Strike the Root of the Problem

In his essay "Agriculture from the Roots up" (in the collection The Way of Ignorance), Berry writes:

Henry David Thoreau wrote somewhere that "hundreds are hacking at the branches for every one who is striking at the root." He meant this as a metaphor, but it applies to modern agriculture and to the science of modern agriculture. As it has become more and more industrialized, agriculture increasingly has been understood as an enterprise established upon the surface of the ground.

Substitute "education" or "spirituality" for "agriculture," and the problem is the same: our Christian schools (including classica ones) are simply hacking at the branches, not addressing the root of our educational crisis; and our eviscerated spirituality does not in the least challenge modernity.