Homeschooling: Objections Answered and Subjects Examined - Verses and Quotes
Essay: http://parentingfreedom.com/homeschooling/
O my people, hear my teaching; listen to the words of my mouth. I will open my mouth in parables, I will utter hidden things, things from of old– what we have heard and known, what our fathers have told us. We will not hide them from their children; we will tell the next generation the praiseworthy deeds of the LORD, his power, and the wonders he has done. He decreed statutes for Jacob and established the law in Israel, which he commanded our forefathers to teach their children, so the next generation would know them, even the children yet to be born, and they in turn would tell their children. Then they would put their trust in God and would not forget his deeds but would keep his commands.
Psalm 78:1-7 NIV
These are the commands, decrees and laws the LORD your God directed me to teach you to observe in the land that you are crossing the Jordan to possess, so that you, your children and their children after them may fear the LORD your God as long as you live by keeping all his decrees and commands that I give you, and so that you may enjoy long life. Hear, O Israel, and be careful to obey so that it may go well with you and that you may increase greatly in a land flowing with milk and honey, just as the LORD, the God of your fathers, promised you. Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates.
Deuteronomy 6:1-9 NIV
But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have become convinced of, because you know those from whom you learned it, and how from infancy you have known the holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.
2 Timothy 3:14-17 NIV
For this reason, since the day we heard about you, we have not stopped praying for you and asking God to fill you with the knowledge of his will through all spiritual wisdom and understanding. And we pray this in order that you may live a life worthy of the Lord and may please him in every way: bearing fruit in every good work, growing in the knowledge of God, being strengthened with all power according to his glorious might so that you may have great endurance and patience, and joyfully giving thanks to the Father.
Colossians 1:9-11 NIV
My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge. Because you have rejected knowledge, I also reject you as my priests; because you have ignored the law of your God, I also will ignore your children.
Hosea 4:6 NIV
At that time Jesus said, ‘I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children.’
Matthew 11:25 NIV
‘For I know the plans I have for you,’ declares the LORD, ‘plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. I will be found by you,’ declares the LORD.
Jeremiah 29:11-14 NIV
I prayed for this child, and the LORD has granted me what I asked of him. So now I give him to the LORD. For his whole life he will be given over to the LORD.
1 Samuel 1:27,28 NIV
Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, since as members of one body you were called to peace. And be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly as you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom, and as you sing psalms, hymns and spiritual songs with gratitude in your hearts to God. And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.
Colossians 3:15-17 NIV
Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is- his good, pleasing and perfect will.
Romans 12:2 NIV
Do not be deceived: Bad company corrupts good morals.
1 Corinthians 15:33 NIV
Can a blind man lead a blind man? Will they not both fall into a pit? A student is not above his teacher, but everyone who is fully trained will be like his teacher.
Luke 6:39, 40 KJV
The hired hand is not the shepherd who owns the sheep. So when he sees the wolf coming, he abandons the sheep and runs away. Then the wolf attacks the flock and scatters it. The man runs away because he is a hired hand and cares nothing for the sheep. “I am the good shepherd; I know my sheep and my sheep know me– just as the Father knows me and I know the Father– and I lay down my life for the sheep.”
John 10:12-15 NIV
Learn not the way of the heathen.
Jeremiah 10:2 KJV
All your children shall be taught by the Lord, and great shall be the peace of your children.
Isaiah 54:13
He who walks with wise men will be wise, but the companion of fools will suffer harm.
Proverbs 13:20 NIV
A happy heart makes the face cheerful, but heartache crushes the spirit. The discerning heart seeks knowledge, but the mouth of a fool feeds on folly. All the days of the oppressed are wretched, but the cheerful heart has a continual feast.
Proverbs 15:13-15 NIV
Ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles? Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit.
Matthew 7:16-17 KJV
Sons are a heritage from the LORD, children a reward from him. Like arrows in the hands of a warrior are sons born in one’s youth. Blessed is the man whose quiver is full of them. They will not be put to shame when they contend with their enemies in the gate.
Psalm 127:3-5 NIV
He tends his flock like a shepherd: He gathers the lambs in his arms and carries them close to his heart; he gently leads those that have young.
Isaiah 40:11 NIV
Be sure you know the condition of your flocks, give careful attention to your herds.
Proverbs 27:23 NIV
I can do everything through him who gives me strength.
Philippians 4:13 NIV
You need to persevere so that when you have done the will of God, you will receive what he has promised.
