Why Meeting Materialism in Education Matters

Materialism is woven into the fabric of society. Around every corner we find it in our economics, our adoration of the famous, our science and medicine, etc. It also seeps into our education. In the necessary separation of church and state, it has become the de facto assumption in curricula across the nation. Is this a good thing or a bad thing? Perhaps it is an incomplete thing. In this post, we will examine why meeting materialism in education matters.

What is Materialism?

I call materialism the worldview that says, “Nothing exists besides matter.” Put another way, “If we can’t see and measure it, it doesn’t exist.” This preoccupation with sensory reality has produced marvelous things for the world like airplanes, the ability to research hostile environments like Antarctica, and life-saving medical treatments, among others. Nobody would deny that life is more comfortable and predictable than ever before, and this we owe to materialism and materialistic science.

One the other hand, how does this apply to your child and his or her education? Let’s say a materialist looks at your daughter. The materialist would say, “Your daughter is nothing but a body. Even her impulses to act, her feelings, and her thoughts are nothing but material processes. In fact, she came about arbitrarily without any meaning or purpose. Your daughter, and indeed all human beings including yourself, are a happy accident, nothing more.”

These assertions are based on Darwinian/Neo-Darwinian observations and reasoning as well as brain scans which show certain areas lighting up when we have certain conscious experiences. Furthermore, materialists use experiments like the Miller-Urey experiment from the 1950s to argue that no intelligence was ever involved in the creation and expression of the universe. In that experiment, scientists setup methane, hydrogen, and ammonia within an atmosphere of water vapor. Next, they shot electric sparks through the mixture. Voila! Amino acids – the building blocks of life – appeared. Many use this experiment to show that life could form out of nothing. Examples like these have become the basis of materialism in education.

Is Materialism True?

Yes. Materialism often correctly describes the processes happening at the tip of the iceberg of reality. For example, I can describe and control how an airplane functions without needing to appeal to souls and spirits. We can also give you antibiotics to treat strep throat. The mechanisms of matter are all very clear in these cases.

However, there are important questions of existence materialism fails to answer. First, in the Miller-Urey experiment, materialists neglect that intelligent agents set up the design. It was human beings who arranged the conditions to be perfect for amino acids to appear from the interaction of the various elements. Thereby, materialism cannot use that example to deny intelligence at work in creation. That doesn’t necessarily refute that life arose arbitrarily out of nothing, just that such experiments cannot prove materialism because their conclusions leave out critical facts.

Second, as far as brain mapping is concerned, those experiments likewise do not prove the brain creates consciousness and that no consciousness exists outside the brain. They merely demonstrate a correlation between consciousness activity and brain states. It’s a chicken and egg problem, and it becomes even more problematic when it serves as a basis for materialism in education. Not to mention, thousands of anecdotal stories from the world’s many spiritual traditions provide evidence to the contrary.

The Philosophical Challenge to Materialism in Education

Reality is like an iceberg, the materialism describes the tip. What of the rest of it? We don’t actually need fancy instruments to experience the whole iceberg. Not to mention, they wouldn’t help us anyway, for how could something material measure something immaterial? It could only measure its effects, like an EEG of the brain which quantifies brain neurons firing. However, those EEG measurements do no actually measure the quality of a thought, for example, only its “quantity.”

Now, follow me on this short journey. Materialists say only matter exists and that even thoughts are purely material. They extend this by saying that thought arises as an emergent property of matter, not for any reason or purpose. However, to say all these things, thinking must first be present. I cannot conceive of “matter, reason, purpose, emergence,” etc. without first thinking. The materialist argument therefore presupposes thinking to begin with, so their argument becomes circular. It’s like saying, “Consciousness cannot exist without matter because matter creates consciousness.”

The next problem is this, why would matter want to become self-conscious and seek to understand itself? Why isn’t it content to just go on being inanimate? Darwinians/Neo-Darwinians explain that all change is driven by survival. However, understanding the nature of reality, the self, and the material universe is not necessary for survival. It is superfluous. So, if matter is all there is and there is no meaning, purpose, nor teleology in the universe, then why should I, as a purely material being, care at all? For that matter, why should materialists care even to understand materialism?

