Dale Partridge - January 02, 2020


Real Christianity #78： Why Christians Should Leave the Public School System


Episode Stats


Length

23 minutes

Words per minute

149.721

Word count

3,488

Sentence count

210

Harmful content

Toxicity

4

sentences flagged

Hate speech

9

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

In this episode, we discuss the biblical perspective on homeschooling vs. the public school system. What does God have to say about the matter? Is it better to homeschool or go to public school?

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 Welcome to Real Christianity. Today we are talking about the biblical perspective on homeschooling
00:00:07.140 and the public school system. Guys, this is an important conversation and you would think that
00:00:12.380 Veronica would be here with me today, but she's not. We've had a couple hiccups on some scheduling
00:00:17.360 stuff and that's okay because you know what? I'm actually the one that really initiated the
00:00:23.180 homeschooling direction for our family. She is all on board on that. But I really do think that
00:00:31.120 it's the dad's responsibility to direct and lead the family in terms of the education direction.
00:00:39.500 And so men, pay attention. This isn't a woman's episode. This is both a men and woman's episode. 0.95
00:00:45.460 And if you're not married or you don't have kids, still, I think this episode is going to be
00:00:50.200 fruitful for you today. Veronica will be joining us for the next several episodes
00:00:54.960 as we get kind of closer to closing off the year here. But today is an audio-only episode,
00:01:01.720 so if you're a YouTube listener, sorry about that. You guys can still listen to it on audio
00:01:06.840 on YouTube. But let's just dive in for a second here. If it's your first time listening to the
00:01:12.260 show, welcome. If you're a regular listener to the Real Christianity podcast, we'd ask that you would
00:01:16.940 leave us a review. If you haven't done it yet, I mean, we have, let's just like the last time I
00:01:22.980 checked, we have about 50,000 monthly listeners and we have about 4,000 reviews. So there's a
00:01:30.640 huge chunk, about 90% of you that haven't left a review yet. And if you're interested, it would be
00:01:37.960 really helpful. It really does help the exposure of the show. Right now, we are somewhere between
00:01:44.340 number 40 and number 60, top religious and spiritual podcasts in the world. And that's a
00:01:51.060 big deal because, you know, this isn't just Christian. This is all religions. And there's
00:01:57.360 actually, I believe, several hundred thousand episodes or shows in that category. And I could
00:02:05.360 have that wrong. There might be several hundred thousand episodes. I think that's right. But
00:02:08.880 there's I think 50,000 shows in that category. And so to be in the top 100 is a huge deal because
00:02:16.700 it brings exposure to God's truth. When people start searching for Christianity, they find our
00:02:22.360 episode because of the amount of reviews we have. So thank you guys so much for those that have left
00:02:26.260 reviews. I read all of them and they're so encouraging. So thank you for that. Another
00:02:32.000 thing I wanted to mention, you guys, last week's episode that Veronica and I did on the questions
00:02:36.940 about marital sex issues, I hope that that was edifying for you. And I hope that you are also
00:02:42.720 considering our ultimate marriage program, our six-week program. We get so many incredible
00:02:49.940 testimonials. It is a biblical marriage program over six weeks. It's $199. It's not that much
00:02:57.340 money. It helps people have a biblical understanding of marriage, roles, sex, kids,
00:03:05.240 money, purpose. I mean, it is just a great program. We put a lot of effort into it and we'd appreciate
00:03:12.780 that if you guys could support our ministry by enrolling in that program. So if it's something
00:03:17.520 that you need and you're also looking a way to support our ministry, Ultimate Marriage is a
00:03:21.800 companion ministry of relearnchurch.org. Okay, today I'm going to unpack, I should say attempt
00:03:29.600 to unpack the biblical position for the homeschool versus public school debate. And as most of you
00:03:36.860 guys know, we do homeschool our children. Aria is in a Christian homeschool co-op called Classical
00:03:44.240 Conversations. And basically, Veronica follows a curriculum at home that's built on the classical
