Consider a parent who is happy to let their kid go to amusement parks, summer camps, workshops, etc., in which there are seemingly dangerous (or sometimes genuinely dangerous) activities. Why would they let them do that?
Presumably it’s because they trust that there are safeguards against the worst dangers, and expert guides to help their kids do what it takes to be safe. Of course, the dangers can still be there, and there can be accidents. But in general, the protections greatly reduce the actual risk.
So then why do the kids want to go to these kinds of places? Often it’s precisely because they seem dangerous. The kid likes the thrill at least. And more than that, when the activity is in fact risky, they like the satisfaction of being able to do the activity. The recognition of one’s own skill in some challenging activity is immensely gratifying.
A parent who will not allow their kid to even begin to engage in these activities, even under close supervision and instruction, and after a guided program of training in doing them safely, must hold one or more of the following beliefs: 1. the kid is essentially incapable of skillful, virtuous performance; 2. the activity is not actually worth while; 3. the guides and safeguards aren’t trustworthy.
Options 1 and 3 require the parent to believe something about another person. Though the belief may in fact be true, it would nevertheless be a pretty damning claim about either one. Sometime parents may in fact know that their kid isn’t mature enough (in whatever sense) for the activity. However, if the kid never seems to mature enough to satisfy the parent, something else is going on. A skeptical belief about the guide would need to come with quite a bit of justification. After all, in many of these cases, several other people have certified the guide as basically competent and trustworthy. They might be wrong, but the onus is on the critic to show how.
Option 2 is tricky, because sometimes these kinds of activities are not intrinsically valuable, but they still have some kind of value. A fun activity might be merely fun. Yet “being fun” is a type of value, and one that we often care a lot about. A parent who won’t let their kid just “have fun” is stereotypically bad, however well-intentioned.
Here’s the upshot. The “risky” activities described above are all risky to one’s body. What about activities that are risky to one’s mind? Many kids aren’t interested in thrill rides, extreme sports, weapons, power tools, etc. But they do love to think about things, to try out ideas, to experiment with cultural expression, and the like. These activities can also be risky. Many parents, especially in Christian circles, are quite tolerant, even enthusiastic, about teaching their kids to use their bodies correctly in dangerous activities. But they don’t want to grant their kids opportunities to use their minds in a similarly risky way.
A Christian education offers a “safe” environment in which skilled guides may direct students into risky uses of their minds. There is still risk, just as there is risk in the climbing gym or on the dirt bike track. But the risk is mitigated by the safety features and by the skilled, progressively-scaffolded instruction.
Parents who object to their kids being exposed to dangerous ideas must believe something analogous to one of the three options above. Either 1) the kid is essentially incapable of skillful, virtuous engagement with ideas; 2) the activities of thinking and creating with one’s mind are not worth while; or 3) the guides and safeguards aren’t trustworthy.
Unfortunately, it is basically impossible to escape exposure to dangerous ideas, so a kid who is incapable of responding appropriately to them will be in bad shape. Some of the especially risky physical behaviors can be avoided more or less indefinitely. (Not all of them, including some of the riskiest ones. Driving a car, for example, is hard to avoid in many contexts.) Risky mental activities are a lot harder to completely avoid. Someone who doesn’t have any skill in dealing with them will be extremely fragile.
Perhaps this kind of mental creativity is not really worth while. But many kids find it fun, and if fun is a good enough reason to do something physical, we would need some further reason to refuse it to those who enjoy the life of the mind. Sometimes parents just don’t really believe that thinking and creating can be fun. Sometimes kids can actually enjoy these kinds of things in ways that their parents never really have, or have forgotten about. For example, a successful businessman has the mental power to be an intellectual, but the habits of mind that would make it possible have never been cultivated. His son, though, might have enjoyed the fruits of his father’s success, and also gotten a taste of the contemplative life. The father is largely responsible for his son’s ability, but he doesn’t understand how his son would rather think about world than change it. Or a mom is a social expert, navigating various relationships and responsibilities like a master politician. Her daughter has the same skills, but is interested in thinking about them abstractly through psychology and political science rather than actually cultivating the social network. These parents’ successes enable their kids to enjoy their minds, but the kids’ way of engaging with the world remains unintelligible, and so the parents can’t see why thinking about “dangerous” ideas would be enjoyable in its own right. Just as the riskiness of a thrill ride can be fun, so too the riskiness of considering a dangerous idea can be fun.
(There is, as well, a complaint about the usefulness of merely thinking about ideas. I’m not considering that claim here.)
The complaint could be against the trustworthiness of the guides and instructors. But again, absent some special complaint against these individuals, it seems slanderous to deny their ability to successfully guide a student. The critic would have to claim that it is impossible for someone to be a reliable guide through risky and dangerous ideas. And it’s just not obvious what justification they could have for such a claim.
The conclusion, then, is that a good Christian education ought to include “risky” ideas. It’s the way Christian young people can acquire skill in navigating the life of the mind under competent supervision. Engaging with potentially dangerous ideas is also fun, and when done in the proper way, not nearly as risky as encountering them in the wild. This is, I think, an argument not just for Christian education, but for Christian liberal arts education.
