Dr Greg Bahnsen - Basic Training in Education: Why Public Schools Won't Work (Part 3)

I want to welcome you to the third session of our seminar on Christian education. I'm glad you could be with us this evening. We're going to try to finish up tonight by completing a thought that started two sessions ago when I taught you that the Bible shows us that walking with God, keeping covenant with him requires us to raise our children in such a way that they see everything in life and everything that they learn is from the perspective of God's word. We want our lives to be God centered, we want our families to be God centered and therefore we want the education of our children to be God centered as well. And so Christian education was presented then as a covenantal duty. If we would love God with all of our heart, soul, strength and mind, we must show that in the way in which we educate our children because they belong to the Lord as well. In our second session I followed up on that by discussing what I think is the central mistake made by Christians, well meaning Christians who send their children to state sponsored or public schools. And that mistake is what I call the myth of neutrality. It's thinking, quite mistakenly, that it's possible to divide life into a sacred set of truths as well as a secular set of truths, or if you will, to divide life into the supernatural and the natural domains, in which case in that area of natural truths which are secular in character, anybody would be able to teach those things. And that's what the schools are all about. And it's perfectly alright, therefore to have our children learn secular natural truths at school and, and then have that supplemented by supernatural truths or sacred truths at home. And we saw that that dichotomy is unbiblical and unworkable. And that as a matter of fact, neutrality, religious neutrality, is absolutely impossible in anything, including the education of our children. And now I'd like to cap all that off tonight by talking about the impossibility of the state schools, the impossibility of what's often called public education. But right here at the beginning of our lecture, we have to get something straightened out because the language that is used in discussions of school issues is, I think, very misleading, very ambiguous. When we talk about such things as public schools, sometimes the thought is that the schools which are sponsored by the state, state which are funded by taxes that are extracted from citizens, and therefore the education that it pays for is for every child, no matter what the background or whatever the outlook of the family or the lifestyle the family may be. That's what is public education. And then over against public education you have what's Sometimes called private education. Now, those terms are not so bad if you know how they're used, but they're not ordinarily used in the right way. By public is meant publicly funded education. So state sponsored, tax supported schools. And by private education we mean education that's funded privately by individuals, families, whatever it may be, rather than by everybody in your neighborhood, everybody in your community. So the public private distinction is a meaningful one as long as you're talking about who's paying the way for the education. But most people don't use the terms that way. They use public and private to mean something like education that's available to the public. That's what the state gives. And then if you have a church or some private group that has private education, then it's restricted education. But as a matter of fact, when Christian schools operate, they operate public establishments. What do I mean by that? They're open to the public. There may be a few religious organizations that have parochial schools available only to people who go to that particular church or denomination, what have you. But for the most part, the Christian schools that we have in this country are public institutions. They're open to anyone who would like to come. They are not discriminatory. The real distinction that we should be holding in mind, therefore, is not so much public private, but it's a question of state sponsored or privately sponsored schools. But I'm not going to be talking about private education, privately sponsored education per se, because that would include any number of groups that are not religious or not Christian in their orientation, though they run an establishment that is funded by the parents and the tuition that's paid by the students. I'm going to be talking tonight about Christian education over against state sponsored education. And my point is going to be that the public schools, what we call public schools, the state sponsored schools, are in fact a failure as schools. They're a failure at what they claim to be. And when we get to the end of the lecture, I'm going to argue that they are not just as a matter of incidental fact, it's just worked out that way so far, but that philosophically and inherently it's impossible for state sponsored education to be what it claims to be. And so you might look upon tonight's lecture as the impossibility of the state schools. Let me begin by talking about some problems in state sponsored education. I've pulled from my file from a few years back, an editorial written by Sally Reed, who at that time was the national chairman for the National Council for better education. And Ms. Reed's purpose in writing was to evaluate the NEA, the National Education association, which is the largest teachers union in the country. And I don't know what the exact percentage is, but the vast majority of teachers in the state sponsored are what we'll call public schools, belong to this teaching organization, to this union at that time. Sally reed wrote, the 25th annual National Education association convention marks another year of deceit, despair and defeat in our public schools. The nea, originally a professional association dedicated to the improvement of education, has changed in recent years. The NEA has done for American education what Jack the Ripper did for door to door salesmen. NEA union officials and their vocal minority of trusty militants gathering inside the Los Angeles Convention center this week are as oblivious to the disintegration of their ill deserved authority as Nero was to the burning of Rome. Parents and teachers are becoming aware of the NEA's true agenda and are fighting back. The National Council for Better Education, which has been referred