Yes, We Should Teach Students What to Think

W hether or not you’re involved in the world of education, you have likely heard the claim: “We don’t teach students what to think; we teach them how to think.” Commonly attributed to cultural anthropologist Margaret Mead, this sentiment has recently been co-opted by educational leaders on both the right and left — usually in an effort to create distance from the indoctrination and groupthink all too common on campus.

At first blush, it sounds reasonable. We (the authors) have each used the phrase ourselves in the past. It often leads to applause.

But should it?

A truly neutral education — one that scrupulously avoids teaching students what to think — would forgo many of the fundamental principles that most educators take for granted. Such an education would have no opinion on whether students should treat their classmates with dignity and respect. It would remain agnostic on whether truth exists and impartial as to whether free speech should be protected inside and outside the classroom. It would stay silent on whether a life of service is preferable to a life of dishonest gain.

This is absurd.

We all want students not just to think, but to know that their neighbors are worthy of respect. All of us want them to believe in the pursuit of truth (if not, what is the academic enterprise?). Is there an educator among us who wants to discourage the freedom of speech, or to avoid taking sides between a life of self-interest and a life of service?

So yes, we should teach students what to think.

When educators claim complete moral and ideological neutrality, the descent into chaos is inevitable — as is the penchant for some ideology being smuggled through the back door. The fruit of this process has become regrettably clear on some college campuses in recent years, and recent legal battles over DEI directives from the Department of Education have confirmed that some ideology will always be present in American classrooms. The only question is what kind of ideology?

In The Abolition of Man, C. S. Lewis sounds the alarm bell concerning purportedly neutral approaches to education. In attempting pure neutrality, he argues, we risk creating “men without chests” — graduates who are gifted thinkers but who have none of the moral training necessary to use their gifts for good. Lewis reminds us the educational process has never been morally neutral:

Aristotle says that the aim of education is to make the pupil like and dislike what he ought. When the age for reflective thought comes, the pupil who has been thus trained in “ordinate affections” or “just sentiments” will easily find the first principles in Ethics; but to the corrupt man they will never be visible at all.

So, the telos of education is to train students to love what is good, to do what is just, to become what a human being is made to be. Forming virtuous citizens naturally and unavoidably involves teaching students what to think — not least in teaching them what it means to be virtuous.

Christian institutions like Pepperdine are not the only ones that teach from a particular perspective; every institution does. The Classic Learning Test is not the only standardized test that will by nature influence American education toward producing a particular type of student: intellectually, morally, spiritually. We are simply honest about it.

When educators say, “We teach students not what to think but how to think,” they mean well. Of course, we should teach students how to think. We should teach them to think deeply and question relentlessly. We should give them the tools of formal logic and Socratic dialogue.

This is all well and good. But it is incomplete, and, therefore, not completely honest.

No one is aiming at “neutral” education, and we owe our students more than just tools. We do not want to create “men without chests.” No educator worthy of the name is striving to produce graduates who are highly trained, articulate sociopaths.

The mission of education should be to create good citizens: young men and women of wisdom and virtue who love the good, true, and beautiful.

It is time, fellow educators, to be honest with one another, and with our students and their parents. We must teach students what to think so they may take those transcendentals from the classroom into a world that desperately needs them.

G. K. Chesterton defines education simply as “the soul of a society as it passes from one generation to another.” We would do well to consider — and to be forthright about — what kind of soul we are attempting to pass along.

Jim Gash is president of Pepperdine University. Jeremy Wayne Tate is founder and CEO of the Classic Learning Test.