Recently, I watched a debate published by The Gospel Coalition titled, Should Christians Send Their Kids to Public School? The topic caught my interest because I’m a Christian father homeschooling his children, and I imagine like some of you, know many other Christian and non-Christian families who homeschool, but even greater numbers of parents who send their children to public schools.

Our path to homeschooling came, like many others, because of the COVID pandemic. By default, my wife and I became homeschoolers when we decided to remove our children from the private Christian school they were attending in March 2020. Through a series of events (I might also argue Divine intervention played a role) I’ll save for a future post, I have now become the primary teacher for our two grade-school aged daughters.

To be fully transparent, I was never homeschooled. I attended a public school for kindergarten, then went on to attend a Lutheran private school for grades 1-7, before transferring to public school where I repeated seventh grade and narrowly graduated high school in 1989 without having to repeat another year.

In other words, I wasn’t what most educators would describe as “academically gifted”. My high school guidance counselor, Mr. Rotella, confirmed this when near the end of my senior year he suggested I should highly consider a career working with my hands because if I depended on my brain to support me, I would find myself homeless and starving before I reached 20 years of age.

Start with why, not what or how.

After high school, in my early 20’s I would discover I wasn’t lacking intelligence as Mr. Rotella had thought. The missing element in my drive for academics was one of motivation and having a reason to excel. Once I had a reason, or what you could call a “why” to learn, I was off and running, stacking up books I had read, and degrees completed until achieving a “terminal” degree in 2012. It’s hard to believe, but I don’t recall finishing my first book until I was in my late 20’s! Why was that the case?

Asking “why?” can be powerful, as Simon Sinek has demonstrated in the business world, and it can be equally powerful in other areas such as education. As Sinek notes in his bestseller, Start with Why, most people start with “what” and “how” rather than why. This, I would argue, is true in education where what is centered on the subjects taught, and how on the techniques to teach the subjects. Both are important, but I would argue, not as important as understanding why.

When I found my personal why for learning something changed inside of me. I had a reason to pay attention in class. I had a reason to do the assigned reading. I had a reason to study. I had a reason to do homework. I had a reason to seek not only a passing grade, but the highest grade possible. I realized there was value and purpose in learning.

Why do we educate our children? A lesson from the world of consulting.

Before I became a Christian homeschool dad and worked as a business consultant, I would’ve argued the primary reason to educate children is so when they become adults they’d get out of our homes and be able to survive on their own! While that’s partially true, I would now argue it’s a minor part of why we should educate children, not to mention it doesn’t take 13 years to instruct kids they need to keep food in the fridge, shower every once in a while to keep from offending others with their body odor, and stocking toilet paper under the sink in the bathroom to survive.

Back when I was a business consultant working to help organizational leaders be successful, one of the first questions I would ask was, “How do you define success?”. This single question created a bullseye to aim at, and provided a filtering mechanism to evaluate how well they were spending every minute of their day.

I would ask a leader why she was spending time on the things she was doing, and how those activities were helping her achieve what she had defined as success. In a short amount of time, it would become evident whether she was working on the right things. This too was a great teaching moment to share the difference between “management” and “leadership” (the former is about getting stuff done, while the latter is focused on getting the right stuff done).

One could argue if we want to hit the bullseye in educating our children, we can start with why we do it, and to help facilitate answering the question we should also ask, how do we define success? Like my consulting clients, we can then evaluate how well we as home, public, and / or private educators are doing in accomplishing the goal.

What’s the goal?

If you haven’t already guessed, this is where the debate comes into play. Ask someone in public education what the goal is and there’s a high probability you may get a different answer than someone working in private education or from a homeschool educator like me.

I would argue it all comes down to one word. Worldview.

Huh?

What are you talking about, Scott?

Worldview?

Really?

Let me explain.

