The Briefing with Albert Mohler - Thursday, December 4, 2025

Starting point is 00:00:04 It's Thursday, December 4, 2025. I'm Albert Boller, and this is the briefing, a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview. I think most of us by now are aware that the nation faces a very significant educational crisis, an academic crisis, a learning crisis, a school crisis. Now, one of the things we have faced just in recent years is that you have people who are saying, look, these kids just aren't doing well in school. They had been doing well, they're not doing well any longer, or they're not doing as well now as they used to do. Very interesting article appeared in the New York Times asking the question, is the problem the children or is the problem the schools? G. L. Nyang wrote a report, and it begins this way, quote, one of them were bewildering aspects of the already high-stress endeavor of 21st century American parenting is that at some point your child is likely to be identified with a psychiatric diagnosis of one kind or another. Many exist in a gray zone. that previous generations of parents never encountered, end quote.

Starting point is 00:01:08 Okay, now, before we go any further, there's just such massive worldview importance to be seen in this. We're being told, just in this article for the New York Times, that one of the bewildering aspects of modern parenting is the fact, now just listen to how this is written. At some point, your child is likely to be identified with a psychiatric diagnosis of one kind or another, end quote. Now, this is a huge problem.

Starting point is 00:01:35 It's a problem that's far more massive, I think, than most American parents, most American Christian parents recognize the psychologization, the turning to the therapeutic of just about everything, translating every issue into a psychiatric diagnosis or some kind of syndrome. All of this is just a huge problem. It should be a huge problem for Christian parents. Now, let's just talk about a couple of the issues that are often discussed here. Number one, boys and ADHD, and then also the question of autism. And, of course, there's some relationship between autism and ADHD.

Starting point is 00:02:10 Sometimes it's referred to as a spectrum in which there are more significant, less significant cases. I want to begin right now by saying, I am not arguing that there is no such thing. That is not my argument. I believe there is ample evidence that there are particular patterns and particular issues that arise with certain children, disproportionately boys. And there may be all kinds of reasons for them. That is beyond the conversation right now. But the point I want to make is that the Christian worldview has to hold these kinds of issues in deep suspicion. In other words, we want to see the evidence. We want to see how this fits into larger biblical truth claims and principles. But we also understand that sin comes with effects

Starting point is 00:02:52 and some of those effects could well show up. And by this, I mean in a sinful world, just as you end up with tumors and viruses, you also end up with, well, learning problems. But the problems are disproportionately male, and they're disproportionately modern. That gets to something else. So the therapeutic revolution, which I think is a net, very problematic revolution, it has come only fairly recently since the 1950s, really, in the United States and popular culture, more since the 1970s and 80s. But over the course of the last several years, there has been a noted deterioration in scores by children.

Starting point is 00:03:31 You can take eighth graders, a pretty universal age at which many of these things are tested. And then, of course, high school as well, college entrance tests. Look, America has a problem. Now, let me just tell you, the problem is massive, as we're going to see in just a few moments. It's a lot bigger than most educators want to admit. But the interesting thing about this article in the New York Times is that it is reversing the question. asking, you know, is the problem really the kids or is the problem the school? I want to extend that to say, is the problem the kids or is the problem also the expectations and the diagnoses

Starting point is 00:04:04 and all the rest? Now, the numbers are staggering. Listen to this. Quote, a diagnosis of attention, deficit, hyperactivity disorder, that's ADHD, is practically a right of passage in American Boyhood. This is reading directly from the report, quote, with nearly one in four, 17-year-old boys bearing the diagnosis. Okay, so we now reach the point. This report comes from the New York Times that in America's public school systems, one out of four 17-year-old boys

Starting point is 00:04:38 has a diagnosis of ADHD, not just a suspicion, not just some kind of issue of parents talked with a teacher about or the teachers talked with a parent about. No, we're now talking about a diagnosis, one out of four. Now, let me just say that in the issue of statistics, in the world of statistics, one out of four is a major statistic.

