What do we do with home-schoolers? Pastor Stein sees the Public Schools artifically inflating their graduation rates by having deadbeat parents "say" they will homeschool their kids. His response? Have the Government Regulate homeschooling.
Render the Home-Schools unto Caesar? A Critique of Pastor Stein’s State-Worship Joel McDurmon disagrees with Pastor Stein, and is very critical of him. McDurmon's personal critisism of Stein should be ignored unless you know Pastor Stein personally. His critique of what Stein says is spot on, though.
But then, that’s the original issue, isn’t it?—the Public school’s drop-out rate. These kids were already drop-out material. The only reason they avoided actually sagging the drop-out statistics even further is because, allegedly, of the Public school unethically unloading them as fraudulent “home school” kids. No problems here! No drop-outs on our books! Please note two things:
1) These kids were already drop-outs as public-schooled kids. Their failure is the Public School’s failure. Their failure is the State’s failure.
2) Many of the flunkies would have ended up on social welfare programs anyway, however they were schooled. The only thing that has been improved here, then, is the Public School’s drop-out statistic.
Think about it for a bit, part of the reason the schools are using this loophole, is because they have failed to teach the kids. The schools are regulated by the Government. So, how can you expect that extending that regulation to homeschools will help? Anyway, that's not what I really wanted to emphazise. See this quote from McDurmon:
People worship God on Sunday, speak of God and family—then willingly herd their children into largely pagan asylums all day for five days a week. In these prisons of Statist corruption and vice, children are desensitized to everything about God and family. Christian parents willingly render their children to Caesar.
This is something that has puzzled me for a long time. Why do Christian parents send their kids to public schools? Public schools are some of the most profoundly un-Christian environments around. They teach things that directly contradict the Bible. They teach kids that it's ok to have sex outside of marriage. They teach that it's ok to lust after the same sex. They teach that your kids should keep their faith private and out of public life. They teach history in a way that ignores, and/or lies about, and/or minimizes Christianities influence. I've heard parents say that they want their kids to be lights in the school for Christ. My response in my mind to that is very rude. How is it possible to believe that kids with little life experience, who are barely making their faith their own, to resist the un-Christian influence of the Public School system?
Think about it, how do you strengthen your faith? By spending time in God's Word, and by fellowshipping with fellow believers. Kids going to public schools spend most of their time fellowshipping with unbelievers, and sleeping. That is not healthy.
So, I believe that Christian parents should only send their kids to school if they can't homeschool them. And public schools should be the absolute last choice. It should be Christian schools first, then private schools, then any other options, then public schools.