When I started writing Is Public Education Necessary in 1976, I wanted to find out why this country, born in freedom, adopted government-owned and operated education so early in its history. The whole idea of government-controlled education seemed to contradict everything about the origins of this country and the adherence of our founding fathers to a philosophy of freedom. What's more, our federal constitution makes no mention of education and has left the entire matter up to the citizens and the states. Indeed, if you stop and think of it, it becomes more and more obvious that if anything at all should be in private hands, it is the education of the young. It is hard to think of an enterprise or service less suited to government ownership or control than the education of children. In the first place, parental rights, preferences, and responsibilities take precedence over government interests in the raising and educating of children. And secondly, education is so deeply involved with moral values derived from religion that it is inevitable that government involvement in education would lead to unending conflict and confrontation with both parents and religion. And we have not even addressed the problems of cost and efficiency, which argue strongly against any government enterprise. Thank you. Besides, what does the government know about children? What does it know about the art of teaching? What does it know about God or morality? What does it know about love, caring, and the nourishment of the intellect and the soul? The establishment histories of public education give the impression that public education was created to guarantee literacy for all, particularly the poor, and to maintain our great democratic society. Yet my research into the origins of public education revealed an entirely different story. For example, literacy was very high in America from the time of the earliest settlements in New England and Virginia right up to the establishment of the public schools in the 1840s and 50s. The early colonists, in their vast majority, were devout Christians who built their new society on the solid foundation of the Bible. Knowledge of the Bible required high literacy, and that is why the early colonists stressed education. In the Massachusetts Bay Colony, Harvard College was founded by Calvinists in 1636, only six years after the first settlement at Boston. The purpose of the college was to train up a learned clergy, and that meant teaching Latin, Greek, and Hebrew in the wilderness to ensure the development of a society based on the highest spiritual attainment that man was capable of. But it should be remembered that the Puritan leaders were outstanding men of learning with a sophisticated knowledge of history, politics, and religion, and that their congregations were made up of men and women of deep religious faith. They were determined to create a Bible commonwealth in which men could live in complete obedience to God's word, away from the corrupting influences of the old world. In a way, the Puritans as a movement can be compared with today's homeschoolers, who are for the most also men and women of deep religious faith, with a mission to impart knowledge and wisdom and biblical principles to their children. I'm sure that if Christian homeschoolers today migrated en masse to some wilderness where they could create a society of their own, the educational facilities of that society would soon outshine that of the culture they left behind. Why? Because the homeschoolers, like the Puritans, would build their education on the foundation of truth, while the public education of contemporary America is based on falsehood. In the Massachusetts Bay Colony, education was considered a parental responsibility. In fact, the very first education law in the New World, enacted by the colonists in 1642, required parents to exercise that responsibility. It read, quote, for as much as the good education of children is of singular behoof and benefit to any commonwealth, and whereas many parents and masters are too indulgent and negligent of their duty in this kind, it is therefore ordered by this court and the authorities thereof that the selectmen of every town shall have a vigilant eye over their brethren and neighbors, to see first that none of them shall suffer so much barbarism in any of their families, as not to endeavor to teach, by themselves or others, their children and apprentices, as much learning as may enable them perfectly to read the English tongue and knowledge of the capital laws, upon penalty of twenty shillings for each neglect therein. Also, that all masters of families do, once a week at least, catechize their children and servants in the grounds and principles of religion." Thus, homeschooling was not only encouraged, it was required, unless you wanted to hire a tutor. The curriculum consisted of learning to read and the tenets of religion. Undoubtedly, in those days, most families normally provided their children with home instruction. The law was obviously enacted to make sure that some parents did not neglect that important duty. In 1647, five years later, a second law was enacted to promote education even further. That law reads, quote, It being one chief project of that old deluder Satan, to keep man from the knowledge of the scriptures, as in former times keeping them in an unknown tongue, so in these latter times by persuading from the use of tongues so that at least the true sense and meaning of the original might be clouded and corrupted with false glosses of deceivers, and to the end that learning may not be buried in the grave of our forefathers in church and commonwealth, the Lord assisting our endeavors, it is therefore ordered by this court and authority thereof that every township within this jurisdiction, after the Lord hath increased them to the number of fifty householders, shall then forthwith