Regardless of whether you can describe your worldview or not, just like a belly button, we all have one. In simple terms, a worldview is just that – how we view the world around us. It’s how we make sense of the world; how we explain reality. Whether or not you want to admit it, the people educating your children, yourself included if you’re a homeschool teacher like me, are helping create, mature, and solidify the worldview of the children who will one day become the future leaders of this world.

With that stated, I would argue why we educate our children is to help them make sense of the world. Because when they can understand, explain, and defend their view of the reality of the world they will be able to more confidently live out their worldview, and be an example for the next generation to follow – their children.

The question then becomes, how can one construct a worldview that most accurately reflects reality? To do so let’s turn to the building blocks we can use to explain a worldview.

Anatomy of a worldview.

Voddie Bauchman’s work provides a starting point in understanding the anatomy of a worldview. In his book titled, Family Driven Fath, Dr. Bauchman argues, a person’s worldview consists of what they believe about the following:

• Does God exist?
• What is the nature of man?
• What do you believe about truth?
• Where does our knowledge come from?
• How do you determine right from wrong (ethics)?

A person’s worldview are the “glasses” they put on to understand the world as it relates to these five components. Based on what they “see” will determine how one navigates the world. In essence, a person’s worldview becomes their internal GPS. The infographic below summarizes a secular worldview (arguably the most prevalent view in America today) vs. a biblical worldview.

The secular worldview believes God does not exists, whereas a biblical worldview believes the God of the Bible is a personal, sovereign, holy, creator of the world.

Man, from a secular perspective, is the result of random evolutionary processes. From a Biblical viewpoint, man is created in the image of God (Genesis 1:26-27), and after the Fall has rejected God, and apart from the redemptive work of Christ, remains in his sin (Psalm 51:5; Romans 3:10-12, 23).

Secular worldview holders believe truth is relative. In other words, your truth is your truth, and my truth is my truth. What’s true for you is not necessarily true for me. Biblical worldview holders believe all truth is absolute, and no one gets to determine their own truth.

The final two elements are knowledge and ethics.

Knowledge, from a secularist point of view, is based on the assumption that nature is a closed system, and all knowldege therefore can be derived from a study of this system. A biblical view does not deny science. In fact, some would argue Christian beliefs helped give rise to science. However, those with a biblical worldview would argue God has also given us general or natural revelation revealed through creation (Psalm 19:1, 50:6; Romans 1:18-20), and special revelation through his Word (2 Peter 1:20-21).

Finally, ethics, how one determines right and wrong, can be viewed from two perspectives. The secularist believes ethics are cultural and negotiable. In other words, the ethics of America today (e.g., same-sex marriage) were not necessarily the ethics of first century Palestine or even the 20th century in America. From a biblical worldview, however, ethics are unchanging and absolute – they come from an unchanging God, he determines right from wrong.

The only question remaining is which view provides the best explanation for the reality of this world? You’ll have to make that determination for yourself. I would argue, once you determine whether you believe God exists or not the other four views come into focus with little added investigation needed.

A good starting point would be to read these two books to get both perspectives:

The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins

On Guard by William Lane Craig

A parent’s greatest responsiblity.

There’s arguably no more challenging responsibility in this world than being a parent. Once you have a child your entire perspective on life changes. If you’re like me, you quickly realize how selfish you are now that you’re responsible for the life of another human being. Within days of bringing a child into this world you quickly conclude, your life is no longer just about you.

Your life’s goals quickly change, and now not only do you need to focus on your life, you have another to work on. Some might suggest your goal becomes raising “good” kids, but I would argue that’s not the goal. The goal for parents is not raising good kids, but helping create “great” adults!

You and I can, to some degree, control our children when they’re living under our roof using the old adage, “my house, my rules”. However, once they leave the nest is when we can truly determine how successful we were in raising our children. we may still have some influence, but all control is lost once they’re on their own.

How do you know you’ve raised great adults? What can we look to to determine our success as parents? Again, it comes down to one word.

Worldview.

It’s also not just the worldview they believe is true that determines success, but also the worldview they use to think about important issues, that ultimately materializes in a worldview they act out through their lives. What they believe leads to what they think, which leads to how they act.

