JA writes,
1. Homeschoolers fall into the error of univariable analysis. “Literacy is bad at 63% of schools. Since they are run by the government, the only reason for poor literacy must be the fact that they are government run.” No, to meaningfully understand the data, you have to dissect it. What is the literacy rate when you eliminate all the schools in blue cities? What is the literacy rate of a public school that has the same demographics as Christian schools – usually white, middle-class two parent families?
Bret responds,
You really seem not to get the macro picture Josh. Government schooling, by design, prohibits connecting what we know from how we know what we know. Government schools, by force of law, does not allow education to teach Christian ontology, epistemology, anthropology, axiology, or teleology. This means the foundation upon which everything the government schools sit upon is anti-Christ. As such, it is irrelevant if some government schools exist in a white, middle-class two parent family and if because of that those students escape some of the even worse outcomes that are characteristic in blue states. It’s all premised on anti-Christ presuppositions and you seem to not be able to understand that in our conversation. Maybe you have an interest in not understanding?
JA writes,
2. You can read books on the state of public education, read all the bad headlines, but you still don’t really know how things are going at the school half an hour away from you. The PhDs in the Dept. of Education, or in school administration might announce all kinds of LBGT stuff that is going to get taught, but it often doesn’t happen. Teachers quietly shelve it, because they’ve got to get their students ready for next math, physics, English or chemistry test.
Bret responds,
Oh, I see… so all the books I’ve cited from all the authors I’ve read (some like Gatto criticizing Government schools as a teacher of the year recipient and as from inside the workings of the government schools) don’t really know how things are going on, but you do. Sorry … I’ll cast my lot with Gatto and wait for your book that details how Gatto (and others) have been wrong.
Secondly here, you expect me to take your word that “it often doesn’t happen.” Sorry, I don’t believe you. I might believe “it sometimes doesn’t happen,” but I don’t believe that it “often doesn’t happen,” and I doubt you have anything to back that spurious claim up.
JA writes,
3. You can go to school/college with bad students who don’t want to learn anything, but the resources are there if you want to learn. I went to a “conservative” public university in the South. Plenty there who just wanted to party. But a lifetime wouldn’t have been long enough to make use of all the resources there – including calculus, science, logic professors who professed faith in Christ and were ready to spend hours giving one-on-one tutoring.
BLMc responds,
Again… more anecdotal statements and mere assertions on your part.
If it is only about resources being there, one doesn’t need to attend government schools because there has never been a time when resources are more present outside of the government schools. Indeed, it is kind of what makes your end of the conversation moot. The resources are so ubiquitous in our information age that we hardly need to send God’s covenant seed to brain dead teachers in dreadful peer settings in order for them to be educated. Indeed, sending them there is in pursuit of anti-education.
I notice you love to talk about the exceptions as opposed to the rule. The rule teaches, as the stats show, that American government schooled children test at the bottom when compared to students from other countries.
JA writes,
4. Public school students spend about 25% of their waking hours at school. Homeschoolers, after you add up time at homeschooling co-ops, athletics programs at the local high school, and the workplace, might spend 15% of their time in the same kind of environment, hearing and seeing all the trash you rightly condemn.
BLMc responds
This argument is “because Homeschoolers are not as superior as they might be therefore they should be even more inferior.”
JA writes,
5. If the child comes from devoted Protestant Christians, he will likely value education like all Protestants once did. He will easily get into honours classes, where they study Newton’s physics (a professing Christian, at least), electricity theories of Faraday (another Christian), and the medical guy who invented anethesthics (also a Christian). He will study advanced math – exercises in pure logic, and “the language of God’s universe,” as one Christian mathematics teacher in the homeschooling movement put it. If you want to exercise dominion over the earth as commanded, you need to know its language, he says.
Bret responds,
And all as presupposing a humanist (and so anti-Christian) starting point.
JA writes,
6. Public education is constantly producing useful studies – just look at all the academic papers cited in “Who is My Neighbour?” There’s a paradox in higher education that is often missed: the LGBT communist profs always making headlines and pushing globalisation, vs. the researchers who are publishing paper after paper demolishing the assumptions of those profs, eg. more diversity means less social trust, interracial marriages more likely to fail, interracial children less healthy and less fertile when adults etc etc.
Bret responds,
The case made by “Who Is My Neighbor” (the whole book) taken as a whole only reinforces my case. If you want to escape your children becoming egalitarian don’t send them to Government schools which is the seedbed for all things egalitarian. Indeed, Government schools are completely premised on egalitarianism. That some children come out having, by God’s grace alone, triumphant over the system is not a rational reason why we should send Christian children into a system that is, by design, thoroughly pagan. You are arguing here that we should go on sinning because grace has been present in a few cases.
