2016 Voter's Guide: What is a Good Education?

     Congress recognized, in an expanding nation, that education was a vital concern.  Every territory that desired admission into the United States had to provide a means for the education of their citizens perpetually.  Why was education such a vital concern?
     The Northwest Ordinance, which set the rules for admitting territories into the union, gave three goals for education: 
          "Religion, morality, and knowledge, being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged."
     Two results of Education were mentioned in the Northwest Ordinance:  The happiness of mankind and good government.  The happiness of citizens and effective rule both depended on a good education.  It becomes obvious that a good education moved beyond the usual academic disciplines of reading, writing, and arithmetic to character development, civic responsibility and even worship.
      Three elements were essential to an education:  Religion, Morality, and Knowledge.  These three are conjoined.  Knowledge must be controlled by morality:  Look where science can now take us.  Is anyone concerned about the growth of technology without a corresponding growth of morality?  Morality is essentially linked to religion.  Even Rousseau saw the need for some sort of civil religion to keep the masses governable. 
     If a people can lift trustfully near their neighbor, law enforcement need only be big enough to manage the occasional squabble.  However, if a people are immoral and accustomed to mayhem, no government is large enough to keep the peace. 
     Religion is linked to both morality and knowledge.  If God created the universe, every advance in science will be "thinking God's thoughts after Him" and defining the boundaries of objective reality. Knowledge divorced from an orderly and moral Deity is subject to man's hubris and corruption.
     Man is both made in the image of God and fallen.  If a man will not be moral out of reverence for God, he may be moral out of fear of punishment.  Removing the thought of eternal judgment allows a man to pursue guilty ends believing he will get away with it.
     What does this have to do with the fall's elections?  Our culture needs to find its way back to an objective, definable morality.  Reuniting religion and morality to the academic disciplines will be a first step.  Vote for those who can see the need.