Watching the news over the past two weeks has made my stomach turn.

I grew up in Southern Indiana. One summer I worked picking cantaloupes and watermelons from sun up to sun down. My supervisor was a member of the Ku Klux Klan. He had a business card that stated that he was in the KKK (who prints these?), a white robe and hood, and an M-16 in the back of his truck. His arguments were made of up unvarnished hate, a misreading of the Bible, and historical inaccuracies. Any 8th grader could see through him, and I did.

Spending time around people like this fellow is a good cure for racial prejudice. In time, God provided me with good friends from a broad and diverse racial background, but by the end of the summer, I knew that whatever this guy believed, I believed the opposite.

This month's events in Charlottesville, VA were disheartening to me. I wanted to make sure that readers knew where our school stands. Here are three reasons why classical Christian schools are a critical element to solving the problem of racial, ethnic, and tribal pride:

1. We read, listen to, and argue with people with different opinions - without  shouting them down

Seeing violent protests this week discouraged me. During these protests, people shouted down their enemies. At classical schools, we listen to our enemies. We don’t listen because we agree, but because we want to respect the image of God in them and understand their arguments—no matter how weak those arguments may be. We read their positions, we discuss them, and we debate them.

A couple of years ago, Gil Smart, the liberal columnist for Lancaster Newspapers (now sadly in Florida), came to Veritas to argue in favor of gay marriage. Our students asked him questions, which he respectfully answered; we wrote to him back, and he answered. What a model of civility! People, whether on the radical right or left, need to stop shouting and start listening…even if they reject what the other side is saying.

We are a Christian school, but we read the critics of the faith: Marcus Aurelius, Nietzsche, Marx, and Camus. Our logic room has a poster of Bertrand Russell, the famous unbelieving logician. We reject his faithlessness, but we can learn from him.

2. We Examine and Reject the Heresy of Racism

Last week was the best week for “white supremacy” in the last 50 years. It was for two reasons. First, because we (our whole nation) paid attention to them. As fire lives on oxygen, white supremacists live on attention. Second, because our news media failed to tell the whole truth about what was happening. They used the event as an opportunity to kick a political football. The media and the politicians have so twisted words that the radical groups on both sides have gleaned an unexpected harvest of national attention. I have to wonder how many people became more open to the hatred around us because the media was so untethered during the weeks that have followed the Charlottesville incident?

How do you inoculate your sons and daughters against this sort of stupidity? You teach them a few things. First, you pay attention to the Bible. It leaves no room for racism. We all came from one set of parents. We all are descendants of those who walked off the ark. We are all - every tongue, tribe, and race - redeemed by the blood Christ. Racism is a heresy. It claims that one group of sinners is in a higher group of beings than others. The Bible undermines this sort of pride. It brings all together under the washing of baptism and the around the table of communion. The gospel meets every culture where it is, but it calls each culture to repentance. Eventually, Christian cultures have abolished slavery and affirmed protections for all who bear the image of God.

How do we unearth this vile heresy in Classical education? We look at it. We actually read some of Hitler’s Mein Kampf (you don’t have to read all of it because it is redundant). We do this because we want our students to see what this horrible man said so that they are not drawn in or enticed by the vile racial pride of fools in our day. We also unmask the horrors of socialism and communism. We read about the Gulags and the failure of men without chests that C. S. Lewis speaks of in The Abolition of Man.

We read these things so that we can fight against these destructive concepts, because God’s Word affirms our unity in Adam, in Noah, and in the redemption of Christ. All who would oppose this biblical equality are outside the faith.

3. We look with both a critical and merciful eye on our past.

We teach our students to look on the past critically, and we teach them how to argue and think (not what to think, mind you, but how. It is an important distinction.). As they learn, they can see the flaws in the thinking of the elders. They see how our nation allowed and affirmed racial slavery. They can see how, even when slavery was ended, our nation gave freed slaves what Martin Luther King called “a bad check.” We need to be critical about our past so that we can avoid repeating our mistakes again.

We also, however, need to eventually grow into maturity and look upon the flawed men and women of past with the eye of mercy. There are leaders of the past from every race and ethnicity who were wrong about things. Caligula and Hitler were awful people who destroyed many lives. Other good people with blind spots like Jefferson or Lincoln aimed at good ends, but often failed to accomplish those ends perfectly. Some were decent people that found themselves mistaken at critical times or on crucial issues. Mature thinkers realize that even they will find themselves mistaken at points. In his famous Farewell Address, George Washington said,

“Though, in reviewing the incidents of my administration, I am unconscious of intentional error, I am nevertheless too sensible of my defects not to think it probable that I may have committed many errors. Whatever they may be, I fervently beseech the Almighty to avert or mitigate the evils to which they may tend. I shall also carry with me the hope that my country will never cease to view them with indulgence; and that, after forty five years of my life dedicated to its service with an upright zeal, the faults of incompetent abilities will be consigned to oblivion, as myself must soon be to the mansions of rest.” (Washington’s Farewell Address)

Washington was a flawed man, but a great man. We need to see both these things: valuing his virtues (which are many) and rejecting his flaws. His humility in this statement is almost overwhelming.

We need to grow up enough to have mercy on those who came before us, because we know that in the future, we will be judged by our descendants (as imperfect as we are and they may be). Today, our schools, politicians, and media outlets judge the past by their own vision of an unachievable, irrational future that cannot come into being. We must reject this folly and prepare our children to do the same. For it is in mercy that children and parents can be united in love. This union is the goal of classical Christian education. Therefore, children greatly benefit from learning their history from schools like Veritas, who will lead them in the Truth.