00:03:49.420 education model, which is built on the trivium. If you want to look it up, go for it. But we're
00:03:54.760 big proponents of the classical education model. And then the kids and her meet up with all the
00:04:00.860 other kids and the other moms once per week in town to learn the following week's lesson. And so
00:04:09.220 I think it's cool because it gives Aria the sense of a classroom because they do like a one day in
00:04:14.860 the classroom with each other and they get to celebrate, you know, holidays and have friends
00:04:19.640 from school and you know all at the same time while mom still is the teacher and actually the
00:04:25.680 the person that's teaching the class is actually called a tutor and they're tutoring the mom and
00:04:31.160 the kids get to share their projects and they get to give speeches in front of the class and
00:04:34.960 it's really awesome so we really appreciate classical conversations you probably have one
00:04:41.360 in your area if you're looking for that it's kind of like you get to homeschool without being alone
00:04:47.800 and so I really appreciate their model. Now, there's two important things to know before we
00:04:51.980 get started. First, I was raised in the public school for my entire education, so I'm preaching
00:04:56.640 today from conviction, not from loyalty or personal experience to the public school system
00:05:03.300 or anything like that. Second, I do not believe the Bible directly condemns public school or
00:05:11.220 affirms homeschooling, but really instead offers us a variety of scripture to help us form a wise
00:05:17.780 decision around how our children are to be educated. And so let's just talk first about
00:05:23.660 public school. Now, over the years, I should say Christians in the public school.
00:05:29.160 The most common reasons I've heard Christians use to support their decision for enrolling
00:05:34.380 their young children in public school, there's really three of them, and I'm going to kind of
00:05:39.360 recite them to you. The first one is, they will be a light to their non-Christian friends.
00:05:46.480 Number two is, you know, we have to teach our children to be in the world, not of the world. 0.98
00:05:52.420 And number three is, we can't keep them in a bubble forever.
00:05:54.940 They need to develop real-world people skills.
00:05:58.620 So, in my experience, the most common reasons or scripture that these Christian parents offer to support their decisions are, like, this is the doctrine they're using to support those three reasons.
00:06:13.860 It's Matthew 5.16.
00:06:14.960 it says, let your light shine before men. Matthew 5.13 says, you are the salt of the earth.
00:06:21.600 John 15.19, be in the world, not of the world. These are the doctrines or the scriptures that
00:06:28.800 they're kind of at the foundation of these reasons. And I believe most parents get mixed up,
00:06:36.180 you know, and they forget that these instructions were not instructions written to children,
00:06:42.660 but they're written to adults. And if you read the scriptures, you know that Jesus nor any of
00:06:49.600 the apostles sent young children out to evangelize or to disciple or to be missionaries or to be
00:06:56.520 iron sharpening iron in another child's life. This doesn't mean, however, that your child can't
00:07:04.020 share the gospel, and some do, but there's a difference between a child sharing the gospel
00:07:09.100 within the safety of their private life, and a child being sent on mission at seven years old
00:07:16.120 into a hostile cultural environment to be a light to those around them.
00:07:21.000 Now, let me remind you what Jesus says regarding the leadership of children. And this is an
00:07:29.400 important verse. I want you to pay attention here. It's Matthew 18, 6. And he says,
00:07:33.660 But whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to stumble, it would be better for him to have a millstone wrapped around his neck and he'd be drowned in the sea.
00:07:46.880 Now, when Jesus says little ones, I don't think he's specifically and solely talking about children, but to all who are young in their faith, which is for sure the posture of every young child.
00:07:59.360 I mean, essentially, the warning is to not purposefully choose to put those who are underdeveloped in their faith in a place of hostility, temptation, moral confusion, or worldly seduction.
00:08:15.540 I would say that Jesus is saying, be super careful that you don't falter one of these little ones.