to by one union official, one NEA union official as the Doberman pincher of the right wing, has organized a demonstration today at the convention center in protest of continuing educational malpractice by the NEA in the following areas. And then she lists four. First of all, their policies are designed to turn America's youth against family, God and country. They have worked successfully to mandate evolutionism, which falls far short of proven scientific fact and which reduces man to the status of an amoeba. Sex education, including graphic illustrations and an everybody does it attitude and nuclear freeze education, which depicts the United States and the Soviet Union. At that time it still was the Soviet Union, which depicts the US and the Soviet Union as moral equals and concentrates on the horrors of nuclear war, ignoring the necessity of defense. The lobby against voluntary school prayer, creationism and patriotism. They lobby against school prayer, creationism and patriotism, all without regard to parental wishes. Meanwhile, they continue to advocate support for a one world government, secular humanism and moral relativism. So that's the first failure of the nea. She says their policies are designed to turn America's youth against family, against God and against country. Secondly, she says their policies are designed to undermine parental authority and infringe on family integrity. And this may shock some of you who have not heard this before. NEA Resolution E32 in their official handbook calls for a parental bypass, legally privileging all communications between teachers and students. Legally privileged from whom? From the children's own parents, of course. The NEA's view of parents is that they are Too uneducated, old fashioned and unsophisticated to understand their own children's problems and concerns. Excluding the parents from education opens the door for the professionals to mold the minds of our young people without regard to the family's beliefs. NEA union officials continue their assault on parental choice by advocating mandated kindergarten. The younger the child, the easier it is to shape his or her views. Mandated sex education and mandated bilingual education. Keeping minorities outside the mainstream of American society, to name just a few of their pet projects. Thirdly, about the nea, Their policies are designed to protect incompetent teachers and drive good teachers out of the profession. The NEA discourages competency tests of teachers to weed out substandard educators. They oppose merit pay or any merit system incentives that would attract and keep America's brightest. And then fourthly, their policies of deception are designed to keep their own rank and file in the dark as to their true radically leftist intentions. They habitually refused to publicize one their lobbying efforts for abortion. The NEA sent a mailgram to all US representatives claiming that their 1.4 million members were opposed to anti abortion legislation. In reality, 75% of their membership are opposed to the NEA's lobbying efforts on abortion. Now I wish I had the time in this short lecture to focus on each of these points, but I mean that is scandalous. And so you have this union. I mean, what does, you know, state sponsored education, what's it doing? What right does it have to be lobbying legislators on issue like abortion, but much less what right do they have to lie about their own membership? You know, their membership's against this anti abortion legislation when 75% of the membership in fact is in favor of it or is concerned about how many abortions are being performed and so forth. Secondly, there's support for Marxist regimes in Central America. Resolution I8 support supports the Sandinistas literacy campaign, which as you know, is just communist indoctrination and anti American rhetoric. And thirdly, their advocacy of gay rights and homosexual affirmation action, affirmative action, pardon me, in our schools. For too long the American public has underestimated this powerful trade union while exuding the false image of the sweet little school Marmion. They were covertly transforming a learned profession into unionized skilled labor. As militant as any Teamster ever hoped to be. The NEA has almost succeeded in turning our classrooms into social experimentation labs, our teachers into Pavlovian drones and our children into frightened shell shocked pacifists. But now parents are on the offense. They are mindful of the power the schools have to shape their children's lives. And they are demanding in the classrooms and in the courtrooms their rightful control of their children's education. Now this is what you might call a wake up call. You know, this is kind of smell the coffee, please, and you know, wake up to what's going on around you. Many Christians who think, well, the public schools could be better, but you know, we can get along with it and we just to need, need to do a little bit of adjustment and clean up this and clean up that, have no idea what has actually taken place in the power structure of the public schools, state sponsored schools, the NEA and these sorts of, I mean really outrageous policies and practices is symptomatic of what the state schools represent. Now more recently we hear in California, I'll just take that as a local illustration since that's where I was. But those of you listening by tape can look at us as a guinea pig model for these things. We here in California have something to look at in terms of the success of the teachers unions. We have our own California Teachers Association. Recently the chairman of that association has retired. And in an article that I clipped out of the paper, we have some report on what has happened in the California public schools during the time of this individual's tenure. Watching over the California teachers associations. And I'll just jot these for you. Student accomplishment in government schools continued dropping, hitting its lowest level ever. In results that were released in May of This year, just 41% of fourth graders scored at or above the basic level of reading on the National Assessment of Education Progress. I want you to think about that. Let that sink in. This is in a state that spends huge amounts of money on education and not even half of our fourth graders reach the competency level that is set by the National Assessment of Education Progress. During the time of this gentleman's tenure, the cta, the California Teachers association, continued supporting bilingual