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.
In all honesty I commend you for engaging with someone of a different view. If you were like R Scott Clark you would have banned me after one or two comments.
I would glad if you would allow me to make some final points.
1. I should have said at the beginning that I am in no way suggesting that it is the duty of all Christian parents to send their children to public school. Homeschooling may be the only option. Lots of homeschooled kids are a success in multiple ways.
2. I agree that we can rely on personal experience, observation, and anecdotes too much. But they are part of our providence, which is one aspect of finding God’s will. Providence can reveal the limits of a theory that sounds good but doesn’t always work in practice. As a bad example, you might read a book on Christian parenting that says every child should get the same punishment for the same infraction of the rules. Experience teaches that this theory rests on an egalitarian principle. Most girls are softer and can be corrected more gently.
3. I was once as dismissive as you of the “social skills are underdeveloped in homeschoolers” criticism. Then I read BM Palmer’s sermon on Rev. 3:20, where he masterfully analyses the social nature of human beings:
“Look upon that unvarying law, by which no man finds the perfection of his nature except under the pressure of social discipline. All these powers, intellectual and moral, at which I have hinted, exist, in the first instance, as bare capacities, and lie entirely dormant in the infant: and this marvellous being, with these dormant capabilities, is put by the Creator in immediate contact with all nature without; which, as a charged battery, sends its electric shock through body and mind; waking it up from its torpor, and rousing all these sleeping powers into intense activity and exercise…
“Hence education: why, what is it but educing these powers as they are originally found in man, and stimulating them and developing them; and then furnishing them, in all their strength, with the knowledge which they shall apply in after life? This is true of the moral, as well as of the intellectual and physical in man. These powers all lie dormant, until they have been stirred into action. He who retreats from his kind, and locks himself up in the isolation of his own being, will find his moral nature tottering at last into ruins; and, like some abbey of the middle ages which has fallen into decay, the lichen and the moss will cover it and indicate but the glory of what it was. Surely, if we find man put under the operation of this law, so that he only grows up in the symmetry and proportion of his parts as he is put under this discipline, he is, by the constitution of his nature, formed for society.”
4. There’s often a huge disparity between the amount of social interaction of homeschooled children and the amount in public schooled children. Put bluntly, some homeschooling families are doing a radical social experiment. They point to times when boys worked alongside their fathers in the shop or field and girls worked with their mothers at home. They forget that non-Christian boys and girls did the same, so the amount of social interaction was the same. Plenty of homeschooling families find themselves with no extended family nearby, no children their children’s age in the local church, and the local homeschooling group no longer led by conservative homeschooling families as it was in the 1990s. The result is extreme social isolation, and the dangers Palmer warns about are very real. Church history does not indicate that the children of Christian parents had drastically less social interaction than the children of non Christian parents.
5. We don’t always need stats to know when something is going radically wrong. Boys at home all day, around their mother, are growing up in a feminine environment. Common sense says they will likely become domesticated and effeminate. Since it is hard enough for the wife to bear children, cook meals, and teach the three Rs, the last thing she has time for is making sure their physique, athletic ability, and co-ordination are developing properly. If they are stunted in these areas, they will not be masculine. If the family has a farm or business they can work at, they should be fine. Not every homeschooling family has that.
6. Instilling Christian theories of knowledge in children is important. Practically, how does that work out? Does it mean you stand over their shoulder every time they access resources produced by pagans, and teach them how to process the information from a Christian worldview? No, you instil some epistemological principles and turn them loose, because you have lots of children, a heavy workload, and limited time. So they get online, read books, and get inundated with knowledge produced by humanists. But exposure to humanists does not automatically mean indoctrination. We should have faith that they won’t be. The God of Moses and Daniel still reigns.
7. If your main issue with public schools is the learning environment, you have a point. But that’s a different debate. The debate is whether we can learn from pagan sources. Followers of Van Till seem to hold (maybe not in theory, but in practice) that without correct presuppositions, the knowledge gained is either useless or inherently corrupting. But God points His people to the Cainites to learn tentmaking and music, to the infidel to rebuke them when they are not providing for their own house (1 Tim 5), to Abimelech to learn about honesty and chastity (Gen. 20) to the ant to learn about diligence, planning and foresight (Prov 6), to heathen thinkers to teach us about ethnic/national characteristics (Titus 1), and to the Gentiles to learn about basic morals (1 Cor 5).
