Editorial
The True Neutral Ground: Why Western Tradition Is Essential for Education
This article discusses the challenges of modern education, which often emphasizes technical skills and ideological compliance over critical thinking and moral development. It argues for grounding education in Western tradition, advocating for methods like the Socratic and scientific approaches. This foundation fosters meaningful discourse, civic virtue, and the pursuit of universal truths, countering ideological dogmatism and relativism.
In an era when education increasingly aims to produce individuals capable of efficiently performing tasks or subscribing to ideological doctrines, the deeper purpose of education is often lost. Students are molded to function within societal systems, yet seldom equipped with the intellectual tools to engage critically with the world around them. This phenomenon is especially evident in the rise of competency-based learning (CBL), which reduces education to a series of technical skills, and the influence of critical theory, which often leads to a fragmented and ideologically driven understanding of the world. In contrast, grounding education in Western tradition offers the best path toward true intellectual neutrality—a framework where students are not just trained but are encouraged to engage critically, think deeply, and question rigorously, without descending into relativism or dogmatism. This essay argues that Western tradition provides a self-correcting, shared foundation for discourse that can safeguard education from becoming soulless or ideologically biased.
Speaking Today
The Prohibitive Costs of a Value-free Society
By Elder Neal A. Maxwell
In his 1978 address to the Salt Lake City Rotary Club, Elder Neal A. Maxwell warned of the “prohibitive costs” incurred by a society that abandons absolute values and moral standards. Using the Rotary motto “Is it the truth?” as a springboard, he argued that truth presupposes objective standards rooted in spiritual reality, not subjective human invention. Maxwell lamented the cultural drift toward moral relativism and secularism, asserting that such trends undermine institutions like the family, education, and government by eroding self-discipline, civic virtue, and personal accountability. He criticized value-free experimentation in education and governance, which he said has led to bureaucratic overreach, functional illiteracy, and a decline in civic awareness. The loss of belief in God, he contended, creates a vacuum filled by overreaching government, regulation, and a false sense of freedom that leads to chaos. Ultimately, Maxwell warned that a standardless society fosters selfishness, weakens the individual, and sacrifices liberty for order, culminating in spiritual impoverishment and societal collapse unless reversed by principled leadership and courageous commitment to enduring truths.
The Crisis of Modern Education
Modern education is undergoing a transformation, one that is moving away from the cultivation of wisdom and moral clarity toward an emphasis on technical proficiency and ideological allegiance. Competency-based learning, for instance, seeks to ensure that students master specific skills and meet benchmarks. While this is useful in certain contexts, it neglects the broader intellectual and moral development necessary for flourishing in a complex world. The result is an education system that creates highly specialized individuals, but ones who lack a deeper understanding of themselves and their place in the world.
Critical theories, such as postmodernism and identity politics, have further complicated this issue. These frameworks, while valuable in challenging certain structures of power and privilege, have often shifted the focus of education from objective analysis to ideological critique. In this environment, the quest for universal truths or timeless principles is replaced by a relativism that undermines the very foundation of knowledge itself. This shift has led to an education that is not only soulless but also disconnected from the rich intellectual heritage that could provide students with a coherent and meaningful framework for understanding their lives and their society.
Western Tradition as a Self-Correcting System
Western tradition, in contrast to many contemporary ideological movements, provides a self-correcting system that encourages critical thinking, intellectual rigor, and continual refinement of ideas. One of the most profound contributions of Western civilization is the development of methods like the Socratic method, the scientific method, and the concept of free speech. These tools are designed not to promote dogma, but to foster inquiry, challenge assumptions, and refine understanding. They offer students a means by which to test ideas, reject falsehoods, and improve upon existing knowledge.
The Socratic method, for example, teaches students not to accept answers at face value, but to dig deeper, question assumptions, and arrive at more refined conclusions. The scientific method encourages hypothesis testing, rigorous experimentation, and peer review, ensuring that knowledge is constantly evolving and improving. Free speech—though often challenged in today’s polarized climate—remains the cornerstone of Western thought, guaranteeing that a wide array of ideas can be aired, critiqued, and debated.
