Homeschool News & Views
Issue 14
From Homeschool Helpers
In association with Pass It On Ministries
Institutional Schools Undermine the
Family
Greetings. This is Dan
White with issue 14 of Homeschool News & Views, for March 16, 2007.
I don’t know why we always
do things the hard way. Maybe the hard
way is usually the better way.
Our youngest child wanted
to be baptized. Annie is 19 years old,
old enough to make her own decisions, and that is what she decided.
You will recall that was
one of the great divisions between the early Protestant Reformation Christians
and the Roman Catholic Church.
The Roman Church baptized
infants. When the northern Europeans
began to think for themselves instead of having the church think for them, they
questioned the wisdom of infant baptism.
I recall seeing a movie where some reformers, in a bold move of courage
and wisdom, decided to be baptized again as adults. Such a simple, sensible move was considered
an outrage by the institutional monopolistic church. The practice spread and these people were
called ana-baptists, for being baptized again as
adults.
In our family, the
children are not baptized as infants or children. If they decide to be baptized, it is only
after they are adults and fully capable of deciding their own life’s course. This is without undue pressure from us to do
so. A man convinced against his will is
of the same opinion still. Or you can
lead a horse to water but you can’t make him drink.
Annie decided she wanted
to be baptized.
Of our preceding four
children, two have been baptized and two have not. In the two previous baptisms, we did not make
that big of a spectacle of it. Just a small, short to the point service at some other location
with a few people present. We
intended to do that this time, but things did not work out that way.
First of all, we had
difficulty finding a place to hold the baptism.
We are not part of a big church with a baptistery, so we asked some
church friends about the baptisteries at their churches. Those were not working, because the hot water
heaters were out. We checked further as
to what local churches did in the winter to baptize people, and we found out
that they don’t.
That is the trend of the
country.
That is radically changing
the whole direction of the country. The
left wing controlled public schools educate about 90% of
With no obvious place to
do Annie’s baptism, we decided to have the service here on our forty
acres. We were not at all ready to wade
into the pond in March. When we buried
Annie in a watery grave, we did not want her to actually freeze to death. So I checked with the neighbors to see if any
had a two foot by six foot stock tank.
Nobody did.
So we decided to build a
watery coffin to baptize Annie in. See,
I told you we tend to do things the hard way.
We built a wooden frame about two feet wide, two feet deep and six feet
long and then draped black plastic over that frame. It did, indeed, look somewhat like a
coffin. Another daughter grooms dogs
here at the place. People brought their
pets to drop off for grooming, but before they left they just had to ask, “What
is that thing out in the front yard?”
They were told that’s
where Annie was going to be baptized, and they simply replied, “That’s
nice.” They had no way of knowing how
much this black plastic tank and this baptism meant to us, Annie’s parents.
Institutional schooling
splits the family up in several different ways.
One way is that the public
schools sow hostility between the parents and their children.
The left wing schools foster disrespect for parents, particularly Christian
parents. Now this is happening directly,
where the schools are purposely teaching values which are diametrically opposed
to the teachings of Christ. Over and
over the courts are establishing that the schools are allowed to do this, and
even establishing that it is the schools’ duty to teach these children
pluralism instead of Christ.
This cannot help but
create tension between the children of Christian parents who are taught one
thing at home and another thing at school.
The child has two main authority channels, the parents and the schools. The Christian parent teaches that the school
is good, and the school teaches that the Christian parent is bad. The parent loses.
Most of the teaching to
disrespect parents does not come from classroom lectures, though, but from the
school culture. The public school kids
bring with them whatever is in the world.
The latest movies, music and crazy fads go with the kids into the school
culture, because there is no one or no way to keep that out. Once they disallowed God, then they had to
allow everything else. Once God was put
out, everything else came in.
They don’t want to make a
moral judgment, you know. That would be
immoral.
So the child of Christian
parents who goes to the public schools is constantly inundated with the degenerate
culture of the world, which he inevitably picks up to a more or less
degree. Therefore the Christian parent
is constantly having to battle to try to get his child to overcome all the evil
which the parent has placed him in. This
creates frequent tension between parents and their children.
In fact, a major part of
the cool youth culture is disrespect for parents. There is an underlying premise that parents
are not with it, that they do not understand “today’s”
youth, and that parents are not communicating well enough with their
children. The big problem is that public
school youth are constantly taught disrespect for parents, through the cool
school culture.
