In "American Innumeracy", I reference a few harmful educational trends currently afflicting our children. But it's not enough to curse the darkness: one might also light a candle.

I'm not in a position where I personally can do much to reform the US public school system, but I hope I can shed some light on why so many stupid ideas arise and are accepted. Understanding the mechanism is the first step to recovery.

What I'm going to say here probably going to sound a bit controversial and religiously partisan. I'm sorry: it didn't start out that way, but that's the conclusion I've come to after years of thinking about it. I don't mean to hurt anyone's feelings, but I have to be clear.

So let me start by changing the topic: Why are people valuable? And precisely who is valuable?

I'm a Christian, so for me, this is an easy one: People are valuable because God created everyone, and thus values them regardless of their looks, skills, intelligence, or utility to society.

Now let's say that we don't accept my postulate. What then?

On one hand, we might then regard people as valuable only in terms of their contribution or utility to society. As Hegel said: "All the worth which the human being possesses, all spiritual reality, he possesses only through the State." This philosophical bent formed the underpinnings for Marxism, 20th century eugenics, and the Nazi movement in particular.

And we soon saw where that led.

So what's the secular alternative, for those who witnessed and were shamed by that, but had no interest in theism?

Let me put it this way: a kid comes up and says she feels bad because she's not as smart or pretty or good at sports as her peers -- in fact, has nothing to distinguish her in any way. I, as a theist, tell her (using kid talk) that morality is more important, and that God doesn't value people based on their skills or looks.

What's the secular alternative?

Often, it's to prevent the comparison in the first place. The secularlist wants the little girl to feel good, so he rails against the situation which caused the comparison in the first place: We must eliminate sports and their scores. We must stop handing out grades which rank kids. We must eliminate "tracks" of learning for "gifted" versus normal versus "challenged" kids. We must eliminate stereotypical images of feminine beauty. And we must tell kids they are "gifted", talented, and wonderful -- no matter what.

Radical elitism and radical egalitarianism both stem from materialism. Though they look completely different, they are really the same failure: they both stem from the inability to decouple human worth from our utility. One way, you get social darwinism, the other way, you get a Harrison Bergeron-like quest for equality of results, which includes feminism, affirmative action, over emphasis on self-esteem in education, and most other errors of the late 20th century.

Both errors come about because there is no way I know of, outside theism, to view people as having equal ultimate value while admitting that they appear to have very real differences in ability, utility to society, natural and material endowment, outcome, etc. In short, to paraphrase the bible verse, these harmful errors arise because of, at the bottom, a rejection of the theistic God.