Category: Education

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.

Joshua;

I hear your point about secular. I do not understand it to mean neutral.

Happy to replace secular with anti-Christian. Are antichristian governments incapable of providing something good?

Bret responds,

As we start here would you mind telling me how old you are? Are you a school teacher yourself?  Did you (do you) send your children to government schools?

As to your query … Yes, they are capable.

Now, let’s talk about degrees of anti-Christ. What degree of anti-Christ are we currently at in our government schools?

If, we as a people, were only a wee bit removed from Christian education one might argue that one could navigate around the problems. However, if you will do the reading of numerous books I recommended in the last post you would see that it’s not just that we are off a wee bit. The whole agenda is educate in such a way as to create non-thinking clones. It’s all about command and control. If I want children to be free to think as mature adults I will not want them to attend government schools. Indeed, I am of the conviction that to do so is child abuse.

Joshua writes,

This is where your reasoning is taking you. All schools are religious. If they are not Christian they are antichristian. Therefore they do nothing but harm.

Bret responds,

If I threw children in a pond w/ crocodiles some of them might learn how to swim really well. Throwing them all in the pond would therefore not necessarily do “nothing but harm.” But would it be wise therefore to throw them into a pond with crocodiles because some good might possibly come?

You’re argument here is “let us sin that grace may increase.” Because some good might happen let us ignore the 1st commandment and have our children catechized into a false religion.

Joshua writes,

Cue the anabaptists: all governments are antichristian. They can only do harm. Christians should have nothing to do with them.

Bret responds,

Cue the 1st commandment. “Thou Shalt Have No Other Gods Before Me.” Current secondary education catechizes children into a false religion and makes them servants of false gods. As such Biblical Christian in this climate should have nothing to do with them unless they want to destroy God’s covenant seed.

Do you really think that God would’ve had the Children of Israel attend the schools of Canaan in order to learn the Canaanite ways?

Finally, virtually all Christian do have something to do with government schools. They support them with their taxes.

Joshua writes,

But if antichristian governments are still a legitimate institution of God, then they can provide things of real benefit to everyone, Christians included. 

Bret responds,

Yep … just like Stalin and Mao provided things of real benefit to everyone, Christian included.

Joshua writes,

The Church has benefited from inventions of the Cainites, Moses and Israel from the learning of the Egyptians, the apostolic church (at times) from the law and order of the Romans.

Bret responds,

Sure… we should plunder the Egyptians because it is all ours to begin with. But as we are plundering them and taking back what was our to begin with we should not become Egyptians.

However, currently Christians don’t have to attend the Baphomet Elementary school in order to access education. Have you heard of this thing called “the information age?” Never have we lived in a time when schools were more unnecessary.

Joshua writes,

To accurately compare public schools and homeschooling, you have to compare how Christian students do at home and how they do at school. A parent who homeschools is going to instill a value for education in their children. But that value enables the same child to do well in public school.

Bret responds,

But I don’t want a child to do well in Government school since that means they will be lapping up a false religion. If Christian children have to attend government school it is my prayer that they will do really really poorly.

Joshua writes,

Your analysis of schools is misguided if you compare children of highly dedicated homeschooling parents with children of parents who don’t care. A large majority of students in schools have parents who don’t care. Every teacher I’ve talked to says that the number one factor in academic success is parental involvement.

Bret responds,

I don’t want government schooled children to have academic success. I want them to do poorly. I don’t want them to learn to think like pagans.

I am awash in a culture filled with professional people, including “Christians” who did well in government schools. I try to avoid them as much as I can.

Do exceptions exist? Absolutely! But I don’t gamble when I know the house is overwhelmingly against me.

Now, you have repeatedly accused me of being Anabaptist. I can only plead with you to cease being pagan in your thinking.

You might want to look up the Reformed doctrine of the Anti-thesis and consider that subject in light of our conversation.

Joshua writes;

I hear this argument a lot: government schools only corrupt and indoctrinate. They do more harm than good. It is a sweeping accusation, but is it true?

Bret responds

Yes it is true, generally speaking;

Look, I’m not going to look up all the stats for you on how bad our secondary education is. Here are just a few;

63% of American 12th graders are rated “basic” or “below basic” in reading achievement, the Education Department revealed.

The Education Department also said the statistic that 37% of 12th graders would not qualify for entry-level college courses is accurate if it refers to a particular National Assessment of Educational Progress (or NAEP) test that the National Assessment Governing Board has said can serve as a proxy for entry-level college work.

While looking up the stats, if you want you can also look up how superior homeschooling numbers are to public school numbers.

Now factor in how bad the education is at the teacher colleges of those who get degrees in “education.”

I think the thing for me to do is to recommend a few books so you can get up to speed on the subject.

“The Messianic Character of American Education — R. J. Rushdoony

“The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America” – Charlotte Thomson Iserbyt

“The Worm In The Apple” – Peter Brimelow

Anything by John Taylor Gatto

Anything by Samuel L. Blumenfeld.

Look, I’ve been all over this subject over the years. I’ve read tons of the material. I know what I’m talking about when I say public schools almost universally suck. If you can find a Unicorn among them … congratulations.

Joshua writes

Is every public school like this? I know of homeschooled/Christian schooled kids who went to public high school, and were surprised at how much study they had to do to stay afloat. Surprised too, that the school had rules, and would expel kids for breaking them.

Bret responds,

Anecdotes hold no water. Do the reading and get back to me.

Joshua writes,

The rhetoric resembles Dabney’s (courageous and brilliant man) but he was proud of his secular university education and he taught at another one.

Bret writes,

There is no such thing as “secular.”