Teaching a child to
disrespect his parents is one of the greatest evils of the left wing
schools. Once a child picks up the
attitude that his parents don’t really know what is going on, that they don’t
understand him, that they’re trying to keep him from
being happy by not letting him have all he wants, his life is under a
curse. If a child will not respect his
parents, whom will he respect? Will he
then have high respect for whatever government God has put over him? No.
Will he then have respect for God himself? No.
Will he have respect for other people?
No.
If a child does not learn
to respect his parents, then he will not really respect anyone.
In
Guess what? It’s not the uniforms that made the children
respectful. It’s what they are
taught.
If you took a bunch of public
school kids and somehow forced them to wear uniforms, what would happen? They would immediately tear holes in the
knees, leave off their belts to show their underwear, and pull the tops up so
the girls could show their navels.
Disrespect for parents is sin, directly breaking
the fifth commandment.
Several times the Bible says, as in Lev 20:9
(9) " 'For everyone who curses his father or
his mother shall surely be put to death: he has cursed his father or his
mother; his blood shall be upon him.
That
penalty, although not executed humanly, still exists. If a child does not learn to respect his
parents, the curse of death is on him.
Teaching a child to
disrespect his parents is one of the greatest evils of the left wing
schools. This causes constant friction
between parents and their public school children. The problem is that constant attitude of
disrespect which the child absorbs from the public school culture.
A lot of people realize
that, but most just accept it. They
think that when young people disrespect their parents, it’s just a normal part
of growing up. It is not. It’s just a normal part of the public school
culture.
Our next door neighbor was
at Annie’s baptism. She has been our
neighbor for about twenty years. She has
seen these two girls grow up, and the girls have done work for her and her
husband. When she attended our girls’
homeschool graduations, she was most impressed with how respectful and loving
the homeschool grads were toward their parents.
And respect for parents is normal for Christian homeschool students.
Another way that the
institutional schools split up the family is by separating the siblings, the
brothers and sisters. Most people have
not thought about this, and truly this is one of the blessings of Christian
homeschooling which took me by surprise.
In an institutional school
setting, students are segregated by age.
This means that brothers and sisters are separated from each other every
day for most of the day. All of their classwork and most of their activities are with someone
from outside the family. Almost always a
child’s best friends will be from within the segregated class group, and will
not be a brother or a sister from within the family. In fact, often there will be outright hostility
between the siblings. This is called
sibling rivalry.
Again this is accepted as
just being normal. Your best friend is
never supposed to be your brother or your sister. You’re supposed to fight with your brother or
sister! Or so it is thought.
As we prepared to do the
baptism, Annie’s best friend stood off to the side with a camera. Annie’s best friend is her sister, two years
older. Of course, since they are
sisters, they are much closer than friends.
But since they were homeschooled, they are also much closer than
sisters. They are sister best friends.
Another sister was at this baptism, too, still
older. This sister, one month ago, was
blessed with identical twin girls. Her
husband and she fully intend to homeschool them, to follow the example of
Abraham –
Gen 18:19,
World English Bible
(19) For I have known him, to the end that he may
command his children and his household after him, that they may keep the way of
Yahweh, to do righteousness and justice.
These
young parents want to nurture these girls in the discipline and instruction of
the Lord, Eph 6:4.
This was
the little twin girls first social call, and their
very first trip to Grandma and Grandpa White’s house. We will always remember that they were there
for Annie’s baptism. And they, too, can
have the opportunity to grow up with love and respect for their parents,
instead of frequent hostility and friction.
They, too, can be sister best friends.
Annie’s
baptism was one of the best days in the history of our family. Having it at our home, with family, friends
and neighbors was the best way. I notice
that I recall the days of my children’s baptisms better than I do the day of
their births. This day was added to that
memory.
This
baptism is typical of Christian homeschooling.
Our children were taught right and wrong, Christ and anti-Christ.
As in Isa
30:19-21, World English Bible,
(19) For the people will dwell in
(20) Though the Lord may give you the bread of
adversity and the water of affliction, yet your teachers won't be hidden
anymore, but your eyes will see your teachers;
(21) and when you turn to
the right hand, and when you turn to the left, your ears will hear a voice
behind you, saying, "This is the way. Walk in it."
We were
there every day to tell them, “This is the way.
Walk in it.” Some of our children turned away from Christ, and suffer
for that. Most did accept Him, and are
blessed for that. Even with those who
turned away, there is always that deep knowledge of where to turn, when the
yoke gets too heavy and they want to turn back.
This is
Dan White with Homeschool Helpers. God
bless the Christian homeschoolers.