Schools are Churches
I don’t know when or how we arrived at this point. We assume that schools, the buildings where we send our children seven or eight hours a day, five days a week to have their thinking and their behaviors shaped, are one kind of thing and that churches, the buildings where we take them for two hours a week to have their thinking and behaviors shaped, are a totally different kind. We imagine that schools will transfer morally neutral facts to our children during the 900 hours per year they have them, while our churches will effectively shepherd their eternal hearts during the 100 hours per year they have them. We underestimate how much our children’s beliefs and instincts are shaped Monday through Friday between 8am and 3pm.
Our schools are churches. And you need to know what kind of church is discipling your children.
To be sure, the two are not literally identical, but they work with the same materials in the same sorts of ways. Both are constructed to shape, to improve, to catechize the people entrusted to them, and in the case of schools those people are the most impressionable humans on earth: Children. Perhaps being in the Information Age has caused us to assume that schools are merely places where data dumps into the minds of our kids happen. Or perhaps (and this one seems likelier to me) we are willfully blind to the truth because it’s incompatible with the lifestyles we want. But regardless of how or why we don’t see it, the reality is that schools shape hearts, affections, beliefs, assumptions, and behaviors. They are not bare, sterile manuals to be checked out and then returned that simply teach you how to write computer code or change spark plugs. Schools influence the sentiments and consciences and the ongoing thinking of their students. Or, as one might fairly call them, their disciples.
μαθητής mathētḗs, math-ay-tes'; a learner, i.e. pupil:—disciple.
Strong’s Concordance (“The Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible”)
“Only take care, and keep your soul diligently, lest you forget the things that your eyes have seen, and lest they depart from your heart all the days of your life. Make them known to your children and your children's children — how on the day that you stood before the Lord your God at Horeb, the Lord said to me, ‘Gather the people to me, that I may let them hear my words, so that they may learn to fear me all the days that they live on the earth, and that they may teach their children so.’”
Deuteronomy 4:9-10
What Forms a Young Heart
Every child has his heart trained in what is good and what is bad, what is praiseworthy and what is shameful, over hours and hours and hours of small, sometimes imperceptible human interactions. Values are imparted to children through the thousands of little incidents and occurrences that involve the people they spend the most time with. An adult says to another child nearby, “Tommy, we don’t do that.” Three kids snicker at a little remark their buddy just made. A beloved grown-up smiles at a little girl’s answer to the question “What’s your favorite movie?” The big kid in class laughs at you when you tell him what your dad does for a living. All of these little interactions form what a child thinks is normal, what is desirable, what he or she is supposed to be like and is supposed to want. And a few minutes of Bible teaching a week are unlikely to undo all that assumption-training that happened for hours and hours Monday through Friday.
What a child actually thinks is good and worthwhile, down at the bone level, is bred by what his buddies joke about and what the adults he’s told to trust most admire and what gets him praised at the place where he spends most of his time, not merely by what happens at the end of the day after the bus drops him off at home or the end of the week when he’s with his church. In Deuteronomy, God tells His people that since people’s hearts can be deceived to turn from Him to other gods, they are to teach His words to their children when they are in their houses, when they are out and about, when they are going through the normal rhythms of their days. In other words, because hearts are malleable, we should make instruction about God and His ways a continual feature our kids’ days. Why are we learning math? Because God is wise and rational and made a world where math works. Why are we learning about energy and mass and gravity? Because God made a predictable world with these traits in it. Why are we eating lunch or running to the grocery store or playing with Legos in the basement? Because He made us and sustains us and is blessing us today. But, since hearts wander and are prone to being deceived, if we have our kids souls and affections shaped, daily, by an institution that assumes goodness and truth can be accounted for and achieved apart from God, we shouldn’t be surprised if they end up assuming it themselves.
Take care lest your heart be deceived, and you turn aside and serve other gods and worship them; then the anger of the Lord will be kindled against you, and he will shut up the heavens, so that there will be no rain, and the land will yield no fruit, and you will perish quickly off the good land that the Lord is giving you. You shall therefore lay up these words of mine in your heart and in your soul, and you shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall teach them to your children, talking of them when you are sitting in your house, and when you are walking by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates, that your days and the days of your children may be multiplied in the land that the Lord swore to your fathers to give them, as long as the heavens are above the earth.
Deuteronomy 11:16-21
This house whose doorposts and gates had God’s words carved into them was not merely a place where people with the same last name gathered at the end of the day to watch television together. It was the place where teaching happened, teaching that was woven, threaded throughout the family’s walking by the way and lying down and rising. In this design, the household was the most prominent voice in the learning and thinking and heart-shaping of a child.
