By Andrew McColl, 3^rd January, 2023

All day long, the law of God applies to the affairs of men. Fathers were to spend time with their sons, either in the fields or in the family business. Sons were to receive knowledge of the law in the context of profitable labor. The familiar phrase, “learning by doing,” was applicable. It was a system of instruction we might call “learning while doing.” The law was not some abstract legal code. It was an integrated system of rules that was supposed to be taught in the context of daily living. God’s Bible-revealed law was not to become peripheral in the lives of God’s covenant people. It was to be central. It was to govern men’s activities throughout the day. It was to be memorized, discussed, and acted upon by young and old.

Fathers were not to tell their sons, “Do as I say, not as I do.” Their lives were to become consistent with their words. The sons would hear God’s law and see their fathers carrying it out. This law mandated a mastery of the details of biblical law to all those who were covenanted to Him. All of this has been lost to modern man. Today, formal education is not Bible-based, family-based, occupation-based, or personal. It is humanism-based, state-based, abstract, and bureaucratic. It is also intensely feminine in the early years.[1]

The church and the family are both important social institutions. Whilst they are different, they have a lot in common. One thing they are both required to do is to train people for the future. We call that discipleship. Fathers are to raise children

…in the discipline and admonition of the Lord (Eph.6:4).

Jesus was a teacher, too:

And He went up on the mountain and summoned those whom He Himself wanted, and they came to Him. And He appointed twelve, so that they would be with Him, and that He could send them out to preach, and to have authority to cast out the demons (Mk.1:13-15).

Paul also tells us that the apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers in the church are there for the

…equipping of the saints for the work of service, to the building up of the body of Christ… (Eph.4:11-12).

The training of children is required to be commenced by fathers, in particular. The successful teaching and discipleship of children in the family, is an important prerequisite for church leadership, too.

Jesus summoned the disciples, they came to Him, and they were with Him. This mirrors the task of parents with their children, who have children, then are responsible to train them.

And the school?

It’s not in the Bible. The family is the first and most important place of instruction.

Paul made reference to this. Speaking to Timothy, he wrote that

…I am mindful of the sincere faith within you, which first dwelt in your grandmother Lois and your mother Eunice, and I am sure that it is in you as well (II Tim.1:5).

Conclusion:

When it comes to education, fathers are not to neglect their roles, or delegate their teaching responsibility totally to their wife, and go off to work. Though he’d been created first, Adam neglected his care of Eve in the garden, leaving her defenceless to deal with a demonic attack. That was negligence and slothful, and he hadn’t cared for her. It’s not only sad when fathers do the same thing with their children, it’s a recipe for disaster.

Why?

It suggests to children that education’s a “Mummy thing,” but not for Dad. It opens the door to all manner of unnecessary problems. But the active and vigilant father whose involved in his children’s education, gives the whole process credibility in the eyes of his boys and girls. By implication, this must be an important issue, because Dad’s involved with Mum in this!

Thus the likelihood of success and ultimate fulfilment for the whole family is far higher. Isn’t that what you want, too?

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[1] Gary North, “Inheritance and Dominion,” 1999, p.145-46.

By Kevin Craig (around 1980)

Discipline: an important word; a misunderstood word. Mr. Rushdoony cites the following to test your understanding of the word “discipline.” A pious couple has an erring and seriously delinquent daughter. “Complaining because of her behavior, her unmarried and pregnant condition, and her contempt of their authority, the parents insisted that they had “disciplined” her regularly. She had been deprived of various privileges, and had been frequently slapped and spanked when younger. The girl, almost twenty years of age, was pregnant and in bad company, given to experimenting with narcotics and much else, but she did not know how to sew, cook, study or work, or obey a simple order.”

Question: was the girl disciplined? If you answered “yes,” then you need to pay serious attention to this article. The parents of this girl had chastised her, but she had grown up radically undisciplined. Today, more than ever, Christian school teachers and parents, especially parents, need to understand Christian discipline

Mr. Rushdoony explains the concept of discipline: “Discipline is systematic training and submission to authority, and it is the result of such training. Chastisement or punishment is the penalty or beating administered for departure from authority. Clearly discipline and chastisement are related subjects, but just as clearly they are distinct.” This definition can be clarified by showing why the Christian educator must work to bring about disciplined children, and how he can.

A society is made up of individual men. The character of men determines the character of a society. This is an age of laziness. This is an age of self-gratification. This is an age of disrespect. To understand these problems in society, we must see that they are problems with men who rebel against God. To change society, we must change the hearts of men. This is the task of the Biblical educator.

Man’s basic purpose in life is to exercise dominion over the earth to the glory of God (Gen. 1:26-28). But the Bible is clear: fallen man is no longer Dominion Man. He is Sluggard Man, characterized by laziness, and shunning his work (Prov. 12:24; 18:9; 21:25-26; cf. also Ezek. 16:49).

Since man has declared himself to be his own god (Gen. 3:5), he is thereby concerned only with his own needs, his own desires. His basic motive is self-gratification or self-worship. “If it feels good, do it,” is a popular expression of this attitude. It also implies, “If it doesn’t feel good, don’t do it,” and when it comes to work, study, and self-discipline, fallen man doesn’t—not without pressure.

Finally, because God has ordained structures of authority (parents, teachers, employers, government), and man is rebelling against God, he naturally rebels against these authorities. This is disrespect. Students of past generations rose to their feet when their teachers entered the room (see Lev. 19:32). But this is now the “punk rock” generation.

Modern man: lazy, self-centered, disrespectful. If this is what characterizes fallen men, what do you think characterizes their culture? The productivity of this lazy nation has declined 275% over the last decade. Teenagers who have their desires for instant gratification frustrated, show a high suicide rate, as they wallow in self-pity. Back in the Great Depression, authority patterns constrained behaviour. Today’s poor feel they have the right to loot and riot. In general, the disrespectful age is an age of incompetence. Men who do not obey the commands of their superiors are men who lack discipline. They cannot complete a task. They despise and grumble at an eight-hour-a-day job. As housewives they are unable to patiently and creatively fulfill their duties, and so they retreat into novels and soap operas. As students they cannot compete, and cannot (will not) overcome an assignment without breaking down and crying to parents or peers. Regularly.