None of these teachers had a Van Tillian theory of knowledge. Maybe I’ve used unconvincing examples, but it’s inevitable that children and adults are going to learn a lot from the studies of government-funded academics throughout their life, no matter how they are/were educated.
8. If children are not learning from any pagan sources, Calvin has a word for us:
“…To charge the intellect with perpetual blindness, so as to leave it no intelligence of any description whatever, is repugnant not only to the Word of God, but to common experience. We see that there has been implanted in the human mind a certain desire of investigating truth, to which it never would aspire unless some relish for truth antecedently existed. There is, therefore, now, in the human mind, discernment to this extent, that it is naturally influenced by the love of truth, the neglect of which in the lower animals is a proof of their gross and irrational nature. Still it is true that this love of truth fails before it reaches the goal, forthwith falling away into vanity…
“Therefore, in reading profane authors, the admirable light of truth displayed in them should remind us, that the human mind, however much fallen and perverted from its original integrity, is still adorned and invested with admirable gifts from its Creator. If we reflect that the Spirit of God is the only fountain of truth, we will be careful, as we would avoid offering insult to Him, not to reject or condemn truth wherever it appears. In despising the gifts, we insult the Giver.
How, then, can we deny that truth must have beamed on those ancient lawgivers who arranged civil order and discipline with so much equity? … Therefore, since it is manifest that men whom the Scriptures term carnal, are so acute and clear-sighted in the investigation of inferior things, their example should teach us how many gifts the Lord has left in possession of human nature, notwithstanding of its having been despoiled of the true good.
“But if the Lord has been pleased to assist us by the work and ministry of the ungodly in physics, dialectics, mathematics, and other similar sciences, let us avail ourselves of it, lest, by neglecting the gifts of God spontaneously offered to us, we be justly punished for our sloth” (Institutes of the Christian Religion, Book II, Chapter 2, sections 12, 15-16).
It is hard to square Van Til with what Calvin says here.
9. The Southern Protestants overall were more orthodox than the North. Tragically they rejected Christian Nationalism. Dabney and other Southern anti-Christian nationalists consistently rejected public schools. In the North, by contrast, Protestants formed the National Reform Association and called for the constitutional amendment declaring America to be a Christian nation. They also supported public schools.
The two go hand in hand. Luther, Knox, and other Reformers saw that Christianised public schools are a key part of Christian Nationalism. Christian parents could at least pray for this and get involved in public education without sending their children there, rather than calling for their abolition. Especially when you read that the academic structure envisioned by Knox and Commenius (elementary, junior high, high school, university, post grad) was first fully implemented in America. The content has been badly corrupted but it explains in part why nearly all the top universities in the world have been in the USA for 100+ years.
If you think the achievement of a Christian Nation will be more “top down” than bottom up, i.e. through “a Christian Prince” (a powerful, perhaps unregenerate magistrate favourable to Christianity) why make it needlessly difficult for him by shutting all public schools? He could mandate daily Bible instruction, outlaw all atheistic material, and put the 10 commandments in every classroom. Overnight you’d have a whole generation getting a Christian education. But if they are all gone, or under the authority of churches (the majority of which would be Roman Catholic because the largest, richest, and best organised), it would take him much longer to do that.
Josh writes,
In all honesty I commend you for engaging with someone of a different view. If you were like R Scott Clark you would have banned me after one or two comments.
Bret responds,
Well, let it never be said that I am not more generous than that giant idiot, R. Scott Clark.
Josh writes,
I would glad if you would allow me to make some final points.
1. I should have said at the beginning that I am in no way suggesting that it is the duty of all Christian parents to send their children to public school. Homeschooling may be the only option. Lots of homeschooled kids are a success in multiple ways.
Bret responds
I never thought you were advocating for universal government schooling. But your error of recommending gov’t schools at all for Christians is egregious beyond naming.
Josh writes,
2. I agree that we can rely on personal experience, observation, and anecdotes too much. But they are part of our providence, which is one aspect of finding God’s will. Providence can reveal the limits of a theory that sounds good but doesn’t always work in practice. As a bad example, you might read a book on Christian parenting that says every child should get the same punishment for the same infraction of the rules. Experience teaches that this theory rests on an egalitarian principle. Most girls are softer and can be corrected more gently.