Starting point is 00:05:01 That is vast. When you're talking about a population of 17-year-old males, 17-year-old boys, all across the country, one out of four of them not only had some kind of learning issue, but has a diagnosis of ADHD. I think posing the question here is very healthy. I appreciate the fact that the New York Times has run this piece. asking is the question the kids or is the question the schools. And I think this is a revolutionary shift to the question in some ways because the implication all along has been the problem is the kids. The problem is some kind of issue, some kind of syndrome, some kind of diagnosis that would

Starting point is 00:05:37 explain why there is this problem? And at least some people are now beginning to ask the question, is the school, the problem? Or when I say school here, I don't just mean teachers and principals and and all the rest. I mean, the entire apparatus of elementary and middle school and high school in America, particularly in the public school model. Now, in worldview analysis, there's just a lot of things we need to think about here. For one thing, we do grasp at answers that will give us some satisfaction about why something appears to be broken or not happening. And, you know, the fact is that it is incredibly well documented now that a lot of parents demand a diagnosis. for their kid. They demand a diagnosis. If something is not going well at school, in particular with

Starting point is 00:06:24 boys, then a lot of parents immediately say, well, then we've got to have, you know, junior tested, and then we need a diagnosis. And once we have a diagnosis, then that will help us to deal with the issue. But when you're talking about one out of four, and I think when you look at a lot of the definitions and parents, you know this, the general definitions of things that go into ADHD, they are generally associated with the syndrome known as B-O-Y. And so just to be honest, an awful lot of this is just boys as boys. And I think a part of the problem, I'll just interject this right now is the fact that the public schools have lost the ability to teach boys. Because in this therapeutic age, the therapeutic modality becomes a part of the problem.

Starting point is 00:07:11 Boys need a lot of structure. Boys need authority. Boys need discipline in the classroom. they need very clear assignments. They need men in the classrooms. And I'm not saying they can't be taught by a woman. I'm simply saying it is a fact that it's a very different thing if you put a man in the classroom. And the fact that in so many cases, the educational process has just basically now become devoid of men, this is another problem.

Starting point is 00:07:38 And then, of course, you've got so many latchkey kids and others. You have homes in which there's no father in the home in the first. place? Who would think this could go wrong? But you know, the problem doesn't even stop at high school. For example, the Atlantic came out with a major report just about the same time. These are just a matter of days separated. Rose Horowitz is the author of this report in which we are told that at Brown University and at Harvard University, quote, more than 20% of undergraduates are registered as disabled. At Amherst, another very elite academic institution, the figure is 34%. So I read it just as it is written. The word was disabled. And so you have a picture in your mind of what disability means.

Starting point is 00:08:29 Clearly, those categories are going to have to be completely blown wide open if you're going to talk about 34% of undergraduates at an elite college being official. diagnosed and registered as disabled. This is a huge problem. This is a sign of a society that is losing its mind, yes, and is also losing the ability to teach or to educate. That becomes abundantly clear. If in America's elite universities, you have, like at Amherst, who identify as disabled, let me to say that that is clearly redefining disability. And the whole point of the article is that so much of it is a supposed educational disability or learning disability. Now, that takes us right back to the situation with 17-year-old boys.

Starting point is 00:09:19 And that is the way that New York Times article really began. Now, as I said, there's an interesting turn in that article. And I think it comes when Peter Gray is quoted. He's a research professor at Boston College. He says, quote, what's happening is, instead of saying we need to fix the schools, the message is, we need to fix the kids. He goes on and says, the track has become narrower and narrower,

Starting point is 00:09:44 so a greater range of people don't fit the track anymore. He said, and the result is, we want to call it a disorder. I think that's an honest statement of what's going on here. And, you know, there are all kinds of things in the background to this.