appoint one within their town to teach all such children as shall resort to him, to write and read, whose wages shall be paid either by the parent, or masters of such children, or by the inhabitants in general, by way of supply, as the major part of those who order the prudentials of the town shall appoint, provided that those who send their children be not oppressed by paying much more than they can have them sought for in other towns. And it is further ordered that where any town shall increase to the number of 100 families or householders, they shall set up a grammar school, the masters thereof being able to instruct you so far as they may be fitted for the university. And if any other town neglects the performance hereof above one year, then every such town shall pay five pounds per annum to the next such school till they shall perform this order," unquote. Again, it was the parents who were required to carry out their educational responsibilities. The law did not require parents to deliver their children to the government or the state. It required in towns consisting of over 50 householders that parents hire someone to teach their children. In no way did it preclude homeschooling. It required the inhabitants of the larger towns to create a grammar school for college preparation. Since Harvard had been founded in 1636, the leaders of the community decided that college preparatory schools were necessary to prepare promising youth for careers as clergymen and judges. Thus, a knowledge of Latin, Greek, and Hebrew were considered indispensable if one were to know the true sense and meaning of God's word and not to be deluded by Satan. Today in our secular textbooks, the Puritans are caricatured as naively superstitious, wearing their quaint, simple clothes, and believing in such mythological creatures as witches and demons. But the truth is that the Calvinist worldview of the Puritans provided them with a superior understanding of reality which enabled them to establish and sustain a flourishing and growing civilization on a new continent, a moral and cultivated society which then attracted thousands and thousands of new settlers. Historians have called Puritan New England a theocracy. To the extent that God's law ruled the Commonwealth, it was indeed a theocracy. True, only church members could vote or be elected to public office, but the church itself was democratic in form. Each congregational church elected its own minister, and there was no religious hierarchy. As Cotton Mather put it in one of his sermons, quote, let all mankind know that we came into the wilderness because we would worship God without that episcopacy, that common prayer, and those unwarrantable ceremonies with which the land of our forefathers' sepulchres has been defiled. We came because we would have our posterity settled under the pure dispensations of the gospel, defended by rulers that should be of ourselves." It was in the framework of a basic Calvinist worldview that the American colonies grew. The development of trade, the influx of other religious sects and denominations, the increased economic prosperity, the emergence of religious liberalism, and the pressures of the British crown and Anglican episcopacy to dominate the colonies wrought major changes. But the essentials of Calvinist belief dominated colonial society. The Great Awakening, that intense evangelical revival that swept the American colonies in the 1730s and 40s, was not only an affirmation of that basic, uncluttered simplicity of man's relationship with God, but also a strong reaction against the growing liberalism of the clerical elite. The Awakening also enhanced the idea of individual freedom as a prerequisite for a religious life, an idea that helped fuel the American Revolution. Charles Lippi writes, quote, because the individual sinner became the center of religious experience, and because all persons as sinners held equal status before God, the importance of the individual in the structure of both religion and society was enhanced, unquote. After the Revolution, the shift from common schools to private schools and academies did not signify a change in Christian consciousness. All schools were Christian schools in those days for the simple reason that Americans still had a strong Christian consciousness and lived and worked within a Christian framework. The change from common school to private school represented a change in political form brought about by the Industrial Revolution, an expansion of knowledge, and a response of private initiative to new educational needs. Schools became places where not only basic skills and morals were taught, but also the many new professions and vocations. A learned clergy was still needed to provide spiritual leadership, and the glorification of God was still the purpose of life. But the economic possibilities of life, the opportunities to gain wealth, had expanded enormously. and the private school responded well to the changing needs of the new industrial era. It was in the 1830s, 40s, and 50s that the dominant Christian consciousness began to give way to an emerging secular worldview. What caused this change to take place? It began with the emergence of the Unitarian heresy in New England among the liberal clergy, the Harvard elite, and the affluent merchant class. The crucial event that signaled the arrival of the new worldview was the takeover in 1805 of Harvard University by the Unitarians and the expulsion of the Calvinists. That takeover not only made Harvard the citadel of religious and moral liberalism, but also the citadel of anti-Calvinism. It also set the stage for the philosophical conflict between the Christian and secular worldviews that still rages in America today. The issues at stake were fundamental. the nature of God, and the nature of man. The Unitarians rejected Calvin's doctrines of innate depravity, predestination, election, and