On one chilly winter’s day in 1746, a child was born to a couple in Paris. The father took the child from the arms of his wife, and against her protestations, delivered the baby to the steps of an orphanage. Without even taking the time to note the child’s gender, he abandoned the child to what would have been almost certain death. Subsequently, his wife had four more children, each of whom received the same treatment.
Incredibly, this man went on to unprecedented fame, becoming the most influential philosopher of modern times, the thinker behind all modern revolutions. His name was Jean Jacques Rousseau. What makes this story so poignant and yet so sad, is that it exactly captures the spirit of our times.
Fifteen years after abandoning his first child, Rousseau began writing on the subject over which he would have the most profound influence of all – education. His famous book, Emile, was entirely devoted to the subject of educating a child. In his book Rousseau and Revolution, the famous historian Durant summarizes the philosopher’s thoughts on education: “Rousseau wanted a system of public instruction by the state. He prescribed many years with an unmarried tutor, who would withdraw the child as much as possible from parents and relatives.”
According to my Encyclopedia Americana (1958 edition), Rousseau’s work was precedent setting. “Highly debatable though these propositions [in Emile] are, they have had immense influence on educational theory, including the ‘progressive education” formulated by John Dewey and his followers.”
Paul Johnson is one of the most respected historians on the modern world. In his landmark book, Intellectuals (a book which should be a part of everybody’s library), he struggles to explain the thought processes of the “interesting madman,” Rousseau, “What began as personal self-justification… hardened into convictions, into the proposition that education was the key to social and moral improvement, and this being so, it was the concern of the state. By a curious chain of infamous moral logic, Rousseau’s iniquity as a parent was linked to his ideological offspring, the future totalitarian state.”
The Bible uses fewer word and puts it clearer in Proverbs 23:7, “As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he.” Rousseau’s thinking was wrong. Dead wrong. But the modern world would follow this man who abandoned his own children on the steps of an orphanage, a man who insisted that children should be raised by “professionals.”
The modern world began that day in 1746. A new sociology stepped into predominance. In just about every area of human life in the modern world (from America to Europe to Asia), professionals, technicians, bureaucrats, and psychiatrists licensed to provide drugs, replaced the old-fashioned concepts of Parents, Mothers, and Fathers, Grandmas, Friends, Neighbors, and Pastors. The far-reaching effects of this worldview would capture the institutions of family, school, church, and state. Several weeks ago, five children in tow (as is customary for the homeschooling family), my wife was shopping at a local department store. A woman, noting the entourage, deployed the usual question, “;All yours?” To which Brenda answered with a cheery, “Sure are. Five blessings!” Without skipping a beat, the woman replied, “I’ve got two. You want “;em?” What a heart breaker! My wife was stunned.
Undoubtedly this mother was a product of the age, the thinking espoused by a world that has lost a sense for what things are of real value. If you understand the worldview in which the modern world operates you would at least be able to explain such a baffling response. Rousseau’s worldview is alive and well in our world and his orphanage is expanding. Consider what has happened since 1746. In this country alone, from 1973, forty million children have been cruelly murdered while still in their mothers’ wombs. To put it simply, there are many more children unwanted and unloved by their parents at least to one degree or another. The state (civil government) presses that worldview with more vehemence every year. Many states have widened the compulsory attendance law just over the last ten years in our country. Rousseau’s ideas roll on. Closer to home, the pre-school next door to my office has just doubled their space. The effects of Rousseau have impacted business, politics, economics, church, and family. Indeed, these effects are more than statistics. They are heartbreaking.
There is hardly a family anywhere that has not been impacted by the worldview of a madman who abandoned his own children on the steps of an orphanage. Today, 35% of children are born without fathers in America, a rate that has increased by a factor of 7 since 1960. The family’s importance, influence, and purview have gradually dissipated over the generations. One’s worldview perspective includes the area of sociology, which is the study of human relationships. There has been no more externally destructive force in our society than in this area of sociology.
Different Sociology
Every homeschooled graduate has heard the question, ‘What about socialization?” When I graduated from my homeschool high school in 1980, I used to wonder why people would ask a question so asinine, especially when many homeschool graduates I knew were some of the most successful leaders in any context. But after twenty years of thinking about the question, I’m now convinced that it is the most intelligent question to ask. Home education is bringing sweeping changes into modern society in the area of sociology, and not everybody is excited about that. We are replacing peer pressure, group think, and statist, big government social relationships with a different sociology. Of course this will be of deep concern to those with a different worldview. It isn’t the academic strengths of homeschoolers that is of concern to the opposition. It isn’t even the fact that homeschooled children are able to interact with a wide variety of people from varying social contexts with ease, that bothers the opposition. It is the fact that these children are raised in different social relationships, nurturing relationships that will inevitably produce well-rounded, influential leaders of change in future generations. It is the fact that home education is poised to change the worldview, the social relationships of the modern world, the way we live and the way we interact. We are re-inventing what it means to be a father who walks beside his son, what it means to be a mother who actually nurtures her children into confident, loving, faithful, world-impacting children of God.
