Evidence of the evils of State-controlled children’s education continues to multiply, amplify and explode all around us, but in a culture still loaded with minds molded on State-run assembly lines, those evils are typically dismissed, ignored, or even spun into virtues. This is the climate into which God has placed His people. Even now in America, the ranks of a faithful remnant are being preserved and grown by His grace, and for that we ought to be very thankful and very excited.
Parents who have been blessed with an understanding and desire to do what is required to secure an explicitly Christ-centered education for their children are routinely on the receiving end of jokes, suspicions, and idiotic questions as our systemically secular culture aims to silence the convicting force of these parents’ God-given obedience to His Word on the subject of their children’s education. Put more simply, those who are actively obedient to the Lord in this matter are hated for their obedience by those who cling to rebellion in the same realm.
One of the questions most commonly put to obedient Christian parents by those defending State-controlled children’s education is, “What about socialization?”
This question is a fave of the modern State- and Corporate-programmed mind.
In this context I thought it might be helpful and encouraging to share a handful of potential responses to this question. This particular list is intended to address those who profess to be Christians. Lord willing, we will add to this in the future and even craft lists aimed at different audiences. But, for now, we want to focus here on professing believers. (It might also be helpful to read Adolescence is a Big Fat Lie in order to have a better (more biblical) understanding of what is meant when the term “children” is used.)
That said, here are ten answers to the “What about socialization?” question:
10. We socialize our pets. We educate our children. (Yes, there is a difference.)
9. We think that Socialized children are a bad thing. (If we wanted more Socialist children, we would send our kids to State-controlled “schools”, since that’s their specialty.)
8. The age-segregated school environment is contrived and unnatural. Exactly what “real world” situation are children being prepared for by surrounding them day in and day out with ignorant, immature people of the same age? The separation of children from surrounding levels of knowledge and maturity (both above and below) sounds much more like a contrived artificial environment than it does anything they are likely to encounter in the real world.
7. Sending kids off to learn “social skills” largely from immature, ignorant, and undisciplined children is an inherently stupid idea. Exactly how is it good for a child’s growth and maturity to send them away from their parents to be surrounded day in and day out by immature, ignorant people of the same age?
6. Immersing spiritually immature, ungrounded, and impressionable children in a cesspool of secular worldviews is even more idiotic. Exactly how is it good for a child’s spiritual development to send them away to be surrounded by similarly immature, ignorant children coming from families with all sorts of spiritual perspectives who are then packed together in a place that is purposefully disallowed from acknowledging, much less teaching, the lordship of Christ as it relates to art, math, history, science, and everything else?
5. Remember the evil things that you learned through public schools? If you went to public school as a kid, think of all the ways that you were shaped and molded by the unbiblical, sinful thoughts and behaviors introduced through teachers and fellow students. Take the time to make a fairly detailed list. (Really…make the list.) Be honest and include everything that you can remember in a few minutes’ time (bad language, sexual behavior, lying, disrespectfulness, etc.). Everything on that list is an example of the socialization that we are happy (and obligated by God) to keep away from our children.
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4. Now compare that list to the evil things that your Christian parents taught you. If you were blessed to be raised by serious Christian parents, make a list of all of the ways in which you were negatively impacted as a child by your parents’ introduction of unbiblical concepts and behavior. Much shorter list (than the one from #5 above), right? Do you see the point? (If you weren’t blessed with the parents described here, the point should still be fairly easy to apprehend.)
3. We actually believe that protecting our children from unbiblical socialization (and Socialization) is a good thing. While many mock the “bubble world” approach of responsible (read: biblical) Christian parenting, as Christians we understand that the loving, protective approach to parenting and education mandated in Scripture is the means by which God has graciously enabled us to raise fragile, malleable, sinful little boys and girls into bold, strong men and women of deep faith, conviction, and intellectual integrity. Everything about the public school worldview and practice is diametrically opposed to this.
2. We actively oppose the immersion of our children in secular worldviews because God has commanded parents to ensure an explicitly Christ-centered education. To do otherwise would be sin. (See: Deuteronomy 6 and The Satanic view on children’s education…as embraced by most professing Christians in America.)
1. Because we love God and we love our children. We will one day give an account as to whether we obeyed or rejected His lovingly detailed Word on the subject of children’s education. Our children, as sinners, desperately need the Gospel instilled and infused into every area of their worldview, just as the Lord has so lovingly commanded. They need to understand the true, all-encompassing lordship of Christ as the central theme of all true education.
We will not give account to any public school teachers, supervisors, politicians, neighbors, coaches or secular “experts”. We will give an account to God.
If we disobey the Lord’s loving commands in this critical area, our children (and future generations) will suffer the consequences, and those consequences are more often than not profound in nature. So we do these things as best we are made able by the grace of God because we love God and we love our children.
I hope that this is helpful and encouraging to Brothers and Sisters who are striving by the grace of God to pursue a biblical path to the formation of their children’s minds and souls, and that it might be helpful in encouraging (often through loving confrontation, correction, and conviction) others to do the same, all by God’s grace, for His glory, and to our children’s eternal benefit.
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© 2014 Scott Alan Buss – All Rights Reserved.
Soli Deo Gloria!