When we enlist a school to help us with the education of our children, we need to take stock of the fact that we are not simply delegating someone to teach our children facts. We are also delegating them to train our children’s affections. Kids can pick up on what people really love. And young kids are going to assume that what the trusted people love is worth loving. They’re going to think that what the grown-ups we’ve given them to like and desire and smile about merits that reaction. Why would Mom and Dad give me to these people every day and tell me to listen to them if what they love and follow and live for isn’t right?
We delegate about half of our children’s waking hours Monday through Friday to these people and institutions called schools. We let them instruct, discipline, and shape the little hearts of the young souls we are ultimately responsible for, souls who are still figuring out what the world is and what the right way to live in it is. We cannot send our kids somewhere for that significant a portion of their lives and not expect it to form what they think is normal, what is honorable, what is healthy.
All schools make disciples; it’s simply a question of what kind.
Government Churches
What I assumed were the best aims of a young man, what he should strive after and what was expected of him and what would get him happiness and success, this was all thoroughly shaped by a government building on West Main Street in Mt. Orab, Ohio. Right there behind a Ford dealership and across from a tiny gas station stood a big, brick-and-mortar heart-carving, mind-molding institution, paid for by the same government coffers as the county auditor and the BMV.
One of the hardest questions to ask in life is, “Is this thing we’ve all been working hard at right? Is it good?” Once we’ve grown accustomed to an idea, an endeavor, or an institution, and certainly once we’ve spent time and sweat on it, we have an attachment to it that is difficult to objectively reevaluate. I know it’s painful for good teachers and administrators who love their students to reassess whether it is good for the government to educate children forty hours per week. The pain involved in that is understandable and normal. But we have to reassess it if we are to obey the God who actually made us and who made the world we live in. Does He think it is good and proper for the state to own the education of children for half their waking hours five days a week?
“Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. ‘Honor your father and mother’ (this is the first commandment with a promise), ‘that it may go well with you and that you may live long in the land.’ Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.”
Ephesians 6:1-4
There is much in Scripture about teaching children, about instructing and disciplining and training them. But virtually none of it is yielded to government. Just as the Bible does not describe the family as the institution responsible for the punishing of lawbreakers, but instead assigns that responsibility to the state, the Bible does not describe the teaching of children as the calling of government.
Abraham Kuyper, the Christian theologian, educator, and Prime Minister of the Netherlands from 1901-1905, summarized the Bible’s teaching on the areas of responsibility for different God-ordained institutions as what we now call “sphere sovereignty.” Simply put, the state, the family, and the church, three real authorities that God has truly ordained and has prescriptions for in His Word, each have a realm for which they are responsible. Among other things, the state is responsible for the punishing of evildoers and the upholding of that which is good. The family is responsible for the rearing of children and the protection of sexual purity. The church is responsible for the preaching of the Word and the proper administration of the sacraments. None of these three have the right to abdicate their authority and responsibility to the other, and when any one of the three tries to squeeze into another’s area it is in disobedience to God and will do inevitable harm to people, whether in the short-term, long-term, or both.
What we have done in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries amounts to entrusting to the state the largest share of what is one of the essential responsibilities of the family. And just as it would not go well for a man to expect the government to feed his wife and children or to expect the government keep him and his wife sexually pure, it will not go well for us to continue this practice of child-training that is done mostly by the government. Government is not inherently, inescapably bad. But government is not family. It was never meant to be.
The interests of a state are never going to be perfect, because none of the human beings who create or administer a state, who craft or enforce laws, is perfect. Those imperfect, sometimes sinful interests will always produce a mixed bag of results within what the state does, just as imperfect churches and imperfect families (the only kind that exist this side of Christ’s return) produce mixed results. But when those patchy, impure interests exert themselves in a province in which they were never called to be in the first place, the consequences are much worse. It’s hard enough for an imperfect lawmaker to make laws; it’s virtually impossible for him to also rightly oversee the training of your children.
What kind of policing would we have if families took it upon themselves to enforce laws and arrest criminals? Be assured: There would be some intolerably partial and idiosyncratic laws and arrests. I can tell you chewing with your mouth open would get you forty days in jail in any jurisdiction I policed. What kind of church services would we have if the state dictated the liturgy, the songs, and the sermons? Our church services would be about as spiritually edifying as political ads during election season. Stepping out of the bounds God has prescribed never ends well. When the government takes on the predominant role in the teaching and life-preparation of children, the long-term ramifications will not be good. Kids will largely see the world and their role in it in ways that interest the state, not that interest the individual child or the people who are closely and covenantally bound to him. You and your wife want Johnny to worship Jesus, obey His commandments, be a good and faithful husband someday, and live a Christian life that honors his God. But, for good or for bad, those aren’t the interests of the government institution where you send him for 40 hours a week.