education, which has been shown to be immensely wasteful and keeps students from learning English. A little Hoover Commission analysis found bilingual schooling to be, and I quote, inappropriate, unwarranted, not feasible and counterproductive. That's what the outside experts say when they come in and they look at it. But that's what the California Teachers association has supported for all these years. The CTA backed the California Learning Assessment System. You'll probably recognize that more by the acronym clasp, which is a politically correct test that even included some answers arrived at by groups, not individuals, in the testing sessions. And even the old Democratic legislature objected to the test and cancelled its funding last year. When the clas test results actually were released in April, they were abysmal, commented State Square school Superintendent Delane Easton, who is a favorite of the California Teaching Association. And I quote, you can argue all you want about the test, but the bottom line is something is wrong. The kids basic skills are not what they should be. End of quote. Duh. No kidding. The CTA just set up a new fund to fight initiatives. That is the teachers association has put aside money so that it can politically fight initiatives that come before the people of California. The $19 per member annual assessment taken from teachers taxpayer funded salaries will grab about $3.8 million a year. Well, that's really quite a war chest, isn't it? With which to defeat school, school choice and other initiatives. That's our tax dollars at work. Our tax dollars pay for membership in the cta and that membership dues is used for politicking and lobbying efforts to defeat initiatives that would allow parents choice in the education of their children. So your money, my money, is being used to defeat our desire through the political process to gain greater freedom and choice in the education of our children. Now these are horrendous moral blights. These are not just passing mistakes or one teacher turned out to be a sex maniac or something like that. We're talking about a corruption that has gone to the very heart and core of the public school state sponsored educational system. Under the previous chairman of the cta, that union, our association has continued its cry that the problem in schools is that not enough money is spent. I mean, when you hear these people speak publicly, you just will not hear another refrain. This is the one note that they're able to sing. More money, more money, more money. Well, but you're doing such a bad job. More money, more money, more money. But our children are turning into juvenile delinquents. More money, more money, more money. Over and over and over again. Give us money. That's what it's going to take to correct the problem. Yet California public school spending averages. Hold on to your seats. Averages $5,500 per pupil each year compared to, for example, the state of Utah, which spends only $3,000 per year. The score is among the top five states on the SAT compared to California's subpar ranking of 36th out of 50 states. Now how can more money be the answer if the state that spends nearly half of what we do on a student ranks much higher in educational output and testing than our own state? But that isn't going to stop people from saying that you're still going to hear the more money plea. And on that I couldn't help but share one more clipping with you. This one by one of my favorite columnist, Thomas Sowell. He writes recently, if anything has been shown by innumerable studies over the past few decades, it is that throwing more money at schools and colleges does not improve the quality of education. For example, the big decline in high school students test scores which began in the 1960s was accompanied by huge increases in government spending on education. A more recent study showed that the states whose public schools had the highest scores had lower than average expenditures per student. When money for education does not disappear into a larger bureaucracy headed by honchos with fancier offices and more perks, it often finances the endless distractions from basic education sought by teachers who themselves lack a fundamental grounding in academic skills. I mean, any study of the statistics, the empirical evidence will tell you more money has nothing to do with with the improvement of educational quality in our schools. So how are the public schools doing? How is state sponsored education going? I don't know why any Christian who has looked at the issue is aware of what's going on in the world would want his or her children in the state sponsored schools. It's an absolute educational, social, moral, spiritual debacle. There's just no reason for people to be there. But now I know what the answer is going to be. And I don't say this in an adversarial or angry or negative critical way, but for a number of years I've talked about these things and I think I have a good feel for why parents are still not moved to have their children taken out of the state sponsored school schools. When you hear all this kind of evidence and it is overwhelming, it's really terrible. But the thought is this. Well, but it doesn't have to be that way. What we have here are, if you will, incidental errors. We have bad leadership in the teachers union, we have some bad teachers and we've had a few bad years of substandard education and test scores and that sort of thing. But really the schools are essentially wholesome. They, they're healthy. And if some adjustments were made, we could turn this around, we could shift the tide and things would start getting better. We get back to the good old days when the public schools were something to be proud of. Well, I'm going to suggest to you a different perspective that the reason why we're seeing today all of the problems in the public schools or the state sponsored Schools that I'm referring to is not because somewhere back in the mid-50s, we kind of shifted away from good American values in these schools and things started going downhill. It's that by the mid-50s, what was rank and inherently wrong in the public schools all along finally started to be harvested. That the seeds of the destruction of the public schools have always been there inherently. They've been growing and growing, and by the common grace of God, there's been a restraint upon them so that a generalized Christian culture, and I mean very generalized, I don't mean that most people are Christians