Low productivity; self-pity; poor character and incompetence: this is our age in a nutshell. As Christian educators we must come to grips with this profound truth: Only Christian Education can solve these problems. Even more challenging, any education that is not solving these problems is not a Christian Education. Every Christian school, regardless of size, can and must work to solve these tremendous social problems. Where do we start? We start in the hearts of our students.

First, we must conquer the problem of laziness. We instil in our students’ hearts a desire for godly dominion. Man’s purpose is to work, not to play. Man must exercise dominion over the earth, not retreat from his God-given responsibilities (Gen. 1:26-28; 2:15, 19; II Thess. 3:10¬11; I Tim. 5:13). Not only must man desire to involve himself in God’s glorious creation, to grapple with life, and get his hands into his work (Eph. 4:28; I Thess. 4:11), Dominion Man seeks to overcome sin and the problems and difficulties that tempt us to deny God’s Law (I John 5: 4-5).

Clearly, we often fail (the Greek word for “sin” is hamartia, “to fall short of the mark”), but we keep trying. With discipline, the things that beat us yesterday are the things we conquer today. The word we misspelled yesterday is a tool for dominion today, and we both thank the Lord and take pride in the work of our hands. We must develop in our students this godly desire to work and succeed.

The student who thinks only of his own immediate pleasure, however, will not so easily cultivate a godly desire toward work. He sees only the present, and does not understand that hard work today pays off in the future (Prov.12:24; 22:29). All of our students will be more concerned with play, easy-living, and the way of slothfulness. Therefore, second, we must overcome this commitment to self-gratification.

We must instruct our students to obey God, to desire to please Him and not ourselves. We must also pray that God would give them the grace to declare, “My soul is consumed with longing for your laws at all times” (Ps. 119:20). Christians must find a real joy in their heart to serve with cheerful obedience the Lord Jesus.

Third the solution to an undisciplined, incompetent generation lies with God’s ordained authority, the parents of tomorrow’s adults. Too often, we believe not as Christians, but as the Seneca Indians of the Colonial Era. For these people, “parental tenderness” was carried to a dangerous indulgence. Punishment was lacking, and mothers were quick to express resentment of any constraint or injury or insult offered to the child by an outsider.

As Mr. Rushdoony, himself a missionary to the Indians for nearly nine years, has put it, “I never saw a frustrated Indian child.” He goes on to give us some insights into how we must deal with our students, and sometimes with their parents. “I found the Indians a lovable people, of real ability and more than a little charm, but the permissiveness of their society guaranteed their continuing unhappy and low estate.

An unfrustrated child is inescapably in for trouble. It is impossible to live in a fallen world – where conflict of wills is a daily problem, and a minor one in the face of our major world and local problems – without having frustrations. Discipline in childhood is a schooling in frustration and training in patience and work (cf. Heb 5:8). Discipline not only prepares us for frustration, but gives us the character to work towards overcoming frustration.

“Permissiveness in child rearing thus avoids frustrating the child only to insure continual frustration for the adult.” (The Chalcedon Report, No. 67, P.O. Box 158, Vallecito, Calif. 95251) If the parents of the children we teach are less Christian and more Seneca Indian, and continually indulge their children by doing their homework for them, or pressuring you to stop pressuring their child, you must counsel them along the lines of this article.

What, then, is the purpose of the Christian educator? Simply, to frustrate children. Sound rather bleak? Then understand that by frustrating the child, we deliver his soul from hell. Proverbs 23:13-14 says that if we do not withhold discipline from a child, we shall do just that. Still unmotivated? Then consider your purpose, first, in light of our fallen students.

Our students do not want to read; they do not want to study; they do not want to work, they do not want to keep trying to do that math problem until they get it right. They want you to give them the answers. And if they don’t get the answer from you, they’ll go home and ask their parents, who, unless they’re reading this article, will probably give it to them. Sound cynical?

You and I both know it isn’t, because we know ourselves all too well. “One of the problems facing anyone who works with people today,” warns Mr. Rushdoony, “is this radical lack of discipline and the ability to meet frustrations realistically and to overcome them. The desire of most people is to walk away from problems. But nothing does more to increase the problems inherent in a society and constant to a man’s life than the refusal to meet them head-on and then work patiently to overcome them. To ask for a trouble-free, unfrustrated life is to ask finally for death, and, before death, a lower class, slave status.”

As fallen men we all have this desire. Fallen students are no different: they too desire to put aside their responsibilities. As teachers we must frustrate that sinful desire. Our students want the unfallen, work-free world of Disneyland. They won’t get it when they graduate; they’d better not get it in their education, for their own sakes.

Look at Proverbs 22:6. Now listen to what Bruce A. Ray has said in his, excellent book, Withhold not Correction. “In the Hebrew text of Proverbs 22:6 the phrase “in the way he should go” is entirely lacking. Rather, the Hebrew says, “Train up a child in his way, and when he is old he will not depart from it.” Train up a child in his way…, allow a child to have self-expression, let your children decide what they will and what they will not do and when they will and will not do it, look into the future and you will see those same children unbridled, undisciplined, and unable to bring their bodies into submission to the commands of God. That is a stern warning.”

If you care anything at all about Christian competence, the integrity of the Gospel, and both the present and future sanctification of your students, then in light of the fallen nature of man, you will make your school tough. It’s that simple; it’s that unappealing; but it’s that important.

Second, consider our obligation to God. Proverbs 23:13 is one of many proverbs that command Biblical educators to frustrate the sinful desires of their students: “Withhold not correction from a child.” The same sinful desires that make the student rebel against your God-given authority make you rebel against exercising that authority.