JA writes,
8. Our children should do what Paul did as a child: study pagan thinkers. Then they could go to Mars Hill and point out their contradictions like Paul did. “You have all these altars to all kinds of gods, but your pagan poet says you are the offspring of one God who doesn’t need anything.”
BLMc responds,
How many Pharisees who studied pagan thinkers tried to kill Paul? You take one example of God’s marvelous grace and then try to argue from that one instance that therefore we are allowed to raise our children as pagans.
Joshua, the schools are anti-Christ. They are premised upon the anti-Christ foundation that all the wisdom and knowledge is not founded on Christ. This is contrary to God’s revelation which teaches that all the hidden treasures of wisdom and knowledge are known in Christ (Col. 2:3). A child (or adult) cannot be educated with an education that is dedicated to eliminating the God of the Bible as the locus for all knowing.
Then, of course, one has to add in all the social diseases that arises from putting children in a vast peer setting. Postmen writes about this in some of his books. You might want to read them. “The Disappearance of Childhood” could be a good place to start.
Joshua writes,
9. Michael Spangler just posted a very good analysis of homeschooling: it produces domesticated, effeminate young men, because they’re at home all the time with little kids and a female as their main teacher. They’re not getting educated well, they don’t have a public spirit, they develop a bunker mentality that lasts well into adulthood.
BLMc responds,
Shrug … just because Rev. Spangler writes something doesn’t make it true. It sounds like it is all anchored in anecdotal reasoning and not on proof. Honestly, this just sound like the warmed over nonsensical “but homeschooled children aren’t properly socialized” argument. An odd argument since its inception. Still, I don’t doubt that the above might in some instances be true but on the whole I’d rather have the errors found in homeschooling than the errors found in Government schooling. Similarly, I don’t have a very high opinion of “Christian schools,” though again, I’m sure there are some fine ones out there.
Joshua writes,
10. The Roman Empire supposedly became Christian or at least tolerated Christianity when only approx 15% of the people were Christian. Lots of school districts have more than this amount. If Christians exercised their rights, they could make big changes. The problem is the Christian parents don’t want to confront the nonsense. They just put up with it or take their kids out and hide. That’s a lot easier than seeking grace to boldly but meekly confront teachers and principles about objectionable material.
BLMc responds,
We’ve tried reclaiming the swamp for decades and decades. It’s time to just drain the swamp. See Rushdoony’s “The Messianic Character of American Education.”
Secondly, I seriously doubt that more than 15% of Biblical Christians live in these school districts because if 15% of Biblical Christians did live in these school districts the big changes would’ve been made long ago.
Thirdly, taking their children out is not a matter of hiding. Nice try at poisoning the well there. They take their children out because children are not equipped to withstand or refute the bilge that is characteristic of all Government schools.
As an example… in my little corner of the woods which is largely middle class and white (the standards that you previously mentioned) the Government schools are doing the whole “furrie” thing and the whole Trannie thing and the whole sex education thing.
You’re just massively in error Joshua about all of this. Indeed, for whatever it is worth, you really need to repent for being an advocate for Christians sending God’s covenant seed to anti-Christ government schools. It is sin for you to do this.
Josh writes,
11. A lot of Christian parents don’t take the LGBT crowd head on, because they are shaky on it themselves. They attend churches that say homosexual acts are sinful, but the orientation is not. They let their kids watch movies, listen to songs, spend hours on social media where this stuff is promoted non stop. Their kids are going to get swept away no matter where they go to school.
Bret responds,
So… because parents are rotten therefore it is OK for them to be maximum rotten?
Look, I quite agree that parents are a problem but maybe that is, in part, because the parents attended government schools?
Joshua writes,
12. High school kids are getting more conservative, according to some polls. At my children’s high schools, PRIDE displays get vandalized. Most despise the LGBT crowd. It’s against nature, so they naturally hate that whole agenda.
Bret responds,
When these children become adults with children I’ll then know the general population as gotten “more conservative,” when they refuse to send their children to government schools. Until then, it’s all anecdotal.
Look Joshua… I think we have covered this pretty well and it is clear that we are not making much progress. As such, I don’t know if I will be posting your future protestations. Thanks for being a contestant. There are some lovely parting prizes for some of our contestants who played but didn’t win.
Parting prize for Josh ? The hat with the pointed top and a make-up kit of clown face paint.
Sometimes we also give out clown shoes when we can find a pair at a “going out of the circus business” sale.
Did you know that it really is true that most professional clowns were once school teachers? It is a natural fit.
😉
Josh, you should live out your convictions, send your kids to the heathen hellholes as “missionaries” and not complain how they turn out. Remember to be affirming because of luv. Then die, stand before God and tell Him His Word was not sufficient to convince you, that many other Christians did so and many ministers and bloggers like Tim Challes said it was ok.