Education is a major issue in America in 2024. What does the Bible say about it? How should Christians think about education? What should we say? What should we do?
By Mark D. Harris, MD, MPH, MBA, MDiv, ThM, PhD, DBA
Radio moderator Hoppy Kercheval asked the candidates what their top priority would be to build West Virginia if each was elected governor. Business owner Chris Miller laid out an economic plan including power and natural resources. Delegate Moore Capito gave a forgettable reply. Attorney General Patrick Morrissey restated his desire to “go to war” with neighboring states to reclaim workers and opportunities. Veteran Mac Warner said “education, education, education.” Mac is a self-described Christian, and I know him to be an upright man, but what did he mean when he emphasized education? What does the Bible say about education?
Educating children is a vital task in every society. Cultures teach their little ones to be constructive members and to preserve, propagate, and improve the culture. Recent controversies in the US pit parents against schoolteachers and administrators, in one case going so far as to suggest that parents are domestic terrorists.[1] Then-gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe said, “I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach,” adding fuel to the fire.[2] Whatever ones’ stance, Christians must ask what the Bible says about education. Only then will we know what to do.
What is Education?
Wikipedia says that “Education is the transmission of knowledge, skills, and character traits and comes in many forms.”[3] Britannica argues that “education (is a) discipline that is concerned with methods of teaching and learning in schools or school-like environments as opposed to various nonformal and informal means of socialization (e.g., rural development projects and education through parent-child relationships).”[4] These definitions are useful but fundamentally miss the point. Education is entirely about discovering God through His Spirit and His Creation.
God’s plan for education is most clearly spelled out in Deuteronomy 6. The focal passage, Deuteronomy 6:4-9 (KJV), reads:
Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord: And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might. And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart: And thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up. And thou shalt bind them for a sign upon thine hand, and they shall be as frontlets between thine eyes. And thou shalt write them upon the posts of thy house, and on thy gates.
Education in the Bible is for the purpose of God’s word entering and growing in the heart of man. A skeptic might ask, “Does this mean that people should only study the Bible and not sciences, music, arts, or other topics?” While Jews might study only Talmud and halacha in a Yeshiva and Muslims might study only the Quran in a Madrassa, Christians are commanded to discover God, all of Him, including His created order. Anatomy and Zoology reveal the Creator in a powerful way which complements the revelation of God in the Bible. True science never opposes true theology, because the Lord created them both.
God’s word includes His command to love God, the only God and great I AM. God is the great Creator and Sustainer of the universe, the Eternal One, and the Savior and Lord. Loving Him includes knowing specific revelation (the Bible) and general revelation (Creation). The study of Truth always leads to the Source of Truth…God Himself. When done with the right heart…
- Studying the Bible is studying God.
- Studying business is studying God.
- Studying engineering is studying God.
- Studying history is studying God.
- Studying medicine is studying God.
- Studying music and the arts is studying God.
- Studying philosophy is studying God.
- Studying science is studying God.
- Studying technology is studying God.
In truth, the purpose of education is the study of the Almighty. All other definitions of and purposes for education fall short. All education reveals God. Even the wickedness and confusion of man, such as was demonstrated by man’s treatment of God Incarnate at the cross, reveals the love and grace of our powerful and wonderful Lord.
Whose Responsibility is Education?
The definition and description of education noted above is controversial enough, especially for those who deny the existence of God. The next question, who is responsible to ensure that education happens, is equally contentious. Many people argue that the government has ultimate control over whether or not a person learns. Such a position may be popular among those who want the government to provide everything for them, from cradle to grave, but it is not consistent with God’s teachings in the Holy Bible.
First, learning is the responsibility of the student.
In Psalm 119:11, the Psalmist writes “I have hidden Your word in my heart.” These eight simple words convey the fundamental truth about learning in the Bible. Each man or woman is ultimately responsible for everything he or she does or fails to do (Ezekiel 18:20-21). Romans 1:20 reminds us that those who reject God’s truth are without excuse. Dozens of texts and examples in the Bible are explicit about personal responsibility, and how this applies to education as well as everything else. The student is accountable for his learning.
