Twenty years ago, the Wheaton Alumni magazine began a series of articles in which Wheaton faculty told about their thinking, their research, or their favorite books and people. Professor of Business and Economics Bruce Howard was featured in the Summer 1993 issue.

Depending on who you listen to, the U.S. economy is poised for recovery, recession, significant expansion, or disaster. No one really knows what the economic future will hold, but what we do know is that definite economic challenges face our society today.

One challenge is in the area of productivity. Productivity gains enable a society to increase its standard of living. In 1990, U.S. workers produced, on average, $46,000 worth of goods and services per worker, 25% more than the average Japanese worker and 35% more than the average German worker.

Our growth in productivity, however, has slowed considerably. Over the 35 years from 1937 to 1973, productivity increased by an average of 3% each year. But during the 15-year period from 1973 to 1989, productivity only increased, on average, by .9% a year.

One little-known factor that explains this slowdown in productivity growth is the literacy of our work force. Many estimates show that one in five American adults is functionally illiterate. At least 40 developed nations today have higher functional literacy rates than the United States.

To be illiterate is to be economically disenfranchised. Consider the following: in the decade of the 1980s, college graduates experienced a 16% increase in their real wages. High school graduates saw their real wages fall by 1% and high school dropouts experienced a 12% decline in their real wages. In 1980, a college graduate 10 years into his career was earning 31% more than a contemporary with only a high school diploma. But by 1990, that differential had soared to 86%. This disparity in income is reflected in income taxes. In 1991, Americans with incomes that put them in the highest 5% paid 44.2% of federal income taxes. The top 20% by income paid 72.3% of the federal income tax. The lower 40% by income paid only 1.7% of the federal income tax, mainly because they are generating so little personal income.

We are moving from a manufacturing economy to a “mental” economy. Most of the value that is added to products today is the result of people using their intellect rather than their craftsmanship. Decades ago, people began leaving the farms and moving to factories because that was where the high-paying, value creating jobs were. We had become so good at farming that we just didn’t need as many people to produce all the food we needed.

I was recently in a factory where I watched men and women take plastic caps out of a box and place them on a conveyor belt. They performed this task eight hours a day for a wage of $17.00 an hour. Ten feet away, a million-dollar robot intricately wove and soldered hair-thin wires into a computer for electronic ignitions. What will the future hold for these men and women in a free-trading global economy where billions of others would gladly do the same job for a fraction of their $17.00 wage?

To cope with the changing economic horizon, we need to recognize and deal with the challenge of economically empowering the people in our society so they can participate in the value-creating activities of the next century. One tangible thing that we can do is help people learn to read and develop other basic skills so that they can be full participants in the economy.

Societies today need to focus on the economics of change. In 1960, 25% of the people in France lived or worked on a farm. Today, that number has decreased to less than 6% and continues to fall, Think as well of the enormous changes in the political economies around the world. As people in the world today try to cope with the pace and scope of change, they search for something that is stable, trustworthy, and utterly dependable.

What an opportunity for the Gospel! Christianity offers the glue that can keep a life and world from falling apart. The hope of Christians is based on that which is eternal and unchanging. It is a message for our time; it is a message for all time.

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Bruce Howard is Professor of Business and Economics. Prior to joining Wheaton’s faculty in 1980, he was senior auditor for the Northern Trust Company in Chicago. He received his B.A. from Wheaton and his M.S. and Ph.D. from Northern Illinois University. Dr. Howard’s current research explores the impact of interest rates on consumer behavior with respect to the use of debt to fund purchases of consumer durables and housing. He has an interest on the impact of taxation at the state and local level. For the last several years he has been studying the historical underpinnings of societal values as they relate to ordering of economic activity. In conjunction with his teaching career, Dr. Howard maintains an active professional association with Tyndale House Publishers in matters of accounting, taxation and employee benefits. He also has work experience in health care administration and banking. In recent years, Dr. Howard has traveled to Kazakhstan to teach and present papers at Kazak-American Free University and University of Kazakhstan.

Twenty years ago, the Wheaton Alumni magazine began a series of articles in which Wheaton faculty told about their thinking, their research, or their favorite books and people. Professor of Mathematics Terry Perciante was featured in the February/March 1992 issue.

The Washington Monument stands outside my hotel room window. To the right, I can see the Lincoln Memorial and the White House, shining in the setting Sunday evening sun. This morning I attended the church where Abraham Lincoln worshiped during his presidency and where Scottish immigrant Peter Marshall ministered to multitudes of World War II servicemen.

But sightseeing is not the reason for my visit to Washington. I am part of a three-person team representing the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory. With representatives from seven other Department of Energy national labs, we will seek to formulate and implement strategies for increasing the effectiveness of mathematics and science education in our nation’s schools. The National Academy of Science, the Mathematical Sciences Education Board, the Department of Energy, the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, and other agencies are uniting to provide funds for an extensive and long-term effort to stimulate American mathematics and science education.

The tranquility of the monuments and government buildings outside my window is not shared by the schools in our nation. Tomorrow morning they will fill with young people and then deliver education that is measurably inferior to that which is provided by schools in most other industrialized countries.

What can we do to help our students, individuals who will populate this capital city as leaders and citizens in the years ahead? They will certainly need a profound understanding of many scientific and deeply technical issues. Old ways of knowing will not adequately serve citizens during our age of subatomic particle physics, space exploration and astrophysics, fractal geometry and dynamical systems, biological engineering, and the chemistry of superconducting materials.

