Credits:
The following article is a re-posting from an email sent by Project Restoration. It seems to be a re-wording of a lecture given by Vodie Baucham.
And yet, the facts and ideas herein are not new, nor do they belong to one man alone. These ideas have been championed long before by men such as Samuel Blumenfeld and Dr. R.J. Rushdoony. I myself have written and preached since 1989 on the evils of government schools and give full credit to the tutelage these great men have given me.
So whenever we give credit to any of our modern ministers, yours truly included, let us remember who the men where that originally gave us a glimpse of truth. God has given a great blessing in them.
The Article:
“He who controls the schools controls the world” This is a fact that unfortunately gets by many of us in the Christian community.
The overwhelming majority of the Christian community makes the exact same educational choice, some 90% of those who call themselves born again, blood washed, Christ followers make the exact same educational choice. I don’t think there is anything else that 90% of Christians do together, you bring up any theological issue, and you cannot get 90% of Christians to agree. The Deity of Christ is one but other than that, which Bible are you going to use, they will fight to the death over which Bible to use. Which denomination are you going to be a part of? Duke it out there too, but 90 % make the exact same educational choice and nobody can point to book, chapter, and verse to justify it.
Ninety percent of Christians allow our government to educate their children; we are losing between 70-88% of our children by the end of their freshman year in college, that is the children of evangelicals. Somewhere between 70-88% of them have nothing to do with spiritual things by the end of their freshman year in college. Now let me give you the easy answer, before we go into a more detailed answer. The easy answer is this, if we continue to send our children to Caesar for their education we need to stop being surprised when they come home as Romans.
How does he who controls the schools control the world? Luke 6:40, “A pupil is not above his teacher; but everyone, after he has been fully trained, will be like his teacher.” This is the New Testament version of Proverbs 22:6, “Train up a child in the way he should go and when he is old he will not depart from it.” The New Testament version is right here in front of you, Luke 6:40 “A pupil is not above his teacher, but everyone, after he has been fully trained, will be like his teacher.” It’s simple, it makes sense, whomever is your teacher is your discipler. You cannot separate education and discipleship, whoever is educating our children is discipling our children. Which means, whoever educates the majority of children is discipling the majority of children, and if the pupil is not above his teacher and everyone will ultimately be like his teacher, you see the power of education.
From K-12th grade children spend 14,000 seat hours in school, let me say that again, 14,000 seat hours in school. The average Christian family spends less than 30 minutes a week discussing spiritual matters, parents who think that a few conversations centered around, “What did you learn today?” need to be honest to the usual answer to that question which is, “Nothing”. I hear this all the time, yes I understand, and parents go through the regular rigmarole of, “Our schools are different” that is everybody by the way. It doesn’t matter where they are from or who they are, their schools are different, “every other school in the U.S. is having issues, but our school is different”. After we get past that, then here is the next thing, “I send them there but we make sure and talk through things when they come home”. Really, lets be honest, when they come home and you ask them what they learned so that you can talk through it what is their response when you ask them, “What did you learn in school today”, their response is, “Nothing”.
The fact of the matter is they don’t know what they learned at school. They have no idea what’s been shoved down their throats, it is their normal. They have no concept of anything else, so they don’t know what to discuss. Currently the curriculum in schools is controlled by the government and teachers unions. Interestingly enough, it is the curriculum that is doing the discipling, because that is the other thing that we hear, “we have Christian teachers, we have Christian administrators” I hear that a great deal.
Christian teachers in government schools cannot teach the whole counsel of God, they are required to teach the government’s curriculum which is steeped in Secular Humanism, so Christian teachers are teaching an ungodly curriculum, I know because I was one of those teachers. Public schools are incapable of training our children in the very things that God commands. We only have 24 hours to invest in a day, what they look like:
The Average School Day: Sleep: 8 hours-Eating and bathing: 2 hours-Travel: 1 hour-School: 8 hours-Homework: 2 hours-Television and social: 2 hours Total: 23 hours
Here is what is not included, I didn’t put extra curricular activities in there and we are up to 23 hours. I also didn’t account for the lack of overlap between the schedules of parents and students to take advantage of the one hour that is left, that by the way is designed to overcome all of those other hours where our children are being inundated by Secular Humanism in the public schools. Who are we kidding? There is not enough time in the day to compete with the schools for the minds of our children.