Again, Bruce Ray says, “It is natural for us to seek to withhold discipline from our children. It is much easier for us to do something else, or to be someplace else, but God requires of Christian parents and especially of Christian fathers that they administer the discipline which He reveals in His Word. For parents, and especially for fathers, to withhold that discipline is to sin against God….” (cf. Prov. 19:18 and 13:24).

Finally, consider our love for our students. If we love them, we will be tough with them. We will force them to adhere to strict standards of competence and integrity. We will expect them to work hard, to study independently, and to build the character it takes to be a rust-rate soldier of the Lord Jesus Christ. We must be tough. In far, far, too many Christian schools today, the standards of excellence are below those of the public schools.

We don’t want monks and nuns. Godly living does not consist merely in the memorization of a few Bible texts. It begins with character. A diligent worker, a Biblical mindset; a respecter of authority: these are the things that please God and convey a fine testimony to the unsaved. Christians must be leaders (Matt. 5:13-16). Christians must be diligent, able to persevere (Prov. 11:27; Rom 12:11).

Christians must be disciplined. It starts with parents, at home. It continues with teachers, in schools. It ends with Christians who are prepared and competent to disciple (i.e., to discipline) the nations (Matt. 28:18-20). Proverbs 13:24 says, “He who spares his rod hates his son.” The teacher who fails to challenge his students, hates his students. A tough program of early reading, mastery of the English Language, and a broad understanding of God’s Law in the home, the government, and in our current economic situation, is indeed tough. But it is not hate; it is love. We want our students to obey God because we love them and we want to see them saved and brought to an obedient walk with, and knowledge of, the Living God.

Be a roadblock for incompetence. When you see your student begin to take the road of easy-living, force him to make a detour onto the harder mad. If he rebels, and stops in his tracks, goad him forward (Ecc.12:11). Develop godly character so that when he finally gets out onto the real mad of life, he will be disciplined: ready and competent (Phil. 3:14).

By Andrew McColl, 4^th October, 2022

The lips of the righteous feed many, but fools die for lack of understanding (Prov.10:21).

When a family decides to home school, they open their doors to many blessings from God, along with extra challenges, which are also from Him. The children who might have been dispatched to school from 8am till 4pm, now are home all day.

That means that parents get to see aspects of their children that wouldn’t be quite as evident if they were off to school every day, and that’s a good thing, too.

I’ve mentioned before the wise pastor’s saying,

                       Where there are people, there are problems.

Family problems aren’t necessarily sinful ones, though of course they certainly can be. I’m sure Adam and Eve confronted some significant problems in the garden, before they sinned. But parents in the home (along with children), are obliged to deal with many problems and conflicts that arise. Ideally, this should be in a God-honouring way. I’ve made the mistake of needlessly treading on toes of family members, and initiating unnecessary conflict! And I needed to apologise.

When there are six people in a home, there are six wills, and you’ll find that there are occasions when not everyone in a family sees things with a perfectly uniform perspective! And managing those differences requires wisdom on the part of parents.

The Bible from Genesis onwards, has lots of examples of family conflicts, which frequently weren’t handled very well, and these should be a warning for us. King David was a courageous warrior for Israel, but there were times in his family when he was utterly incompetent to deal with serious family conflict and crises, with tragic results (see II Sam.11-18). Physical and moral courage are two different things.

There are a few ways to respond when conflicts in the home arise. The father can say:

“I don’t want to know about this. This is way too hard to deal with.” (That’s procrastination no.1).

Or, he can defer a decision about the conflict to another date, hoping it will go away. (That’s procrastination no.2).

Or, he can say, “I’m in charge. There’s my way or the highway.” (That’s the authoritarian approach).

Or, he can take a family vote. (That’s democracy).

Or he can seek the views of all family members old enough to have a relevant opinion, discuss these options with his wife, and then come back to the family for any further comments and his final decision.

The Bible makes this clear: all authority is given by God, with a view to serving others.  The scriptural command is that we are to “… through love, serve one another” (Gal.5:13).

How we go about resolving conflict is just as important as the conflict we want to resolve. Why is that?  Because Jesus said that He was “…gentle and humble in heart” (Mat.11:29).

If He is, we ought to be too. Having authority from God is never a licence to be authoritarian; people always appreciate humility in leadership from someone who took the time to listen to them.

Pride is the biggest thing that gets in the way of conflict resolution. Proud people find it hard to admit their fault or mistake. The Bible frequently contrasts pride and humility. It says that “A man’s pride will bring him low, but a humble spirit will obtain honour” (Prov.29:23), and that “…God is opposed to the proud, but gives grace to the humble” (James 4:6).

The critical issue when facing family conflicts is that participants, beginning with parents, exercise godly wisdom, maturity and humility. They can begin with:

1. Do I have all the information I need?
2. Have I chosen the right time, place and method?
3. Have I committed this matter to God?
4. Am I coming with a right attitude?
5. Do I have a clear conscience?[1]                                                                                                
6. Is the outcome we’ve chosen, really going to honour the Lord?

Conclusion:                                                                                                                                  Dealing with and resolving conflicts in the home may not be easy, but it is an essential aspect of parenthood that we cannot and must not avoid. As we go about this process responsibly and humbly before the Lord, we can ask for and expect His blessing, and the life of the Lord in our home and family.

The reward of humility and the fear of the Lord are riches, honour and life (Prov.22:4).

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[1] “Interpersonal Relationships,” in Christian Light Education Classroom Teacher Training, 2013, p.40.

“The goal of feminism was always and only ever about transgressing gender boundaries.”

BY MATTHEW LITTLEFIELDSEPTEMBER 12, 2022

If you are wondering why we have a plague of transgenderism wreaking havoc on our society, let me explain why this is so: it is because more than likely you have many transgender views and practices. You would not realize this, because you most likely call them egalitarian views. Or you might simply say you believe in “equality.” Maybe you just call them Western values, if you even give them a name. 