00:08:23.980 Because if you do, it's better that you just drown in the sea or die right now than the punishment and pain that you're going to experience when you stand before me.
00:08:35.820 Jesus really cares about his little lambs. 0.95
00:08:38.400 And if we lead them astray under false things.
00:08:43.720 I think even as a believer, you're still going to stand before the Lord and give an account for everything you did.
00:08:49.380 Even if you actually get saved in terms of you're saved, you're still going to have to answer for these bad decisions.
00:08:55.920 And so, you know, having said that, and really with reviewing the general state of our public school system,
00:09:03.040 a system which teaches anti-biblical sexuality, false scientific teachings about creation and biology,
00:09:09.260 emotional morality, and really an overall philosophy designed to work against the values
00:09:15.660 and positions of the Christian family. The scripture in Matthew with Jesus talking should
00:09:21.800 at the very least cause Christian parents to re-examine their thinking. And if you're still 0.63
00:09:27.620 on the fence, I'm going to put it another way for you. I'm going to give you kind of an illustration
00:09:31.260 here. I want you to imagine a family who is decidedly atheist and devotedly liberal in
00:09:39.200 their politics, okay? Just imagine this family. And a family, you know, they support the open
00:09:44.320 interpretation of marriage, the abortion of babies, a fluid view of gender. They're a proponent of
00:09:51.000 evolution. Now, imagine that this family, they work diligently to teach these values to their
00:09:56.720 children by taking them to political protests, allowing them to watch documentaries and read
00:10:04.080 books that support their beliefs. Now, what do you believe the chances are of that family
00:10:10.360 allowing their young and impressionable children to spend eight hours per day, five days per week
00:10:17.060 for 13 years being educated by a decidedly Christian and devotedly conservative school,
00:10:25.220 A school that teaches children that evolution is false and creation is true.
00:10:29.220 A school that teaches the biblical model for marriage, life, and gender, 0.81
00:10:33.340 and what basically their parents have taught them is actually a lie or false.
00:10:38.740 A school that has their students practice prayer, watch documentaries,
00:10:43.500 and read books that support their Christian beliefs.
00:10:46.040 What are the chances of that atheist and politically liberal family
00:10:50.100 allowing their children to attend that Christian and devotedly conservative school?
00:10:57.620 I'll give you the answer. Zero. The chances are zero. So having said that, why then would a
00:11:06.600 decidedly Christian family with biblical values choose to place their children in a decidedly
00:11:14.620 atheist and devotedly liberal public school system. Like why would a Christian family choose 0.98
00:11:20.040 to put their kids for eight hours a day, five days per week for 13 years into an education system
00:11:25.380 that opposes and teaches against the very foundational values of their Christian faith?
00:11:32.180 Now, when you look at it from this perspective, it sounds almost silly, right? But that's what's
00:11:38.460 occurring today. Millions of Christian families are choosing to place their children against 0.86
00:11:46.080 Jesus' strong warning in Scripture in the public school system. Now, I do understand that some 0.99
00:11:57.320 Christian families simply can't afford to homeschool or private school their children.
00:12:02.300 I also understand that not all schools and all teachers are immoral or unbiblical, and there are still some upstanding faculties and decent public schools out there, but these are the exceptions, and they're not the mainstream rule here. 0.97
00:12:18.200 And in speaking to the public school system really as a whole, you know, especially America's public school system, it's not getting better, it's not getting safer, it's not getting holier.
00:12:29.680 Okay, just this year in California, the state legislation unanimously approved public schools to have a curriculum for teaching kindergartners about gender identity and personal options within that idea. 0.98
00:12:48.520 And middle schoolers get to learn about masturbation, oral sex, anal sex. 0.99
00:12:53.960 In Florida, just this year, a girl decided to walk into the boys' locker room while the boys were fully undressed. 0.99
00:13:02.980 And the male teacher that was in there wasn't legally allowed to take any action at all.
