In view of the clear educational advantages to homeschooling, the only reason for such a determined attack on it is the existence of a widespread ideological commitment to use the state and state education to bring down historic Western culture and the Christian faith. Homeschooling, whenever possible, may be one of the last remaining ways to hold back these forces of evil—for the sake of our children, our neighbors, our churches and our nation—and for the glory of God, our good Creator and loving Redeemer.

For a few weeks, during the coronavirus lockdown, we have all been homeschooling, whether we like it or not. Christians peacefully divide over the issue. Nevertheless, the shelter-in-place mandate forces us all to think about our children’s education. In Harvard Magazine’s May-June issue,^[1] Elizabeth Bartholet, a law professor and faculty director of the school’s Child Advocacy Program, expressed great concern that homeschooled children are in a dangerous situation and, moreover, will not be able to contribute to a democratic society since they have not attended schools.

“Do we think that parents should have 24/7, essentially authoritarian control, over their children from ages zero to 18?” Bartholet asked. “I think that’s dangerous. … It’s always dangerous to put powerful people in charge of the powerless and to give the powerful ones total authority.” This civil-rights and family-law expert believes homeschooled children are at high risk of abuse and need protection. Homeschool parents, on the contrary, believe that they are protecting their children from the dangerous ideological and physical abuse that often characterizes a “normal” day in many public schools. A Harvard University honors graduate student, Melba Pearson, who was homeschooled until she went to the Ivy League school, puts it this way: “The idea that a government, already so inefficient and inadequate in so many areas, can care for and educate every child better than its parent is wrong,”^[2] Pearson posits that she was better prepared for Harvard because she was homeschooled, not in spite of it. She also wonders why the government has more right than their parents to educate children. Ronald Reagan humorously warned some time ago that when someone appears at your door and says, “I am from the government and I am here to help you,” you should not accept the offer.

The unusual confidence that Bertholet demonstrates in state education goes back a long way. One early American secular philosopher, John Dewey (1859–1952), broke with the Christian faith of his family and worked to establish a system of education for children based entirely on the atheistic notion that human knowledge is the only true basis of our human existence. As a brilliant intellectual, Dewey became the father of public education in the U.S. by founding the University of Columbia’s Teachers’ College, which became the premier school of education in the country. Its graduates began teaching in many other universities and by the time of his death in 1952, Dewey was widely acknowledged as the most influential American educator in the nation.^[3]

What inspired Dewey’s educational theory? He believed that “morals were essentially social and pragmatic and that any attempt to subordinate education to transcendent values or dogmas ought to be resisted.”¹ He discovered such a system on his visit to Moscow in 1928 (just ten years after the entire family of the Romanov Czar had been brutally murdered, children included). Inspired by the Russian Marxists, he wrote glowing reports about the successes of Soviet communism in the “New Republic” magazine.^[4] The influence of Marxism was not limited to Dewey’s written work. In 1934, with Rockefeller money, Dewey played a key role in helping the Frankfurt School’s operatives (German Jewish Marxist intellectuals who were escaping from Hitler—including Max Horkheimer, Theodor W. Adorno, Jürgen Habermas, Erich Fromm and Hebert Marcuse) to put down their roots at his newly founded Columbia University’s Teachers’ College.

Ideas do indeed have consequences. In 1923,^[5] five years before Dewey’s Moscow visit, a group of intellectuals met with Soviet leaders and came to the conclusion that in order to take over the West, a more gradual “cultural revolution,” was needed. That revolution eventually came to be known as “cultural Marxism.” The softer version would advance not by violent revolution but by the destruction of traditional religion (especially Christianity and its effects on the culture), by the collapse of sexual morality and by the deliberate undermining of the family. These themes—the destruction of biblical theism and sexual morals—are clearly delineated in the influential work by Herbert Marcuse, Eros and Civilization. Marcuse exercised enormous influence on students in the 60s and 70s. Who could deny that this is taking place in the West right now?

This movement laid the foundation that inspires the confidence that intellectuals like Bertholet have in public education and in its necessity for today’s world, without which no “progressive” change can occur. The universities, the mainstream media, and Hollywood (in league with the cultural Marxists of a previous generation) now understand that the family and biblical sexual purity must be undermined if the godless ideology of Marxist collectivism is to permeate the West. The performance of the mainstream media is in lockstep with this powerful movement. It seems unprecedented that for three entire years, mainstream media sources have systematically refused to say one positive word about the President of the United States, whether about his person or his policies. It seems that behind the constant personal attacks runs a deep ideological commitment to undermine traditional cultural values, so much for journalistic neutrality.

This commitment is especially evident in the domain of public education. Linda Harvey, who has specialized in following the invasion into schools of the LGBT ideology, recently stated:

When your child sits in a sex education class in middle or high school, sometimes the content is beyond jaw-dropping. It’s XXX-rated, with radical instructors teaching your son or daughter how to switch genders, engage safely in anal or oral sex with boys or girls, or get an abortion. They are taught the biology of “pleasure” and how to give affirmative consent to sex, even if they are underage. This is “comprehensive sex education (CSE).^[6]

In the same vein, in 2019, the Blackshear Elementary School in Austin, Texas, invited a drag queen, David Lee Richardson (aka “Miss Kitty Litter,” a convicted male prostitute), to read books promoting homosexuality to the children in their school library. Those books were written by the school librarian, Roger Grape, a known performing “leather” homosexual.^[7] It is impossible to imagine how such debauchery as this kind of “children’s education” could ever be part of our children’s education or how such events as the Drag Queen Story Hour could be held, promoted and celebrated all over the country. How can Professor Bertholet state with a straight face that homeschooled children are at higher risks of abuse in their own homes than these tender and vulnerable children are in their school libraries? Bertholet says: “I think an overwhelming majority of legislators and American people, if they looked at the situation, would conclude that something ought to be done.”^[8] She’s not talking about ousting the library events, but, rather, about homeschooling!