A call to Christian fathers. Are you up for the challenge?

I’m going to finish with a challenge to the Christian fathers reading this, or maybe being told to read it by their wives 🙂 How important is the education of your children? I don’t have any problem stating that if you’re like most fathers in America (both Christian and non-Christian) your children’s education is low on your list of priorities.

If God didn’t prune the consulting career from my life I’d probably be right there with many of you. I’d be just like you in that If they’re getting good grades and not in the principal’s office on a regular basis all is good! However, hopefully I’ve begun to make an argument that grades and having good behavior, while desired, are not of utmost importance in determining success.

Let’s finish with a series of things to get started in taking a greater role in your children’s education. Keep in mind what I propose is based on those of you sending your children to public or private schools, not those in home learning environments. Although, if you don’t know the answers to the questions I pose below regarding the home learning your children are receiving take the time to educate yourself so you can evaluate whether or not your children are progressing on becoming great adults as well.

Step 1: Define and validate your worldview.

You need to begin with a solid foundation to stand on. Your worldview is the bullseye I wrote of earlier one needs to have to aim at that can also be a filtering mechanism for the steps that follow. What do you believe about God, man, truth, knowledge, and ethics? What evidence, logic, reason, arguments, etc. can you use to validate your worldview represents the truth?

Also, consider sharing your worldview with someone wiser than you that you trust like the pastor of your church. You could also consider using Voddie Bauchman’s book to compare your answers to (see pages 78-81 or watch this lecture where he describes worldviews).

Step 2: Get informed on what they are learning.

As Stephen Covey suggests, seek first to understand, then to be understood! You can do this by learning more about what is being taught to your children. The easiest way to do this is asking them what they’re learning, and also opening their books to confirm what you’re being told. As a homeschool father I read everything my girls read before they read it. While that may not be feasible for you, start with the broader themes (aka “truths”) for each subject being taught.

Step 3: Get informed on who is teaching them.

I would argue this is perhaps even more important than the prior step, but it’s easier to begin with what’s in their backpack they bring home each day. However, your children are being discipled by someone, and that someone is spending more time (over 12,000 hours from K-12) each day with them than you are, so get to know who they are and what they believe. A good starting point is asking them to explain their worldview using the aforementioned five-fold criteria.

…everyone when he is fully trained will be like his teacher.

Jesus, Luke 6:40

Step 4: Take action, if needed.

This final step is one you’ll have to decide on your own how to deal with, if necessary. It’s easy for me to say that if your children are being read to by drag queens, being forced to affirm an LGBTQIA2+ lifestyle is morally acceptable, the universe was created out of nothing by nothing for no reason, etc. you must immediately remove your children from their school.

Only you can determine how much conflict with a biblical worldview you want to take on (assuming a conflict exists). There’s no question a secular worldview is being taught to children in public school today, but the range of what is being taught varies drastically by school district.

One could also argue being exposed to a secular worldview on topics such as creation, for example, could be an opportunity to help your older children (teens) learn how to think critically by comparing the evidence for creation vs. evolution. Just don’t expect the public school system to be open to such thinking in some districts. There is a “right” answer, but rarely will it come from the Bible when the public education system is doing the grading.

I’ll leave you with Paul’s words to the Ephesians giving guidance to the fathers who lived in first century Ephesus (modern day Turkey) that equally applies to us today.

Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.

Ephesians 6:4

Paul is telling fathers (this is true of both parents) to not rule your house with an “iron fist”. If you’ve had kids for two seconds you’ll know that your anger fuels their anger and vice versa. Instead, take a James 1:19-20 approach and be quick to hear, slow to speak, and slow to anger since the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God.

Guide and instruct them in the ways of the Lord and let those instructions be visible in all that you do and say every day of your life. And when, not if, you fail, be quick to make a teaching moment of the situation and provide an opportunity to teach them about one of the greatest lessons they can learn in becoming great adults. Forgiveness.