"An idea fitly put is taken in without effort, and, once in, ideas behave like living creatures––they feed, grow, and multiply." Charlotte Mason, Vol. 2 pg 77 of Charlotte Mason's Original Homeschooling Series
Atheistic, secular humanists have taken over public education and they have won the hearts and minds of the youth in our country. They have removed any ability for a public school educator to teach the Bible as God’s truth. Children are treated like they are computers, a product of their mechanistic biology. The goal of the public school education is to have an equal output for all. The way this is done is to give every child the same input, so that every child will have an equal output. It is measured mechanistically by testing. The result is generations of children leaving school uneducated and indoctrinated. They can reproduce the propaganda, facts, or information poured into them to regurgitate on a test and then to be quickly forgotten. They can repeat what they were taught to think in short pithy sound bites, but they have not been educated on how to think critically for themselves. This has been disastrous for our country and a recipe for the masses to be controlled by its rulers.
In the middle ages, the Christian church opened schools and began to educate the people. The concept of the university was a Christian one. The impact it had on western civilization was transformative.
What if the Christian churches in America or around the world offered a free education to their church member’s children and to the public? Give the parents in this country a viable alternative. The teachers in the Church schools would not be muzzled like they are in public schools. Children would learn God’s truth.
“What about the cost?” you ask. Who would fund this endeavor? The church would. Think for a moment how much money is sent by the church for overseas missions every year. The amount of money is in the billions. What if some of that money was invested in the missionary outreach in our own communities to reach the hearts and minds of the youth for Christ? Do you think that it would be possible? I do.
As thousands of homeschooling families already know, a quality education does not have to be costly. With a free online curriculum like Ambleside Online, www.amblesideonline.org, that offer’s a guideline for a quality education following the educational philosophy of Charlotte Mason, it would be affordable. Most of the high quality books needed are already available as free ebooks and audiobooks in the public domain. For the books that needed to be purchased, they can be purchased as used at a fraction of the cost of a new book.
A Charlotte Mason education starts with God as the creator and children as persons, made in the image of God and capable of intelligent, independent thought. From birth they have all the faculties they need to learn and build relationships with everything and everyone in the world around them. With an insatiable desire for knowledge, the mind of the child grows and thrives on ideas. Provide their minds with a feast of the best ideas from the best minds throughout mankind’s history and include a wide subject areas and the child will learn and grow. Study the works of the best poets, writers of literature, composers, artists, historians, as well as language, geographies with history taught from the begin, “God created the heavens and the earth” to present times as a proper context for the ideas. History taught rightly as the story of the relationship between God and his creation, our story, the story of mankind. With the aide of the Holy Spirit and God’s truth from the Bible, student’s world view will connect them to reality as it really is in Truth.
Can you just imagine how that kind of education of millions of children would impact our world? The church providing an education for all and winning the hearts and minds of our youth for Christ. Its revolutionary!
That really is a revolutionary idea. The churches have had a hold on the private school sector for quite some time, but they are generally cost prohibitive for most middle class families. I agree that we are losing generations to the atheists primarily because of humanist indoctrination of not only primary schools, but secondary and universities as well.
ReplyDeleteI am all for outreach and missionary work, but if we continue to lose our children here at home, then who will there be to continue spreading the gospel in just a generation or two? But, wow! How do we even begin to approach a church with such an idea?
I think it starts with one person and one church. Maybe one person starts a small group of 10 children in the church facility. Start with children from the church with donated funds for the books. It would need to be someone that has taught using Charlotte Mason's approach. Ambleside online is a free curriculum. Many of the books for it are in the public domain so they are free as ebooks as well. It is doable. If one person in a hundred churches across the country were willing to step out, that would effect 1000 children. How quickly God can grow something such as this.
ReplyDeleteAlso, just think about the facilities the churches already own. There is usually plenty of space and most buildings don't get much use during the weekdays.
ReplyDeleteI was thinking the same thing Becky. The churches have the classrooms the school would need. They would need to also provide some kind of salary for the teacher. If a mom can teach a family of 4, 5, or more with children of all ages, then how much easier would it be for her to teach a group of school age children with no babies to take care of as well.
ReplyDeleteI think one way to begin is to start small. Last spring, I approached our pastor about a summer CM cottage school. That grew into a book study (eventually attended by 18-20 moms), which grew into a co-op with almost 60 children, ages 4 months to 14 years. The pastor has expressed interest in growing this into an *extremely* affordable Christian school one day. Nothing is free, unfortunately, as facilities have costs, and we have to consider things like insurance, supplies, state fees or licenses (even in a private school setting). Having put on the cottage school for "free" - which ended up costing me hundreds of dollars out of pocket - I also now believe that it's important for parents and children to have some 'skin in the game,' even if that means required volunteering and some nominal payment for the school. I TOTALLY AGREE with Rebecca that churches, rather than bemoan the decline in the nation's morality, ought to be stepping up to the plate with solutions for discipling our children. We are trying to do this as affordably as possible one day a week for two 12-week terms per year (check out our website to see our structure: http://cminthebluegrass.weebly.com). I'd love to be able to replicate something like this across the country. I'm working on another set of pages on the website, "How to Start a CM Community," which will include templates and notes on setting up study groups, small home-based learning days, cottage schools, and medium-large scale co-ops. Stay tuned. :)
ReplyDeleteHi Jen, I think I remember you posting about this on the AO forum and was very intrigued. I too started up a CM co-op but had to drop it because I had to go back to work last year. We are going back to homeschooling, God willing, this year. Thank you for posting. I am going to head over to your blog for more inspiration.
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