These ideas are irrational, especially coming from a Harvard professor, for we know that Harvard’s success began when a determined group of Massachusetts Bay Colony Puritans founded the school, convinced of the need to train clergy for the new commonwealth—a “church in the wilderness.” Confident in the “Veritas” of biblical truth, the colonists declared with deep faith:

After God had carried us safe to New England and wee had builded our houses, provided necessaries for our livelihood, rear’d convenient places for God’s worship, and settled the civil government: One of the next things we longed for and looked after was to advance learning and perpetuate it to posterity; dreading to leave an illiterate ministry to the churches, when our present ministers shall lie in the dust.^[9]

They go on: “It pleased God to stir up the heart of one Mr. Harvard (a godly gentleman and a lover of learning; then living amongst us) to give one-half of his estate, it being in all about £1,700—[this went well beyond tithing!] towards the erecting of a Colledge, and all his library.”^[10]

It is not widely known that Harvard was also founded as a school to educate American Indians, in order to train them as Christian missionaries among their own tribes. Harvard’s Charter of 1650 called for “the education of the English and Indian youth of this Country in knowledge and godliness.”^[11] Indeed, Harvard was intricately connected with missionary work to the local tribes. The first Bible to be printed in the entire North American continent was printed at Harvard, not in English, but in the Algonquin Indian language, which did not even have an alphabet or any idea of reading before John Eliot became passionate to share the Christian gospel with the Indians in Massachusetts. The Eliot Bible, facilitated conversion of the Indians, ideally by Harvard-educated Indians themselves.^[12] [I must state that my wife is a tenth generation direct descendant of John Eliot].

It should not be lost from view that under the cover of contemporary educational theory, the conflict today over homeschooling continues to pit the still lively, Puritan, Twoist faith of biblical orthodoxy against the Oneist faith of ancient Creator-denying paganism, now aided and abetted by atheistic neo-Marxism. As public education becomes increasingly opposed to the principles of America’s founding, both in the domains of politics and theology, it follows that for serious parents homeschooling may well present an increasingly attractive option. Home education can not only defend the truth but also promote the intellectual and spiritual health of children.

Many studies have demonstrated that home-educated students, on average, perform far better than their government-schooled peers on every metric. Homeschool children have a well-established history of success. They typically outperform their institutional public school peers academically, and actually excel in social development, defying the myth that social development can only occur in the setting of a school. The statistical outcomes are quite positive for the homeschooled, compared to those in conventional schools.^[13]

Public schools are also dangerous. According to government statistics, “During the 2017–18 school year, an estimated 962,300 violent incidents and 476,100 nonviolent incidents occurred in U.S. public schools nationwide. Seventy-one percent of schools reported having at least one violent incident, and sixty-five percent reported having at least one nonviolent incident.”^[14]

In view of the clear educational advantages to homeschooling, the only reason for such a determined attack on it is the existence of a widespread ideological commitment to use the state and state education to bring down historic Western culture and the Christian faith. Homeschooling, whenever possible, may be one of the last remaining ways to hold back these forces of evil—for the sake of our children, our neighbors, our churches and our nation—and for the glory of God, our good Creator and loving Redeemer.

Scripture is clear:

You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates. (Deut. 6:5–9 ESV)

^[1] Erin O’Donnell, “The Risks of Homeschooling,” Harvard Magazine (May-June 2020).

See also https://www.foxnews.com/us/harvard-homeschool-article-dangerous-parents-risk

^[2]https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwiW0eTVjozpAhUMKawKHfsBCb8QFjAAegQIAhAB&url=https%3A%2F%2Fmedium.com%2F%40melbapearson&usg=AOvVaw1Zuy4dR0m1avIaBE0iG_hL

^[3] https://www.biography.com/scholar/john-dewey

^[4] https://newrepublic.com/article/104706/impressions-soviet-russia

^[5] Alex Newman, “Frankfurt School Weaponized US Education Against Civilization,” The Epoch Times (March 10, 2020).

^[6] Linda Harvey, “Let’s Go Back to Better, Not ‘Normal’,” Mission America (April 2020).

^[7] https://www.massresistance.org/docs/gen4/20b/Austin-TX-Blackshear-library/index.html

^[8] Erin O’Donnell, “The Risks of Homeschooling.”

^[9] thttps://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Harvard_University

^[10] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Harvard_(clergyman).

^[11] https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Harvard_University

^[12] https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Harvard_University

^[13] https://www.nheri.org/pros-and-cons-of-homeschooling-for-students-disrupted-by-covid-19-coronavirus/

^[14] https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/harvard-law-prof-calls-for-ban-on-homeschooling-saying-its-dangerous-to-leave-children-with-their-parents-24-7/ according to government statistics.

Dr. Peter Jones is scholar in residence at Westminster Seminary California and associate pastor at New Life Presbyterian Church in Escondido, Calif. He is director of truthXchange, a communications center aimed at equipping the Christian community to recognize and effectively respond to the rise of paganism. This article is used with permission.