The Bible and Education, is the text silent? Because for a long time our attitude on the issue is, “Hey, just leave me alone, you do what you’ve been led to do and I’ll do what I feel led to do”, excuse me if I do not buy into that mysticism. I do what the Bible commands me to do. It’s like saying, “Hey, there is a beautiful woman over there, and I’m standing here with a married friend. The beautiful woman over there is giving us the eye, hey, you do what you feel led to do and I’ll do what I feel led to do.” No, the Bible has spoken on the issue of adultery, and I believe the Bible has also spoken on the education issue. For so long we’ve treated this like some sort of mystical decision that parents have to make where we meditate, until God zaps us with what we are to do with our children educationally.
Now before we look at some verses, I will admit to you that the word school does not exist in anyone of these, but let’s look at what the Bible says about the training of the mind.
Deuteronomy 6:6, 7 “These words, which I am commanding you today, shall be on your hearts. You shall teach them diligently to your sons and shall talk of them when you sit in you house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you rise up.”
That would be all of the time. There was an administrator in a school system in Amarillo, TX challenge this issue, she is committed to public schools, committed to government education, as a Christian, committed to it, “we have got to have it, and our kids have got to be there”, and I mention this passage of scripture, to which she responded, “I always thought that meant after school hours.”
Listen to Psalm 1,”Blessed is the man who does not walk in the council of the wicked, nor stand in the path of sinners, nor sit in the seat of scoffers! But his delight is in the law of the LORD, and in His law he meditates day and night. He will be like the tree firmly planted by ;the streams of water, which yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither; and in whatever he does he prospers. The wicked are not so, but they are like the chaff which the wind drives away. Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the assembly of the righteous. For the LORD knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish.”
Proverbs 1:7, “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge; fools despise wisdom and instruction.” Romans 12:2, listen to this, “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of GOD is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect.”
Look at 2 Corinthians 10:5, “We are destroying speculations and every lofty thing raised up against the knowledge of GOD, we are taking every thought captive to the obedience of CHRIST…”.
Is Math a thought? Is Science a thought? Is History a thought?
Colossians 2:8, “See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deception, according to the tradition of men, according to the empty principles of the world, rather than according to CHRIST.”
Listen to this, “I Timothy 6:20, “O Timothy, guard what has been entrusted to you, avoiding worldly and empty chatter and the opposing arguments of what is falsely called ‘knowledge’ – which some have professed and thus gone astray from the faith…”
Can we obey these principles without applying them to the way we educate our children? How can we do that? How can we look at these principles about the training of the mind and not apply them to the way that we educate our children?
Now, about early education, Government Education was established about 1870, I am surprised about how many people don’t know this. It was modeled after the Prussian format, rooted in secular humanism, opposed by American Christians for decades. For 50 years the church fought tooth and nail against compulsory education, and against government education, fought it tooth and nail, they knew better. As late as 1900, two-thirds of high school children were educated at home or the Church, as late as 1900 still two-thirds. Listen to this from Alexis de Tocqueville, “As late as the 1830’s it was noted in America that education was everywhere in the hands of the Protestant clergy.”
Education is not mentioned in the United States Constitution, but guess what is? The 10th Amendment, “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” What does that mean? I’ll tell you what it means; the Federal Government has no jurisdiction over education.
On the subject of home schooling, everyone always asks the exact same questions, and these questions are rooted in the fact that they’ve been discipled by the system. There are three questions that are always asked, number one, every home school family knows is the question of questions, “What about socialization?”, that is the easy one, another question, “Is that legal?”, and the other question is, “Where do you get your curriculum, who oversees your curriculum?”. Those are the three questions, why does everyone ask the exact three same questions? Because everyone has been discipled by the same teacher, “Is that legal?”, where does that question come from? That question comes from sheep, who have forgotten that they are free men. We ask that question because we believe that children are wards of the state, we ask that question because we have been discipled by the system that says it owns us and the first question everybody asks is, “How can you educate your own children?”, Why? Because the system wants you to be a slave! The government has no jurisdiction over our children. But everybody asks that question, why, because the pupil is not above his teacher, but everyone after he has been fully trained will be like his teacher. Everyone that has been through our education system has had the idea pounded into their head that the state is the educator. That you have to ask permission from the state, the Ninth Circuit has actually expressed that in no uncertain terms.