And the education given at the University in the early 19th century is apples and oranges from where we are now. You’re making category mistakes.

Joshua writes,

Schools are terribly secular but they are still studying general revelation.

Bret responds,

There is no such thing as “secular.” All education without exception is hopelessly religious.

Since man’s reason is fallen general revelation is only as good as the religious presuppositions that fallen man brings to the general revelation. Currently, those presuppositions are thoroughly anti-Christ and as such the general revelation he will read will confirm his anti-Christ presuppositions.

Joshua writes,

It is better for millions of children to be studying that rather than nothing at all.

Bret responds,

As a Pastor I have told people consistently that they would be better served having their children stay at home not being formally educated at all then sending them to government schools where they will be catechized into a false religion and where they will learn to read general revelation in such a way that confirms the false religion.

Shoot… if you want I can link you to a video where the chap teaches that Natural law (a subset of general revelation) teaches that sodomy is perfectly in keeping with Natural Law.

Joshua writes,

Obviously they would get a lot more out of their studies if they also studied special revelation from a Reformed perspective, began and ended each school day with prayer, etc. But you and I are communicating right now in part because of pagans who have studied the book of nature well enough to make advancements in technology.

Bret responds,

You and I are communicating only because fallen man;

1.) Is never consistent with his Christ hating presuppositions
2.) Borrows from the capital of a Christian world and life view in order to get his Christ hating worldview off the ground and running.

Fallen man gets things right not because he reads general revelation aright but he gets things right despite his reading general revelation wrongly.

You and I are not on the same page about education and neither are we on the same page in terms of worldview and epistemology.

Joshua writes,

But not studying general revelation at all is what Satan and Rome would prefer. You remember the medieval mindset: “ignorance is the mother of devotion”. Uneducated people are much easier to manipulate and control. Rome therefore argued that only the clergy and a few others, in the tight grip of the Church, should have an education.

Bret responds,

LOL … we spend tens of millions of dollars on education and we have to be one of the stupidest peoples on the planet. Do the reading of the books cited above.

Secondly, it strikes me that many, if not most, of those who have terminal degrees are the most easily propagandized and manipulated people I come across. Clergy and Professors are the worst of all. I know very very few educated clergy and almost all of those clergy I know have either Masters or Ph.D’s.

“Education” hasn’t delivered people from ignorance. Putative education has merely made people confirmed in their ignorance. Indeed, I’d say that currently we need to flip your proverb and say, “Education is the mother of devotion.” That is tongue in cheek of course.

Joshua wrote,

And it is just not the case that if the government gets out of education, all parents will step up and work harder than ever to make sure their children get educated. In his lectures defending the establishment principle, Thomas Chalmers points out that education is not subject to the law of demand and supply. The less educated people are, and the less access they have to education, the less they desire it. “Men love darkness rather than light”- including the light of general revelation. Especially when their bellies are full.

Bret responds,

I’ll place my bet on parents. I’ve seen and know what Government education looks like. I have known countless secondary school teachers. I’ve yet to come across one that was intelligent. Now, I’ve known a few University types who were sharp but not so many that I have concluded that they are the norm.

That men loved darkness rather than light is true. It explains why they are so comfortable piling up degrees.

Joshua writes,

Christian parents will try to educate their children no matter what, but when they do it themselves, the results are mixed. Homeschooling advocates point to high SAT scores of homeschoolers, but that’s only counting the ones that actually take the SAT. I know of many burnt out homeschooling parents and half-educated children who resent the fact that they are studying well into their 20s, while working a full-time job, to get the education they should have gotten in their teens.

Bret responds,

I’m not interested in your anecdotes. I have anecdotes also that are different then your anecdotes.

Believe me … those home educated children you’re talking about should instead thank their parents that they didn’t send them to a place where the interest is not in education but in reinforcing societal command and control mechanisms. You can’t really believe that the secondary schools have any interest in educating can you?

Read the sources I posted. If you believe that you’re deluded.

Joshua writes,

I want to see a Christian nation as much as you. But to convince others, we have to steer clear of bad arguments. One argument against government schools sounds Anabaptistic:

The government must be secular and have nothing to do with religion (or education)
Therefore the government (schools) will be anti-Christian.
Therefore the Christian should have nothing to do with government (schools).

Bret responds,

You’re first premise is faulty. There is no such thing as secular. That means your 1st conclusion is faulty since unless schools are explicitly Christian they will by default be anti-Christian. There is no such thing as neutrality.

However, per the 1st commandment your conclusion is true.

The anabaptists believed that anything outside of their community (“the world”) was evil. I’m not arguing that. I’m arguing that what is not Christian is evil to one degree or another and government schools are not Christian … nor are they neutral (secular). They are hopelessly religious and the religion that they advocate and teach is NOT the Christian religion. Our current Christian schools are not the “secular” schools that Dabney would’ve attended. They are the kind of schools that the Marquis de Sade would’ve built.

Can you understand that distinction?

Joshua writes,

But if government, Christian or not, is a divine institution, then it can provide good things. Its secular nature does not mean everything it does will be harmful. This includes education. Texas University Professor Dabney would agree.

Bret responds,

Governments that are not Christian are by definition anti-Christian. Neutrality is a myth. There is no such thing as secular. That is a classical liberal mindset. One that I do not share.

If Dabney were alive today he would agree with me. Read his stuff on Education as can be found in his “Secular Writings.”

Look Joshua, you strike me as a bright chap with a sharp blade but your blade is set at the wrong angle and though sharp, is cutting wrong with every cut.

Thanks for the conversation. I don’t think we are going to make much progress though as we are each beginning at very different starting points.

Cheers