The Power of Presuppositions

"Education is a series of religious acts partly because the power of assumption is so great. Assumptions are even more powerful than assertions because they bypass a persons critical faculty and thereby create prejudice. Government education assumes God to be irrelevant to the educational process when, in fact, "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge" (Proverbs 1:7). Such false assumptions by the government schools can then be combined with arguments that prove the truth of what is false. These false assumptions are particularly beguiling because they appeal to one of our worst instincts - the desire to be fashionable or at least to avoid being associated with the unfashionable or unpopular." 

- Herbert Schlossberg,  (Idols for Destruction, 1983, p. 210)

The above quotation was found in Randy Booth's chapter "Family and Education" in The Church-Friendly Family, edited by Uri Brito.  In about a dozen pages, Pastor Booth articulates the best content summary of Christian Education that I have ever heard or read in my life.  I cannot recommend it to you highly enough.

So many kindly old ladies ask in exasperation, "How could anyone look at the hummingbird in flight or the sun setting over the ocean, or the elegant double helix of a DNA strand and not recognize God's glory on display?"

The answer is, of course, "Because your generation sent my generation to public schools where they were professionally trained to do exactly that for 8 hours a day, every day of the school year, for the 12 most formative years of their lives."
We have been trained to ignore God's glory on display in creation; to study and work as if God were irrelevant to the real business of life; to live the majority of our lives as if God mattered very little or not at all.  We are experts at suppressing the truth in unrighteousness. Think about it.  It is illegal to pray out loud in a public school.  How is it possible, in any way, to obey the command of God to raise our children in the paideia and discipline of God, while sending them to a place where it is illegal for them to be led in prayer for the bulk of their developing lives?  

[photo: worldschooleducation.com]