reprobation as repugnant and unjust. They rejected the Trinity as an enormous tax on human credulity, and by doing so, also rejected the divinity of Christ and the means of salvation provided by his sacrifice on the cross. They were also repelled by the idea of a sovereign, omnipotent God who permitted evil and suffering to exist, and who saved some human beings and rejected others. As Unitarian leader William Channing put it in 1819, To give our views of God in one word, we believe in his parental character. Now we object to the systems of religion which prevail among us, that they are adverse in a greater or less degree to these purifying, comforting, and honorable views of God, that they take from us our Father in heaven, and substitute for him a being whom we cannot love if we would, and whom we ought not to love if we could. We cannot bow before a being, however great and powerful, who governs tyrannically." In other words, the Unitarians made their worship of God conditional on His being what they wanted Him to be. It was a not-so-subtle shift from the objective to the subjective, a warning that if God was not what they thought He ought to be, they'd create a God who was. When man creates God, he reverses the divine process and ends up worshipping himself. The Calvinists drew their knowledge of God from the Bible. Their desire was to know God as he is, not as we mortals would like him to be. The Bible has established the objective reality of God in a way that cannot be disputed. By denying that truth, the Unitarians embarked on a course of error that has led this nation into the moral anarchy and spiritual bankruptcy we have today. As for the nature of man, the Unitarians decided that man was not only not innately depraved, but that he was basically good and rational. Indeed, he was even perfectible. But how is that perfectibility to be attained? And how is one to explain man's evil behavior? The Unitarians believe that evil was caused by ignorance, poverty, social injustice, and other environmental and social factors. Education, the Unitarians decided, is the only way to solve the problem of evil. Education would eliminate ignorance, which would eliminate poverty, which would eliminate social injustice, which would eliminate crime. They believe that moral progress is as attainable as material progress once the principles of improvement are discovered. In this scheme of things, there was no place for a triune God or a divine Christ through whom salvation was attainable. It was therefore only natural that the Unitarians would shift their practice of religion from the worship and glorification of a harmless, benevolent, fatherly God of limited powers to the creation of earthly institutions to improve the character of man. The one institution that the Unitarians decided could be used to carry out this formidable task was the public school. Why only public schools and not private or charity because private schools were run and controlled by individuals and denominations that might have an entirely different view concerning the nature of man. Besides, private owners were forced by economic reality to concentrate on teaching skills rather than forming characters. As for the denominational schools, they were too sectarian, and the charity schools were usually run by Calvinists. Only government schools could become that secular instrument of salvation. Unitarianism has evolved into the humanism that now dominates American public education. But there were other influences that helped change America's Christian consciousness to a secular one. The two most powerful were Owenite socialism and Hegelianism. Owenism was founded by Robert Owen, who was born in England in 1771, and is today considered the father of modern socialism. Owen, who became a wealthy self-made textile manufacturer, explained how he rejected religion and became a socialist in this way, quote, It was with the greatest reluctance, and after long contests in my mind, that I was compelled to abandon my first and deep-rooted impressions in favor of Christianity. But being obliged to give up my faith in this sect, I was at the same time compelled to reject all others for I had discovered that all had been based on the same absurd imagination, that each one formed his own qualities, determined his own thoughts, will, and action, and was responsible for them to God and his fellow men. My own reflections compelled me to come to very different conclusions. My reason taught me that I could not have made one of my own qualities, that they were forced upon me by nature, that my language, religion, and habits were forced upon me by society, that nature gave the qualities and society directed them. Thus was I forced, through seeing the error of their foundation, to abandon all belief in every religion which had been taught to man. But my religious feelings were immediately replaced by the spirit of universal charity, not for a sect, or a party, or for a country, or a color, but for the human race, and with a real and ardent desire to do them good." Suppose he was the original do-gooder. By 1813, Owen was ready to embark on a messianic mission to change the world by getting rid of the two obstacles to mankind's happiness, religion and private property. Since he believed that all men were the products of their culture, he decided that education was the only means by which men could attain that happy, utopian state on earth. Children are, Owen wrote, without exception, passive and wonderfully contrived compounds, which, by an accurate previous and subsequent attention, founded on a correct knowledge of the subject, may be formed collectively to have any human character. And although these compounds, like all other works of nature, possess endless varieties, yet they partake of that plastic quality which, by perseverance under judicious management, may be ultimately