If freedom is defined as having choice and control, there is no educational freedom in school.
When you send your children to school, do you have any choice as to what will take place there? Do you have any control?
In my twenty-five years in the system, the only choice I could see that the parents had was whether or not they were going to sell hot dogs on the field day. That was about it.
Many Christian parents are not familiar with God’s promises and purposes. There’s a lot of doubt and unbelief because there is a lot of biblical illiteracy. And we know that where there is doubt and unbelief, God cannot work. Even Jesus Himself could not perform miracles in certain places because of the unbelief of the local residents.
The parents are not being stupid or unintelligent. They’re just ignorant in the sense of “not knowing”. They just do not know the difference, and that’s the reason why they use the Alberta Programs of Study at home, if they don’t just send their children to a school that uses it.
They are unknowingly seeking the approval of man because that is all that is being offered. And there’s a lot of pressure to do so. That’s why you will get the questions when it is discovered you favour home education and even more grilling when you determine to avoid using government curriculum.
You know, questions like: “What about socialization?” / “Are you sure you know what you’re doing?” / “Are you certified?” / “Is this legal?” / “How will the children get into college?”. All kinds of questions to test you and your resolve.
People cannot understand why one would want to home educate when the government is so ready and willing to do it for them. Nearly everyone thinks that only the government’s way will work.
Maybe, people ask these questions in an attempt to disqualify your decision to home educate because this decision challenges their world view and that makes them uncomfortable. Perhaps in their hearts they know that what you are saying about government schools and programming is true and the thoughts of doing something other than follow as sheep is frightening.
People are usually threatened when seeing others doing something different from themselves, especially something as important and established as education.
As we learned from our study of world views, we naturally believe we are right and so expect others to believe as we do, even when we don’t question what we believe and why we believe it. Christians are just as subject to this characteristic of world views as anyone else. Even when in error or advancing heresy, it is done with the internal conviction of being right.
The population has been trained to be committed to a singular public education system that advances “common values and beliefs” that effectively replace God’s absolute truth and singular faith with relative values rooted in hedonistic beliefs.
These “common values and beliefs” accept, advance and celebrate everything… but the truth. Christian values and beliefs need not apply to what is “common” to all Albertans! Really? Common values and beliefs? I don’t think so! What a shame.
Paul says in Galatians 1:10, “For do I now persuade men, or God? or do I seek to please men? for if I yet pleased men, I should not be the servant of Christ.”
There it is, black and white again: Who are you going to serve? Who are you going to please? What then will you allow your children to be subject to? Will it be what pleases God or what pleases man?
That is the real choice we are given. A simple choice that truly bears eternal consequences, one which is far better than the other, but most certainly not the easiest choice to live with.
Thank you for taking the time to examine this series. I pray that it has blessed you as much as I hope it has helped you understand what a public curriculum is and what it is intended to do.
May God bless and keep you.