In California when it comes to sex education, hey you send your kids to us, you have no rights when it comes to what they are taught. We are sheep, and not free men. Everybody asks that question, everybody, why, because a pupil is not above his teacher but everyone when he is fully trained will be like his teacher. The other question stems from the same concept, “Where do you get your curriculum? Who gives you your curriculum? Who approves your curriculum? Who tests your children regularly to ensure you are keeping up with your curriculum?”, again, that is the slave mentality. How is the state exercising it’s jurisdiction over the child that you and the state share, that’s what that question means.
And, the last question, “What about socialization?” again it comes from the same place, because we are sheep and not living like free men. When was the last time you were in a room with 25 people your exact same age? School, it never happens again once school is over, which means that, that is false socialization that gives you skills that you never needed to acquire in the first place. There are not many positive social skills you can learn in school, but there are plenty of negative ones.
Some alarming facts:
Less than 10% of American Christians possess a biblical worldview, I believe this is because the majority of them have been educated by government schools, that is where they got their worldview from.
Two-thirds of “born again” Christians assert that there is no such thing as absolute truth. Which means they don’t believe that they are absolutely saved.
Only 4 out of 10 said they were absolutely committed to the Christian faith. In today maybe out tomorrow.
Only 44% of churched youth assert that humans are capable of grasping the meaning of truth.
85% of churched youth agreed with this statement: “What is right for one person in a given situation might not be right for another person who encounters the same situation.” That is relativism or situational ethics.
62% of churched youth agreed with the statement: “Nothing can be known for certain except the things that you experience in your life.”
Alright, People with a Christian Worldview are:
11 times less likely to condone adultery
15 times less likely to believe homosexuality is acceptable
31 times less likely to condone premarital cohabitation
100 times less likely to endorse abortion
What are most preachers always pounding the pulpit about? This list. Why are they always pounding the pulpit about this list? Because people don’t have a Christian worldview, if they had a Christian worldview then pastors would be pounding the pulpit about something else. But because of 90% of Christian don’t have a Christian worldview pastors have to constantly remind them to act like something they are not.
So, what is a worldview? A worldview is a set of underlying assumptions that interpret existence.
James W. Sire, “Our ground-floor assumptions-ones that are so basic that none more basic can be conceived-those compose our worldview.”
Colson & Pearcey, “A worldview is the sum total of our beliefs about the world; the big picture that directs our daily decisions and actions.”
Our worldview directs our daily decisions and actions, if you want to know a persons worldview, do not ask them what they believe, watch how they live that’s where you see a person’s worldview.
How Are These Worldviews Formed?
Informally, so when our students are in the government education system nobody is saying to them, “Here is Secular Humanism” they are not saying that, it is informal
Uncritically, they are not thinking through it.
In fact, they are not being taught to think, we don’t teach logic in our schools anymore, why, you cannot shove trash down the throat of a person whom you have taught logic.
Intergenerationally
Intragenerationally
Over time – 14,000 seat hours!
Elements of a Worldview
Our view of God
Our view of Man
Our view of Truth
Our view of Knowledge
Our view of Ethics
Again, the most basic, we could add a few more, but these are the most basic.
Two Main Competing Worldviews in Our Culture
Secular Humanism Christian Theism
View of God
Atheistic Theistic
View of Man
Evolutionary Special Creation
View of Truth
Truth is Relative Truth is Absolute
View of Knowledge
Naturalistic Materialism- General and Special Revelation-
Nature is a closed system, matter Christian Theism gave us the hard
is all that matters, everything we sciences. Humanism does not work
know, we know because of observation well with science because truth is relative
View of Ethics
Cultural and Negotiated Absolute and Universal
What is ethical in one culture is not
necessarily ethical in another.