Bret responds
Going against the clear teaching is a different category than relying on anecdotes to prove a claim that is merely a matter of opinion. You have been throwing around a ton of opinions and basing those opinions, not on God’s Word, but on useless anecdotes.
Josh writes,
3. I was once as dismissive as you of the “social skills are underdeveloped in homeschoolers” criticism. Then I read BM Palmer’s sermon on Rev. 3:20, where he masterfully analyses the social nature of human beings:
Bret responds,
Again, you offer that social skills might be underdeveloped in some homeschoolers but you don’t prove that if you put those same homeschoolers in government schools that would automatically mean that their social skills would improve. To the contrary, I would contend that they would be even worse then the less than laudatory social skills you bemoan. As such, your quote from B. M. Palmer really proves nothing since I am not arguing that social skills are not important. Still, it is a great quote form Palmer even if it is put to inapplicable usage.
I would rather put my children in a Brothel for 8 hours a day to develop social skills than put them in deadening houses that brainwash children into a command and control mindset that we today call “government skills.”
Oh… since you quoted Palmer errantly, allow me to quote A. A. Hodge to sustain my overall point that Government education sucks;
“It is our duty, as far as lies in our power, immediately to organize human society and all its institutions and organs upon a distinctively Christian basis. Indifference or impartiality here between the law of the kingdom and the law of the world, or of its prince, the devil, is utter treason to the King of Righteousness. The Bible, the great statute‑book of the kingdom, explicitly lays down principles which, when candidly applied, will regulate the action of every human being in all relations. There can be no compromise. The King said, with regard to all descriptions of moral agents in all spheres of activity, ‘He that is not with me is against me.’ If the national life in general is organized upon non‑Christian principles, the churches which are embraced within the universal assimilating power of that nation will not long be able to preserve their integrity.”
A.A. Hodge, Evangelical Theology, 283–284.
You are advocating sending God’s covenant seed where they will be taught explicitly to be against Christ. This is a wicked wicked advocacy on your part.
Joshua writes,
4. There’s often a huge disparity between the amount of social interaction of homeschooled children and the amount in public schooled children. Put bluntly, some homeschooling families are doing a radical social experiment.
Bret responds,
LOL… as opposed to the radical social experiment of putting children in Gov’t schools to be catechized into a Christ hating humanism and in an atmosphere where they are raised in a peer-oriented aspirational setting? Come on Joshua … appealing to the idea that somehow raising and educating children in a family setting is a more radical social experiment than letting the pagan Christ haters raise them is a sign of massive desperation on your part.
Joshua writes,
They point to times when boys worked alongside their fathers in the shop or field and girls worked with their mothers at home. They forget that non-Christian boys and girls did the same, so the amount of social interaction was the same. Plenty of homeschooling families find themselves with no extended family nearby, no children their children’s age in the local church, and the local homeschooling group no longer led by conservative homeschooling families as it was in the 1990s. The result is extreme social isolation, and the dangers Palmer warns about are very real. Church history does not indicate that the children of Christian parents had drastically less social interaction than the children of non Christian parents.
Bret responds,
Let’s just pretend, for the sake of argument, that you’re correct here about the depredations of raising and educating children in a familial-centric setting. Of course you’re not correct, but let’s just pretend you are. Arguing that educating children in this “bad” climate doesn’t prove that educating them in a more bad atmosphere (Government schools) would be preferable. Maybe many Christians are in a bad setting. However, no bad how bad their current setting is in terms of teaching their children social skills, it is less bad than the horrors they would face upon being inserted into a decidedly wicked and anti-Christ setting that are government skills. You’re problem Joshua is you really don’t understand the hellscape that is the Government schools. Read Gatto. Read Iserbyt. If you want someone current look into Brett Pike’s critiques of Government schools. Watch his Youtubes. You really really don’t get it.
Joshua writes
5. We don’t always need stats to know when something is going radically wrong. Boys at home all day, around their mother, are growing up in a feminine environment. Common sense says they will likely become domesticated and effeminate. Since it is hard enough for the wife to bear children, cook meals, and teach the three Rs, the last thing she has time for is making sure their physique, athletic ability, and co-ordination are developing properly. If they are stunted in these areas, they will not be masculine. If the family has a farm or business they can work at, they should be fine. Not every homeschooling family has that.
