Public Schools Teach Children that God is Irrelevant

This post is the third in a five post series about homeschooling. All of these posts are previews of topics I cover in more detail in my book Faithful Parents, Faithful Children which is available for free in the Amazon Kindle store now through Tuesday (2/12/2013), and always available in print in our store. If you don’t want to miss any posts, Like our page on Facebook. Today’s preview is an excerpt from the chapter on the importance of a Biblical worldview in education.

Public Schools Teach that God is Irrelevant

In government schools, as well as in many Christian schools, the main message taught is ‘the irrelevancy of God in all studies.’ No one says this out loud, of course. However, it is the unsaid assumption that underlies every book and curriculum. Non-Christian schools automatically purchase materials that say nothing about the Creator in their texts. For government schools it is the understood norm that God is not to be mentioned in the classroom. Christian schools often purchase similar books, sometimes obtaining them from government sources. There may be occasions throughout the year when the teacher attempts to build thought about God into the studies, but this is not normative. It is not unusual for the Christian teacher to open class with prayer and then never mention God in relation to the studies at hand. Some Christian teachers do better than this but many do not. They have never been taught from a Biblical perspective in what they teach, and so do not know there is anything missing from their curriculum.

This issue of the irrelevancy of God in the school is no small problem. By excluding God from the study materials, the school teaches by its example that God is not of sufficient importance to be discussed. That attitude is imparted directly to the students who then see nothing wrong with that attitude since it is normal to them. They think of discussions about God and His providence as irrelevant to what is done at the institution. It is a belief that carries on throughout their lives even though it has never been seriously considered.

Both of my daughters attended conservative Christian colleges, one of which was a Bible college. Both girls were disappointed with the lack of Biblical content in the classrooms. I interviewed the head of the department where my oldest daughter was majoring and was assured that every class was taught from a Christian worldview. The instructor had supposedly been put through a twenty hour class on teaching from a Biblical worldview and would use that training in her instruction. The reports I received from my daughter were that in most of the classes the instructors said exactly nothing about Christian thought as relates to the discipline.

Homeschooling Can Teach the Supremacy of God

I have talked to parents from across the country concerning this issue. The reports I receive are almost all similar. The Christian college literature all promises that the schools promote a Christian worldview approach to their studies. In reality these colleges hardly ever deliver. My younger daughter faced this same difficulty at the Christian college she attended. In her history classes, psychology class or in any non-Bible class, God was rarely if ever mentioned. His providence was not discussed in the history classes, ever. When I wrote to the psychology professor complaining about the failure to teach Biblical thought he wrote back to me saying, “I taught the content of the discipline” and “it was not a theology class.” Of course that begged the question. Did you show the student how the mind of God relates to this field of study? Their answer was a resounding no, and that quite defensively. My question now is, then why do we need you? Why do Christian parents need Christian schools that do not teach Christian thought? If God is irrelevant to the studies why do we need the schools? I am convinced that the problems we have seen at the college level through our own family are nearly as persistent at the grade school and high school levels (there are notable exceptions with schools that have adopted a Principle Approach). The reports we have received from Christian parents typically confirm this. Often class sessions open with prayer, but the teaching has nothing to say about God in relation to the curriculum content. The irrelevancy of God problem pervades both public and private schools, and will not be fixed in the foreseeable future. If God’s direct commands for parents to teach their children are not sufficient, this additional disaster should give parents further pause to consider removing them from the schools.

For Christian Culture,

Don Schanzenbach

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