00:13:10.060 And I actually read the story on the newamerican.com website and actually continues to say, and I'm going to quote this.
00:13:16.780 It says, school officials ordered the teacher to be in the boys' locker room while the girl was changing.
00:13:23.380 and could have been showering.
00:13:26.360 Obviously, he refused, saying he could not knowingly place himself in a position
00:13:30.920 where he would, quote, observe a minor female in the nude or otherwise in a state of undress, end quote.
00:13:39.000 In saner places, I'm still within the main quote.
00:13:43.180 In saner places, grown men are arrested and jailed for trying to watch underage girls change or shower.
00:13:50.680 But in 2019, government schools in America, they can be ordered to do it, end quote.
00:13:57.460 Okay, guys, this is a problem.
00:13:59.640 This is just, I know this is just one example, but that philosophy is bleeding in everywhere.
00:14:07.140 The article actually goes on to say, and another quote says,
00:14:10.140 in New York. Schools were caught giving children handouts on sex change surgery, polyamory, which
00:14:19.220 is relationships that include multiple partners, and what it means to be pansexual. You know,
00:14:26.220 gender-confused teachers are now ordering their pupils to refer to them as gender-neutral,
00:14:34.700 You know, pronouns such as mix, M-I-X, rather than miss.
00:14:40.640 And it's not just happening, guys, in liberal states either.
00:14:44.120 Conservative states are actually falling to this philosophy every single month.
00:14:48.540 They're doing drag queen story hours and kindergartens all around the states.
00:14:54.000 They're doing training for junior high on how to terminate unwanted pregnancies.
00:15:01.480 the Planned Parenthood, the Plan B pill.
00:15:05.800 They're giving access to condoms and sexually instructive material
00:15:09.620 on elementary and middle school campuses.
00:15:12.560 It's literally nuts.
00:15:15.120 And so, parents, don't be fooled.
00:15:17.860 Satan is playing for keeps when it comes to your children.
00:15:22.500 He wants the hearts and minds of the little ones.
00:15:27.260 He really does.
00:15:28.160 um now we we have to remember that all education is discipleship okay just hear me i'm going to say
00:15:37.540 it one more time we must remember that all education is discipleship and if you're sending
00:15:44.080 your children to public school for 30 to 40 hours per week how do you expect to out disciple that
00:15:50.620 like do you do you think that 60 minutes of sunday school and a few morning devotionals
00:15:56.160 is going to compete. There's a really fascinating quote by atheist and communist Vladimir Lenin.
00:16:04.640 He once said, quote, give me four years to teach the children and the seed I have sown will never
00:16:12.040 be uprooted, end quote. And you know, actually the Bible backs up his claim in Proverbs 22, 6.
00:16:20.580 It says, train up a child in the way they should go.
00:16:24.500 And when they're old, they will not depart from it.
00:16:28.640 And see, you can train your children or the culture can train your children.
00:16:33.660 But one thing is for sure, do not expect your child to depart from the things that they were taught.
00:16:42.040 You know, whether they're true or whether they're not true.
00:16:44.680 And whether they're moral or whether they're immoral.
00:16:46.920 Okay, because outside of a very real encounter with Jesus in terms of a rebirth, God designed the human brain to lock in the lessons of early childhood.
00:17:01.340 I've actually heard it explained that between the ages of one and three, children are like wet clay.
00:17:08.200 Between the ages of four and seven, they are moldable clay.
00:17:13.220 Eight to 12, they are beginning to be difficult to shape.
00:17:19.220 And age 13 to 18, they're generally shaped already.
00:17:24.760 And only very small adjustments can be made, and most of the time by sanding or shaving off the unwanted portions.
00:17:33.360 And so the development of who they are, what they believe, is taking place very young.
00:17:41.080 By the time they're 10, the majority of that's already in place.
00:17:45.980 And, you know, again, people, if your child's currently in public school,
00:17:51.820 I just want you to hear me when I say this.
00:17:54.360 I'm not condemning you.
00:17:56.180 You might feel convicted by the truth that's being said today,
00:18:00.420 but that's separate from what I'm doing.
00:18:03.400 I'm simply presenting a biblical perspective on the matter for you to consider.
