This time it is homeschooling. For years I was taught to simply teach the basics and to teach apologetics and about God, and that would be enough. We shouldn't worry about preparing our kids for college. Well, that, along with so many other things, have been in the process of rethinking and reevaluating in our household for the last year and a half. Sammy LOVES math and science. He is especially interested in astronomy and doing experiments...and he's only 8. So, we came to the conclusion that we want to prepare him so that if the Lord leads him to go to college for a degree and advancement, he won't have to go into it and take remedial courses, but that he would be fully prepared. If God leads him contrary to that, we will be fine with that too, but we want to do everything that we possibly can to make sure he's ready for wherever the Lord may lead. I have been reading a book recommended by a dear friend on Biblical homeschooling. It has been challenging many of my previously held thoughts on things, and my status quo, which is a valuable thing. I need to be shaken out of my rut once in awhile. Anyway, in reading yesterday, I read something that was shocking, and I had to read it to Terry. Now, I will state that I agree with a lot of this. However, I will also state that I do not limit my God from being able to keep godly children safe if parents have no other recourse but to put their children in a state school. My God is bigger than that.
"Our culture is being manipulated to worship the state. We see the state as a god, with the right to control everything which it chooses. The state is being endowed with powers for controlling the destiny of its human resources - the power of predestination. Our culture teaches us to think of the state as having a natural right to control the education of children for the sake of society, because, after all, the democratic state is the embodiment of society. Our culture teaches us that the state has a compelling interest in its own survival and success. Hence the state must own the children, for the children are the future. Though this doctrine is rarely stated in such explicit terms, it is nevertheless the implicit declaration of virtually all state programs. The state seeks to be omniscient - to know everything about us. The state seeks to be omnipresent - to be everywhere in our lives. The state seeks to be omnipotent - to control everything in society. The state is the incarnation of the god of humanism. Man, through the state, has become the measure of all things. The promise of the tempter in the Garden of Eden is at last fulfilled in the socialist state. Man is as a god, determining for himself what is good and evil - measuring everything by his own invented standards, apart from God's revealed standards.
There is only one way to defeat the socialist state. It is not with political machinery and votes. It is not with petitions and protests. It is with godly, parent-controlled education of their own children. Socialism breaks down the natural bond between parents and children - that is a necessary part of the socialist program. Unless those bonds are broken, the state cannot gain power to control the future. Parent-controlled education thwarts that purpose. Hence the socialist state has worked hard to turn the parental bond into a liability and to make it desirable for parents to sever that bond wherever and whenever it is possible.
From a practical point of view, Homeschooling is strongly out of favor with the socialist state, because it strengthens that parent-child bond which controls the future. The family is socialism's public enemby number one, and practicing Biblical Christianity is a hate crime against the state." (p. 56; "Teaching the Trivium: Christian Homeschooling in a Classical Style" by Harvey and Laurie Bluedorn; copyright 2001)
As an aside, I would also say that I know many good and godly parents that have maintained that strong relationship with their children in spite of state schools, however, I do believe they are the exception, not the rule. For the most part, I do indeed see the break down of the family ties as the children progress through school, for one reason or another. I have my opinions as to what those reasons are, but I will leave that to the reader to decide for themselves.
