Douglas Groothuis, who blogs at The Constructive Curmudgeon, recounts a conversation between himself and a nameless youth while in line to purchase the conclusion of the Harry Potter series, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, which paints an all too-realistic portrayal of an increasingly illiterate generation. While Groothuis is frequently painfully conservative, I found myself nodding in agreement with this conversation.
With a wistful smile.
I’m saddened when I contemplate that high school students today are largely clueless as to classic literature, the Scriptures, and art in general. In our technological innovations, I fear we have misplaced critical items in our cultural heritage. We fail to educate students in an appreciation of the arts (not typically the teachers’ fault, I’ve noticed, but rather the system) in favor of over-emphasizing the maths and sciences, resulting in a worldview that has cast aside mystery and desires to quantify everything.
Even more dangerously, it chooses to ignore as superstition anything that it cannot quantify.
Should I mention here that we can’t quantify God?
I guess our innovations should be making access to art and great literature easier, but instead we permit our children to rot away brain cells in front of video games and American Idol instead of cultivating an appreciation for (and a relationship with) the Scriptures, Shakespeare, Van Gogh, or Miles Davis.
It is conversations like these that cause me to realize the extent of the damage. It is bordering on cataclysmic.