education

Midnight is drawing nearer here in Kentucky...I think I must still be on Bozeman time. :) Oh well. It's been a while since I posted anything, and I was having some thoughts today that I want to write out, in hopes that I will at least clarify them for myself.

The subject of education is one I've been, well, wrestling with for some time. I personally went to public school all my life, and I now teach at a private school. Most of my cousins and many of my friends were homeschooled (or are homeschooling their children). I don't know that my perspective is therefore unique, but it is rather broad. The thing is, unfortunately the Bible never says anything like, "You must educate your children in a Biblical setting" or "Children should be educated so as to best impact culture" or "In their education, children should seek to witness to their classmates." All of those are probably good things, and may be partly implied by some things in the Bible, but they are never stated out-right, and therefore it is difficult to determine what is best and what is Biblical. And their are certainly a number of opposing views among even orthodox Christians.

Let's start with a few key verses. Every side will, of course, have different ones (or the same ones applied differently), so let me attempt to just give a few that are fairly clear in meaning.

Deut. 4:9
Only take heed to yourself, and diligently keep yourself, lest you forget the things your eyes have seen, and lest they depart from your heart all the days of your life. And teach them to your children and your grandchildren,

Psalm 34:11
Come, you children, listen to me;
I will teach you the fear of the LORD.

Ephesians 6:4
And you, fathers, do not provoke your children to wrath, but bring them up in the training and admonition of the Lord.

Having searched my concordance, these are just about the only verses that refer to teaching or training children specifically. Of course there would be others that would apply (especially in Proverbs), but these are a good start. And the only thing that they say is that parents are to teach their children about God -- who He is, what He has done, how we should respond, etc. Our government (which we are supposed to obey) says that all children should be educated in "the 3 R's" and such. So we need to educate children about God as well as teaching them to read and write and such. That is about all that I can draw directly from the Bible, along with the fact that responsibility does rest on the parents. From here on it gets more difficult, and more divisive.

Let's consider pro's and con's of our choices, starting with public school, since that's where I started. I should preface these statements by making it clear that I went to fairly good public schools. In elementary school I think that many of my teachers were believers, and my high school is rated fairly high. That is the sort of situation I'm familiar with, and my thoughts might be different if we were discussing a school in the inner city where very little real education happens. Perhaps for this discussion we will assume that all our options are as ideal as they can be. All three can be very bad, so we will assume we get them at their best.

Public school....
Arguments for it include:
1. It's a good financial decision. Going into debt to pay for your child's elementary school doesn't seem like good stewardship (which we are Biblically called to have). Public education is "free" and may give the mom time for a part-time job while the kids are in school to supplement their income without taking time from the kids.
2. The mother and/or father are not good teachers or would be miserable or terribly stressed trying to teach. The kids would get a better education at public school and their parents might be more emotionally stable after having a little break.
3. It's a great opportunity to teach children to apply what they learned in church in witnessing to their unsaved friends. The public schools are huge mission fields and we can send little missionaries there free.

Arguments against it include:
1. World-view matters in every subject. If we want them to truly think like Christians we must educate them as Christians in all areas of life.
2. Negative peer pressure can draw them away and cause them to abandon their faith, or at least get caught up in sin for long periods of time.
3. Standards are dropping, and children will not get a really good education in most public schools.

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It's pretty late and I'm not thinking too clearly, so I'm going to
pause here and hopefully post again on this topic in the near
future. :)
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