Hebrews 10:36 NIV
Being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.
Philippians 1:6 NIV
Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others.
Philippians 2:4 NIV
For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.
Mark 10:45 NIV
But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.
Galatians 5:22,23 NIV
Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience.
Colossians 3:12 NIV
We do not want you to become lazy, but to imitate those who through faith and patience inherit what has been promised.
Hebrews 6:12 NIV
Be patient, then, brothers, until the Lord’s coming. See how the farmer waits for the land to yield its valuable crop and how patient he is for the autumn and spring rains.
James 5:7 NIV
And we pray this in order that you may live a life worthy of the Lord and may please him in every way: bearing fruit in every good work, growing in the knowledge of God, being strengthened with all power according to his glorious might so that you may have great endurance and patience, and joyfully giving thanks to the Father.”
Colossians 1:10-12 NIV
“If you want big-souled, large-hearted men or women, look for them among those who are much engaged among the young, bearing with their follies, and sympathising with their weaknesses for Jesus’ sake.”
C.H. Spurgeon
Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.
Proverbs 22:6 NIV
Fathers, do not exasperate your children; instead, bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord.
Ephesians 6:4 NIV
The heart of the mother is the schoolroom of the child.
Author unknown
Now you, if you call yourself a Jew (or Christian); if you rely on the law and brag about your relationship to God; if you know his will and approve of what is superior because you are instructed by the law; if you are convinced that you are a guide for the blind, a light for those who are in the dark, an instructor of the foolish, a teacher of infants, because you have in the law the embodiment of knowledge and truth– you, then, who teach others, do you not teach yourself? You who preach against stealing, do you steal? You who say that people should not commit adultery, do you commit adultery? You who abhor idols, do you rob temples? You who brag about the law, do you dishonor God by breaking the law? As it is written: ‘God’s name is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you.’
Romans 2:17-23 NIV
And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless until the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ–to the glory and praise of God.
Philippians 1:9-11 NIV
“Two roads diverged in a wood, and I took the one less travelled by, and that has made all the difference.”
Robert Frost
But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.
Joshua 24:15 NIV
“Thank goodness I was never sent to school; it would have rubbed off some of the originality.”
Beatrix Potter
“It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education.”
Albert Einstein
“It is, in fact, nothing short of a miracle that the modern methods of instruction have not entirely strangled the holy curiosity of inquiry.”
Albert Einstein
“I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.”
Mark Twain
“Many public-school children seem to know only two dates–1492 and 4th of July; and as a rule they don’t know what happened on either occasion.”
Mark Twain
“All schools, all colleges, have two great functions: to confer, and to conceal, valuable knowledge. The theological knowledge which they conceal cannot justly be regarded as less valuable than that which they reveal. That is, when a man is buying a basket of strawberries it can profit him to know that the bottom half of it is rotten.”
Mark Twain
“The function of schooling is threefold: To police, to baby-sit, and to break spirit. It does these so successfully that no reform is ever seriously attempted.”
Erik Erikson, psychiatrist, author of Identity Crisis
“I view public school as a burning building - and I’m going to save every child I can.”
John Holt
“It is, in fact, nothing short of a miracle that the modern methods of instruction have not yet entirely strangled the holy curiosity of inquiry; for this delicate little plant, aside from stimulation, stands mainly in need of freedom; without this it goes to wreck and ruin without fail. It is a very grave mistake to think that the enjoyment of seeing and searching can be promoted by means of coercion and a sense of duty.”
Albert Einstein
“All great change in America begins at the dinner table.”
Ronald Reagan
“I am not young enough to know everything.”
Oscar Wilde
“Speaking the Truth in times of universal deceit is a revolutionary act.”
George Orwell
“People do not like to think. If one thinks, one must reach conclusions. Conclusions are not always pleasant.”
Helen Keller
“Even if you’re on the right track, you’ll get run over if you just sit there.”
Will Rogers
“Be thankful we’re not getting all the government we’re paying for.”
Will Rogers
“Truth is always about something, but reality is that about which truth is.”
C.S. Lewis
“Education is the best provision for the journey to old age.”
Aristotle
“It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.”
Aristotle
“Outside of a dog, a book is a man’s best friend. Inside of a dog, it’s too dark to read.”
Groucho Marx
“I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book.”
Groucho Marx
“Only the educated are free.”
Epictetus
“It’s a greater work to educate a child, in the true and larger sense of the word, than to rule a state.”
