A Nation
at Risk
Changing Textbooks Reveal the
Secularization of American Education
By Stephen McDowell
A
CCORDING TO THE National Commission on
Excellence in Education, America is “a nation at risk.”
This 1980s report stated, “If an unfriendly foreign power had
attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational
performance that exists today, we might well have viewed
it as an act of war.” 1 The consequences of this poor perfor-
mance are not only declining knowledge but also declining
morality, both of which are necessary for a free and pros-
perous nation. The mediocrity is primarily due to a state-
monopolized educational system that has rejected its Chris-
tian foundation, replacing it with a secular ideology that
teaches man is the ultimate authority and source of truth.
Contrary to the belief of many educrats, the underlying
problem is not financial but ideological. We have replaced
a Christian philosophy with a secular philosophy of educa-
tion. The Apostle Paul warns us, “See to it that no one
takes you captive through philosophy and empty decep-
tion, according to the tradition of men, according to the
elementary principles of the world, rather than according
to Christ” (Col. 2:8).
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A man-centered worldly philosophy brings captivity,
while a Christian philosophy liberates. America became
the most free and prosperous nation the world has known
due to its Christian education, which passed on principles
of truth, liberty, and creativity for centuries. Over time this
Christian education was supplanted by secularism. The
content of school textbooks reflects this change.
EARLY AMERICAN TEXTBOOKS
The Bible was the central text for early American education.
Theological catechisms were very popular with over 500
different ones used in Colonial times. John Locke observed
in 1690 that children learned to read by following “the
ordinary road of Hornbook, Primer, Psalter, Testament,
and Bible.” 2 Hornbooks were the most widely used tool for
teaching reading in seventeenth-century America. A horn-
book was a flat piece of wood with a handle, to which a sheet
of printed paper was attached and covered with a transpar-
ent animal horn to protect it. A typical hornbook had the
alphabet, the vowels, a list of syllables, the invocation of the