Most westerners have imbibed transgender views from a young age because they have been raised in a culture that promotes the destruction of all gender boundaries. The average person, even the average scholar, does not realize this was the goal of feminist ideology from the beginning, to break all “detestable” gender distinctions, as Percy Bysshe Shelley said.

They are not aware that the famous leading feminist in the 19th century, Sarah Bernhardt, deliberately changed her dress from feminine to masculine, and publicly showed herself doing masculine things, to highlight gender differences could and should be transgressed. They are not aware that similar behaviour was modelled by a lot of feminists, and copied by 19th-century women who viewed these women as role models. The goal of feminism was always and only ever about transgressing gender boundaries. 

First, they sought to make women like men, casting them as warriors and providers. Then they undermined the reality of gender distinctions completely. We live in the fruit of their efforts; a society that cannot even define a woman, let alone define gender roles.

In such a society, all of the groundwork has been done for transgenderism to grow rampant, and it has. It is the natural and logical extension of feminist goals: the destruction of “detestable” gender boundaries. We live in such a society. Aussies and westerners have been literally feminised and reforged into the image of the early Satanic feminists. 

This has occurred to such a degree that many conservative, Christian, parents treat their little girls just like boys and push them into sports, and even traditionally masculine sports. This is not just transgender – gender boundary transgressing – to its core, it also hurts them. 

As The Guardian explains:

Are women more prone to injury?

Women are being encouraged to take up sport as never before. But new evidence suggests it can have a devastating effect on their bodies. Anna Kessel asks what’s being done to prevent an unlikely ‘epidemic’…

…But it is not male stars that sports doctors are now most worried about. It is sportswomen. They are currently considered to be up to eight times more likely to suffer anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) damage than men, and in the United States so many women and girls have been affected that one expert has called it an epidemic. The problem has been highlighted from the morning news bulletin on ABC to the front page of the New York Times as thousands of women and girls in competitive sport undergo ACL operations each year, at a cost of millions of dollars. The higher the level of competition, the more they are at risk. One in 10 women playing college sports will suffer an ACL injury.

Why the concern? Partly because we know so little about how men and women are susceptible to particular injuries, especially about the neuromuscular differences between the sexes. Research is still being carried out into rates of concussion, thought to be higher in women, joint injuries and even bone damage in endurance athletes leading to stress fractures of the femur, such as the one Paula Radcliffe suffered before the Beijing Olympics.

‘There are certain areas where you would say women appear to be at a greater risk,’ says OSM columnist Dr Nicholas Peirce, a lead physician at the English Institute of Sport. ‘We don’t know how increased activity is affecting hips, backs and shoulders. We see a large number of women having shoulder operations in canoeing and rugby, and there are other injuries, stress fractures of the back or stress lumbars on the lower spine. We are challenged to really follow and observe the demands of elite sport because at the moment there is a lot we don’t know.’

The most evident problems just now are with the anterior cruciate ligament, because it is such a devastating injury. Ruled out of action for sometimes more than a year, athletes fall behind in their sporting careers, are 25 per cent more likely to suffer the same injury again and, worst of all, face debilitating permanent damage to their knees. Women in their twenties are being described as ‘crippled’, even after successful ACL surgery, as osteoarthritis of the knee takes hold.

This article is from back in a time (2008) when even leftist outfits understood the clear differences between men and women. Men are designed to run, hunt, fight and exert themselves. Women are not, and it is not an accident that engaging in masculine endeavours hurts women in far, far higher numbers than men. That is their biology screaming at them to stop putting their bodies through that. 

You may say that sport is brutal on men too. Yes, it is, and a lot of men can’t cut it. But it is incumbent on men to prove themselves in a way, physically and mentally, that it is not incumbent on women to do. Men have a responsibility to provide for their wives, sons and daughters, and therefore men have a responsibility to use their bodies up in this process.

Proving yourself in sport is part of learning the courage, tenacity, competitiveness and physical prowess, that is necessary to be a providing man in this life. There are other ways too, of course, but sport is one of the most common ways. But the key point is that this is not incumbent on women, because God designed them to be provided for. That is the key difference. 

Stop treating little girls like little boys, their bodies cannot take it. And the evidence in society says nor can their psyches. So many kids today are confused about gender, because from their grandparents down, even most of the Christians around them are confused about gender.

Gender roles have been destroyed, utterly, just like the early feminists, inspired by Satan (yes, literally), intended. You’ve been conned, but biology supersedes ideology and the damage being done to kids is screaming at society to stop with this nonsense. Stop treating girls like boys.

By Andrew McColl, 6^th September, 2022

Here are the basics of education:

One size doesn’t fit all.
The lowest common denominator slows down the process.
Students learn best at their own speed.
The best way to learn any subject is to teach it.
Students can tutor other students.
Digital technology is decentralizing everything.
Free is cheap.
The division of labour works.
Wikipedia already offers the basics.
Each social group has its own agenda.
The Establishment has its agenda.
This agenda is at best a compromise for everyone else.
All gatekeepers are losing ground.
There are many valid ways to certify competence.
If you can pass the exam, you don’t need a classroom.
Bureaucracies are not efficient.
Unionized bureaucracies are the least efficient bureaucracies.
Monopolies are not efficient.
State-run monopolies are the least efficient monopolies.
Control over education is the most important political monopoly.
The state is going bankrupt.
Therein lies an entrepreneurial opportunity.[1]

When rats are leaving a sinking ship, you know there’s something wrong. Public education is doomed. It’s not for me to try and predict how long till it sinks beneath the waves.

What is my challenge is to explain that this great demise is going to be great for children, for parents, for families, the church and society. And most of all, it is an opportunity that every Christian family should be excited about, because of the phenomenal opportunities it will bring for every society, in terms of tax-savings, advances in culture and education, and the liberty and prosperity of nations under God.