It doesn’t take a genius to figure out which of these worldviews dominates contemporary American culture. Look at the educational influence on worldview:
“Non-Christian (FALSE) education puts the child in a vacuum. The result is that child dies. True education alone really nurtures personality, because it alone gives the child air and food. Modern educational philosophy gruesomely insults our God and our Christ. How, then, do you expect to build anything positively Christian or theistic upon a foundation which is the negation of Christianity and Theism? No teaching of any sort is possible except in Christian schools.” Cornelius Van Til.
“This whole process of education is to be religious, and not only religious, but Christian. And as Christianity is the only true religion, and God, in Christ the only true God, the only possible means of profitable education is the nurture and admonition of the Lord.” Charles Hodge.
“I am as sure as I am about Christ’s reign that a comprehensive and centralized system of national education, separate from religion, as is now commonly proposed,” gives you an idea of when he was writing, the late 1800’s, “will prove the most appalling enginery for the propagation of anti-Christian and atheistic unbelief and of antisocial nihilistic ethics individual, social and political, which this sin-rent world has ever seen.” A.A. Hodge.
“No academic skepticism, no secularist authors, no blatant materialism can so undermine the spiritual life of the country like the completely secularized training of a child under the authority of the State. Bible-based education is mandatory for Christian parents. If we think we can keep our children in a secular school system and escape the dumb down amoral, and immoral results of secular humanism in schools, we are sorely mistaken.” David Alan Black.
Amen, Hallelujah, Praise the Lord. By the way, we are not the only ones that understand this,
“When an opponent declares, ‘I will not come over to your side,’ I calmly say, ‘Your’ child belongs to us already. What are you? You will pass on. Your descendants, however, now stand in the new camp. In a short time, they will know nothing else but this new community.” Who new this about the power of education? Adolf Hitler.
“Education is thus a most powerful ally of humanism, and every public school is a school of humanism. What can the theistic Sunday school, meeting for an hour once a week and teaching only a fraction of the children, do to stem the tide of a five-day program of humanistic teaching?” Charles Potter, signer of the Humanist Manifesto, one of the architects of the modern American educational system.
“Our schools may not teach Johnny to read properly, but the fact that Johnny is in school until he is 16 tends to lean toward the elimination of religious superstition.” Paul Blanchard, signer of the Humanist Manifesto, one of the architects of the modern American educational system.
“Public education is the parochial education of scientific humanism.”Joel Burnette, signer of the Humanist Manifesto, one of the architects of the modern American educational system.
So, how did they do it? The Nehemiah Institute has been conducting the PEERS test for two decades, it tests worldview. It scores you from -100 to 100. A mature Christian with a Biblical Christian worldview will score above 70, an immature Christian should score between 30-69, a moderate Christian worldview. If you score 0-29 you are considered to have a Secular Humanist worldview, if you score below 0 you are thinking as a Socialist. What do the test results look like? Biblical scholars have averaged 87.8, just what you would expect. Humanists scored -45, again just what you would expect. Christian school faculty averaged 52.9, I would not want these people teaching my children, I would expect teachers to score over 70, maybe not as high as Biblical scholars but surely over 70. Our teachers’ at Heritage Christian Academy average over 70, I use the PEERS test during initial employment interviews.
For students from Christian homes over the past twenty years the trend in public school and traditional Christian schools has been downward. Starting with an average score of approximately 38 for public and 50 for traditional Christian school students in 1988, the results from 2006 show the Christian students in public school scoring 8, and the traditional Christian schools 16. In twenty years, students from Christian homes have went from thinking as Moderate Christians to thinking as Secular Humanists. Projections tell us that by the year 2014 both public and traditional Christian school students will be thinking as Marxist socialists.
What is the problem with most Christian schools? It is not true of all, but it boggles my mind, some Christian schools actually brag about the fact that they have certified teachers. Certified by whom? The State. The government, so Christian schools are saying, “Hey the government approves of our teachers.” This just means they have been indoctrinated into teaching secular humanism and must have their minds renewed in the methods of teaching Biblically.
Since 1988, 90% of Christian students have scored below the Moderate Christian worldview level. Ninety percent have scored in the Secular Humanist worldview level.