molded into the very image of rational wishes and desires." Note the similarities and differences between Owen's views and those of today's behaviorists. Owen believed that children were passive compounds that could be molded like clay. The behaviorists use operant conditioning to produce the desired behavior. Owen believed in molding character. The behaviorists believe in controlling behavior. To Owen, children were clay. To the behaviorists, children are animals. Owen lived at a time when men still believed in the perfectibility of character. Today's behaviorists are much less sanguine. They believe that man's basic character cannot be changed and that scientific control of behavior is the answer. Owen's views about education were welcomed by the Unitarians, for Owen had also advocated the creation of a national education system to mold the character of an entire nation. He wrote in 1813, quote, it follows that every state to be well governed or to direct its chief attention to the formation of character, and that the best governed state will be that which shall possess the best national system of education. Under the guidance of minds competent to its direction, a national system of education and training and education may be formed. to become the most safe, easy, effectual, and economical instrument of government that can be devised. And it may be made to possess a power equal to the accomplishment of the most grand and beneficial purposes." In 1825, Robert Owen came to America to establish his communist colony at New Harmony, Indiana. It was called an experiment in social reform through cooperation and rational education. But in less than two years, it failed. The problem Owen decided was that people raised and educated under the old system were incapable of adapting themselves to the communist way of life, no matter how much they professed to believe in it. Therefore, the Owenites decided that rational education would have to precede the creation of a socialist society. And they subsequently launched a strong campaign to promote a national system of secular education. Thus, by 1829, the Unitarians were joined by the Owenites in the new growing movement for secular public education. A third important factor in the growth of the public school movement was the philosophy of Hegelianism, developed by George Friedrich Hegel, the German philosopher, during the early part of the 19th century. Hegel denied the existence of an objectively real God, who existed apart from the universe he created. capable of forming a covenant with human beings. Hegel considered Jehovah to be a mythological figure, and Christ to have been a human being. Hegel's view was that God is everything that exists, all-inclusive, and that everything in the universe is in one way or another a manifestation of God. This concept is known as pantheism. Hegel said that the universe is nothing more than God's mind or spirit or energy in the process of achieving its own perfection or self-realization. Hegel saw history as an evolutionary process of dialectical idealism heading toward perfection. To Hegel, man's mind is a microcosm of the divine mind, the highest manifestation of God in the universe. Man is divinity becoming aware of itself, and therefore man's institutions were the manifestation of divinity itself. Hegel considered the state to be God on earth because it embodied man's collective power and will. The consequence of such belief is that the state becomes the ultimate source of all law. Since there is no objectively real God, and no such thing as God's law. In the pantheistic Hegelian state, man's law becomes the equivalent of God's law, and all religion becomes subsumed under state law. From 1850 to about 1890, Hegelian ideas dominated America's top public educators. They believed that the purpose of life was not the glorification of God, but the glorification of man and his state. These were the men who molded public education until it was ready to be taken over by the progressives at the turn of the century. The progressives were a new breed of educator who rejected Christianity and put their faith in science, evolution, and psychology. Science provided the means of understanding the universe. Evolution explained our animal origins. And psychology suggested a new scientific means of controlling human behavior. It was a very important shift from knowledge of God to knowledge of man, from theology to psychology. The progressives were also socialists. Why? Because to them, socialism offered the only acceptable means of dealing with human evil. They were convinced that evil was caused by social injustice, which was in turn caused by our horrible economic and social system. Capitalism, private property, individualism, the Judeo-Christian religious system. The progressives became obsessed with a messianic mission to change America from a free enterprise, individualistic, believing nation into a socialist, collectivist, atheist nation. They knew that Americans were not about to overthrow their way of life for socialism. So they decided that the best way to change America would be through the evolutionary process of education. But to do so, they realized that a new curriculum would be needed for the schools. So John Dewey got to work in his laboratory school at the University of Chicago, and after two years, came up with a new curriculum. He explained it all in his little book, School and Society, which was published around the turn of the century. Dewey said that what we had to do was de-emphasize and play down the academic and literacy skills and put the emphasis on the social skills, that is, in social studies, activities, values, and behavior. In this way, children amenable to socialism would be produced. As far as the progressives were concerned, the schools would have to reflect the new atheistic purpose of life, the denial of God and the Bible, and the