In the Garden of Eden, God did not make it hard to disobey Him and eat of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. He did not put the tree in a hard-to-find corner of the Garden, surrounded by thorny bushes and wild animals (or angels). God did not make the fruit ugly, stinking, or hard to reach. Instead, He put the tree in the center of the Garden, easily accessible, beautiful, and tasty (Genesis 2:9, 16, 17). Even more, God let the serpent into the Garden, knowing full well that man would sin, the universe would fall, and suffering and death would become reality. The Sovereign of the Universe did not make it easy to avoid temptation, He made it hard. And yet, the blame for the Fall rests squarely on Adam and Eve. They made their own decision, acted on it, and suffered the awful consequences.
The World, the powers of evil in the universe and those humans who assist them, teaches that we should never “blame the victim”. If a student doesn’t learn, for example, the World says that it is the parent’s fault, the teacher’s fault, or society’s fault. Personal virtue, such as industry or imagination, or personal vice, such as idleness or insolence, play no role. These foolish people argue that race, sex, and economic status determine outcome…that the disadvantaged are not responsible for their poor decisions or acts because they cannot do otherwise.
The Bible tolerates no such foolishness. The soul that sins (in this case, refusing to discover God in His creation), it shall die (Ezekiel 18:20-21).
Second, learning is the responsibility of the parent.
The student must learn and cannot ultimately blame anyone else if he or she does not. But students, especially during the early years, need help. Parents bear secondary responsibility for the education of their children (Deuteronomy 6:1-9). Parents must provide moral education (Proverbs 22:6) and education for farming, a trade, or practical living. For example, students accompanied Elijah and Elisha for years in a de facto apprenticeship program. Jesus was apprenticed to his adoptive father Joseph as a manual laborer (Matthew 13:55, Mark 6:3). Parents must do everything they can to produce mature, skilled, virtuous adults to safeguard and improve society into succeeding generations. Notice that there is no way out for parents. Just as a father in first century Israel could not wholly outsource his son’s education to the local synagogue leader, fathers today cannot wholly outsource their son’s education to teachers and the educational bureaucracy.
The world argues that “parents should have a voice in their kids’ education, but we’ve gone too far.”[5] This statement is as foolish as it is unbiblical. Parents have the children (physically), live with the children, pay for the children, teach the children, and are ultimately responsible for the children. Teachers, no matter how skilled and dedicated, do not. Parents do not have only “a voice.” They determine what their children are and are not exposed to in the formal learning environment. Parents rely on teachers to know what and how to teach, but no school bureaucrat gets to override parental direction. Without teachers, students would have a harder time learning. Without parents, there would be no students.
Third, learning is the responsibility of the teacher.
The breadth and depth of knowledge in the modern world is breathtaking. No person can know it all. Furthermore, the resources required to teach are always in short supply. In addition to classes, schools require chemistry labs, band rooms, workshops, and athletic fields to give their students every opportunity to succeed. Teachers must be skilled in their field, from algebra to zoology, and able to teach. Teachers must also be able to impose discipline in the classroom, communicate with parents, and satisfy their superiors in the educational bureaucracy. Teaching is a challenging and rewarding career which impacts students from classroom to grave. But in the overall learning process, teachers are not as important as students or parents. The Bible, and the experience of every society in human history, say the same.
Fourth, learning is the responsibility of society.
The United States is an organization instituted by its citizens, individual human beings living in a certain geographical area, to provide for their best interest. The first responsibility of every society is to ensure its own near-term survival. For this reason, nations have stable economies, laws, police forces, militaries, and norms. The second responsibility of every society is to ensure its own long-term survival. For this reason, societies encourage people to marry and have children, and to educate those children. Societies that disparage half of their population, that pit men and women against each other, that loathe God-ordained marriage, and that devalue or even abort children, contribute to cultural and national suicide.
How is Education Done?
People learn in every moment of their lives. Most education is informal, with people learning things simply through watching and listening to others. Some education is formal, with paid teachers, classrooms, formal curricula, and the like. Formal education gets the attention of the government and media, but informal education is far more important to daily life. It bears remembering that Jesus used informal education.
