We must teach our students to work hard to empathize with and understand others. Students need many prior Christian virtues, such as humility, self-control, and gentleness, before learning and applying these skills. Yet, at the same time, we must not shy away from teaching our students to identify fools, offer reasons for their foolishness, and yes be willing to avoid or exclude them when appropriate. 

Stupidity is a more dangerous enemy of the good than malice. One may protest against evil; it can be exposed and if need be, prevented by use of force. Evil always carries within itself the germ of its own subversion in that it leaves behind in human beings at least a sense of unease. Against stupidity we are defenseless.
— Dietrich Bonhoeffer¹

Like snow in summer or rain in harvest,
honor is not fitting for a fool.
Prov. 26:1 (NIV)

This post will demonstrate that I do not believe the last sentence of Bonhoeffer’s quote above. I contend we are not defenseless against stupidity or what the Bible calls fools and foolishness. I think our defense can start by identifying fools and foolish ideas and offering clear reasons why they are foolish. Ideally, Christians in universities should help with this process.

Yet, I must confess that I don’t help my students identify fools and foolishness as well as I should. The likely reason is that I’ve absorbed the cultural pressure to be nice that I described recently. I don’t think I’m alone. According to the Google N-gram, we have talked less about “fool,” “fools” “foolish,” and “foolishness” ever since the 1930s.

I would hypothesize that the declining use of these words stems from the dominance in our culture of sentimentality, by which I mean excessive tenderness and niceness. For Christians, it may involve the erroneous assumption that we need to be “nicer” than both God and Scripture or perhaps an erroneous view that we should avoid that kind of “demeaning” language.² That sort of foolish niceness is a vice and a way our culture has deformed us.

After all, biblical wisdom literature is quite clear that the path to wisdom entails learning to identify fools and foolish ideas. Yet, we often avoid this part. For example, how many times have you heard Proverbs 1:7a in Christian discussions about education, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge,” but you never hear the second part quoted, “but fools despise wisdom and instruction.” Indeed, I cannot recall a time I have heard the second part quoted in these contexts.

The wise and diligent know how to identify fools, help others identify them, and avoid them (Prov. 14:7, “Stay away from a fool, for you will not find knowledge on their lips”). Indeed, Jesus and Paul freely identified fools and foolish ideas (Mt. 7:24-26; Mt. 25; Luke 10; Gal. 3:1, 3, etc.). Christian education should help with these tasks. I was reminded of this important endeavor when rereading the philosophy of education by one of the greatest Christian educators, John Amos Comenius:

We do not choose parasites, fools, or buffoons, but serious, wise, and pious men as tutors for the sons of our kings and princes. Should we not blush, therefore, when we confide the education of the sons of the King of kings, of the brothers of Christ and heirs of eternity, to the jesting Plautus, the lascivious Catullus, the impure Ovid, that impious mocker at God, Lucian, the obscene Martial, and the rest of the writers who are ignorant of the true God?³

Comenius is simply applying and expanding upon Proverbs 14:7 in his day. We should make sure our young students are equipped with the Christian critical thinking they need to identify fools before having them read fools.

To help students identify and critically analyze fools we must dig deeper than surface level impressions to expose foolishness.

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