The Need for Wisdom

One must study wisdom to know how to do good, just as much as one must study physics to know how to do physics. If you are taught wisdom, there's a good chance you will become wise. If not, there's a good chance you will be a fool. And fools do a great deal of harm. 

But wisdom is no longer taught by most parents and nearly all schools.

Until the early decades of the 20th century, American students were expected to know the greatest sources of wisdom -- the ancient Greek and Roman writers, Shakespeare and, most important of all, the Bible.

But about 100 years ago, America embarked on the road to hell when it stopped teaching wisdom -- and what wisdom is all about, moral virtue -- when it secularized all education. First the universities and then the lower grades decided that knowledge could substitute for wisdom. Now American young people get no wisdom and, for that matter, little knowledge.

It is not a coincidence that the most foolish institutions in America and the rest of the West are the universities. They are the most radically secular.

You don't have to be religious to realize that the most secular institutions are also the most foolish institutions. You just need not to be a fool.

Dennis Prager, “If the Road to Hell Is Paved With Good Intentions, With What Do We Pave the Road to Heaven?”