Informal Education
The human mind is constantly searching for input from its environment. As a result, education is occurring constantly. Most education is informal, with people observing others and doing things to be like them (or unlike them). When I was a small child, my father mowed the back yard every week. I followed him with my little plastic toy mower row by row as he cut the grass (and I pretended to). When he came in, I came in. I wanted to be just like my dad. Mothers taught their daughters to cook, sew, clean, and tend house while fathers taught their sons to build, farm, and hunt. Grandparents, aunts, and uncles filled in as needed. Cousins and friends formed a peer group which served to teach, to set, and to enforce behavioral standards.
As humanity’s body of knowledge expands, the complexity of life increases. Knowing all one needs to know for success grows harder. As a result, people need strong relationships with other people to navigate the shoals of life. When a child has an attentive mother and father and an involved extended family, that child has more access to learning, resources, and supervision. When that child is in a church, he or she has even more people and resources to help in life. The broader and deeper a person’s social network is, both parents and children, the better off that individual will be. The Deuteronomy passage, and the whole Bible, show what can happen with a supportive community and what can happen without.
Informal education continues throughout life. The brain of a healthy 80-year-old is still hungry for knowledge and information. As older generations pass into eternity, informal education for those remaining comes from peers and younger people. Churches provide a great deal of education to and socialization for the aged in America.
Formal Education
Formal education has been around for millennia and consists of a designated teacher instructing a group of students in a certain topic at a particular place and time. Classrooms, lesson plans, homework, and evaluations (tests, quizzes) are common and often standardized. Students rise through grades year by year to complete a societally approved curriculum. In 1852, Massachusetts became the first US state to make formal education compulsory. Prior to that time, formal education was restricted to the rich.
Early in their lives, children learn voraciously, from talking to walking. As they grow, learning needs become more abstract. Gross motor skills lead to fine motor skills. Colors and shapes become more important. Social skills, interacting with other people, are on the list. Whether due to genetic problems, illness or injury, or parental neglect, children can stop achieving these milestones or even regress.
Reading is critical as it opens the door to all other fields. But reading is very abstract and therefore conceptually difficult. The word A-P-P-L-E refers in English to a red (or yellow or green) fruit, but the symbols A, P, L, and E have no natural relationship with the fruit. Further, the Germans use A-P-F-E-L and the Spanish M-A-N-Z-A-N-A to mean the same thing. Reading requires a person to focus on small immobile symbols arranged in lines and separated by spaces (and punctuation marks), and then evaluate hundreds of sets of symbols to ascertain the meaning on the page. Multiply this by the number of passages to realize that reading is one of the biggest challenges of education. The average American reads at the 7th to 8th grade level and 21% are illiterate.[6]
Online learning has opened doors to formal education previously unavailable to the sick and aged. Costs are still prohibitive. For their part, older people must be willing to teach and learn from younger people. They must believe that they can learn, and that they should learn. God never allows us to stop seeking Him.
Types of Education
The United States, as with many developed economies, has instituted universal public schooling. Paid for with tax dollars, public schools are required for all children and are heavily regulated and bureaucratized. America tries to make its sons and daughters into productive citizens through public schools. And yet by many measures, education in the US has poorer results than education in other developed countries. This suggests that public schools are failing to effectively develop the next generation of Americans.[7] More kids than before are getting educated outside the school system. Homeschooling, cooperative schooling, and charter schooling are attractive alternatives to public schools, especially in poor and minority communities. Charter schooling has proven to be better than public schooling in helping kids learn.[8] Homeschooling is also superior.[9]
Where is Education Going?
The last time that American couples produced enough children to replace themselves, a fertility rate of at least 2.1 children per woman, was 1972.[10] The American population growth since then has been due to decreasing deaths and increased immigration. However, the decrease in death rates ceased in 2008.[11] Furthermore, fertility rates are falling worldwide (with few exceptions) so immigration cannot support the US population more than a few years.
Birth rates impact education. Fewer parents having fewer children means fewer brothers, sisters, cousins, aunts, uncles, and friends. Elementary, middle, and high schools are closing since fewer kids means lower enrollments.[12] Colleges and universities are facing the same demographic bust.[13] Undergraduate enrollment fell from a high of 18.1 million in 2010 to 15.4 million in 2021.[14] Next year, 2025, is expected to bring a huge drop in college enrollment simply due to demographics. Employers will suffer from the baby bust for decades.
