As the present, accelerating shake up in education occurs, our culture and each of our families have a real opportunity. We can rethink what responsibility we have concerning preparing our children for their future. Few get to think about these things—we are blessed. Presently, there is a lot of tension and uncertainty about this. This multifaceted problem should give us pause, but in once sense they are inevitable. Our educational system (or the part of it run by the government) has become economically unsustainable—like many other parts of government. Our public schools—like many other parts of our national life—have been philosophically unsustainable for a long time. We desire children to have a strong moral foundation. We expect them to work hard. We want them to love one another. Yet, we have eroded constantly the faith that underlies all of these things. Now, we do so officially. We want the car to run after we drain the gasoline from the tank.

We must not, however, in these trying times lose the opportunity nationally (or at least locally) to consider what an education is and whose responsibility it is. Without an firm and sound answer to this question we can never know if we are doing what we should for our children. Here are a few things that we need to remember:

1. Education (in a special way) is unavoidably religious. Training children about life cannot be rightly done and cannot be done well without some deep and abiding religious commitments. At the beginning of the public schools in America (in 18^th century New England), this was explicit. The first actual law requiring public schools was called the “Old Deluder Satan Law” (http://www.constitution.org/primarysources/deluder.html). The public schools were to disseminate learning (particularly scriptural truth and Bible reading). At the beginning of the consolidation of the public schools in America (back in the 1950s) the Christian (actually Protestant) Worldview was evident but muted. The Catholics knew this from the beginning and wisely opted out to form their own system. Now, we claim that our education is secular—not hateful to Christianity but neutral concerning it. This, however, is a fiction. The education our culture gives is built on a worldview that maintains (wrongly) that you can be an educated person and an excellent citizen and a moral person without reference to God. Secular education is not neutral concerning God instead it claims that God is a neutral—it does not matter if He is or is not. We must confront and reject this lie.
2. Education is a commodity or service that should be governed by market forces. Today, some seem to say that education is too holy, too important to subject it to market forces. It is true that education is one of the holiest tasks of parents and it is true that education is important. The market (where students and parents can leave failing institutions and move to other schools) brings a level of accountability that the present system not only lack but seems created to avoid. Right now, public schools are furloughing teachers to close budget gaps. They are not furloughing the worst teachers. They are cutting the teachers with the least seniority. The market rewards talent and punishes slough. Education should be responsible enough to live in that reality.
3. Education is the responsibility of parents—not the state. Our system takes education as a responsibility away from the parents and puts it under control of the government (at various levels). It does so because some parents do a terrible job of raising their children. The present system makes the path of least resistance one where money is taken from everyone to provide schooling for the children of a community. The state or the churches (why can’t it be “and”) are always going to need to be on the lookout for ways to help the poor afford a good education for their children. The present system discourages when it should encourage parental investment. Parents should be pushed toward their children and the present system pulls parent and child apart—because parents bear only a small part of the funding and parents have little say in the curriculum and no say in the worldview.

Our culture would do well to think through these truths as it rethinks education.