We are re-inventing social relationships in Rousseau’s world. We are reversing Rousseau, a 300-year precedent!
When a family who has learned to live with each other in peace and unity walks into a restaraunt, they are treated with stares and an occasional complement. One day, we were sitting in Country Buffet, our favorite restaurant when a family with six children entered. My son, whispered to me, “Dad, that’s a homeschool family.” I asked him why he thought that was the case and I was amazed at his answer. He said, “It’s the way the children are talking respectfully and lovingly to their parents.” Later I walked up to the father intending to ask him if they were home educators. He beat me to it. “;Do you folks homeschool?” He asked.
The Domino Effect
It would be one thing, if homeschooling only affected family social relationships and perhaps then home educators would be tolerated. But indeed that is not the case! Once you have rearranged social relationships on the basic level, you will inevitably find a domino effect taking place, and all other social relationships will be affected.
Last week, I took a call from Barna Research, an organization that surveys Christian ministries. (Ironically, the call came in while I was working on my Bible lesson I was preparing for my children that morning.) The gentleman on the other end of the line was surveying Christian pastors on children’s ministries in their churches. He asked me if we had any Sunday Schools for children in our church.
I told him, “No.”
“Any mid-week youth groups?”
“Not exactly,” I replied.
“How about children’s church?”
“Nope.”
There was a pause. “What kind of church are you? Don’t you have anything for children?”
I told him, “Well, we were reading the Bible, and we found Deuteronomy 6:7, Ephesians 6:4, the book of Proverbs, and all of the other passages on children’s ministries. In practically every passage we found that it would be a really good idea if parents would disciple their own children. We couldn’t find any more powerful ministry program for children, than for their own parents to show them Jesus every day as they sit in their house together, as they walk by the way, as they rise up, and as they lie down. We thought that would be a pretty neat system of disciple-ing children, and we decided to go with it.”
“Wow. That’s not even on my list here. That’s pretty weird.”
“Yeah. Christian parents were doing that sort of thing for about 1800 years, until the Sunday School movement started up and family discipleship virtually disappeared. By 1820, Archibald Alexander wrote his book lamenting the decline of families actively disciple-ing their own children.”
Many homeschooling families are meeting resistance in their various other associations in life, whether it be extended family or church, and they wonder why. It is because they have made a worldview shift at a foundational level, a change in social relationship and there is no way to avoid a domino effect in other social relationships. We’re reversing Rousseau, and it’s going to be a struggle. This change in social relationships at the basic level of the family will produce a reunification of the family and empowerment for the family. Inevitably, this must affect economics, especially as families begin to see the household (and not the individual) as the basic economic unit. The word “economics” comes from the Greek, oikonomia, which means “the law or vision of the household.” As homeschooling re-introduces a re-integrated family, de-centralized family businesses will replace the large corporations and individualized career tracks. This is a model that bears thousands of years of biblical and historical precedent (Gen. 29:9, 37:12, 1 Sam, 17:15, Acts 18:2,3, Prov. 31:11,27). Yet another domino in the sequence is civil government. If the family once again realizes its God-ordained roles in education, inheritance, and caring for elderly parents, that will most certainly replace the Rousseau-ian vision of government-provided schools, social security, and generational welfare programs.
The Vision Goes Even Deeper
Actually, our vision is much deeper than a mere change in social relationships. God wants us to love him. That according to the Shema, the most famous passage in the Jewish tradition in Deuteronomy 6:5-6. This most basic summary of a godly life has never changed, according to our Lord Jesus Christ in Matthew 22:37. But God also shows us HOW to do that in the very next verse. “Teach your children my words as you sit in your house, as you walk by the way, as you rise up, and as you lie down.”
Our vision is simple. We don’t want people to say, “I’ve got two. You want em?” We don’t want booming daycare businesses for toddlers. While we wish God’s richest blessings on orphanages and families that take care of the orphan, what we really want is Colorado families loving God. We want Colorado families loving God by parents lovingly, tenderly, carefully, teaching their children God’s word themselves as they sit in their houses, as they walk by the way, as they rise up, and as they lie down.
Once again, we can hear Jesus’ question as plain and clear as can be: “Do you love me?”
“Yes Lord. I do.”
“Well then. Do you see those lambs over there, that I gave you?
“Yes.”
“Feed them.”