Starting point is 00:09:55 For one thing, all kinds of politics, all kinds of ideology is fed into this. What the public schools are now expected to do is driven much by ideology. It's all kinds of people. the administrative state and in the educational schools and in the larger cultural elites who say, you know, your curriculum needs to do this. Your curriculum needs to say this. And so much of the curriculum itself has now been dumbed down. And I don't know a single educator who would deny,

Starting point is 00:10:24 by the way, at any level. And so at any level, I mean, at every level, education is being progressively dumbed down. And this is not just an intuition. It's not just an accusation. This is this is backed up with solid evidence. And so I'm just going to rush very quickly to a bit of that solid evidence because we're going to come back to it. And this is the fact that a blockbuster of a report has been released by the faculty Senate, the faculty administration work group at the University of California, San Diego. And this one is setting off a tsunami in higher education. You're talking about one of the Cals, one of the University of California institution. So in the state of California, The University of California is at the very top of the heap in terms of the elite in public education.

Starting point is 00:11:14 And certainly it starts with Berkeley, but it goes to the other University of California campuses. This is the University of California, San Diego, big university. Listen to this. I'm reading here directly from the UC San Diego Senate report, quote, the number of students who are not able to perform at high school level increased. And even the number of students who can't perform at middle school level increased enormously. That was said by a professor who's co-chair of the work group and a professor of sociology. Then listen to this.

Starting point is 00:11:42 Quote, in 2020, university data show one in 200 incoming students needed remedial math. This year, that number is about one in eight. That's roughly a 30-fold increase, according to the report. And we're not talking about complicated math situations. Former Senator Ben Sass, who was also, of course, a college and university president, He wrote a piece and opinion piece with the Wall Street Journal pointing out that this is a crisis in American higher education and frankly every level of American education. And frankly, crisis doesn't even begin to cover what we're talking about here. But he points out that college students, according to this kind of report, are struggling with questions such as 7 plus 2 equals 6 plus what.

Starting point is 00:12:31 We're not talking here about trigonometry. We're talking here about apples. This is more like kindergarten, or at least in terms of this kind of equation, something that certainly should be mastered by, say, the sixth or seventh grade. Another of the questions given as an illustration is this. Sarah had nine pennies and nine dimes. How many coins did she have in all? End quote. Okay. Now, I think as an educator, by the way, or as someone who's taken a test, you recognize it a little bit of trick in that. A little bit of trick in that. Because human nature is to add it up to a total. Again, nine pennies. and nine dimes. And so the temptation there is to say that the answer is 99 cents. But that's not the question. The question was how many coins? And that means 18 coins. Okay. So let's just make sure we all have to go to remedial math. Now let me go back to the fact that if you look at the University of California, San Diego, that's supposed to be an elite institution, a highly selective institution. They've been

Starting point is 00:13:31 selecting the students. It's a rare opportunity to gate admission to one of the UC Canter. emphasis. And now we're looking at one in eight students, not able to do high school or maybe even middle school math. Okay, so there's lots going into this. Part of it is DEI. And nobody really wants to say this, but that's a part of what's been going into this, because there have been people who have been claiming that math is middle class and it's restrictive. And an emphasis upon math itself is as a form of oppression. And they're saying that a concentration on math can be even racist. And those are established arguments. Of course, not being able to do math is a significant liability, regardless of one's social context. The next thing we need to say is that there has been an

Starting point is 00:14:20 effort to stop testing, standardized testing, saying that that is unfair to students who may have different educational aptitudes. Well, the point of the matter is that those standardized tests were originally put in place in order to have a standardized way of making admissions decisions so that there was less subjectivity. And so that there was a greater way, at least in theory, of knowing whether a student or an applicant did or did not have the aptitude for admission to this college, this degree program, et cetera. But now that's considered oppressive. And you'll notice that testing is increasingly, just across the board, oppressive. And we really do have a crisis here, folks. And I want to look at the various levels of crisis. Number one, let's go back to the situation

Starting point is 00:15:07 with 17-year-old boys. Let's go back to the fact that one out of four now has a diagnosis of ADHD. And I said, again, the problem here can't be ADHD. It has to be something larger and more fundamental. And I think a part of the problem is it is an educational failure, probably just across the board. And I'm not throwing educators, and especially Christians working in schools. I'm not educators under the bus. Many of them are put in situations in which they see the brokenness, they know the challenges. They are all too aware of these problems. And there are so many teachers who will say, write out loud, I wish I had order in the classroom so I could teach. I wish I had the freedom to teach what I think would actually help these students to learn. There are all

Starting point is 00:15:51 kinds of things that are going into this. But I'll just tell you, what are the most fundamental definitions of insanity is looking at something like this and saying, we don't have a problem. I appreciate that New York Times article asking, is the problem the schools? And I think that's a fundamentally good question. And by that, I don't mean to say schools are bad. I mean to say that what has been done transforming the schools into the laboratories of social justice, laboratories of ideology, laboratories of therapy and all the rest, that hasn't worked. It also hasn't worked to assign to the schools the responsibility to deal with all kinds of pathologies set loose in society.