Any long-term solution to our education problems requires the decentralization that can come from competition.[2]

Centralisation is the tool of tyrants, but decentralisation means greater individual and family freedom. The prospects are truly enormous and exciting for us, but they are predicated on one thing: the obedience of Christians to the Word of God as it applies to their children’s education. This is the very thing that can lead to national transformation.

How do we know this? Jesus said of His disciples, “You are the salt of the earth” (Mat.5:13) and “the light of the world” (Mat.5:14). He also predicted that “the kingdom of heaven is like leaven, which a woman took and hid in three pecks of flour until it was all leavened” (Mat.13:33).

What does this mean? It’s not rocket science. Christians are to take the kingdom of God all over the world, and transform societies with the gospel. This means discipleship, it means liberty, it means changes to law (according to God’s law), and it means cultural change. Nothing is to be left out of the influence of the kingdom.

You say, “even culture as well?” Absolutely. Jordan writes,

Culture follows from, arises from, and is dependent upon faith.Spiritual loyalty to God, in faith, must precede and be theground of all cultural change. It not only must be, it inevitablywill be. The gospel has inevitable consequences, and so doesBaalism.[3]

OK, it may take centuries. So what?  We’ve had twenty and the job hasn’t been completed, yet. That’s the Great Commission (Mat.28:18-20), and that’s the job we’ve been given. Jesus said, “the kingdom of heaven is like leaven, which a woman took and hid in three pecks of flour until it was all leavened” (Mat.13:33). He predicted the total change of the world, through the leavening impact of the kingdom of God, through God’s people.

It begins with God’s people obeying the Word of God with their children. That means extricating them from the citadels of humanism, public education, and discipling them: preparing them for a life of service and dominion; what Adam and Eve were placed here for (see Gen.1:26-28), and what we are here for.

It means moving away from the centralising pattern of State control: “One size fits all. Everyone do it this way! No variations allowed!”

Parental control of child rearing, especially education, is one of the bulwarks of liberty. No nation can remain free when the state has greater influence over the knowledge and values transmitted to children than the family…The best way to improve education is to return control to the parents who know best what their children need.[4]

We’d better get ready. Why? Because God said “all the earth will be filled with the glory of the Lord” (Nu.14:21), and we’ve got a job to do.

Have you started yet?

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[1] Gary North.

[2] Walter Williams, “Dumbest Generation Getting Dumber,” Lew Rockwell website, 3/6/2009. (Williams is Professor of Economics at George Mason University.)

[3] James Jordan, “Judges: God’s War on Humanism,” 1985, p.59.

[4] Dr. Ron Paul (US Senator), 2007.

By Andrew McColl, 30^th August, 2022       

Parents are pulling their children out of the government schools. This is happening across the USA.

In city after city, enrolment is declining. This is not a recent development. It has been going on for a half a decade. It has taken place in half of the nation’s largest districts.

The trend looks irreversible.

As the Web offers better programs free of charge, the public schools cannot compete. The inner city schools are catastrophic. They are getting worse. As whites and Asians flee the cities, the inner-city schools get worse.

The tax base shrinks. The teachers union demands more pay and smaller classes. The city governments are trapped. Solution: cut programs, fire teachers, and enlarge classes back to (horror!) 1959? 33 students.

Nobody is supposed to talk about this. It is time to talk about it. Public education will not recover. The longer the decline takes place, the more parents will conclude that there is only one solution: pull their kids out.[1]

Despite the attempts of government to stifle and control it, the free-market is vigorously at work in education in the US, and around the world. And what’s it saying? Public education is inflexible, bureaucratically driven, union-dominated, ineffective, and frightfully expensive.

A student enrolled in public education costs the Australian taxpayer about $20,000 annually. When that child is home schooled by his parents, it costs the taxpayer nothing. Sometime, (and it may require an economic crash to bring it about), the economic realities of public education are going to strike home, and they won’t be comforting for public-school teachers, who thought they had security of tenure.

Governments have believed this lie: the more you spend on education, the more you must be committed to it. That’s very convenient when you’re part of an extremely inefficient and expensive public education system. But that nonsense is going to go out the window, when governments do the sums and figure this out: when families home school their children, it costs the government nothing.

All of this is good, and positive; in fact, it will be huge. Why? Because governments have monopolised education for over a century, saying, “We will deal with this, on your behalf, with your tax monies.”

Well, thank you Mr Government, but you haven’t dealt with this one very well. In fact, western governments have done a perfect job of showing they just don’t have the grace from God for this.

Why?

Because God gives grace to parents to educate children, not governments; it is a parental responsibility, according to the Bible. Where responsibility rests, authority lies, and with authority comes grace.

Big changes are going to happen over the next generation in education, and it will be exciting to behold. A sharp rise in private sector involvement, particularly in home schooling, and a corresponding decline in government controlled and funded education.

That doesn’t mean there won’t be some fights, no sir. The educational establishment won’t take this one lying down. They’ll see the bull-dozer coming at their house, and will throw everything at it. But that is all part of what needs to happen; public debate on a very important subject- the future of our children, and society as a whole.

Educational freedom is a great thing, and we will see a great deal more of it in the west, soon. It is going to facilitate the preaching and growth of the Christian faith, the strength and positive development of the Christian family, and the growth of the Church.

The potential outcomes are exciting. The collapse of the false religion of humanism, a tremendous saving to the taxpayer, and cultural changes over time that will be remarkable.

Will you be part of it?

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[1] Gary North, “Exodus Out of Tax-Funded Schools in Major Cities,” Lew Rockwell website, 26/7/2012.