sacrifice of man on the altar of collectivism. Now why did the progressives want to downgrade literary skills? Because to John Dewey and his colleagues, high literacy was considered an obstacle to socialism. Why? Because high literacy produced individuals with independent intelligence who could stand on their own feet and think for themselves. But a socialist society is composed of an elite at the top, and the masses below them. The elite does the thinking for everyone else. Thus a socialist society cannot tolerate a population of individualists who can think for themselves and might oppose the elite. And so it was decided to dumb down America in order to create a more docile, manipulable population. Now, how were the educators to do this? How were they going to give American parents the impression that the children were being educated while at the same time dumbing them down? Well, these men were America's top educators and the world's top psychologists. They put their heads together and came up with an ingenious solution. simply change the way American children are taught to read. Throw out the alphabetic phonics method, which is the proper way to teach children to read an alphabetic writing system, and put in a new method, a whole word look-say or sight method that teaches children to read English as if it were Chinese, an ideographic writing system. And incidentally, there you see the difference. The alphabetic system is a very precise system. It gives us a precise reproduction of the spoken word, while the ideographic system is very imprecise. There's a lot of guessing involved. And children, in fact, are encouraged to not only guess words, but to sort of edit as they go along. so that they really edit what the writer has written. To them, what the writer has written is less important than what they think the writer has written. And this is exactly what the progressives did. The change was made on a wide scale in the early 1930s. The results have been dramatic and devastating. American literacy today is on a par with many undeveloped countries. The dumbing down process has been successfully carried out, and there is no indication that the process can be reversed in the public schools. And that is why parents are now removing their children from the public schools and placing them in private schools, church schools, and homeschools. There is also another reason why Americans abandoned Christian schools in favor of secular public schools. Back in the 1830s, 40s, and 50s, there arose a great fear among American Protestants that massive Catholic immigration would change the Protestant character of American society. And so many conservative Protestants joined the Unitarian Socialists and Hegelians in promoting a government school system which could be used to promote Protestant objectives. The Catholics, of course, caught on to this plan and finally decided to create a parochial school system of their own. There were many conservative Protestants who realized that they were taking a great risk in putting their children in secular schools. The risk that the religious faith of their children might be undermined. But they felt that the risk was worth taking. Indeed, they said as much in a report they made to the Policymaking General Association of Massachusetts in 1849, the leading Protestant body in New England. They wrote, quote, The benefits of this system, that is the public school system, in offering instruction to all are so many and so great that its religious deficiencies, especially since they can be otherwise supplied, that is through Sunday school and church, do not seem to be a sufficient reason for abandoning it and adopting in place of it a system of denominational parochial schools. It is, however, a great evil to withdraw from the established system of common school the interest and influence of the religious part of the community. On the whole, it seems to be the wisest course, at least for the present, to do all in our power to perfect, as far as it can be done, not only its intellectual, but also its moral and religious character. However, they added this proviso. If after a full and faithful experiment, it should at last be seen that fidelity to the religious interests of our children forbids a further patronage of the system, we can unite with the evangelical Christians in the establishment of private schools in which more full doctrinal religious instruction may be possible. Unquote. I believe that we can say without contradiction that the public schools have been given a full and faithful test. One lasting over a hundred years. And that they have failed. The movement of Christians out of the government schools is an eloquent testimony to that failure. It is obvious that America abandoned Christian schools in favor of government secular schools because it no longer believed in the efficacy of salvation through Christ and accepted salvation through education. The public school replaced Christ as the instrument of salvation. But the public school has, in fact, become the instrument of satanic destruction. There is no better way to describe it. That old deluder Satan, who could not delude our Puritan founding fathers, has managed to delude most of their sinful descendants. The choice for Christians today is quite clear. They cannot put their children in satanic schools if they wish to preserve the values, the unalienable rights derived from God on which this nation's origin is based and on which its future survival depends. America abandoned its early Christian schools for the wrong reasons. It must now get back to them for the right reasons. The purpose of life is still the glorification of God. That is the knowledge we should be imparting to our children at home or in school. And that is the only way we shall be able to preserve the priceless heritage our founding fathers bequeathed us. Thank you very much.