William Ellery Channing
“The principal goal of education is to create men who are capable of doing new things, not simply of repeating what other generations have done.”
Jean Piaget (1896-1980) Swiss Cognitive Psychologist
“The great aim of education is not knowledge, but action.”
Herbert Spencer
“Imagination is more important than knowledge.”
Albert Einstein
“If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales. If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales.”
Albert Einstein
“The reformers did not merely curse the darkness; they were determined to work positively for the good of their neighbor and the glory of God.”
Michael Horton
“Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.”
Theodore Roosevelt
“When the eagles are silent, the parrots begin to jabber.”
Sir Winston Churchill
“It’s not enough that we do our best; sometimes we have to do what is required.”
Sir Winston Churchill
“Christianity is not a religion that is based simply on vertical events that are wrestled out of the context of history. The biblical faith is rooted and grounded within the plane of real history.”
R.C. Sproul
“Your descendants shall gather your fruits.”
Virgil
“Our children cannot be parented by people whose names we hardly even know.”
Hold on to Your Kids p. 48
“I think it’s time to get our kids out [of public schools].”
Dr. James Dobson, Focus on the Family Radio, March 28, 2002
At the end of the book, The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe, Edmund was “looking better than she had seen him look - oh, for ages; in fact ever since his first term at that horrid school which was where he had begun to go wrong.” And this was on the last page, “Bless me, what do they teach them at these schools?”
C.S.Lewis
“Education is thus a most powerful ally of humanism. What can the theistic Sunday schools, meeting for an hour once a week, and teaching only a fraction of the children, do to stem the tide of a five-day program of humanistic teaching?”
Charles Francis Potter, signer of the 1933 Humanist Manifesto & author of Humanism: A New Religion.
“True religion affords government its surest support. The future of this nation depends on the Christian training of the youth. It is impossible to govern without the Bible.”
George Washington
“An education without the Bible is useless.”
Noah Webster
“It is time we get our kids out of the public schools.”
Dr. Tim LaHaye, Left Behind Book Series and Pastor
“I am beginning to suspect all elaborate and special systems of education. They seem to me to be built upon the supposition that every child is a kind of idiot who must be taught to think. Whereas if the child is left to himself, he will think more and better, if less slowly. Let him come and go freely, let him touch real things and combine his impressions for himself, instead of sitting indoors at a little round table while a sweet-voiced teacher suggest that he build a stone wall with his wooden blocks, or make a rainbow out of strips of colored paper, or plant straw trees in flower pots. Such teaching fills the mind with artificial associations that must be got rid of before the child can develop independent ideas out of actual experiences.”
Anne Sullivan
“All men who have turned out worth anything have had the chief hand in their own education.”
Sir Walter Scott
“I learned most, not from those who taught me but from those who talked with me.”
St. Augustine
“In general the best teacher or care-giver cannot match a parent of even ordinary education and experience.”
Dr. Raymond Moore, Home Grown Kids (1981)
“It’s the end of summer
When you send your children to the moon.”
Dar Williams, The End Of The Summer
Homeschoolers “are the epitome of Brown students,” says Dean Joyce Reed. “They are self-directed, they take risks, and they don’t back off.”
Brown Alumni Magazine, “Homeschooling Comes of Age,” January/February 2002.
“We’ve got a whole lot of falsehoods associated with schooling,” says J. Gary Knowles, a University of Toronto researcher… “We have… weird rites of passage that are… quite dysfunctional.” Knowles has found homeschoolers to be more self-reliant and focused. “They’re able to move into adulthood with a much better sense of self and have a very good sense as to what they want to do,” he said… “Where did we ever get the idea that 2,000 13-year-olds were the ideal people with which to socialize other 13-year-olds?”