By Andrew McColl, 23/8/2022

From the late nineteenth century until today, leading American educators have been forthright in their public pronouncements of their agenda. This agenda is deeply religious. John Dewey, the “father” of progressive education, dedicated humanist, and philosopher stated his position plainly: “Our schools, in bringing together those of different nationalities, languages, traditions, and creeds, in assimilating them together upon the basis of what is common and public in endeavour and achievement, are performing an infinitely significant religious work.”[1]More than this: “In such a dim, blind, but effective way the American people is conscious that its schools serve best the cause of religion in serving the cause of social unification. . . .”[2][3]

No one likes rude shocks. I don’t. But they happen. Because 98% of the Church has been sleeping for over a century, our enemies have crept up on us.

We’ve been intellectually and ideologically ambushed, attacked and abused; left bleeding on the side of the road. When we sent our children off to a State school, we found that their faith in God (which we encouraged them in) was undermined by the teachings of Darwinism, and questioned by the doctrines of socialism taught at school. Then, they were ridiculed by their peers.

What had happened?

We disobeyed God, and there were consequences: ugly ones. Now, we can see it was our own fault; we let this happen, in acts of moral cowardice we will give account for.

But what now?

If we possess anything of a Christian conscience, we cannot let this century-long practice of disobedience in the Church to continue. Obedience to God always requires our action, in one form or another. It’s time for our acquiescence in the face of this evil to stop.

The public education system is no place for a Christian child, because it communicates the fallen, alien faith of humanism as legitimate, truthful and right. Over a twelve year period, that means 14,400 hours of religious/educational indoctrination. Is it any wonder that so many Christian children abandon the faith?

Schooling is a form of adoption…you give your kid away at his most plastic years to a group of strangers. You accept a promise…that the State (through its agents) knows better how to raise your children and educate them than you, your neighbors, your grandparents, [and] your local traditions do, and that your kid will be better off…in the key hours of growing up, strangers have reared the kid.[4]    

This is in direct and blatant conflict with the command of scripture, to “train up a child in the way he should go…” (Prov.22:6). It’s contrary to God’s command, that we should “teach them [the words of God] diligently to your sons when you sit in your house and when you walk by the way and when you lie down and when you rise up” (Deut.6:7). And it’s at variance with God’s command through the apostle Paul, “Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord” (Eph.6:4).

Christians can make some pathetic excuses, like these:

1) “Everyone else in my Church sends their children to the State school.” OK, but when did God call us to be like everyone else? He told us to imitate and obey Him, absolutely.

2) “I can’t afford it.” Can’t afford what? Can’t afford to obey Jesus Christ? Are you looking forward to meeting Him at the Day of Judgment, with that kind of attitude?

3) “I don’t know how to begin.” OK, step one is to take the children out of harm’s way: WITHDRAW them from the pagan institution, and start looking for some good curriculum. It’s around.

4) “My family will think I’m weird.” Nothing new about that. Jesus’ family thought their boy was pretty unusual too. In fact, they thought He was out of His mind.

5) “My pastor thinks it’s weird.” Suggest he reads Deuteronomy 6 and 11, and ask him what he is doing to disciple his children in the faith, and what level of success he’s had.

6) “I could get into trouble with the authorities.” Who would you prefer to have trouble with: the judge of all the earth, Jesus Christ, or some bureaucrat? Peter and the other apostles declared to some frustrated religious authorities of their day, that “We must obey God rather than men” (Acts 5:29).

Children are a God-given inheritance for our conquest of the world for Christ. They are a means of subduing the earth and exercising dominion under the Lord. If we give our children to state or private schools which are not systematically Christian in their curriculum, we are then giving the future to God’s enemies, and He will hold us accountable for laying waste our heritage.[5]

Conclusion:                                                                                                                                           The twentieth century was marked by something God was not impressed by: insipid and compromising Christians. Will He consider you one of these on Judgment Day?

Get out from under His judgment and take the education and discipleship of your children very, very seriously, like Abraham did with Isaac (Gen.18:17-19). You might just taste His blessing instead.

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[1] See Rousas Rushdoony, “The Messianic Nature of American Education,” 1963.

[2] John Dewey, “Religion and our Schools,” 1908. Reproduced photographically in David Noebel, “Clergy in the Classroom: the Religion of Secular Education,” 1995, p.19.

[3] Quoted in Gary North, “Inheritance and Dominion,” 1999, ch.28.

[4] John Taylor Gatto, “State Controlled Consciousness,” 1990(?)

[5] Rousas Rushdoony, “In His Service,” 2009, p.20.

“All you have to do is Google child care person arrested and you’ll find, just like the Ostrich that walks away, you put your kids in danger of being trampled or crushed when you’re not present. It doesn’t happen all the time, but it’s not in your control when it does and when it doesn’t, is it?”

BY MATTHEW LITTLEFIELD, AUGUST 19, 2022

Cauldronpool.com

Job 39:13-18 says: “The wings of the ostrich wave proudly, but are they the pinions and plumage of love? For she leaves her eggs to the earth and lets them be warmed on the ground, forgetting that a foot may crush them and that the wild beast may trample them. She deals cruelly with her young, as if they were not hers; though her labor be in vain, yet she has no fear, because God has made her forget wisdom and given her no share in understanding. When she rouses herself to flee, she laughs at the horse and his rider.”

This is an interesting passage, because if you read up about why Ostriches abandon their eggs observers note that they don’t actually abandon their eggs. They appear to abandon them, it looks like they are abandoning them. But really, the Ostrich leaves them behind for all sorts of other reasons, “good” reasons, “necessary” reasons. In other words, the Ostrich will sometimes abandon her eggs, but she “has her reasons,” which is how it is explained.

But to walk away from the young while they are still little, from the Scripture’s point of view, is still abandonment. Because while they are out of the mother hen’s reach, they are vulnerable to being crushed or trampled. That is why she deals cruelly with them. This doesn’t even have to happen every time, it just needs to happen some of the time to be true. 

The analogy with daycare is obvious. All you have to do is Google child care person arrested and you’ll find, just like the Ostrich that walks away, you put your kids in danger of being trampled or crushed when you’re not present. It doesn’t happen all the time, but it’s not in your control when it does and when it doesn’t, is it?