in America or anything so silly as that, but still, the ethos up until the 1950s still had some kind of Christian flavor to it, and that that acted as a preservative and a curbing effect on what was inherently wrong in the public schools all along. And now with the recession of Christian influence in our society, what we're seeing harvested in the public schools is its true character today. And that's what I'm going to try to prove to you in the remainder of my lecture this evening. I want to argue that state sponsored or public education is inherently impossible. And to do that, I'd like to pose a handful, a series of issues for public schools to resolve. We're just going to kind of think this through in an illustrative way. We must remember that public or state sponsored schools must resolve these questions or these difficulties in a pluralistic way fashion. Pluralistic meaning to the satisfaction and equitable treatment of all taxpayers and viewpoints represented by them. Let me say that again, a pluralistic resolution of the problems must be one that is to the satisfaction and equitable treatment of all taxpayers and all viewpoints represented by them. So I'm going to pose some problems and then we're going to take this standard of pluralistic resolution, which is what it would have to be if it's going to be state sponsored. It has to be fair for all citizens who pay their taxes, after all. And we're going to ask, is it even possible to resolve the problem in a pluralistic fashion? And you know already that my argument is going to be no, it's not. Number one, let's take this old threadbare question of prayer in public schools. Should the public schools publicly acknowledge prayer or time for private prayer? Now, I want to make very clear what I'm talking about here. I'm talking about simply acknowledging prayer or a time for prayer. It doesn't have to be compulsory participation in the sense that every child must recite the prayers but let's start there. Let's ask the question, is it right for the public schools to compel all children to recite prayers? That's pretty easy for everybody to answer. How can you have a pluralistic resolution of that? You can't. Some parents don't believe in prayer and don't want their children influenced to pray, be influenced to pray. And so you can't compel children to recite prayers that wouldn't be public, that wouldn't be pluralistic. Well, then how about compulsory participation in the sense that though they don't have to recite the prayer, they have to bow their head? Well, it doesn't take a PhD in philosophy to figure out that this is just an version of the same question. Yes, they're not being compelled to recite the prayer, but they are being compelled to go through some of the motions, if you will, to enter into the lifestyle of a praying family by bowing their heads and showing respect in that way. So we say, okay, you can't have a pluralistic resolution of the prayer problem by saying they just have to bow their heads, but they don't have to say the prayer. Well, how about this? Which is the more recent version of how we're going to get public schools to allow for prayer. What if there's compulsory participation in the form of silence? Is this equitable treatment of all taxpayers and all points of view? If what we say is in the public schools at a certain given time in the morning, let's say 8:15, all students will be required to be quiet for one minute so that those who wish to privately be pray may do so. Well, again, it doesn't take a PhD in philosophy. You don't have to be some advanced logician to figure this out. If it's not correct, if it's not acceptable to compel students to bow their heads, why is it acceptable to compel them to be quiet at this time of day? That's not natural for them to do. I mean, it may be that the teacher wants quiet in the classroom while he is or she's teaching math. That's another issue. But to compel silence for the sake of respecting other people praying, not all religious perspectives, not all taxpayers, agree with that. Some parents would say, I don't want my children to think that other children are doing things they're not doing, so they're left out, or they're awkward or they're strange, or they're against the tide or whatever it may be. That's not fair to make my children feel guilty in that way. So compulsory participation in prayer, whether it be recitation of prayers, bowing of your head, or just showing the courtesy of being quiet for a minute, cannot be an issue that is pluralistically resolved because parents are going to see differently on this. It's just inherently impossible to solve the school prayer problem. It would be easy enough to become like some of our politicians who want to jump on this bandwagon and look like they're being religious and so forth, and push for prayer in the schools and so forth. But in the nature of the case, a state sponsored school cannot make that religious decision for people and therefore it cannot resolve the question of prayer. There are other problems with prayer. Before I go to the next issue issue, just think about this. Should the wording of a prayer that is prayed out loud, let's say at the baccalaureate service or at the graduation service from the high school, should the wording of that prayer be redemptive in character? Well, you know, this is another one of those things you just can't solve. Because if it's not redemptive, I for one would scream bloody murder. No one has the right to go into the holy presence of God without a mediator. The Lord Jesus Christ must be at the center of our prayers. We must pray in his name. Any other prayer is a pagan ritual in my eyes and in the eyes I think of most Bible guided Christians. But on the other hand, how can I expect my neighbors to support a prayer that appeals to the Lord Jesus Christ when they don't believe the Lord Jesus Christ is either who he said he was, was, or a redeemer or a special religious leader in any sense, if they were going to allow for prayer, it would have to be some kind of brand X prayer, right? Where to whatever powers there may be you would pray to, but you couldn't name one. It couldn't be Krishna, it couldn't be Buddha, it couldn't be Jesus and so forth. Now what I'm trying to put before you is don't think the school prayer problem then is just some kind of little quirk we've had for the last few years and we'll eventually iron that out. It is philosophically, logically impossible to give equitable treatment to all taxpayers when