00:18:09.640 And we all have to determine how to navigate the life and family that God has laid out before us.
00:18:15.940 And I also understand that there are always unique circumstances and special exceptions for some families.
00:18:23.760 They're single parents. I get that.
00:18:27.360 But, you know, we have to be careful.
00:18:30.720 One is because we love to believe that we're the exception.
00:18:33.300 We love to make ourselves feel special.
00:18:35.480 Like, oh, I got a unique situation.
00:18:37.180 um you know so so i'm just going to ask you a question um i want you to ask yourself if your
00:18:45.500 child's in public school even if you think it's like oh our district's okay um is it really worth
00:18:53.300 it is the potential loss of your child's spiritual footing really worth it um is is losing your child
00:19:03.120 to the culture really worth it? Is risking your child's eternal security really worth it? 0.86
00:19:12.520 And you know, as parents, sometimes it requires us to just literally move heaven and earth
00:19:18.140 to shield our children's hearts. Sometimes it requires us working nights and weekends,
00:19:23.940 or quitting a job, or moving across the country, or, you know, finding a new place to call home.
00:19:33.120 All of this to just withstand the enemy's efforts to distort and pervert our families.
00:19:37.840 You know, Paul tells us in the book of Galatians, chapter 6, verse 9, he says,
00:19:42.820 Let us not grow weary while doing good, for in due season we will reap if we do not lose heart.
00:19:52.200 And so, Christian parents, raising godly children is fulfilling the Great Commission in your home.
00:19:59.080 okay it's it's the work i would say of the utmost importance um it is absolutely saintly work
00:20:09.400 raising these children and teaching these children it's holy work it's eternal work
00:20:15.020 and so i want you to get before the lord um and talk about it with him um ask him what you should
00:20:22.200 do. Be open to his response. And while Veronica is not here, she did tell me to say something.
00:20:30.020 She said, to remind you guys, that homeschooling can be intimidating.
00:20:37.260 But if God made you a mother, he also equipped you with everything you need to be that child's
00:20:44.120 teacher. And you're going to need to learn and grow, but you are qualified to do so.
00:20:52.200 And we also think that, you know, public school is the same as homeschooling.
00:20:56.840 Veronica does homeschooling two hours a day with the little ones.
00:21:01.380 And so you don't have to, like, think that, oh, my gosh, how am I going to pull, like, a six-hour curriculum five days a week?
00:21:07.400 Veronica does two hours a day, and that's enough.
00:21:11.140 And as the kids get older, I'm sure that will change.
00:21:15.560 But you get to ease in.
00:21:17.160 And so don't be overwhelmed by that.
00:21:18.580 there's also some fantastic classical education private schools, Christian schools, that are
00:21:26.020 options too. But homeschooling is actually quite affordable. There's only some curriculum to pay
00:21:30.480 for, way cheaper than private school. Something for you to consider and to pray over. Guys,
00:21:36.460 we're going to close with that. 2020 is coming up, and we are excited for the things that we
00:21:42.980 have before us. I'm coming out with another book on biblical church. We also are in the middle of
00:21:51.740 redoing the entire website, and we have some fun announcements in terms of kind of refocusing our
00:21:59.200 website, our curriculum on church planting. We have decided to start a biblical church planting
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00:22:14.680 thanks to your generosity. But guys, it's closing up on the end of the year. You can do a tax
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00:22:33.800 in God's kingdom-building work.
00:22:36.840 There are three people that I'd love to hire.
00:22:40.240 We just don't have the budget for it yet.
00:22:43.320 And so we would appreciate your generosity.
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00:22:51.440 We don't know.
00:22:52.680 But we are so thankful for everybody that does give and has given.
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00:22:58.460 you can always go to relearnchurch.org forward slash donate.
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00:23:10.580 On that note, guys, thank you guys so much for joining the episode today,
00:23:15.060 and we will see you next week.
00:23:17.420 Take care.