The question as to whether Christian parents should homeschool their children is becoming more prominent with the latest developments in North America’s education system. The province of Ontario, Canada, for example, has introduced radical sexual content in its physical health curriculum, teaching children in grade 3 about same-sex marriages and homosexuality, and to those in grades 6 and 7 about “masturbation, oral and anal sex.” As dear friend and scholar Dr. Scott Masson had said in his letter to the National Post, the new sex education curriculum is “nothing other than an experiment on our children by the children of the sexual revolution,”[1] and a shift “from ignoring one’s parents to operating explicitly against them.”[2]
Since then, a growing number of Christian families have awoken to the reality that the public education system is not truly ‘secular,’ or in other words, religiously neutral. The religious presuppositions are in fact ‘anti-Christian,’ rooted in Enlightenment philosophy. This rationalism undermines the Christian worldview by suggesting that man can arrive at some knowledge concerning reality, ethics and epistemology independently from God. And hence, with no need for God, man can thus solve the world’s problems by ‘reason’ alone. Of course, there is no such substance as ‘reason’; this abstractual conception doesn’t exist. What man does have is ‘understanding,’ and this understanding of reality, ethics and knowledge is either true or false. If it is conformed to the word of God, then it is the wisdom of God (Prov. 9;10), but if it is antithetical to the word of God, then it is the foolishness of this world, the fallen thinking of natural man (Eph. 4:18).
The reason many Christian families haven’t discerned these humanistic presuppositions is because we have all, at some point, bought in to the idea of a ‘neutral’ space. This was the result of Enlightenment thinking, rooted in what educators proposed was the ‘blank slate’ theory for the human mind (tabula rasa). This concept denies the depravity of mankind and suggests that man is born with a neutral, blank slate, and is thus unformed and irreligious. He is not evil (or sinful) by ‘nature,’ but in order to avoid man’s corruption, he must be educated and ‘nurtured’ appropriately. Education, therefore, is seen by the humanist as a tool by which they might bring about the salvation of mankind. This in turn proposed the division of secular and sacred, relegating religion to the private sphere, and insisting that all things in the public sphere are irreligious and neutral. But ‘education’ is not neutral, in fact, nothing in the public sphere is neutral, because man himself is not a religiously neutral being. He is either in accord with ‘true understanding,’ subject to the Lordship of Christ, or misaligned with folly, and thus set up in hostility against Him. In the case of our public education system, its underlying humanistic philosophy is outright folly and moral rebellion.
However, though our public schools of today are increasingly humanistic, they weren’t always so. Both the United States and Canada founded their public schools with a strong Christian influence. This explains why Bible reading and prayer were integral to the school day, because though the schools were founded and funded by the state, the curriculum and religious nature of the education was largely “under local control and extensively given to religious influence.”[3] That is to say that parents were still regarded as the primary educators of their children, and as a result were consulted, along with Christian leaders from the Protestant and Catholic communities. However, with Enlightenment philosophy having arrived from Europe during a time when the West was departing from a Christian consensus, public education was poisoned by humanistic presuppositions and eventually developed into what it is today. To put it simply, modern public education is the state violating the sphere sovereignty of the family by taking away the rights of parents from being primary educators and indoctrinating our children in the religious humanism of our society, which involves relegating the church to the private sphere while it shamelessly exposes children to the immoralism of the sexual revolution and the perverse progressivism of cultural Marxism.
Christian Alternatives
As families have awakened to this reality – that by sending their children to pagan Rome, many often return Romans – the need for a distinctly Christian education has become ever more clear. And by education we mean “implication into God’s interpretation.”[4] The late apologist Cornelius Van Til explains it this way:
No narrow intellectualism is implied in this definition. To think God’s thoughts after him, to dedicate the universe to its Maker, and to be the vice-regent of the Ruler of all things: this is man’s task. Man is prophet, priest and king. It is this view of education that is involved in and demanded by the idea of creation.[5]
Christian education has thus taken two main forms, homeschooling and institutional schooling. In homeschooling, the parents maintain and exercise their right to be their children’s primary educators. And as subject to God, they are to instruct them in the way of the Lord, not only theologically, but in all aspects of their curriculum. Several resources are available that provide curriculums to stay-at-home parents, including BJU Press; and an example of the comprehensiveness of Christian education is provided in the textbook Biblical Worldview: Creation, Fall, Redemption by Mark L. Ward.[6]
The other alternative is Christian education at an institutional level, and by this I do not mean a Catholic education system that is funded by the state, but rather private Christian schools. If biblically consistent, the school will still recognize parents as the primary educators of their children, but as the parents have decided, they may delegate their teaching to a Christian education system. There are several excellent examples of Christian schooling, such as WCCA,[7] which employs a time-honored classical model of Christian education. This involves teaching students the tools of learning in order to cultivate a lifelong love of learning (Phil. 4:8), that in studying the natural world through science, or appreciating the great works in music and the visual arts, they might always be directed to God as the ultimate source of truth, goodness and beauty.
But as to the prominent question, whether Christian parents should homeschool, the answer is that they should, while also considering the other alternative of Christian private schools. If a child’s parents feel convicted to teach their children personally, then they should abide by their conviction. But they should not impose this conviction on other parents who insist on enrolling their children in Christian private schools. In this we must be sensitive with one another, for each Christian family seeks after the best education for their children, and every parent will be held accountable by God. We should, however, diligently warn parents about the dangers of enrolling their children in public schools, for in many cases they are unware of the anti-Christian, religious presuppositions involved. And it is often with much pain and regret that parents discover the mistake of allowing their children to be indoctrinated by the state.
As we do this, however, we must also bear in mind that there are many parents who might not be able to homeschool or enroll their children in Christian private schools because of their financial situation. Having come from a low-income home when I was younger, both my parents had to work in order to cover our modest living expenses, and often what was earned was not enough for either alternative. As a result of my experience, I have great sympathy for parents who find themselves unable to afford such Christian education, but this presents an invaluable opportunity for the church to help such parents financially, to provide them with scholarships, or to make Christian education more affordable by means of faithful tithing and giving. If we hope to see a strong and vibrant church that is capable of creating and cultivating a Christian culture, we must first reclaim education in terms of the law-word of God, and this can only be done collectively as a covenant community.
[1] Scott Masson, ‘Why the Critics of the Ontario Sex-Ed Curriculum Are Right’, National Post (National Post, March 31, 2015), accessed May 11, 2017, http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/scott-masson-why-the-critics-of-the-ontario-sex-ed-curriculum-are-right.
[2] Scott Masson, ‘Shutting Our Minds to the Truth’, National Post (National Post, May 14, 2015), accessed May 11, 2017, http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/scott-masson-shutting-our-minds-to-the-truth.
[3] Rousas J. Rushdoony, Intellectual Schizophrenia: Culture, Crisis and Education (Vallecito, CA: Ross House Books, 2002), 59.
[4] Cornelius Van Til, ‘Creation: The Education of Man – A Divinely Ordained Need’ in Foundations of Christian Education: Addresses to Christian Teachers, Dennis E. Johnson, ed. (Philipsburg, NJ.: P&R Publishing, 1990), 44.
[5] Ibid.
[6] BJU Press, ‘Biblical Worldview Student Text’ BJU Press, accessed May 11, 2017, http://www.bjupress.com/product/295782
[7] WCCA, ‘About Classical Christian Education’, Westminster Classical, accessed May 11, 2017, http://westminsterclassical.ca/classical-christian-education/