Bret responds,
No doubt these are possible dangers but less dangers than would exist if little Johnny was put into a Government school and learn that girls can be boys and boys can be girls and that sodomy is acceptable while being guided by AI programs to accept the standards that the Government wants them to accept. Pike goes into this somewhat. You have underestimated how evil those Government schools are.
Joshua writes,
6. Instilling Christian theories of knowledge in children is important. Practically, how does that work out? Does it mean you stand over their shoulder every time they access resources produced by pagans, and teach them how to process the information from a Christian worldview? No, you instil some epistemological principles and turn them loose, because you have lots of children, a heavy workload, and limited time. So they get online, read books, and get inundated with knowledge produced by humanists. But exposure to humanists does not automatically mean indoctrination. We should have faith that they won’t be. The God of Moses and Daniel still reigns.
Bret responds,
The God of Moses and Daniel still reigns therefore we should send our little children to be missionaries among cannibals hoping they won’t get eaten. Yep, makes perfect sense. Dude … do you practice whistling past the graveyard?
Joshua writes,
7. If your main issue with public schools is the learning environment, you have a point. But that’s a different debate. The debate is whether we can learn from pagan sources. Followers of Van Till seem to hold (maybe not in theory, but in practice) that without correct presuppositions, the knowledge gained is either useless or inherently corrupting. But God points His people to the Cainites to learn tentmaking and music, to the infidel to rebuke them when they are not providing for their own house (1 Tim 5), to Abimelech to learn about honesty and chastity (Gen. 20) to the ant to learn about diligence, planning and foresight (Prov 6), to heathen thinkers to teach us about ethnic/national characteristics (Titus 1), and to the Gentiles to learn about basic morals (1 Cor 5).
Bret responds,
Of course we can learn from the heathens since whatever they excel in they stole from Christianity to begin with. However, a 5 year old or a 13 year old or a 17 year old is not ready to be put in an environment where they are required to learn from a pagan teacher, pagan truth, so as to spit it back in order to get a pagan “A” on their test or paper. Again, you fail to realize the conditioning into Heathendom that occurs in the Government schools. Do the reading. You’re woefully uninformed and are living in some kind of candy-land reality where we should expect children to overcome the conditioning and propaganda that has been refined and perfected over scores of decades.
Joshua writes,
None of these teachers had a Van Tillian theory of knowledge. Maybe I’ve used unconvincing examples, but it’s inevitable that children and adults are going to learn a lot from the studies of government-funded academics throughout their life, no matter how they are/were educated.
Bret
Shrug… whatever Christians will learn from these sources they will be educated well enough to realize that whatever the Heathen get right they get right in spite of their Christ hating worldview.
Joshua writes,
8. If children are not learning from any pagan sources, Calvin has a word for us:
Bret responds,
The Calvin quote does not help you because I don’t deny the truth of it. What I deny is that any of that is happening in our current Government school setting and even if, on a rare occasion, it is children not yet trained in worldview thinking are not capable of smelling a rat. Once they get that ability then they can read all the Heathen they like. But that ability takes time to develop… lots of time. As such, God’s covenant seed should be kept in a covenantal hot house until they are ready to slay pagan dragons.
Josh writes,
It is hard to square Van Til with what Calvin says here.
Bret responds,
Not difficult at all when one isn’t representing CVT correctly.
Joshua writes,
9. The Southern Protestants overall were more orthodox than the North. Tragically they rejected Christian Nationalism. Dabney and other Southern anti-Christian nationalists consistently rejected public schools. In the North, by contrast, Protestants formed the National Reform Association and called for the constitutional amendment declaring America to be a Christian nation. They also supported public schools.
Bret responds,
And look where we are. Have you ever read Machen on this very subject? He doesn’t agree with you.
Josh writes,
The two go hand in hand. Luther, Knox, and other Reformers saw that Christianised public schools are a key part of Christian Nationalism. Christian parents could at least pray for this and get involved in public education without sending their children there, rather than calling for their abolition. Especially when you read that the academic structure envisioned by Knox and Commenius (elementary, junior high, high school, university, post grad) was first fully implemented in America. The content has been badly corrupted but it explains in part why nearly all the top universities in the world have been in the USA for 100+ years.
