Re-Thinking My Thinking on Education

After a little more thought I've decided it may be good to make some acknowledgements relative to my most recent post. Here they are:

1. I don't think education is an altogether simple enterprise. There are genuine complexities to our lives which make education choices more demanding and difficult.

2. If you were to become convinced that public school is not what God wants for your children, it may take a year or so to make a change. For instance, if parents decided today to go in some other direction, the implemented change may not be manageable until next school year. There may be lots of logistics to work through.

3. Parents are responsible to God for their children's education. But that doesn't mean they have to do all the educating. I think to enlist tutors, for example, is a fine thing. And one could argue that the public school system is for them a set of tutors they have chosen to teach their children basic courses while they (the parents) teach godliness. My initial trouble with such an argument would be the influence that such a non-Christian system may have upon my children. And then there is the issue of proper learning. I don't believe the education approach of our public schools is particularly effective or fruitful. Nevertheless, I offer the acknowledgement.

4. Some of the social interaction and opportunities afforded within the public school system could be good for our children. It is true that home-schools and Christian schools cannot offer all of these things. My caution here is that while we may desire these things for our children, we weigh the worth of them biblically.

5. I do not believe it is in itself sinful for a Christian to work within the public school system. The problem for me would be the difficulty that comes with the expectation that employees of the system" put their light under a bowl" (Mt 5:14-16) and/or teach contrary to God's Word. That, in itself, would be sinful.

6. Because of God's common grace, and the image of God in all of His human creatures, Christians can and should learn from non-Christians. One implication of this is that the best math teacher, for example, may not be a Christian, if in using the term "best" we simply mean the person that understands the subject most thoroughly and is able to communicate how it works. Of course if you want your children to understand math's relationship to God, then this teacher can't help you.

Well, it's 2:01 AM and I suppose that's enough. I almost always struggle inwardly after posting something polemical (like the earlier post on education). I don't want to be a hard-ass in any wrong sense of the word. Nor do I want to be an idealist, again, in any wrong sense. My hope is to be occasionally helpful to God's people. So in that spirit, I offer the above.

Grace & Peace.