We are bombarded with stories of government
overreach into education. We hear about progressive propaganda disguised as
curriculum, or parents in a California school district who are not allowed
withdraw their children from the LGBT curriculum. You probably did not hear
about the instance in Massachusetts where the state militia arrived at several
homes of families who didn’t want their children to attend the local school.
Under threat of force the militia escorted children from their homes and to the
local school. The reason you probably never heard about it – it happened in
1852. Government overreach and mandatory education go together like Communism
and gulags.
I won’t retread the vast array of problems in modern
education. No one argues that the American education system is sound. But I
will argue that the fruit of our current system is not the result of a good
tree that’s diseased; it is the result of a poor seed planted in thorny ground and
left untended.
The first instruction regarding education was given
by the prophet Moses in the Torah, the first five books of the Bible. These
books represent the first recorded history and culture manual for a nation. He
says that parents were to teach their children to love God at all times of the
day. At a time when parents would spend all day with their children, this was
easily done. Education for the ancients included knowledge, worship, skills,
community-wide activities, and celebrations. Yet we know Israel was not
faithful to that work. When they were captive in Babylon, the synagogues were
created. These were places for worship and instruction in what it meant to be
Jewish.
Skipping ahead a few civilizations, the people known as “the Greeks” were not one synonymous group, but several city-states who differed in what they valued and emphasized. The most notable difference was Sparta, who valued military service and Athens, who valued leisure and intellectual pursuits. Their most famous philosophers: Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, were similar to Hebrew prophets, calling the people to live in a humane way and reject pragmatism (focus on what works, not what’s best) and decadence. They were, like the prophet John the Baptist, voices crying in the wilderness who were mostly rejected by their own people.
