Before pondering what materials and methods should be used for her students, the home educator needs to settle on the goal, that is, what is the expected result of education. Of course the goal in the public schools for at least the past twenty years has not been to educate anyone, but to groom and mold children into useful idiots. In short, this goal has become legalized child abuse. Mr. Shakespeare was ahead of his time when he had his three weird sisters chant, “Fair is foul, and foul is fair.” A better commentary on American public education (falsely so called) cannot be found, unless we go to the Scriptures, which states, “The wicked shall be turned into hell, and all the nations that forget God” (Psalm 9:17).
The world improvers, that would be Socialists and other criminals, understand completely what their goal is regarding the use of the schools. Being the founder of social reconstructionism and a signer of the Humanist Manifesto, Theodore Brameld states in his Education as Power, “I may only assert here that one moral end takes precedence before all the others to which education should now be dedicated. This is the building of a world order of nations under the direction of the majority of peoples.” While Brameld was widely criticized at first for his views, fifty years after the publication of his book, social reconstructionism has become the norm in the governmental school systems today. Here is a clear example that ideas, no matter how radical and erroneous, have consequences.
In fact, obtaining Brameld’s goal of public “education” has been a resounding success, because most graduates are docile subjects of the central government, ready to take their menial positions under the elite in the industrial-governmental cartel, and willing to believe the mass media without any critical thought about the message. Clearly, the home school exists because of this abuse found in the public schools. However, while home educators may have some vague feelings about getting their students ready for college or preparing their students to compete in the world marketplace, these notions fail to be specific goals. In other words, there is no specific destination, and most teaching is without purpose.
The Lord Jesus Christ declares not only what is the purpose of life, but also what is the goal of actual education. In Mark 12:29–30, the Lord states, “The first of all the commandments is, Hear, O Israel; The Lord our God is one Lord: And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength: this is the first commandment.” While the secularist may scoff at this, for the Christian, this command is central to faith and is indeed the goal to be achieved.
Education then is the guiding of students to exercise all of their faculties—heart, soul, mind, and body—towards loving God. Students who love God are self-governing individuals who need no central-planning busybody to tell them what to do or what to think. However, we must remember that faith has two parts according to Hebrews chapter 11: substance and evidence. The substance is the student’s loving God, or “the substance of things hoped for.” But what is the evidence of faith, “the evidence of things not seen”?
The Lord Jesus Christ helps us again by saying, “Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.” This commandment reveals three points. First, students’ loving their God is equal to their loving their neighbors, which is the evidence of the unseen substance of faith. Second, students are to love their neighbors, not mankind. A neighbor is specific and concrete; mankind is general and abstract. Having a concern for the poor is not the same as taking a load of groceries to one’s next-door neighbor who is out of work. And third, students must love themselves before they can love their neighbors. Students must enrich themselves first before they can have the capacity to enrich others and to be a blessing to their neighbors. Clearly then, a truly educated young person achieves the goal of loving God by examining how well the student enriches others, not by testing how much the student knows about specific material in a particular discipline.
Thus, to educate means to cultivate students by leading them to govern themselves well, bringing heart, soul, mind, and strength under the control of the Holy Spirit. These faculties of the whole person are exercised through a curriculum that enriches the whole student, not in a utilitarian manner, but as an end in itself. In addition to this, education nurtures ladies and gentlemen, who must value themselves as special creations with unique purpose before they can love others. Only then can students extend to their worthy neighbors the qualities of kindness, understanding, and generosity. Home educators, this is your goal.
THE DUNCE'S CORNER 