An Alternative to Materialism

The materialist argument collapses under its own weight for a simple reason: it forgets that it’s thinking. It consider only outer, physical-sensory facts and ignores a whole other set of facts contained in thinking. Put another way, materialism ignores the thinker.

While this outer obsession has given us airplanes and advanced medical technology, it has hollowed out the inner life of many humans beings who need more than materialistic thoughts to feel fulfilled and complete. If you aren’t convinced, please check out my several posts on the meaning crisis in youth.

Rudolf Steiner’s The Philosophy of Freedom presents an alternative view that doesn’t require religion. He explains that reality consists of concept and percept. The latter is what objects give to us externally visible to the senses. The former is what those objects give to the non-physical part of us – the “thinker,” if will. The concept of a tree is no less real than the bark, branches, leaves, etc. In the same way, the inner reality of your child is no less real to a teacher than her physical expression. They come together and form the whole of who she is, something the teacher should be looking for when looking at her. One side of reality meets the senses and the other meets the intuition. The veracity of this picture of reality is easily verifiable with a little conscious thought.

Overcoming Materialism in Education

The ability to think, that is, to exercise what is non-physical in us, is exactly where education has failed now for decades. Is it any wonder we see so many unquestioning materialists these days? I daresay, they have become religious. Perhaps we can call their religion “Materialistic Scientism.”

So, how do we overcome this materialism in education? Let’s start where it most firmly takes root: science. If we believe Steiner, Aquinas, Aristotle, and a host of other exceptional thinkers (or, if we even just experience these things for ourselves), we will see the world as this merger of concept and percept. Within each phenomenon and being, there is a teleology, aka, an informing principle at work. If we look at an acorn, for example, and observe it over time to become a tree, we can reason backwards that the teleology or purpose of the acorn is to become the tree.

This phenomenological approach to science is what we use at Enkindle Academy. We don’t use textbooks where principles are just given to students without exerting their own faculties. We start with observing the phenomena themselves, like the acorn, the light refracting through a prism, or the vinegar and baking soda. Then, we recall the details. Next, we put it to sleep. The next day, we see what bubbles up as understanding. In this process, we use the will (direct observation), the feeling (recalling in pictures), and thinking (understanding) in that order. Students develop the ability to think intuitively into the phenomena of the world. They discover for themselves the concepts clothed in the percepts.

Why Does Meeting Materialism in Education Matter?

It matters that we address materialism in education because the future depends on it. Someone recently told me he felt materialism was the thing saving the world. I could only wonder if he was being serious or joking. No doubt, materialism has solved many problems, but how many more has it caused? It is due to materialism that the environment is in dire straits, that chronic disease is at an all time high, that we have so much abundance yet so much poverty. Should I continue?

No, materialism is not saving the planet, it is destroying it. This same individual blamed all the problems on dogmatic religion, and no doubt that also causes major problems. Yet, the materialists fail to recognize that they have become just as dogmatic as the medieval religious fanatics they arose to oppose. Dogma of all kinds is problematic. It’s just that materialist don’t see how their religion has become among the ones they so vociferously react against.

There is nothing wrong with the scientific method. In fact, it’s crucial to examine reality in a systematic, grounded, and unbiased way. It’s just that when we limit our assumptions to only what can be perceived, physically, we see the tip and deny the iceberg. We need a holistic science of the whole iceberg, lest we repeat the gross errors of the past century and a half. Anthroposophy provides us such a science, and we do well to base our education on it.

How We Can Help

Enkindle Academy offers prerecorded and live lessons for students in grades 5-9. We teach all academic subjects plus fine arts, creative writing, and empowerment groups for teens. We also offer 1-on-1 tutoring on all subjects including fine arts. Visit our website for more info and for free sample lessons. Remember to subscribe for weekly updates, tips for homeschooling, and special offers.

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