Starting point is 00:16:27 And by the way, on the other side of those pathologies, the break. of the family, the breakdown of marriage, so many single family homes, you just go down, you go down the list of all of these problems. I just want to stay right up front. It's too much to ask the schools to handle this, but I also want to say in so much brokenness, the schools become one of the only means, if you're in government, if you're trying to deliver social services, about one of the only means in which there might be some opportunity to help some of these kids. And thus, there is a logic to, I think, the loss of so much of the educational effectiveness. So there is so much on the table here. I wanted to make very clear the numbers in this New York Times article, one in four 17-year-old boys having the diagnosis of ADHD. And then one out of eight of the approved applicants, the incoming students, the University of California, San Diego, not being able to do high school and perhaps even middle school math, needing remedial math. One of the educators there at the University of California, San Diego, not being able to do high school and perhaps even middle school math, needing remedial math. One of the educators there at the University of California, San

Starting point is 00:17:30 Diego or UCSD as it's known, basically made the obvious point. This university is not equipped to have to do remedial math with one out of eight of all incoming students. We can do that or we can be a major university and a research institution. We can't do both. And it also tells you something's wrong in the admissions process. There is simply no way that there aren't enough young people applying to the University of California, San Diego who can do simple math. There has to be some explanation, may not be a simple explanation for why those students are not here, and other students got approved applications. I think there is also the basic reminder here that if you tear down a civilization, it's going to come with consequences. And some of those consequences are going to show up

Starting point is 00:18:17 even in data like this. And you're going to look at this and you're going to say, you know, that is not just a problem in our schools. It's a problem. in our societies. It's a problem in our families. It's a problem in our communities. Christians know that the more basic the subversion, the more basic or foundational, the problem, the more difficult it's going to be not only to solve it, but to get people to admit what it is, that it is what it is. Oh, by the way, let me just give you another aspect of this, which should terrify you in case you say want to fly on a plane or, you know, turn on your oven. The article, also says explicitly that at the University of California, San Diego, 55.6% of the undergraduate

Starting point is 00:19:05 student body is pursuing a degree in STEMM, science, technology, engineering, math. Okay, so one out of eight can't do middle school or high school math, but 55.6% are majoring in, oops, almost the same thing. And there is no degree in engineering without a lot of math. There's no degree in any of these fields. And by the way, at least one of the letters actually means math, if math means anything. All right. Now, there are some people saying a lot of this is explainable by the pandemic. You know, some of it may very well be. And when you look at a graph or you look at a progression line and there's something like, you know, a lump in the middle of the Python, that could be explained contextual issues but we're not just looking at that we are looking at number one the fact that

Starting point is 00:19:59 this pattern started before covid this pattern started way before covid and frankly we are we're at this point now where it's just not enough to say this is because of COVID it that's not enough in politics it's not enough in in in child rearing it's not enough in church it's not enough anywhere we're past the time when you can say well this is just due to COVID it's COVID may have something to do with it, but just is not a word that fits. The editorial board of the Wall Street Journal came out responding to the report from the faculty Senate there at the University of California, San Diego, by describing it as, quote, a math horror show.

Starting point is 00:20:42 And I don't think that's wrong. The article goes on and says, quote, in 2013, California started down the slippery slope of declining standards by dropping algebra as a requirement for eighth graders. Now, many of its top college students can't even add fractions. Politicians blame rising unemployment among recent grads or artificial intelligence. Maybe the real problem is the not-so-soft bigotry of ever lower expectations, end quote. I think there's an interesting point to be made in that analysis. And here you have the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal, and that paper has got a lot staked in this kind of future.

