A previous issue began a discussion of The Mind of the Spirit, and this one was expected to be a continuation of that topic.  However, a couple of recent issues of prominent American Christian magazines have concentrated on urging Christians not to abandon the public school, and while that issue is on the front burner, it seems important that someone suggest some aspects of it which were not covered in the magazines. We will return in due time to the mind of the Spirit. 

The magazines referred to were Christianity Today (Sept. 9 issue) and Focus on the Family (August, 1999). Christianity Today included both an editorial, "Stay in School: Dropping our of public education is a bad choice for Christians", and an article by Verla Gillmor, "Chicago Hope: How Christians are transforming public education." Focus on the Family carried a prominent article by Cheri Fuller, "Rebuilding Hope for Public Schools." 

First, there is the separation of church and state problem. The idea that church and state are meant to be hermetically separated from each other is completely specious. It doesn't appear in the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution. It rose from a comment in a letter from Thomas Jefferson to a Baptist pastor. The founding fathers did not believe in it. Several of them were clear in their insistence that democracy could not survive without strong religious commitment on the part of its citizens. Religion and the state cannot be separated. There is no basis for a moral consensus in a society unless there is some sort of common religious basis for it. The current collapse of moral consciousness in the United States is clearly the result of the foundational atheism in secularism. That secularist would deny this is not surprising, but neither is it convincing. 

Secondly, there is the question of whether the state should be responsible for the education of its children. Basically that responsibility rests with the family. Education inevitably includes the impartation of some kind of moral standards to students. The business of the state, Biblically speaking, is public justice. This does not include education. The state has no business dictating a set of ethical standards, or the lack of one, to its students. It is impossible to convey a moral perspective in education without some religious basis. This is why the permission of prayer in public school is not the Christian answer to the education conundrum. Whose prayer would it be? Islamic, Hindu, or Christian? Or would it be a mixture, so simplified as to be satisfactory to no one's religious commitments? 

The real problem that Christians have, or should have, with public schooling becomes apparent when we begin to look into the commonly held assumptions of educators today. Warren A. Nord in his book, Religion and American Education, lists three of these. (Nord is the director of the Program in the Humanities and Human Values and a teacher of philosophy at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill). First is the assumption that the secular and the sacred can be separated and most of life understood "in purely secular terms". Second is the assumption that secular education is neutral on religion. Reed notes that Justice Robert Jackson wrote in 1947 that public education "is organized on the premise that secular education can be isolated from all religious teaching so that the school can inculcate all needed temporal knowledge and also maintain a strict and lofty neutrality as to religion." The third assumption is that secular thought depends on rationalism whereas religion depends on irrational faith. Promoting religion in education is indoctrination, and indoctrination is not education. 

Reed's response is that "in the last few decades many secular scholars have argued that modern science is anything but the epitome of disinterested reason and objectivity; rather, it reflects ideology, power relationships, even faith commitments. Such post-modern thought typically denies science any special standing as the arbiter of truth ... Now, if the sacred and the secular cannot be disentangled ... then the conventional wisdom of modern American education is profoundly mistaken." (p. 6-7) 

Our own response leads into another point in the discussion. Not only is it impossible, Biblically speaking, to separate the sacred from the secular, but secularism is not only not neutral, it is another form of religion. It is based on a faith in the scientific method for which it is impossible to establish any rational defense. It omits all reference to the sinfulness of the human heart. Pascal saw through this centuries ago when he said, "The heart has its reasons that reason knows not of." This means that a secular approach to education is just as much indoctrination as a Christian approach. The problem with secular education is that it is based on, and it communicates, a false world view. A Christian worldview of creation, fall and redemption offers a far more whole and satisfactory approach to the creation, which is the only curriculum any school has, than the secular worldview. 

