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February 1, 2005
On one chilly winter's day in 1746, a child was born
to a couple in Paris. The father took the child from the
arms of his wife and against her protestations delivered the
baby to the steps of an orphanage. Without even taking the
time to note the child's gender, he abandoned the child to
what would have been almost certain death. Subsequently,
his wife had four more children each of whom received the
same treatment.
Incredibly, this man went on to unprecedented fame,
becoming the most influential philosopher of modern times,
the thinker behind all modern revolutions. His name was
Jean Jacques Rousseau. What makes this story so poignant
and yet so sad, is that it exactly captures the spirit of our
times.
Fifteen years after abandoning his first child,
Rousseau began writing on the subject over which he
would have the most profound influence of all - education.
His famous book, Emile, was entirely devoted to the subject
of educating a child. In his book Rousseau and Revolution,
the famous historian Durant summarizes the philosopher's
thoughts on education: "Rousseau wanted a system of
public instruction by the state. He prescribed many years
with an unmarried tutor, who would withdraw the child as
much as possible from parents and relatives." According
to my Encyclopedia Americana (1958 edition), Rousseau's
work was precedent setting. "Highly debatable though
these propositions [in Emile] are, they have had immense
influence on educational theory, including the "progressive
education" formulated by John Dewey and his followers."
Paul Johnson is one of the most respected historians
on the modern world. In his landmark book, Intellectuals
(a work which should be a part of everybody's library), he
struggles to explain the thought processes of the
"interesting madman," Rousseau, "What began as personal
self-justification... hardened into convictions, into the
proposition that education was the key to social and moral
improvement, and this being so, it was the concern of the
state. By a curious chain of infamous moral logic,
Rousseau's iniquity as a parent was linked to his
ideological offspring, the future totalitarian state." The
Bible uses fewer words and puts it clearer in Proverbs 23:7,
"As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he." Rousseau's
thinking was wrong. Dead wrong. But the modern world
would follow this man who abandoned his own children on
the steps of an orphanage, a man who insisted that children
should be raised by "professionals."
The modern world began that day in 1746. A new
sociology stepped into place. In just about every area of
human life in the modern world (from America to Europe
to Asia), licensed professionals, technicians, bureaucrats,
and psychiatrists replaced the old-fashioned concepts of
parents, mothers and fathers, grandmas, friends, neighbors,
and pastors. The far-reaching effects of this bad
worldview would capture the institutions of family, school,
church, and state.
Several weeks ago, my wife was shopping at a local
department store, five children in tow (as is customary for
the homeschooling family). A woman, noting the
entourage, deployed the usual question, "All yours?" To
which Brenda answered with a cheery, "Sure are. Five
blessings!"
Without skipping a beat, the woman replied, I've
got two. You want em?"
What a heart breaker! My wife was stunned.
Undoubtedly this mother was a product of the age, the
thinking espoused by a world that has lost a sense for what
things are of real value. If you understand the worldview in
which the modern world operates, you would at least be
able to explain such a baffling response.
Rousseau's worldview is alive and well in our
world and his orphanage is expanding. Consider what has
happened since 1746. In this country alone, from 1973,
forty million children have been cruelly murdered while
still in their mothers' wombs. To put it simply, there are
many more children unwanted and unloved by their parents
at least to one degree or another. The state (civil
government) presses that worldview with more vehemence
every year. Many states have widened the compulsory
attendance law just over the last ten years in our country.
Rousseau's ideas roll on. Closer to home, the pre-school
next door to my office has just doubled their space. The
effects of Rousseau have impacted business, politics,
economics, church, and family. Indeed, these effects are
more than statistics. They are devastating. There is hardly
a family anywhere that has not been impacted by the
worldview of a madman who abandoned his own children
on the steps of an orphanage. Today, 35% of children are
born without fathers in America, a rate that has increased
by a factor of 7 since 1960. By the year 2000, 80% of
women with small children were in the workforce, a rate
that is finally beginning to decline. How would one best
summarize the 20th century? It was the century when
fatherhood and motherhood faded and the family's
importance, influence, and purview gradually dissipated.
The worldview ideas of the "intellectuals" of the previous
two centuries have given birth to new social architecture,
and the destructive effects of this "new" world are now
painfully obvious, especially in Europe and America. For
many parents, it has become too high a price to pay. Of
course, there will always be those who continue to hold
tenaciously to the worldview of the intellectual madman
and the social structures he recommended.
Home Education Introduces A Different Sociological Construct
I am sure that every homeschooled graduate has
heard the question, "What about socialization?" When I
graduated from my homeschool high school in 1980, I used
to wonder why people would ask a question so asinine,
especially when many homeschool graduates I knew were
some of the most successful leaders in any context. But
after twenty years of thinking about the question, I'm now
convinced that it is the most intelligent question to ask.