Starting point is 00:21:17 Obviously, we all do, but that paper is probably on the front lines of, say, big corporations trying to figure out who in the world we're going to hire. And one of the things they do point out here is that if you take away algebra as a requirement, you don't just lose algebra. It turns out you lose what comes before that. And it's another sign that if you dumb the educational curriculum down, you're actually going to end up dumbing it down further than you think, and probably that you're trying to sell to the school board or to the state legislature.

Starting point is 00:21:49 We are looking here at the fact that if you tell, students math's not really all that important and you don't have to work all that hard guess what they get the message speaking of math rose horowitz at the Atlantic does the math for u.c san diego telling us that if you're looking at that increase in percentage let's put it down to numbers five years ago about 30 incoming freshmen at the college at the university arrived with math skills below high school level now the institution is reporting the number is more than 900 so as you're looking at, again, a 30-fold increase from 30 to 900 in five years, and I can't resist it. You do the math. It is a huge, huge problem.

Starting point is 00:22:36 All right, before we leave for today, a very interesting report out of the UK. Remember that just a matter of months ago, the Supreme Court there in Britain, came down really clear and determinative in that male means male and female means female. and it basically comes out against transgender identity. And so when it comes to organizations for women or organizations for girls, the big point is the Supreme Court there in Britain said that those institutions have the right to only admit women or girls and to only allow women or girls into their spaces. And you also have the fact that legally, once you say an organization has that right, it does imply an obligation, even just for, say, issues of litigation and all the rest.

Starting point is 00:23:23 And so the word is coming out of Great Britain that the girl guides, that's something like the girl scouts in the United States. And again, there are all kinds of problems there, but let's just stick with this report. The girl guides have come out. And the interesting thing is that they say they're being forced to do it by the Supreme Court of Britain's decision. quote, from today the 2nd of December is with a heavy heart that we are announcing trans girls and young women will no longer be able to join girl guiding. This is a decision we would have preferred not to make, and we know that this may be upsetting for members of our community.

Starting point is 00:23:57 There will be no immediate changes for current young members, but more information will be shared next week, end quote. So the interesting thing there is that the girl guides is politically posturing against the policy they say they have now been forced to assume. And, you know, at least some in the LGBTQ community see that as, or that kind of pattern as something that is suspect to them. Like, we hate to do this, but we just have to do this. But it does simply make common sense. Let's just state that. I think if you're going to have a group like the girl guides or girl guiding, as it's

Starting point is 00:24:32 called, like scouting, if you're going to have that and you're going to say it's girls and you're going to say its leaders must be women, then you either mean that or you don't. And the transgender lie is just that. it is a transgender life, a very potent one. But it's also interesting to see that it's not just girls because there are other reports out about other organizations. One of the other women's organizations, this is not just the girls, but adults,

Starting point is 00:24:57 the National Federation of Women's Institutes, it has also announced that, quote, with the utmost regret and sadness, that we announced that from April, 2006, we can no longer offer formal membership to transgender women as an organization that has proudly welcomed transgender women into our membership for more than 40 years. This is not something we would do unless we feel that we had no other choice. And here's the brilliant way they said that the issue is framed.

Starting point is 00:25:27 Quote, to be able to continue operating as the Women's Institute, they were going to have to make this change. So in other words, they're being forced by the Supreme Court's decision. They're in Britain that if they are going to be a women's institute, it has to be instituted of hold for it, women. Once again, a wake-up call as to where we live in the insanity of our times and a part of our Christian responsibility, even when it's really hard. And even when it's not popular, is to think in biblical categories consistently, and where necessary, courageously.

Starting point is 00:26:05 Thanks for listening to the briefing. For more information, go to my website at Albertmuller.com. You can follow me on X or Twitter by going to X.com forward slash Albert Moeller. For information on the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, go to sbtsbts.edu. For informational on Boyce College, where we still believe in math, just go to voicecollege.com. I'll meet you again tomorrow for the briefing.

The Briefing with Albert Mohler - Thursday, December 4, 2025

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