As he lists off the groups of fighting men who joined David in Hebron, the writer of 1 Chronicles gives the men of Issachar a special description: they understood the times and they knew what Israel ought to do (1 Chronicles 12:32).
Although we live in a much different context, I think the overarching principle ought to be applied to us as well.
It’s important for us to understand our times and know what we ought to do.
As a matter of fact, knowing the right course of action often requires us to first understand our times.
- Spend a good while listening before speaking.
- Writing down notes before responding.
- Taking in the scene before taking the stage.
And when you do speak, you will be that much more of an effective ambassador.
A eye-catching study hit the press at the beginning of this school year—a new Gallup poll reveals that American adults are disgruntled with K-12 education at a record level. Only 36% of Americans are either somewhat or completely satisfied with our country’s education quality, leaving 63% as either somewhat or completely dissatisfied.
Think about that: only one out of every three Americans is overall happy with how our country is educating our kids. This ties the record low set in the year 2000, and is nine percentage points below the historical 24-year-average of 45%.
While many factors are surely playing into this, we can perhaps glean one clue from a secondary variable that Gallup studied—political party. While neither end of the political spectrum is thrilled with how things are going, Democrats and Democrat-leaning independents seem relatively happier with education quality (44% are either “somewhat” or “completely” satisfied) than do Republicans and Republican-leaning independents (25%).
True, only 8% of Democrat-aligned respondents were completely satisfied. But only 4% of Republican-aligned respondents were. So could the recent drop in education satisfaction have to do with politics?
It seems like pretty much everything is political nowadays. Even the part of our society that should, ideally, be among the least politicized—educating our children with fundamental knowledge they’ll need for life.
But the news is swirling with education politics. As many schools seem to drift leftward and many conservative parents and politicians start to sound the alarm and fight back, education has been increasingly catapulted into the political arena.
Perhaps one reason why Americans overall—and Republican-aligned Americans in particular—are increasingly unhappy with education is that there’s currently a political firefight being fought over it.
Evidence of this battle is all around us. Just take a look at some recent developments in the educational-political battle:
- Moms for Liberty, a rapidly-growing parental rights movement that has made waves fighting mask mandates
- The American Library Association’s annual report on censored books; three out of the top four of 2022’s most challenged books were flagged because of “LGBTQIA+ content”
- Florida’s Parental Rights in Education Law which has been praised as an obstacle to the sexualization of young children, and has been criticized as a vague, awkward interference in the professions of teachers.
- It’s not only politicized curriculum that’s sparking these debates; schools have even attracted national security concerns as of late. Take a look at the national debate about Confucius Institutes (also see this video on the IFI YouTube channel), which some allege to be fingers of the Chinese Communist Party as it seeks to infiltrate American schools.
