There was a time when American education, for all its flaws, still touched the soul.

Classrooms once opened with prayer, not merely as a ritual of faith, but as a humble recognition of something greater than ourselves. At the center of education was not just reading, writing, and arithmetic, but a moral compass. There was a sense of meaning—a sense of the sacred.

Then, almost imperceptibly at first, that compass was removed.

Separation of Church and State

In the mid-20th century, following Supreme Court rulings such as Engel v. Vitale (1962) and Abington School District v. Schempp (1963), religion was formally removed from public schools. The justification was constitutional—the separation of church and state. But the deeper, unspoken result was the removal of the soul from the education system. We did not simply strip the classroom of prayer; we stripped it of purpose.

And nature, as always, abhors a vacuum.

The New Authority

Into the space once held by religion—its structure, values, and sense of ultimate meaning—stepped a new authority: psychology. But this was not the spiritual psychology of the ancients or even the moral psychology of Aristotle. It was behaviorist, reductionist, and mechanistic in nature. Psychology asked not what is humankind’s purpose, but how do they behave?—and more importantly, how can we make people behave differently?

Psychology, in this modern form, did not just fill the gap left by religion. It negated it.

The Displacement of Soul

When we removed religion from education, we did so under the banner of neutrality. The state must not endorse one faith over another, we said—and in that there was a valid point. But what replaced it was not neutral. It was a worldview just as commanding and far-reaching as any theology.

Modern psychology—the kind institutionalized in schools by way of counseling programs, behavior charts, and social-emotional learning—brings with it a host of assumptions:

• The human being is just a bundle of mental states and reactions and is not a soul.
• That anything uncomfortable is trauma.
• One’s identity is fluid, internal, and emotionally based, meaning it is not determined by biology or character acquired through living.
• That truth is subjective, and there is no external truth.
• The goal of education is not merely to instill virtue, but also to promote regulation, encompassing compliance, self-esteem, and career readiness.

These are not neutral ideas. They are values. They are ideology. And they replaced the older framework that once held schools accountable to something above them, not bureaucracy, but moral law.

What Was Lost

Religion, at its best, gave education a sense of upward aim. It taught children they were more than flesh, more than feelings. It called them to grow in wisdom and character, not just score higher on standardized tests.

When we taught children the Ten Commandments, we weren’t merely instructing them in doctrine; we were anchoring their conscience. Even the secular values we now defend—dignity, equality, rights—have roots in the sacredness of the individual, a notion born not of science, but of spirit.

Remove that foundation, and something subtle begins to break. Children lose their grounding. Teachers lose their authority. Schools become less places of formation and more areas of management.

Enter the psychologist.

Psychology as Replacement Priesthood

Today, a child who struggles is not considered spiritually lost, but rather,  emotionally disordered. A boy acting out is not just growing up,  but is labeled with ADHD. A girl in despair is not offered meaning but medication.

The ancient teacher would have asked: What is this child reaching for? What pain must be named and faced?

The modern school counselor asks: What behavior needs to be redirected? What feeling must be validated?

Psychology, in this role, has taken on a priesthood it was never meant to be.

It’s not about becoming better—just behaving better.  It does not call students to grow beyond themselves but to express themselves better. It has traded confession for therapy.

The result? – a generation of children who are fragile, medicated, confused about who they are, and increasingly unable to think clearly or live freely.

A Decline by Design

We often talk about “the “decline of education in terms of test scores or curriculum wars. But the more profound decline is spiritual. Once we removed religion, we also removed a coherent definition of the human person. What is education for, if not to grow one’s full humanity? And what is humanity, if not the image of something higher?

By removing that higher reference point, we made education about systems, not souls. And systems can be managed, manipulated, and engineered.

This was not an accident. It was not even entirely a mistake.

For those who wish to reshape society—not reform it but reprogram it—the first step is always to disentangle the child from tradition, from their sense of identity, and moral vision. In this sense, psychology was not just a mistake. It was a replacement theology, designed to remake the child into a citizen of the system, rather than a steward of their soul.

A Return to Meaning

None of this is to say religion must be forced back into public schools. That is not the point. The point is that the soul must not be forgotten—and education, if it is to mean anything, must be about more than data, feelings, and compliance.

We must reclaim a vision of the human being that sees depth, not just behavior, teaches responsibility, not just rights, and honors truth, not just tolerance.

Until then, we will continue to graduate children who are technologically skilled but spiritually adrift. They have opinions, but no beliefs. They can express their feelings, but cannot tell you why they matter.

The loss of religion in education did not create a vacuum. It created a new religion—one with no God, no grace, and no hope of redemption.

But the truth is always there.  What we have lost is the moral compass.

Let’s find it.

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