Unlike ideological movements that insist on the correctness of a single narrative or viewpoint, the Western tradition recognizes the importance of intellectual humility and adaptability. It understands that truth is not static but is discovered through a continual process of questioning, testing, and refining ideas. By grounding education in this tradition, we offer students not just a set of facts to memorize, but a toolkit for lifelong learning and intellectual growth.
A Shared Foundation for Discourse
One of the most compelling reasons to ground education in Western tradition is that it provides a shared intellectual vocabulary, one that allows for meaningful discourse and public engagement. From the Bible and classical philosophy to Shakespeare and the Federalist Papers, Western texts provide reference points that allow individuals to communicate about important concepts like justice, virtue, freedom, and the common good. These works form the bedrock of our cultural and intellectual history, offering a common language for engaging with the most pressing questions of our time.
Without a shared foundation, public discourse becomes fragmented and incoherent. The debates of today—on topics ranging from governance to social justice to human rights—cannot be meaningfully addressed without a common understanding of these foundational texts. Without such a foundation, we risk devolving into ideological echo chambers, where people speak past one another rather than engaging in a productive exchange of ideas.
The shared foundation provided by Western traditions also fosters a sense of civic virtue. When students are taught to engage with these texts and ideas, they are not just learning facts; they are being prepared to become responsible, thoughtful citizens capable of participating in the great conversation of civilization. This is the essence of liberal education: the cultivation of wisdom and the development of character, both of which are essential for a functioning democracy.
The Dangers of Ideological Dogmatism
By rejecting Western traditions in favor of relativism or radical ideological critique, modern education often replaces one form of dogmatism with another. Critical theory, while valuable in pointing out systemic injustices, can at times devolve into a rigid framework that reduces individuals to their group identities, rather than recognizing their inherent dignity and capacity for personal agency. In such an environment, education ceases to be about the pursuit of truth and becomes instead a battleground for ideological conformity.
But how can a society set priorities if there are no basic standards? Are we to make our calculations using only the arithmetic of appetite?
Neal A. Maxwell
Moreover, the rise of radical relativism has left many students without the intellectual tools to discern truth from falsehood. If all ideas are equally valid, then how do we evaluate them? If there is no objective standard of morality, how do we decide what is right or wrong? These are not just theoretical questions; they have profound real-world consequences. An education that fails to answer these questions or, worse, dismisses them as irrelevant, leaves students intellectually unmoored and morally adrift.
Other Voices
Schooling Is Never Values-Free or Apolitical
By Alfie Kohn
Kohn argues that education is inherently shaped by values and political perspectives, despite claims of neutrality. He challenges the notion that any curriculum can be apolitical or free of moral influence, asserting that what is taught—or omitted—reflects deliberate choices with ideological implications. He questions why teaching about historical issues like racism is labeled “political,” while ignoring them is not, suggesting that traditional curricula may perpetuate indoctrination through omission or misrepresentation. Kohn emphasizes that education cannot avoid embedding values, comparing the debate over teaching values to the inevitability of bacteria in the human body. He advocates for transparency about these influences rather than pretending neutrality is achievable, highlighting the difference between fostering critical thinking and imposing predefined viewpoints.
Key points
There is a meaningful difference between giving students the tools for critical reflection and getting them to parrot someone else’s position.
It’s dishonest to pretend that curriculum is apolitical or values-free.
What has been taught for decades actually may amount to indoctrination by omission or misdirection.
Conclusion
Western tradition offers the closest thing to true neutrality in education. It provides a framework in which students can critically engage with ideas, free from the influence of ideological dogma. By emphasizing intellectual tools like the Socratic method, the scientific method, and free speech, Western tradition encourages inquiry, critique, and self-correction. Moreover, it offers a shared intellectual foundation for public discourse, one that allows for meaningful dialogue and the cultivation of civic virtue. In contrast, the rise of ideological dogmatism and relativism threatens to erode these values, leaving education fragmented and disconnected from the larger questions of meaning, purpose, and truth.
As we move forward, it is essential that we return to these Western traditions, not to rigidly enforce a set of beliefs, but to provide students with the intellectual and moral tools they need to navigate an increasingly complex world. A true education is not one that simply trains individuals to perform tasks or espouses ideologies, but one that equips them to think deeply, question boldly, and engage meaningfully with the world around them. The West’s intellectual and moral inheritance remains the best path forward—one that not only restores the soul of education but also ensures a more just, thoughtful, and engaged society.