The only wise God has called the state to carry the sword in punishing evildoing lawbreakers, not the family and not the church. In the same vein, He has called the church to preach and baptize and give the elements of communion, not the family and not the state. And He has called the family to produce and discipline and teach children, not the state and not the church. Government, church, and family are each ordained and authorized for a good and noble purpose, but none are authorized to be the other. What we have in our state schools are a deviation from God’s arrangement for the world; they are governmental child-raising establishments. They will not do what fathers and mothers were called to do because God never appointed them to. Their interests in a child are not a father’s interests or a mother’s, because they are not a father or a mother. They will make disciples and shape souls, because all teaching institutions make disciples and shape souls, but they will be made with a tilt towards what is good for the state.
Since all schools catechize and all schools proselytize, what we have in our government schools amounts to churches for the state. Doubtless some will be better than others, but none will be Christian, and none will be true fathers and mothers.
Christian Schools
What about a Christian school, though? Would it be wrong or unwise to send your kid to a private Christian school, or is home educating the only good option?
It is wonderful for Christians to build schools to teach kids about God and His world and His Word. What we need to keep in mind as we build and support such schools is that fidelity to the God of the Bible requires vigilance. Remember: Hearts are prone to being deceived. That means my heart, my kids’ hearts, and the hearts of the people on the board and the staff of the Christian school in my town are all susceptible to being led astray.
And to the angel of the church in Pergamum write: ‘The words of him who has the sharp two-edged sword.
I know where you dwell, where Satan's throne is. Yet you hold fast my name, and you did not deny my faith even in the days of Antipas my faithful witness, who was killed among you, where Satan dwells. But I have a few things against you: you have some there who hold the teaching of Balaam, who taught Balak to put a stumbling block before the sons of Israel, so that they might eat food sacrificed to idols and practice sexual immorality. So also you have some who hold the teaching of the Nicolaitans. Therefore repent. If not, I will come to you soon and war against them with the sword of my mouth.
Revelation 2:12-16
Christian schools must be kept faithfully Christian. A school where it’s assumed math and science and good behavior can all be learned without reference to Christ but that has a cross in its logo and on its letterhead isn’t that much different from a government school. In order to be a Christian school and not merely a school with some hospitality for Christianity, it will need to expect and reinforce worship of and trust in Jesus Christ. It cannot be a cleaner, nicer public school. Its teachers and students and administrators and custodians and donors and parents and basketball coaches should know that they teach and train all that they do because they love and obey Jesus and want to help young people love and obey Him. And in a world increasingly hostile to the Bible and the God of the Bible, this will be difficult. The pressure on any institution of size will be intense. Forming and keeping a thoroughly Christian school will require thick faith and thick skin.
A Christian school seeking to obey God will also make plain that parents are the ones responsible for the education of their children, even as they choose to enlist the resources of a Christian organization to help them. The fact that a school is a faithfully Christ-honoring educational organization does not undo God’s design that a child’s parents are to raise him up in the worship of God. It simply means the parents can have good reason to trust the school whose support they’re securing.
A truly Christian school can make truly Christian disciples. We do well to build and maintain them in faith.
So What Now?
We got to where we are over more than a century, and so I have no illusion that (apart from a miracle of God) we will be able to quickly do away with unbelieving institutions taking the majority role in the shaping of children’s hearts. We’ve grown accustomed to seeing education as totally distinct from the forming of a child’s affections and and beliefs, and our lifestyles and careers and institutions have all grown up around that custom. We’ve lived as though our schools will do one thing and our churches will do another and all will be well for about five generations now. We aren’t going to recover education as proper discipleship overnight.
We must start at the bedrock level, the level where we all simply take it for granted that it is fitting for a non-Christian school to shape our kids for hours every day. When American chattel slavery needed to be undone, the most important argument needed to happen at the bedrock level, the level of the God-authored humanity of black people: “Since these people are people, we cannot keep kidnapping them and buying them and treating them as livestock." When the questions arose of what to do when so much of an economy and a society depended on the institution, again and again and again the foundational assumption (that it was fitting for black people to be treated this way) needed to be challenged, until there was widespread agreement. We can talk about how to repent of an aberrant practice, how to undo its damage, how to recover from it and unwind it next, but first we need to agree that it needs repented of, that it is damaging, that it is aberrant.
Let’s allow Scripture to awaken us to what ought to be. Then let’s begin working out good ways of getting there.