These are worthy comments, and I share the authors' fears. However, the key question here is why values, morality and political ideas need to be based in ancient history or an historical approach at all. To drag students through three thousand years of history in order to consider how the good life should be lived is simply a waste of valuable school time. Politics, philosophy and social thought do not need this archaic approach.

There isn't much I would not agree with in this article except the references to Israel.

The west drew it's laws and their application from Christ and not from the Ancient Hebrew. Yes the bible recounts parables and stories from that source but like Christ dizmissed much of it. The State of Israel never existed until the mid 20th century.

Aristotle reconciled the Greek and Hebrew traditions. Science and faith.
Aquinas continued that tradition. The Church's role over the centuries should be both appreciated and studied, particularily Agustine and Aquinas. They wrote and confirmed much of the dogma and created much of the ethics and beliefs we apply and live by today.
They need revision and that can only be done with study and understanding.

Yes a good essay and a good question too - where does the "West" begin and end especially in a time of instantaneous everything.

But what if none of our usual methods of "education" are sufficient for preparing young people to live in the now instantaneously inter-connected Quantum world of the "21st century" wherein everything is in a constant state of flux (it always was of course).
The set of essays available via this reference give a much more paradoxical non-linear perspective on the state of the humanly created world in the "21st century".
http://wildriverreview.com/user/63#article_list

Interesting article except that everything seems to be boiled down to values. As a Christian, and a clerical one at that, I have no idea what Christian values are. Christianity is not a collection of values that could be trasmitted to make us all good. Rather, it is a revealing narrative that creates a world. To live in that world is to be transformed into the one represented in the narrative. This means that the Christian life is not a life hemned in by ideas of good and bad. That is just another name for living in the flesh, or the law that kills the human spirit. Christians do not know what they are to become. What would be the point of life if that were the case. There is a radical freedom in Christianity that can only be threatened by talking about Christian values, the excuse for not understanding what the faith stands for.

if the system ain't broke then don't fix it. For anyone with half a brain you can observe that the more secular we have become and the more the leftist we have rewritten history the more violent, the more immoral, the more untrustworthy, the more perverted, the more addicted and the more denial the nation has become. The total lack of morals and moral relativsim taught and modelled in order for our society to be guilt free about murdering the unborn, having sex with and however with anyone, men sowing seed and refusing to father children, cowardly drunks belting the oldies etc etc. Anyone who can't see that the departure from Christian ethics is one of the major causes is either blind or stupid.

yep Runner there was a golden age when even the lion ate vegies and everyone looked smart and wore a tie.