“Going to school feels like watching a rated R movie every day.” quote from a Christian, public, junior-high student
When my husband and I were deciding how to educate our children, we had Christian friends who felt an evangelist call to share their faith in the public school setting. However, when their children entered junior high, they communicated "going to school feels like watching a rated R movie every day." They eventually decided the negative impact outweighed the positive, and they transferred their children to private school.
Education is not neutral. It shapes what children love and their theology.
Davies Owens, the Executive Director of the Society for Classical Learning, recently interviewed Dr. Steve Turley about the formative power of education. The interview is informative and explains why a Classical Christian Education is an offensive strategy in the war to teach our children to love God’s truth and goodness. Here are a few of my favorite quotes from the interview:
We’ve really dropped the ball in that we bought into the lie that education is simple information acquisition and it is not initiation to a culture. - Dr. Steve Turley
Education is not so much informative as it is formative. If a child is learning 7 or 8 hours a day that God does not matter in any way shape or form to literature, art or geometry, science, and life there is no way you are going to make up for that at the dinner table. They will embody the notion that theology is irrelevant to all these subjects. - Dr. Steve Turley
Western civilization is under radical attack right now even within the church. There is no better way to counter the attack than to go back to the very kind of education that is there precisely to shape the affections to love the civilization that is under attack. - Dr. Steve Turley
Parents need to fully understand the impact of education on children. Listening to this interview is a great place to start.
For more information, read the following blogs:
Why It Matters Where Your Child Goes to School