But for those of you who think it’s rare, note research shows, that in a different way, every kid put in daycare is being harmed:

Aggression

The “Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development,” supported by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), said that children who spend time in day care may be more aggressive than children who spend no time in day care. According to the study, the number of hours a child spends in day care also affects his aggression levels; the more hours he is there, the more aggressively he behaves. However, some reject the statistical correlation as too small to be presumed a fact.”

Stress

In a study conducted by the Institute of Child Development at the University of Minnesota, children under age 3 who spend time in day care may experience more stress than children of the same age who are not in day care. Children in the study exhibited higher levels of cortisol, a stress hormone, when they were in the middle of full days at day care; the cortisol levels went down when they went back home. Those children were described as being more shy, a trait which could cause stress in a social environment. However, day care might not be the only cause of the stress; children inevitably must participate in some social environments once they reach elementary school-age.

Diminished Bonding

Young children who spend time in day care may bond less with their mothers than children who stay home with their mothers, according to the NICHD study. However, the results were preliminary, and the link may not be significant enough to necessitate parents being concerned about their children’s welfare. Researchers suggest that parents who send their children to day care should focus on finding a high-quality day care rather than fretting about diminished bonding.

Aggressive and Disruptive Behavior

Children who are in day care for a year or more have been shown to be more disruptive in class as long as into the sixth grade, according to a New York Times report on the Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development. Even children in high-quality centers were shown to exhibit disruptive behavior. However, children in high-quality centers were also shown to score better on standardized tests. A study by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, reported by CBS, also found that children who spend long hours in day care are at increased risk of becoming aggressive, in addition to developing other behavior problems.”

The article misleads people by noting you should choose better quality daycare. But the research did not distinguish between types of daycare, but the amount of time spent in daycare. 

As other research shows:

The raging debates around maternal guilt, work/family balance, money and childrearing often drown out scientific insights into the developmental impact of day care. But the latest findings, from a huge, long-term government study, are worrisome. They show that kids who spend long hours in day care have behavior problems that persist well into elementary school. About 26 percent of children who spend more than 45 hours per week in day care go on to have serious behavior problems at kindergarten age. In contrast, only 10 percent of kids who spend less than 10 hours per week have equivalent problems.

The worst part about this is that it is known that daycare has a bad effect on kids, and it has been known for some time. But this research is partially kept from mothers: 

Developmental psychologists are sweeping this information under the rug, hoping studies will churn out better data soon, argues Jay Belsky, a child development researcher at London’s Birbeck College and a longtime critic of his fellow scientists. He contends that the field of developmental psychology is monopolized by women with a “liberal progressive feminist” bias. “Their concern is to not make mothers feel bad,” he says…

…Belsky has been outspoken on the issue for decades. In the 1980s, his studies showed that children spending long hours in day care had higher levels of aggression than those raised by their mothers. Detractors excoriated him then for using bad science to criticize working women.

It is easy for data to be manipulated. But consistent data over the long term, which disagrees with prevailing public attitudes, and which I can anecdotally say has been observed by people I know is much harder to explain away. The article then notes that Belsky’s female colleagues disagree with him (obviously). But then notes this: 

Although Belsky’s harsh words haven’t won him many friends, some researchers think he has a point. Kathy McCartney, an education professor at Harvard and another NICHD day care researcher, concedes the aggression results are significant, but won’t offer cautionary advice without more research. “So far it is looking like he’s right,” says McCartney, who criticized Belsky’s claims in the past. “Long hours in child care are associated with behavior problems.”

This woman notes the solutions aren’t obvious. To which I respond: the solution is called mothers raising their kids in the home, like God intended. But you also need to mix this with rejecting avarice, greed, and covetousness. Because these are big reasons why so many women work. 

Many people say they can’t afford to live on one income. This is probably true for some. But for many what they really mean is that they cannot afford the house, car and lifestyle they want with only one income. In other words, they have “reasons,” like the Ostrich. 

Wow. Modern woman deals cruelly with her young. Note parents: one day those kids will be deciding where you end up in aged care. That lack of bonding might come back to bite. I don’t think you need data or research to foresee that. 

By Andrew McColl, 16/8/2022

I am convinced that the battle for humankind’s future must be waged and won in the public school classroom by teachers that correctly perceive their role as proselytizers of a new faith: a religion of humanity that recognizes and respects the spark of what theologians call divinity in every human being … The classroom must and will become an arena of conflict between the old and new. These teachers must embody the same selfless dedication as the most rabid fundamentalist preachers, for they will be ministers of another sort, utilizing the classroom instead of a pulpit to convey humanist values in whatever subject they teach, regardless of the educational level—preschool day care or large state universities. John Dunphy, (“The Humanist,” Jan/Feb 1983).

While the Church slept soundly in the twentieth century, her enemies were hard at work to undermine the Church, and take over social institutions.

How could they do this?

Well, it was easy when the Church was sleeping soundly, unperturbed by thoughts of conflict. If you cannot see that Darwinism or other forms of humanism provide a religious, ideological and educational challenge for your children, why bother to contend with these alien belief systems? If you aren’t aware that there is something worth fighting for, or that there is a war or even a battle taking place, why would you ever get out of bed?

For 150 years in Australia (and in most the West), we’ve had compulsory, State education. Officially it seems, the responsibility for the education of children (which parents are commanded to accomplish in the Bible) has passed from parents to a government instrumentality, and all while the Church was asleep. Today, it costs the Australian taxpayer around $20,000 per year to educate each child in a public school.  This is one of the real costs of transferring the responsibility of education from parents to the State. There are many more.

Now, we have governments institutionalising Child-Care, for children aged from as young as a few weeks old. Some children will spend 10 hours a day at these institutions. By the age of ten or twelve, they may have had only a very modest amount of interaction with their parents. And we wonder whether there was a deliberate plan.