Many Christians fear that academia is out to destroy their children’s faith and morality. Insofar as this is true, schools are limited in their ability to influence young people. Schools can only influence children that exist, and parents decide whether a child exists.[15] The non-religious marry less often and have fewer children (2019 Fertility Rate (FR) 1.4) than the religious do (2019 FR 2.1), and so contribute fewer children to schools in the future. COVID caused a baby boom in red (Republican) states and a baby bust in blue (Democratic) states.[16] Students raised in Christian families who have been well trained in a Biblical worldview and remain faithful will have an outsized influence, both through their numbers and through their ideas. Fundamentally, parents and families influence children long before schools get to them, around age 5 for kindergarten. Good parenting, supportive friends and families, and faithful churches will give children the highest possible chance of remaining true to their faith in Christ and succeeding in their earthly future.
When I taught this class, one woman spoke of the need for churches to stand up verbally and politically for Christian education. She is right. However, the best thing that Christians can do for all the woes in society is to think speak, and act as Christians. Trust in and obedience to God will result in godly people, many of whom will be married heterosexual couples with many children, hard work, fruits of the Spirit, strong churches, and a Biblical worldview.
Conclusion
Education, like everything else in life, is about God. Education takes natural, sinful men and helps change them into virtuous adults who do God’s work in their generation. Education is informal and formal, with both being important but the former having the greatest impact. Education proceeds from gross to fine and concrete to abstract. Reading is the key that unlocks the door to future understanding. Every Christian should be literate. Education today is not merely for the young, as God does not allow any of His people to stop growing in Him. Regarding education in America, followers of God have nothing to fear. The realities of life ensure that God’s plan always wins. To be winners, each individual, family, and community must align their thoughts, words, and actions with God’s plan.
References
[1] https://www.edweek.org/policy-politics/school-boards-ask-biden-to-review-threats-and-violence-as-possible-domestic-terrorism/2021/09. Actual letter removed from NSBA website.
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQ0-blMQIk8. Terry McAuliffe says parents should have no say in their child’s education.
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education.
[4] https://www.britannica.com/topic/education.
[5] Parents Should Have a Voice in Their Kids’ Education but We’ve Gone Too Far. https://time.com/6215119/parents-rights-education-gone-too-far/.
[6] https://www.crossrivertherapy.com/research/literacy-statistics.
[7] Though as I argue, the fault is with parents, communities, and the children themselves…not just public schools.
[8] The evidence in favour of charter schools in America has strengthened, https://www.economist.com/leaders/2024/02/01/the-evidence-in-favour-of-charter-schools-in-america-has-strengthened.
[9] 16 Public School vs Homeschool Pros and Cons, https://vittana.org/16-public-school-vs-homeschool-pros-and-cons,
[10] U.S. Fertility Rate 1950-2024, https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-states/fertility-rate.
[11] U.S. Death Rate 1950-2024, https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-states/death-rate.
[12] https://www.edweek.org/leadership/opinion-school-closures-are-coming-what-not-to-do/2022/11.
[13] College enrollment could take a big hit in 2025. Here’s why. https://thehill.com/changing-america/enrichment/education/4398533-college-enrollment-could-take-a-big-hit-in-2025-heres-why/.
[14] College enrollment could take a big hit in 2025. Here’s why. https://thehill.com/changing-america/enrichment/education/4398533-college-enrollment-could-take-a-big-hit-in-2025-heres-why/.
[15] Conservatives also fear that big government or big corporations will take their children. While some are trying, these institutions face the same problem as schools do. Governments and companies can only influence (or oppress) people who exist. Neither governments nor corporations create children, and so the only way they have influence is to steal children away from those who have them…parents. Parents (under God) decide whether to have a child. They take responsibility for the child and raise the child. Only when parents and families fail to do their duties will outsiders have an opening. Children do not create and raise themselves.
[16] The Pandemic Caused a Baby Boom in Red States and a Bust in Blue States, https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-pandemic-caused-a-baby-boom-in-red-states-and-a-bust-in-blue-states/.
