Education Methodology Matters: See the Fruit- Do the Numbers- Stop the Madness

The Biblical model for education features fathers as teachers, walking and talking alongside their children when they sit in the house, when they walk by the way, when they lie down and when they rise up, bringing them up "in the training and admonition of the Lord" in an age integrated context of church and family and business life.

 In contrast, Kyle Anne-Shiver writes in "American Thinker" about the despicable moral state of the souls of those who experience public education-- a system which rages against almost every principle of biblical education. After thousands of hours getting their brians pickled in relativism and socialism, they are - relativists and socialists. She tells of a "a very disturbing pattern of moral erosion:"

• 30% stole from a store in the past year; 23% stole from a parent or other relative; 20% stole something from a friend.
  
• 42% lie regularly to save money; 83% lied to a parent about something significant.
  
• 64% cheated on a test in the last year; 38% cheated 2 or more times; 36% used the internet to plagiarize an assignment.

American young people are just about evenly divided on whether they prefer capitalism to socialism. Among our under-30 crowd, 37% prefer capitalism, 33% socialism, and 30% are undecided.

You may be thinking it could be worse. And as it turns out, you would be correct. It actually is worse. By students' own admission, 26% confessed they lied on at least one or two questions on the survey. Experts agree that dishonesty on surveys usually is an attempt to conceal misconduct, i.e., to make oneself appear better than he actually is.

But it gets even worse.

High school students admit to vast amounts of lying, cheating and stealing, but lo and behold, their confessions make nary a dent in their ethical self-esteem. A staggering 93 percent said they were satisfied with their personal ethics and character and 77 percent said that when it comes to doing what is right, "I am better than most people I know."

I have little patience with those who praise or want to try to preserve such a damaging system. We need to go back to obeying the word of God in the realm of education and training of children. Two hundred years ago before modern age segregated education model had infiltrated our culture-- literacy researcher Dupont de Nemours discovered that only four out of every one thousand could not read - for a literacy rate of over 99%. Why? Fathers and mothers were teaching their children in their own homes how to read using the Bible and the children were not being polluted by their peers in an age segregated world. My belief is this: without a return to biblical discpleship in our homes, there is no hope for the church or the state of the United States of America.