, a great boon for Missouri’s schools. The advantage: graduates of the institution could be admitted to city high schools without an exam. Strings were attached, of course. With accreditation came the city’s approved curriculum (Endnote 2). And with that, progressivism, against which the Missouri Synod had held the ramparts so manfully, walked right in the back door. Within the next generation, many Missouri Synod schools had followed suit. This rapid change of affairs deserves our theological reflection.
More than a century overdue, Thomas Korcok’s Serpents in the Classroom lays bare the theological import deeply embedded in the curricula, theories, and methods our schools have “uncritically incorporated” (xiii). The first and strongest half of the book reads as a potent polemic against modern educational theories, exposing them as not only woefully impoverished but poisonous, even satanic, as the title implies. Korcok traces the intellectual origins of humanist educational theories to the Enlightenment’s rejection of the authority of divine revelation. Korcok’s cogent analysis demonstrates that as heirs of the Enlightenment the most influential pedagogical theorists of the twentieth century—John Dewey, Jean Piaget, Maria Montesorri, and others—dogmatically pursued the displacement of orthodox Christian catechesis with utopian ideals of human autonomy fundamentally at odds with the biblical teaching of original sin. As mercurial and faddish as education praxis is, Korcok unmasks current trends and buzzwords for the reheated droppings of yesteryear’s secular humanists that they are.
Korcok’s work is at its best when it punches hard. In the right hands, it will hit home. Given the stakes, the accomplished and impending apostasy of generations, the text strikes the right tone with its occasional invective, though it sometimes offers assertions in the place of arguments. As such, it likely will not land well with its intended audience, the miseducated educators and miseducating teachers colleges Korcok hopes to win over to the cause of classical education. Instead, this book belongs in the hands of any and every pastor, parent, and school-board member who has begun to smell the rot. It should dissuade them from being satisfied with putting makeup and perfume on a corpse. Would that someone had pressed this book into my hands as a freshman in college!
The weakness of this book lies in its proposed antidote. To be sure, this booklet makes no claim to be an exhaustive positive account of classical education or even much of an outline. Korcok freely admits as much, indicating that “[t]here are many other sources for this” (91). Disappointingly, Korcok fails to mention these sources. As much as Korcok rightly emphasizes that a Christian education is oriented around “a content-driven curriculum” (89) as opposed to “critical thinking,” he does not give the reader much in the way of content. (One notable exception: Korcok presents in an appendix a most helpful Liederpensum, or “regimen” for “equip[ing] children to sing [36 Lutheran chorales] by heart around the family table and join in congregational singing during the Sunday morning Divine Service” [97].) Here Korcok would have been better off recommending a couple of books and calling it a day.
Instead, he further muddies already opaque waters, suggesting instead that “there is simply no ‘one size fits all’ model of classical education” (97). With each book published on the subject, the chimera that is classical education grows blurrier. It may or may not involve teaching Latin and a list of old books; no one seems to know for sure.
After claiming that generations of teachers have been hoodwinked and miseducated by progressives, Korcok strangely asserts that teachers “are best equipped to structure the curriculum and select the materials appropriate to the situation” (97). Are these teachers going to become Latinists at the wave of a wand? An ill-defined classical curriculum and some ruminations on the transcendentals of truth, goodness, and beauty will not cut it. We do not simply need the right ideas; we need the right people and institutions. As Korcok puts it, “[I]n order to have wise and eloquent students” we require “wise and eloquent teachers” (109). Where are these teachers to be had? Korcok clearly understands that solutions have to be far more comprehensive, including the abandonment of accreditation as it currently exists and a complete overhaul of teacher training and recruitment. He waves in this general direction in his conclusion, but he puts more stock in hoping that leopards can change their spots than in clearly delineating a viable alternative.
Although Serpents in the Classroom does not deliver on a coherent solution to what ails our schools, it does provide a sobering diagnosis. Additionally, Korcok’s reflections on the objectivity of beauty, natural revelation, and a Christian historiography are enriching, if not always actionable. Despite its shortcomings, this book is a necessary contribution. Parents do not call poison control until they suspect their kids swallowed something dangerous. This book should come in bright red with exclamation marks all around. The kids have swallowed bleach; act now!
Shawn Barnett
Associate Pastor, Redeemer Lutheran Church
Fort Wayne, Indiana
Endnotes
- Cited in Heinrich Spengeler, Geschichte der Dreieinigkeits-Gemeinde U.A.K. zu Milwaukee, Wis. vom 1897 bis zum Jahre 1922. Zum fünfundsiebzigsten Jubiläum der Gemeinde (Milwaukee: Wisconsin North America Press, 1922), 16.
- Spengeler, Geschichte der Dreieinigkeits-Gemeinde, 16.