it comes to prayer can't be done. Okay, so let's put the prayer issue aside. I just used that one to kind of wake you up to see some of the difficulty. But it's much more than the issue of prayer. Some people might say, okay, let's not even talk about that you see the problem though? What about parents who say, we want to talk about that. You can't resolve it by ignoring it. That's not equitable, but okay, forget it. Whatever you do with the prayer problem. How about this? Problem two, the lifestyle of teachers. Problem two, the lifestyle of teachers. Let's get real blunt about it. Should. Should state sponsored education hire openly professed homosexuals to teach? Should state sponsored education hire those who advocate and have practiced or participated in abortion? Should state sponsored education hire teachers who are anarchist in their political philosophy, calling for every man doing what is right in his own eyes and the forcible, even overthrow of the law and order forces in our society? Is it all right for state sponsored education to hire communists to teach who are open in their advocacy of communist philosophy? How about advocates of free love? How about advocates of recreational drugs? How about advocates of terrorism? About people who burn the American flag? How about those who use foul language? How about teachers who are Hindu in their orientation and therefore teach that everything that we're studying is illusion anyway and it's not important? How about those who want to date or be sexually involved with their students? Now, the list could go on. I just don't want to spend all my time on one illustration. But now I'm going to ask you in each one of those cases, how can you pluralistically satisfy and give equitable treatment to all taxpayers on these issues? Take the Hindu illustration. Don't Hindus have rights? They paid their taxes. But if a Hindu teacher is going to teach math, I'll tell you, you're probably not going to be very happy because what you expect to be taught as math cannot be taught from a Hindu perspective. Hinduism says there is no plurality. Everything is an illusion. Therefore, one plus one equals one in Hindu thought. Now, is that okay to be taught? No. You say no, that's just not good math, Dr. Brunson. Well, let me tell you something. What you're calling not good math is Hindu math. And if Hindus pay their taxes, then you must give equitable treatment to them. To teach one plus one equals two is in essence to teach what I'll call Christian math. The Christian worldview supports the laws of mathematics. Hindu worldview does not. And people sometimes will blow off these illustrations because maybe in your hometown you haven't had any Hindus imply to teach. They say, ah, that's just an extreme example. Well, I'll tell you, there's a lot of Hindus coming into this country. And the fact that it doesn't happen to be in your backyard doesn't change the fact that it's a legitimate question to testing the feasibility of the very philosophy of state sponsored education. What about the foul language illustration? I happen to have gone to a state sponsored high school. Not that I support that, but in my own growth and upbringing, that's where I was at the time. And I knew teachers who used language sometimes in the classroom like that. And it was always one of these things like with the kind of had to do it surreptitiously when they let it slip, you know, and students were expected not to go tattle on them. But why should they have to worry about that? On what basis can the state sponsored school tell us which kind of adjectives are acceptable in language? Well, you'd have to have some kind of what absolute moral point of view or religious perspective to justify that. But if that's true, you're not giving equitable treatment to those who reject that moral point of view or that religion. How about abortionists or terrorists? Here's one that if you really want to see an explosion at a school board meeting, how about high school teachers that date their students? But why shouldn't they be allowed to date their students? If those families that have students involved in this are paying their taxes, shouldn't you give them equal treatment, equitable treatment as well? You see, the lifestyle of teachers is not something you can just kind of disregard when it comes to hiring. It's not something you can disregard when it comes to conduct in the classroom, social behavior on campus, or even the content of what these teachers are going to say. Well, let's change the subject. My third illustration is how can there be a pluralistic resolution of conflicts over school social behavior? How should dress code disagreements be resolved? Some families are not upset when their teenage daughters come to school with a great deal of cleavage showing. Other families think that that's disruptive to the classroom environment and or employees. Now, whose point of view should be preferred here? If you're going to give equitable treatment to all taxpayers? Should young male students be forbidden to wear clothing which is socially identified with a particular gang? How can you give equitable treatment to all points of view on that issue? How about school lunches? Should school lunches include meat, thereby offending the vegetarians in the culture? Should school lunches include pork, thereby offending the Jewish and Muslim elements in the society? Well, these are little trivial things, right? Well, they may be, but they're a good test. The philosophy of pluralistic resolution of disputes just won't work here. How about schoolyard disputes? Should they be settled by violence. I mean, everybody's got a knee jerk response to that one. We all know the answer, right? The person who's the playground attendance will to go over there and stop those boys from fighting. Why? And what if, and I'm not really being as extreme or outlandish as some of you might think. What if there are certain families or fathers who teach their children? This is what you do when you get into a hassle with somebody else, you knock his teeth out. Because in this world might rules the world. So you might as well learn on the school ground, somebody's hassling you. You got to learn to just clean his clock. Now some teachers don't think that's the way it should be done. And parents, especially those that have their children having their teeth knocked out, don't think it's a very good thing to do at all. But now how can you equitably resolve that? If we have parents who say no, I