North points out,

“The modern State seeks to steal the legacy of the faithful: the hearts and minds of children. The educational bureaucrats today have imposed a massive system of ideological kidnapping on the voters. This is the inherent nature of all compulsory education, regulated education, and tax-funded education. Education is not neutral. The bureaucrats have built a gigantic system of humanist indoctrination with funds extracted from all local residents.”[1]

The outcome? Weak and poorly functioning families, dependent on the State for hand-outs and other forms of “deliverance.” And with the Australian 1975 Family Law Act (deliberately structured to permit “no-fault” divorce), these weak families are much more likely to divorce. What does this teach us?

For too long we have ignored what the Bible says about education, and have entrusted this vital parental task to an institution that doesn’t have the grace from God for the task. We have foolishly entered the lion’s lair, taking our children with us, but the lion is just as predatory and rapacious as ever.

Why? Because there is a lot at stake: jobs, money and power, and the self-serving and the rapacious won’t give these things up easily. It’s human nature not to give them up!

The solution?

Stop complaining, and start doing something. Christian parents must get their children out of the lions’ lair, and take up the responsibility for their education. We were supposed to do this from the beginning, and it’s not that hard.

The consequences within a generation for individual families, for churches and the nation at large, could be absolutely amazing. I have witnessed this with hundreds of families. But the scriptural warning is clear, for those who refuse the word of the Lord:

…if you refuse and rebel, you will be devoured by the sword… (Isa.1:20).

 You want help with this? Call, me on 0404 425 222.

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[1] Gary North, “Inheritance and Dominion,” 1999, ch.28.

By Andrew McColl, 2^nd August 2022

No realm taken over by the state has escaped its coercive and punitive nature, to the detriment of its original function…Before the states in America took over education, the United States had the world’s lowest illiteracy rate and a remarkably capable populace. Today…we have our highest illiteracy rate in history. Jonathan Kozol, in “Prisoners of Silence,” (1980) gives us some very alarming estimates, from federal and other sources. The Office of Education estimates that fifty seven million Americans are unequipped to carry out the most basic tasks. This means over 35% of the entire adult population.[1]

There are lot of downsides to State control of education. One of these is that children won’t learn  Christian standards. They do not learn “Thou shalt not kill.” What do they learn? How to comply. How to do as you are told. How to win approval in the classroom, and with your peers.

Is learning to do as you are told wrong? No, so long as your obedience doesn’t violate the commandments of scripture.

What are US soldiers doing in Iraq and Afghanistan? Fighting and killing, just as they did in Vietnam, when 58,000 US soldiers died. Has Afghanistan invaded the United States, or sent in bombers, or bombarded its coastline? Then what justification is there for the United States to send its soldiers half-way around the world, patrolling the land and killing people?

The war in Afghanistan, like the war in Iraq, is a monstrous evil. U.S. troops are not defending our freedoms, protecting America, upholding the Constitution, keeping us safe from terrorists, preserving our way of life, fighting them “over there” so we don’t have to fight them “over here,” or any of the other blather that passes for reality nowadays. To those on the receiving end of American bombs, missiles, and bullets in Afghanistan (and Pakistan, Yemen, etc.), U.S. troops are attackers, invaders, trespassers, occupiers, aggressors, and killers.[2]

How did this come about? Go back around 170 years, when compulsory State education was introduced in the United States. Once the State has the capacity through legislation to indoctrinate children, it goes about this process in a subtle way. It doesn’t want to say to parents, “we are taking your children away from you,” but information is fed to children at school in such a way that children grow up with views, completely at odds with the Bible. God is seen to be irrelevant; not in the equation. In the 1920’s, Gresham Macham commented,

[P]lace the lives of children in their formative years, despite the best convictions of their parents, under the intimate control of experts appointed by the state, force them to attend schools where the higher aspirations of humanity are crushed out, and where the mind is filled with the materialism of the day, and it is difficult to see how even the remnants of liberty can subsist. Such a tyranny … used as the instrument of destroying human souls, is certainly far more dangerous than the crude tyrannies of the past.[3]

The second thing we can see is that educational standards decline when the State controls education. Why? Because the parents who God made responsible for education, are largely shut out of the educational process. The responsibility is turned over to a self-serving Department, which then has a vested interest in suppressing ways of monitoring its success.

There is now widespread evidence that suppression of bad publicity concerning schools is a widespread policy in the United States, through such mechanisms as reducing the pass rate on tests, so that only an “acceptable” number of students fail. Also, authors such as Bruce Shortt have plainly shown,                                                                                                                                       

…10% of the students at 20 elite New England preparatory schools were designated as “learning disabled” for purposes of taking the SAT.[4]

Elite groups with power in society are manipulative. Departments of Education fall into this category. They have immense power to control the flow of information to children, and they also don’t want unsavoury information about the failure of teachers or the Department coming into the hands of parents.

But that’s not all. The Minister also wouldn’t be impressed with negative press, so the Department also has a vested interest in keeping him suitably uninformed. I mean, we wouldn’t want the minister getting hold of some bad publicity, and acting on it now, would we? That could be very serious! While ever he is in the dark, and only informed through suitable channels, that will be fine.

It really is a wonder that anyone subjected to public schooling can think at all since the purpose of public indoctrination seems to be to fill the students’ heads with error and carefully filtered information. It isn’t so much a lack of education that hurts anyone, it’s the errors that are taught as fact that do almost irremediable harm.[5]

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[1] Rousas Rushdoony, “Roots of Reconstruction,” 1991, p.502

[2] Laurance Vance, “Should we Ask God to Bless the Troops?” Lew Rockwell website, 5/7/2012

[3] J. Gresham Macham, “Christianity and Liberalism,” 1923.

[4] Bruce Shortt, “The Harsh Truth about Public Schools,” 2004, p.144.

[5] Chris Sullivan, “Civics Lesson,” the Lew Rockwell website, 18/7/2012.