Fox News, “First Wave of Homeschoolers Comes of Age,” April 5, 2002
FLOWERS ARE RED
Harry Chapin
The little boy went first day of school
He got some crayons and started to draw
He put colors all over the paper
For colors was what he saw
And the teacher said… What you doin’ young man
I’m paintin’ flowers he said
She said… It’s not the time for art young man
And anyway flowers are green and red
There’s a time for everything young man
And a way it should be done
You’ve got to show concern for everyone else
For you’re not the only one
And she said…
Flowers are red young man
Green leaves are green
There’s no need to see flowers any other way
Than they way they always have been seen
But the little boy said…
There are so many colors in the rainbow
So many colors in the morning sun
So many colors in the flower and I see every one
Well the teacher said… You’re sassy
There’s ways that things should be
And you’ll paint flowers the way they are
So repeat after me…
And she said…
Flowers are red young man
Green leaves are green
There’s no need to see flowers any other way
Than they way they always have been seen
But the little boy said…
There are so many colors in the rainbow
So many colors in the morning sun
So many colors in the flower and I see every one
The teacher put him in a corner
She said… It’s for your own good…
And you won’t come out ’til you get it right
And are responding like you should
Well finally he got lonely
Frightened thoughts filled his head
And he went up to the teacher
And this is what he said… and he said
Flowers are red, green leaves are green
There’s no need to see flowers any other way
Than the way they always have been seen
Time went by like it always does
And they moved to another town
And the little boy went to another school
And this is what he found
The teacher there was smilin’
She said… Painting should be fun
And there are so many colors in a flower
So let’s use every one
But that little boy painted flowers
In neat rows of green and red
And when the teacher asked him why
This is what he said… and he said
Flowers are red, green leaves are green
There’s no need to see flowers any other way
Than the way they always have been seen.
“I am as sure as I am of Christ’s reign that a comprehensive and centralized system of national education, separated from religion, as is now commonly proposed, will prove the most appalling enginery for the propagation of anti-Christian and atheistic unbelief, and of anti-social nihilistic ethics, individual, social and political, which this sin-rent world has never seen.”
A. A. Hodge in 1887
“[T]he parents have a duty to provide the child with a godly education … Wisdom rests on faith, and true knowledge has as its presupposition the sovereign God. There can be no neutrality in education. Education by the state will have statist ends. Education by the church will be geared to promoting the church.”
Rushdoony, Institutes, Vol I, 182.
“Why then did kindergarten succeed? The answer was and is clear-cut: the desire of women to get rid of their children. Educators had to set an age requirement for kindergarten children, else they would be deluged with mothers trying to push very young children into their hands. Thus, kindergarten has proven to be in part a polite and oblique form of infanticide, one which hypocritical women can indulge in while getting credit for solicitous motherhood.”
R. J. Rushdoony, The Messianic Character of American Education (Vallecito, CA: Ross House Books, 1963), 282-283.
Lee Duigon lists ten reasons why, “if you still have children in the public schools, you should pull them out as soon as possible.”
1. Public schools actively promote sodomy and other forms of immoral and risky behavior.
2. Public education undermines your children’s Christian beliefs.
3. The public school establishment resists any and all reform and will never get any better.
4. Academically, public schooling is geared to mediocrity.
5. Public education consumes at least $500 billion a year in tax money, much of which is wasted.
6. The public school is a hotbed of materialism and conspicuous consumption.
7. Public school is a crucible of peer pressure.
8. Removing children from public schools will weaken the power of teachers’ unions and make for a better America.
9. Public education is inefficient.
10. The whole purpose of public education is to transform America into a statist “democracy” to be “managed” by elites.
“Each year the child is coming to belong more to the State and less and less to the parent.”
Ellwood P. Cubberley, Conceptions of Education (1909)
“In 1909 a factory inspector did an informal survey of 500 working children in 20 factories. She found that 412 of them would rather work in the terrible conditions of the factories than return to school.”
Helen Todd, “Why Children Work,” McClure’s Magazine (April 1913)
“In one experiment in Milwaukee, for example, 8,000 youth…were asked if they would return full-time to school if they were paid about the same wages as they earned at work; only 16 said they would.”
David Tyack, Managers of Virtue (1982)
“I pay the schoolmaster, but ’tis the schoolboys that educate my son.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson
“The object of education is to prepare the young to educate themselves throughout their lives.”
Robert Maynard Hutchins
“Do not train children to learning by force and harshness, but direct them to it by what amuses their minds, so that you may be better able to discover with accuracy the peculiar bent of the genius of each.”
Plato
“A gentleman need not know Latin, but he should at least have forgotten it.”
Brander Matthews
“The future of the child is always the work of the mother.”
Napoleon Bonaparte
“If religion is not extended to the children, what will be the outcome?”
John Wesley
“If family religion be neglected - if care be not taken with the rising generation - will not the present revival of religion in a short time die away?”
John Wesley
The UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Articles 2, 7, 18, 26/1, 26/3, 28 and 30, state, “All are equal under the law and are entitled to equal protection against discrimination. Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience, and religion. Everyone has the right to education. Education shall be free, at least in the elementary and fundamental stages. Parents have a prior right to choose the kind of education that shall be given to their child.”