think violence is what should be there. You might as well get used to it because when you get out of school, that's the way it's going to be. Is it acceptable at the local state sponsored high school to have homosexual couples come to the prom? It's not an extreme illustration like some of the others you might imagine are being extreme. That's in the paper every spring now some school somewhere is going through major hassles over there. Now some schools have said, okay, we just aren't going to fight it. So if you have a homosexual couple, we're going to let it happen. Well, I'm asking is that equitable treatment of all points of view? As a matter of fact, I don't want my teenage children going to a social affair or a prom where homosexuals are displaying their perversion. And so my point of view has not been taken into account. My moral prerogatives have been trampled upon by when the school decides to open the door to that kind of perversion. Anybody catching on here in each one of these cases, I want you to see the notion that the state can satisfy all points of view or that the state can even find the lowest common denominator is really naive. It's logically inherently impossible. Now let's talk about what's taught in the classroom. We've looked at the prayer issue, the lifestyle of teachers, school, social behavior. But let's go to the heart of the classroom and its instruction. What should be taught or considered about origins in the classroom? What should be taught about man's moral condition? What should be Taught about the solution to man's predicaments in this world. There are many classes where you cannot avoid saying something on these issues. Where do we come from? What's the mess we're in? How can it be resolved? Are humans unique from animals? Are humans superior to animals? Is it acceptable for humans to eat animals, use them in experimentation? Is it acceptable to dissect a frog in the biology lab? You have to have some view of human life and its place in the universe, some understanding of the relationship to animal life to answer those questions. When we're in social science classes or history courses, how are we to evaluate man and his general character? Do we find that men are basically good people? Is that what we're supposed to teach children? And therefore all the wars that we've seen through the history of the western world world are all flukes in human nature. What are we supposed to make of this? And what are we supposed to teach people as to our students, as to how they can go out into the world and make it a better place? What are we supposed to teach in the liberal arts? What are we supposed to teach in the natural sciences about man, his moral condition, his predicaments and the solution to them? Now, some people might say, stay away from those questions. Just don't bring them up. Well, in essence, that's to say, don't talk about social science, because social science is a science about man and his interpersonal relationships. You've got to answer these questions, and even when you think you're not answering them, you're really carrying the baggage of some kind of presuppositions or assumptions about that. Are we supposed to pretend that those questions are not relevant to the literature, are not relevant to history, are not relevant to all of the curriculum? It's impossible. I have a fifth question for you. What are the state sponsored schools supposed to do about teaching the laws of mathematics or the laws of science or the laws of morality? Can state sponsored education teach that there are laws at all? Now I realize because most people haven't had courses in apologetics and haven't been forced to become analytical and pushy about this, that they just take it for granted? Everybody knows there are laws. Well, now wait a minute. If the state sponsored schools are not supposed to teach a religious perspective or anything about God, then where do these laws come from? Has anybody seen these laws? No. We take them for granted, but what right do we have to take them for granted? The only reason we take them for granted, I would argue, is because we're all made in the image of God. And we know very well there are laws of math and laws of morality and so forth. But from a secular point of view, you can't say that. So somebody might say, well, from a secular point of view we just have to say there's a realm of laws. We say, wait a minute. But that violates what the secularist teaches students about how they know things in terms of observation and research and experimentation. No one has discovered the realm of the laws. No one's done scientific experimentation. Upon that. How dare you teach students that? Why don't you just teach them their Santa Claus if you're going to do something like that? Alright, have I beat you down enough? Have you gotten the point? Public education, understood as state sponsored education that pluralistically resolves all disputes to the satisfaction and equitable treatment of all taxpayers and viewpoints is a fraud. It is impossible. It has always been impossible. And in our day and age we are reaping the results of trying to do the impossible. That's why there will not be a resolution in the public school board meetings, public meetings of these difficulties. It is impossible. Always a point of view is being taken, one point of view being favored over another, and therefore it's not equitable to all people. Well now, that being the case, I have another question. This one is morally charged. Should people be forced to finance what they disagree with? Now I believe that the Lord Jesus Christ is God the Son, Creator of heaven and earth, and the Redeemer of God's elect. And I believe that that is necessary as the foundation and presupposition of all education. Colossians 2, verse 3 tells me all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are deposited in this one who is the Creator and redeemer. And therefore I'm going to go next door and I'm going to ask the neighbor over here and go the other way, the neighbor over here and saying, look, I expect you to cough up $3,000 each each year to educate my children in a Christian perspective that Jesus is the repository of all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. Now what if I went over with a gun? So it's not really a matter of destroy, it's a matter of compulsion. What if I go over and I say, you're going to pay for my child's Christian education? You know why I'm telling you the story this way? Because if it's told