Volume 1, Issue 3 – February 2004

Posted on 2/22/2004 at 11:59:08 AM

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State Schools vs The Prophets

Posted on 2/8/2004 at 12:58:59 PM

What the Prophets Have to Say about Home & Religious Education

The intent of this article is not for the readers to judge the choices of others regarding their children’s education. We cannot fully know the circumstances and challenges other parents face, but we can study the teachings in this article and pray for ourselves to find how relevant and important they are to us personally, and how we might best implement them.

Home schooling children is not a modern idea. Throughout the world’s history it was the norm, and produced famous names like Newton, Edison, Einstein, Graham-Bell, the Wright Brothers, DaVinci, Washington, Franklin, Jefferson, Lincoln, Churchill, Dickens, C.S. Lewis, Joseph Smith and Brigham Young. Before the advent of state schooling (and often after) the greatest inventors, scientists, artists, novelists, political and religious leaders received their education from their parents, from their own enthusiasm to learn, and from the religion with which they were associated.

The American experiment in public (state-provided) education began as early as the 1830s, and was started by those men who admired the Prussian system of schooling, which seemed to them to provide that country with obedient soldiers and little dissension amongst the working classes. Those businessmen and social reformers who sponsored these early schooling systems made it clear that their aims were to either create compliant workers or to spread the new and seemingly less troublesome atheistic religion of humanism.¹ It didn’t take them long to convince the states that it would also be in their interests to have an influence in the upbringing of children, and the compulsory education system was born (which never had anything to do with providing greater knowledge or opportunities). From these beginnings there is now a massive schooling system, with tens of millions of students, taking billions of dollars in taxes, and staffed by teachers, psychologists, security guards, and non-teaching staff of every description.²

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