This leads to another step in our discussion. In his book, Foolishness to the Greeks, Leslie Newbigin discusses what he calls "the world of facts", and says, "Corresponding to this world of facts is a kind of knowledge that is understood to be objective and impersonal, a knowledge that does not involve the knower in a personal risk." (p. 76) That is, they are neutral as far as meaning is concerned. They do not call on us for any personal response. They are simply useful in the pursuit of our purposes. They give us power over the world. Incidentally, the pursuit of power was one of the temptations offered to Eve and Adam in the Garden of Eden. Genesis 3:6 indicates that the serpent suggested that pleasure, possessions and power were to be had from the forbidden tree without God's being involved in the transaction. And the tree was one which God had specifically not blessed to the original pair. 

Newbigin goes on to point out that knowing the facts without any personal commitment is at the core of our modem culture. He traces the development of this concept to Lord Bacon (1561-1626), who urged the early scientists to forget about any meaning involved and simply collect facts. The idea of a goal or purpose of the facts was to be specifically omitted. 

This idea sounds reasonable to us because it is so foundational in the modem outlook on reality. But the Bible diametrically opposes it. Facts are created by the Word of God and they continue in existence only because of that Word (Hebrews 1:3). They do mean something. They were created with the specific purpose of revealing God to humans and providing a channel for them to respond to Him. For example, Romans 1:20 (in the New American Standard Bible) says "For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse"(emphasis added). Another powerful illustration is found in Job 42:5-6. In the preceding four chapters, as we have arranged them, God talked to Job in response to his questions. God did not answer them, but talked exclusively about the creation. There is nothing that we would call spiritual in these chapters. But in response to their presentation of the creation Job says, "I have heard of Thee by the hearing of the ear; But now my eye sees Thee: Therefore I retract, and I repent in dust and ashes." That the creation reveals God is clearly set forth here. There are many similar passages, such as Psalm 19:1-6, Psalm 8: 1; Isaiah 6:3. 

What this means is that facts are not neutral. They mean something, and they call on us, who bear the image of God, for a response. They give us power, but that is not their primary purpose. They call on us for a response. They are meant, first of all, to lead us to a deeper awe of God, an enlarged love to Him, more praise and thanksgiving, and more service to Him. This is the point of Romans 12:1 which says, "I urge you, therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship." That makes the curriculum in the Christian school profoundly different from that of the secular school. The latter curriculum simply supports and encourages the natural, sinful, self-centered life of humans alienated from God. The former calls for commitment to the service of God in every aspect of our lives. Creation reveals God, and God's love for us prompts us to make a response to Him. The knowledge of God is equated with eternal life in our Lord's prayer in John 17:3. Once we understand the redeeming work of Christ in His life, death and resurrection, the study of the creation can become a means of deepening our knowledge of God.

 This brings us back to where we began. What should be the attitude of Christians to the public school?  If that school is as secular as has been asserted above, it promotes a very powerful form of modem idolatry. When it insists that the world can be correctly known without any reference to God, it is just as idolatrous as was Baal worship in Old Testament times. Christians should do all they can to move it toward a better perspective on the world, but can they afford to put their children into its hands to learn how to live? 

The answer, of course, is No! Christian schools or home schooling are the principal alternatives. The state has the right to insist that children should be educated. It does not have the right to force Christians to subject their children to an education which undermines and denies the basic beliefs of the family. Other governments than ours recognize this and help Christians with the cost of a Christian school education. For example, in British Columbia, Canada, the government provides to parents with children in Christian schools half the cost of education in the public system.  Since Christian schools usually cost considerably less than public schools, this is a real help. It is something that Christians need to work for in our country. However, given the Biblical injunctions against idolatry, they ought to try their best to avoid putting their children into the secular system. Twelve years there will leave in the minds of students a perspective which is not easily altered. 

When a Christian family removes its children from public school for Christian school or home schooling, it is not necessarily dropping out of public education. It is protesting the government's taking over what is the family's responsibility, that is, bringing up its children in the fear of the Lord. Christians need to sustain this kind of protest. There are plenty of parents who will still want public education, and the government should continue to provide it for them. Christians can help to keep that school from its worst excesses. Further, Christian schools will not bring in the millennium. Scripture is clear that things will get worse rather than better toward the end. But it would be well if Christians could be found to be doing the right thing when the Lord returns. That means conducting schools that recognize that creation reveals God and calls for our response to Him.