this way, everybody of course goes nuts. Christian and non Christian alike would say, no, you can't compel somebody to pay for the education of your children and your point of view. That's not right. Well, you know, it's coming right now. Look around the other way. Wapoom. Why should Christians be compelled to pay money for the education of their neighbors children? In a non Christian perspective, why should Hindus support Christian education or atheistic education? Why should atheists have to support Hindu education? You can multiply the illustrations over and over again, but in every case it comes down to when the state taxes you and requires you to pay this. It's upon threat of some penalty, usually imprisonment. I mean, it might be the death penalty in some cultures, but it might be a fine or it may be imprisonment. But the point is it's compulsory. We're going to compel you upon threat of punishment to pay for something you don't believe in. And I dare say that's about as anti pluralistic, anti American, anti free spirit as anything imaginable. The way to peace is the free market. The way to peace in all of the educational disputes of our culture is the free market. Not rancor and riots at school board meetings, but the free market. Make your own choice and then pay for it. That is to say, the answer to all of these problems is private funding of education. And so if you don't like the fact that this school over here has homosexuals going to the prom, or if you don't like the fact that this school over here has some kind of vague prayer to whatever powers, there may be no reference to Jesus, then don't send your children there and you won't be forced to pay for it either. You only have to pay for the education of your children in the way that you think is best. Now some parents might say, well, I don't have a school that teaches everything the way I want. Well, hey, life's rough. Now, you probably don't with your paycheck have the privilege of buying everything you want either. You have to make choices and trade offs in life. But the point is, you choose where your children should go to that school which best accommodates your prerogatives, your perspectives and principles as a parent, and you pay for it. You see, if we have privately funded education, then there's no reason for my neighbor to be angry with me because I want my children taught in a particular way. I'm not forcing him to pay for it and he's not forcing me to pay for the education of his children. Or how about those neighbors who don't have any children at all? They're not involved in this sort of thing. The free Market automatically resolves every one of the disputes that I brought up tonight. They seem so terrible, but they're only terrible and intractable when you have the idea that there must be a pluralistic resolution that gives equal or equitable treatment to everybody. Let everybody make their choice and pay their own way. Should your children be raised and molded contrary to your values? Should your children be raised and molded contrary to your conviction? Convictions. If you're a Christian parent, you need to see not only the inherent impossibility of state sponsored public education, you need to see that as a matter of fact a fraud being perpetrated upon you because your children will not be molded and will not be taught in the way that you approve of as a Christian, but you will pay for it. And you'll be told, this is for everybody. Should anyone be obligated to pay for the education of his neighbor's children according to his neighbor's parental choices? I would hope that just as a moral question, everybody would be able to see the answer must be no. You're not under obligation to help your neighbor raise his children in a pagan way, a Hindu way, a Christian way. That's not your obligation and therefore politics. Public schools, if you mean by that state sponsored schools giving equitable treatment to everybody. Public schools are inherently impossible. And if they're impossible, the practice of them is, whether we recognize it on the surface of things or not, hypocritical. What is really taking place in what we call the public schools or the state schools today is the financing of the wishes of one group out of the wallets of others. Now we do a good job of hiding that. We try to put a nice veneer or coating on it to say this is equitable, this is for everybody. We make no choices, we are neutral. But it's impossible that they are. We've already seen that. And so in fact, some people's wallets are supporting the wishes of another group of people who are having their way in the public school. The fact is that the Bible does not authorize God, has not authorized as a tax supported program, has not authorized the state to tax us to run schools. And almost always when you see the public or the state authorities engaging in something that they've not been authorized to do, you're going to find that the state is engaged in well intentioned but messianic tyranny. Because the way in which you will see public school teachers and administrators defend the public school system, they may not use the word, but you look at their defenses and it's messianic in character. We've got to save the world. We've got to save the lives of these little ones. We ought to save our culture. Well, you know what? There's only one way to be saved from a Christian perspective, and that's to come to the Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus said if we abide in his word, then we are truly his disciples and we will know the truth and the truth will set us free. Jesus is the one who offers liberating truth. And so now what you have in the public schools, even when you have well meaning Christians involved, is the substitute Messiah saying, we've got to save our culture, save our children. It may be well intentioned, but it is not authorized by God and therefore it's idolatrous and it's theft because it's taking money from people that God has not authorized the state to take. Christian parents must be concerned for far, far more than whether Johnny may pray in school or the lifestyle of teachers, or the social conduct that's acceptable on campus. They must be concerned that in all things Christ be given the preeminence. So Colossians 1:18 says, in all things, no exclusion for education, no exclusion for the upbringing of your children. In all things that Christ may might have the preeminence. And if Christ does not have the preeminence at the local state sponsored school, then