Home education is bringing sweeping changes into modern
society in the area of sociology, and not everybody is
excited about that. We are replacing peer pressure, group
think, and statist, big government social relationships with
a different sociology. Of course this will be of deep
concern to those with a different worldview. It isn't the
academic strengths of homeschoolers that is of concern to
the opposition. It isn't even the fact that homeschooled
children are able to interact with a wide variety of people
from varying social contexts with ease that bothers the
opposition. It is the fact that these children are raised in
different social relationships, nurturing relationships that
will inevitably produce well-rounded, influential leaders of
change in future generations. It is the fact that home
education is poised to change worldviews, the social
relationships of the modern world, the way we live and the
way we interact. We are re-inventing what it means to be a
father who walks beside his son, what it means to be a
mother who actually nurtures her children into confident,
loving, faithful, world-impacting children of God. We are
re-inventing social relationships in Rousseau's world. We
are reversing Rousseau, a 300-year precedent!
When a family who has learned to live with each
other in peace and unity walks into a restaraunt, they are
treated with stares and an occasional complement. One
day, we were sitting in Country Buffet, our favorite
restaurant when a family with six children
entered.
My son, whispered to me, "Dad, that's a
homeschool family."
I asked him why he thought that was the case, and I
was amazed at his answer.
He said, "It's the way the children are talking
respectfully and lovingly to their parents."
Later I walked up to the father intending to ask him
if they were home educators. He beat me to it. "Do you
folks homeschool?" He asked.
The Domino Effect
It would be one thing, if homeschooling only
affected family social relationships and perhaps then home
educators would be tolerated. But indeed that is not the
case! Once you have rearranged social relationships on the
basic level, you will inevitably find a domino effect taking
place, and all other social relationships will be affected.
Last week, I took a call from Barna Research, an
organization that surveys Christian ministries. (Ironically,
the call came in while I was working on my Bible lesson I
was preparing for my children that morning.) The
gentleman on the other end of the line was surveying
Christian pastors on children's ministries in their churches.
He asked me if we had any Sunday School programs for
children in our church. I told him, "No."
"Any mid-week youth groups?"
"Not exactly," I replied.
"How about children's church?"
"Nope."
There was a pause. "What kind of church are you?
Don't you have anything for children?"
I told him, "Well, we were reading the Bible, and
we found Deuteronomy 6:7, Ephesians 6:4, the book of
Proverbs, and all of the other passages on children's
ministries. In practically every passage we found that it
would be a really good idea if parents would disciple their
own children. We couldn't find any more powerful
ministry program for children, than for their own parents to
show them Jesus every day as they sit in their house
together, as they walk by the way, as they rise up, and as
they lie down. We thought that would be a pretty neat
system of disciple-ing children, and we decided to go with
it."
"Wow. That's not even on my list here. That's
pretty weird."
"Yeah. Christian parents were doing that sort of
thing for about 1800 years, until the Sunday School
movement started up and family discipleship virtually
disappeared. By 1820, Archibald Alexander wrote his book
lamenting the decline of families actively disciple-ing their
own children."
Many homeschooling families are meeting
resistance in their various other associations in life, whether
it be extended family or church, and they wonder why. It is
because they have made a worldview shift at a foundational
level, a change in social relationship and there is no way to
avoid a domino effect in other social relationships. We're
reversing Rousseau, and it's going to be a struggle.
This change in social relationships at the basic level
of the family will produce a reunification of the family and
empowerment for the family. Inevitably, this must affect
economics, especially as families begin to see the
household (and not the individual) as the basic economic
unit. The word "economics" comes from the Greek,
oikonomia, which means "the law or vision of the
household." As homeschooling re-introduces a
re-integrated family, de-centralized family businesses will
replace the large corporations and individualized career
tracks. This is a model that bears thousands of years of
biblical and historical precedent (Gen. 29:9, 37:12, 1 Sam,
17:15, Acts 18:2,3, Prov. 31:11,27). The changes in social
settings at home will change the way we do business.
Yet another domino in the sequence is civil
government. If the family once again realizes its
God-ordained roles in education, inheritance, and caring for
elderly parents, that will most certainly replace the
Rousseau-ian vision of government-provided schools,
social security, and generational welfare programs.
The Vision Goes Even Deeper
Indeed, our vision is much deeper than a mere
change in social relationships, in business, and in
government. Our vision is that people would love God. It
is the vision of the Shema, the most famous passage in
Jewish tradition in Deuteronomy 6:5-6. According to our
Lord Jesus Christ in Matthew 22:37, this most basic
summary of a godly life has never changed. God shows us
HOW to love Him in the very next verse (Deut. 6:7). Here
is how you love God. "Teach your children my words as
you sit in your house, as you walk by the way, as you rise
up, and as you lie down."
Our vision is simple. We want fewer mothers
saying, "I've got two. You want em?" We don't want
booming day care businesses for toddlers. While we wish
God's richest blessings on orphanages and families that
take care of the abandoned and ignored orphan, what we
really want is more families loving God. We want more
families loving God by parents lovingly, tenderly,
continually teaching their children God's Word themselves
throughout the day as they sit in their houses, as they walk
by the way, as they rise up, and as they lie down.
Once again, we can hear Jesus' question as plain
and clear as can be:
"Do you love me?"
"Yes, Lord."
"Well then. Do you see those lambs over there that I gave
you?
"Yes."
"Feed them."
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