Is there any hope? Yes, there is. Students from Biblical Classical Christian schools and home schools started out in 1988 scoring at about 62 and have trended upward over twenty years to average 72 in 2006. How do we do it? We teach biblical principles in every subject, immersing our students in a completely biblical curriculum and education. Teaching the students to research, reason, and relate everything in life to the scriptures. They are trained to view the world completely through the lens of the Bible.
These students are retaining the faith of their parents at a rate of 90-95 percent after they graduate from college. The others are leaving the faith of their parents by a rate of 70-88 % by the end of their freshman year of college.
Christian Smith a Sociology Department Chair from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill did a 4.5 million dollar research project called The National Study on Youth and Religion. Christian Smith is not a radical fundamentalist, he comes from a main line denominational background. He found the following, “Especially when religion is structurally isolated from the primary schedules and networks that comprise teenagers’ lives are teens’ religious and spiritual lives most weak. It is by contrast when teens’ family, school, friends, and sports lives and religious congregations somehow connect, intersect, and overlap, that they exhibit the most committed and integral religious and spiritual lives.” This can only be accomplished through True education, whether home schooling or attending a Biblical Classical Christian school using a curriculum such as the Principle Approach.
Listen to Richard Baxter, a reformed pastor writing in the 1600’s, “This is the sanctification of your studies: when they are devoted to God, and when He is the end, the object and the life of them all.”
Southern Seminary’s president and talk show host, Al Mohler said, “I believe that now is the time for responsible Southern Baptists to develop an exit strategy from the public schools. This strategy would affirm the basic and ultimate responsibility of Christian parents to take charge of the education of their own children. This strategy would also affirm the responsibility of churches to equip parents, support families, and offer alternatives. At the same time, this strategy must acknowledge that Southern Baptist Churches, families, and parents do not yet see the same realities, the same threats, and the same challenges in every context. Sadly, this is almost certainly just a matter of time.”
I believe that parents are to give their children a True education whatever the cost. It can be done by home schooling at a cost of about $550 per student per year. This is much less than the current cost of a state education of $7000 per student. I also believe that children should be home schooled until they do not drop the values of their parents when they are with their peers. When they have this solid foundation then they are ready to attend our school as an extension of their parent’s responsibility for their education.
Many of the objections to home schooling have been proven unwarranted by the data found by National Home Education Research Institute (NHERI). Just go to their website and you can find the data such as this, “Students taught at home by a mother with no high school diploma score higher on standardized tests than the average of all public school students.” One of the biggest objections has to do with sports, in our geographical area there are home school groups that offer team sports, our school allows homeschoolers to play with us, there is even a new Christian football league that has started in Michigan for students to play high school football to give God the glory, not man.
Finally, we must be careful that we do not make athletics our god as the rest of culture has done.
The salt and light issue does not apply to our immature untrained students, it is not their job to evangelize the public schools, in fact reverse evangelization is actually occurring there. They are being changed by a system that was designed to do so by its humanist architects. It was John Dewey that said, “The public schools must become exclusively humanist and we must remove the religious superstitions from the students.” If you read further on in the Sermon on the Mount we find that those who encourage little ones to go astray are the least in the Kingdom. Let’s not help in leading our little ones astray.
I am advocating removing all Christian students from the government school system not only because of the above data, but because I had already struggled with the Lord about this for a whole night in the spring of 2007 and he was very explicit with me about his anger with Christians sending their gifts from him to a school system that was training them to be ungodly.
Dr. Voddie Baucham puts it this way, “My responsibility as a father is to raise, train, hone, aim and launch the arrows that God has given me. And there are those who seem to think that I should take them when they are undeveloped twigs and launch them into a system that will hone them and sharpen them and aim them back at me.”
We are raising an army of warriors that the Lord has given us for such a time as this in our country and when they are unleashed they will impact this world because they were trained, honed and launched by God, and not by the humanist philosophy of our government school system.
Matthew Byers
Project Restoration,
Tearing Down Strongholds,
Restoring the Foundations,
Rebuilding the Walls
P.O. Box 183
North Branch, MI 48461
The New Geneva Leadership Blog 