it's not something we as Christians should be supporting. I want to end our lecture tonight by reading another clipping for you, this one coming from quite a while ago, over a decade ago. It was written by E. Earl Ellis, who was a professing Christian, and he has, I think, a very important thing to share about the impossibility of secular education, and the title is if Only a Secularist Religion Is Taught. He says two decades have passed since the Supreme Court prohibited prayer and Bible reading in the public schools, and there is little prospect of returning to the status quo ante. Support for the shift in public education from a mildly Christian to a secular context is sustained mainly by the assumption, remarkably widespread and largely unquestioned, that the removal of religion from the school would produce a neutral arena equally fair to children of every religious background. Does the secular public school in fact achieve this goal? Both logic and experience argue that it does not. On the contrary, the secular school only raises the religious question in a different and more acute form. This is true because of the inherently religious dimension in education. In a Yale review essay, F.K. davis rightly concluded that since education is also a metaphysical expression, a good deal of educational thought and practice is therefore religious in character. It has always been so, and there is no prospect that a secular society could be constructed in which this would not be so. Admittedly, secularism does not have a prescribed cult and creed, a defined membership. But religion in its most important facets is manifested not by external forms but by the questions addressed and by the implicit value judgments and affirmations about reality that are made at school. It is especially involved in the subjects of literature, history, and social studies, both in the selection of text and in the manner and context of presentation. In this sense, a religion of secular humanism is clearly established in the public school, with its explicit exclusion of God, its naturalistic interpretation of meanings and values, and in its relativizing of contrary worldviews and value systems. Such a school may affirm that honesty is the best policy, but it must forbid the Ten Commandments to hang upon the wall. With its humanistic framework, it teaches implicitly or explicitly that man is the measure of all things, and while it can laud liberty or democracy as important values, it cannot, with Thomas Jefferson, present them as gifts endowed by the Creator. And thus Justice Brennan, ruling against Bible reading, could contrast, and I quote, public secular education with its uniquely democratic values and sectarian education, which offers values of its own. This in the abingdon School District vs. Shemp case of 1962, even when the public school teaches about God or reads the Bible as literature, man remains the measure. The transition of the religious context of public education from Christianity to secularism was not the result of some diabolical plot. The Supreme Court, which painted the schools into this particular corner, was apparently guided by more by a process of elimination in prevailing zeitgeist the spirit of the age than by a desire to give establishment status to specific worldview and value system. Nevertheless, whatever the Court's intentions, the inevitable consequence of its actions was rightly perceived in Justice Stewart's dissent in Abingdon versus Shemp. And I quote, a refusal to permit religious exercises bust the scene not as the realization of a state neutrality, but rather as the establishment of a religion of secularism or at the least, of government support of the beliefs of those who think that religious exercises should be conducted only in private. End of quote. And then I want to skip a bit toward the end of the article. He says, a monopoly given to one system representing one set of values and one kind of education educational structure not only violates constitutional rights but also stultifies the educational process itself. And the moral relativism of an educational system that excludes the power and the sanctions of A divinely appointed moral order may in time be stultifying in other ways as well. He says the words of C.S. lewis in the Abolition of Man are not inappropriate. And he quotes, such is the tragicomedy of our situation. We continue to clamor for those very qualities we are rendering impossible. In a sort of ghastly simplicity, we remove the organ and demand the function. We make men without chest and demand of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honor and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We cast strength and bid the geldings be fruitful. Well, that's one of the greatest quotes in all of the literature of Lewis. What he's saying is the public schools must castrate us morally and religiously and then demand that we somehow procreate and bring forth what are nothing more but the fruits of a religious worldview. You can't have honesty, you can't have integrity, you can't have courage and patriotism. And all these things are the democratic processes, even without a worldview that supports it. Well, let me finish. And this is the main point that Ellis is making, and it ties in with what I've brought to your attention tonight. He says, if the state, as its courts profess, is committed to a religious neutrality, an evenhanded accommodation of different value systems, should it not disengage from direct involvement in. In an enterprise in which religious values are the sine qua non, without which nothing? And let me put it to you in closing this way. If education is inherently religious and state sponsored education must be religiously neutral, then mustn't the state pull out of the educational process because it can avoid making religious decisions? And so I want to conclude that the state sponsored public schools are not an option for Christian parents and they aren't even an option for non Christian parents. State sponsored public education is fraudulent and hypocritical. It is not giving equitable treatment, cannot give equitable treatment to all points of view. It is inherently a religious enterprise. And the sooner we as Christians learn that, the sooner we'll get our children out of such a system and into one that we truly believe in, where we can walk in covenant with our God and keep the first and great commandment that we love him with all of our heart, soul, strength and mind. Thank you.