Unfortunately, most college faculty (even those who view themselves as liberally educated) remain so mathematically and scientifically illiterate that they cannot comprehend books and articles from those disciplines, which so profoundly shape modern life and decision making. What educational hope can there be for our young people?

Indictment of the causes for malaise in American education and culture is altogether too easy. The loss of a national consensus relative to the nature of education, the effects of urban congestion, the decline of social structures such as the family, and other factors could offer excuses for a lack of personal response to the problems.

If believers abdicate their influence in society to people who are not grounded in the love of God and the light of his revelation, then who will act? Lincoln’s action in the midst of a national social crisis and Marshall’s ministry to those in spiritual crisis both provide examples of the kind of commitment that our current educational problems require.

In our meetings, the Fermilab team will seek to join strategies and resources in order to achieve the maximum effect on our young people’s mathematical and scientific growth. And right now, as I return to the laptop computer on my desk, I’ll write another page in a series of books aimed at improving the teaching of mathematics at the secondary and college level.

In April, and again in July, I’ll join with my German and American coauthors to present seminars in Nashville and Chicago that detail wonderful advances in mathematics, but explain them at a level appropriate for secondary school mathematics teachers. By God’s grace, I want others to see me as an individual who loves his discipline and who wants others to become quantitatively enabled so that they can render more effective service than I can.

Would that we could all become people who are not conformed to standards of educational mediocrity, but are instead transformed and made capable of communicating with people who need to know his mercy and grace. The task involves serving Christ well while also serving young people within an educational system that needs reform.

Together, the multitude of Christian mathematics and science educators in our nation can provide living monuments to Christ’s transforming power in the face of overwhelming odds. If God has given special analytical abilities, considerable mathematical and scientific preparation, and opportunities to teach others, then surely by offering these special abilities to the Lordship of the Christ of creation, opportunities will be given by him to apply these gifts in ministries to people and to the educational infrastructure of our nation.

May God enable all of us to become humble agents of change and conveyors of new life in our disciplines, professions, and communities.

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Terry Perciante received the bachelor of science degree from Wheaton in 1967 and the Ed.D. from the State University of New York at Buffalo in 1972, when he began teaching at Wheaton. He was named Wheaton’s Junior Teacher of the Year in 1977 and Senior Teacher of the Year in 1994. In 1990, he was one of 700 educators from private colleges across the nation who was recognized by The Sears-Roebuck Foundation for resourcefulness and leadership. He is a member of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, and is an organizing force behind Project Teacher, a program funded by the Lilly Endowment. Since 1988 Terry has increasingly worked in fractal geometry and chaos theory with a small international team of writers and researchers headquartered at the University of Bremen in northern Germany. His professional involvement with this team has resulted in his presenting frequent keynote talks at NSF institutes, symposia, and professional meetings especially relating to aspects of dynamical systems.

Throughout his teaching career at Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois, Dr. R. Lance Factor, George Appleton Lawrence Distinguished Service Professor and Chair of Philosophy, had noticed several odd flourishes adorning the interior and exterior of Old Main, the historic central campus hall where Lincoln debated Douglas in 1858. Investigating its history, Factor unearthed fascinating secrets permeating the very foundation of the building.

Knox College, founded by rock-ribbed Presbyterian pioneers who despised both slavery and oath-bound fraternities, had existed for nearly twenty years when its crosstown competitor, Lombard College, founded by Unitarian Universalists, erected in 1855 an attractive central building. Anxious to equal or exceed this accomplishment, then-president Jonathan Blanchard and the Knox trustees concentrated on raising funds and locating an architect. Rejecting plans presented by a Calvinist firm in Chicago, Blanchard sought Mr. Charles Ulricson, the project’s contractor who had also designed churches, mansions and offices in Galesburg and other midwestern locations. A Swedish immigrant, Ulricson’s cool, competent demeanor appealed to Blanchard and the board, who nicknamed him “the urbane Mr. Ulricson.” Working quickly and efficiently, Ulricson presented an agreeable plan to the administration and construction commenced. Completed in 1857, the three-storey hall, topped by a temple-like belltower, commanded a magnificent view of the prairie, a benefit which the Lombard building did not offer, much to the delight of Knox constituents.

Professor Factor, continuing his careful perusal of ledgers, journals, correspondence and other documents, discovered that Ulricson had studied under renowned architectural masters in New York City, learning the principles of sacred geometry and alchemical engineering. A loyal disciple, he departed their tutelage a member of “the sacred priesthood of architecture” and eventually settled in Peoria, Illinois, happily applying his vast knowledge of mystic ratios and sacred numbers to his projects – chiefly Knox College. In brief, Old Main is a purely Masonic talisman. Its existence as a beloved landmark is particularly ironic considering that Jonathan Blanchard, later president of Wheaton College, founded in 1868 the National Christian Association as an instrument dedicated to eradicating the influence of Freemasonry from American church life. Undoubtedly he and the trustees were entirely unaware of the hidden esoteric meanings and sacred symbology woven into every tile, window and doorway. According to Factor, Ulricson likely believed that his building might capture the positive energies of the “the Great Geometer,” sanctifying and edifying its occupants. Through the influence of occultic design Ulricson might have sought to mystically unify the opposing, aggressive forces of Jonathan Blanchard and George Gale, founder of the college and the city. Both were strong-willed and often locked horns, fomenting division among the Galesburg citizenry. If Charles Ulricson was “urbane,” he was also surely crafty as he advanced the “craft” of Freemasonry through means both brazen and surreptitious.