If you think the achievement of a Christian Nation will be more “top down” than bottom up, i.e. through “a Christian Prince” (a powerful, perhaps unregenerate magistrate favourable to Christianity) why make it needlessly difficult for him by shutting all public schools? He could mandate daily Bible instruction, outlaw all atheistic material, and put the 10 commandments in every classroom. Overnight you’d have a whole generation getting a Christian education. But if they are all gone, or under the authority of churches (the majority of which would be Roman Catholic because the largest, richest, and best organised), it would take him much longer to do that.
Bret responds,
When we get a Christian nation again advocating for Christian schools I’ll be sure to re-visit the subject though I suspect that even then I’ll be slow to support the “Lord of the Flies” education atmosphere that Government schools create.
Thank you Josh for the conversation. You’re are still seriously wrong but at least you try to intellectually justify your awful position. I pray that the Spirit of Christ will lead you into repentance on this subject.
Thank you for your reply. Interesting how homeschoolers commonly assume two things:
1. The homeschooler will always be in a better environment than the public school. No exceptions. Even if one of the parents are dead, terminally ill, or had abandoned the family, leaving the other one to work, educate, and manage the children. Even if the homeschooler is left idle, and therefore in a devil’s workshop. Even if they are in a work environment, where, unlike public schools, parental involvement is excluded. Even if they are on social media, or left alone to surf the internet, where they are exposed to everything a public schooled child is exposed to, and maybe more.
The children of this world are wiser than the children of light, sometimes even in supervision re social media. Did you know Australia has banned social media for everyone under 16? In other countries, cell phones are banned at schools?
2. All public schools are so bad, it is impossible for a teen from a Christian home to get a better education than a homeschooled child, no matter how much their education is neglected.
Please, bolster your case by getting rid of these bad arguments which are so easy to refute.
LOL
You are assuming that I assume these things. I don’t.
However, I do assume that these things are normatively the case. Matters can be generally true without being universally true you know. Exceptions always exist. It really shouldn’t have to be said when intelligent people are having a conversation. I just assumed you were intelligent. My mistake.
However, having said that, I do believe that a child is unlikely to be in a worse setting than the setting of a government school. Not even all those hypotheticals you provided would be worse than being in the schools of Baal where children are being catechized into a false religion. You have not measured yet the depths of how bad government schools and government teachers are. And really … in all our discussions that is your chief problem. You are not familiar with what is going on in government schools. You seem to think you are but you are not.
Please remove your ignorance by reading some of the books I earlier recommended. If you did you would quit arguing the nonsense you’re arguing.
Thanks for the repartee.
Thank you for the clarification. The intensity of your language naturally leads anyone to conclude that sending children to government schools is always wrong.
I am familar with what is going on in government schools. My children go to them. I am also a homeschooling insider, so every single one of your points I have read and/or heard before. The key arguments were first formulated by Dabney and updated by Rushdooney. The counter-arguments of Ruffner and Barnabas Sears are still relevant. I encourage you to read them.
In the 1990s, it was relatively easy to maintain a substantial difference between the homeschool and the public school. With the arrival of social media, moral madness permeates everything.
Homeschooling parents do not have a clue (to use normative language) just how worldly wise their children are. Their children are inundated with LGBT wickedness, socialism, communism on social media, in the workplace, and so on. It’s the students of bad parents (whether in public school or at work) that are the biggest challenge for children from Christian homes. It is not the teachers. They have a hard time convincing students about evolution – something like 50% of students in public schools doubt the theory.
If homeschoolers think government teachers are the number 1 enemy of their children, they are in for a rude awakening. The greatest enemy (excepting Satan and their desparately wicked hearts) is the internet and co-workers.
Joshua,
I know that the internet is a cesspool. However, the solution isn’t to say… “Well, since the internet is a cesspool, I therefore have license to put my children in the cesspool that is government schools. Two wrongs, even in 2025, still don’t make a right.
I do understand that homeschooling is NOT a silver bullet. However, the reason that is so is because the parents homeschooling their children were, in the Lion’s share of the cases, themselves Government schooled, or failing that they still have not been able to get outside the bubble of this culture.
All that being said… One doesn’t get to say that because there are even worse enemies out there, therefore I get to expose my children to enemies that might possibly be just a tad less bad as compared to the really bad enemies.
It is a strange way to reason on your part.