Before creating any book or guide, the intended audience must be identified. So who am I aiming this work at? Who will benefit from following this effort?
Generally speaking, you could say that I am appealing to parents, as the topic is education, but education does more than prepare a child for the future. It creates the society we end up living in. So, even though the main target audience is parents, most anybody concerned about the state of our modern day society may be interested in what I have to say.
Today’s “anything goes” political and social environment is essentially recreating and normalizing most things on the basis of feelings, rather than fact. This new “reality” comes with the overarching objective of destroying any religious system that advances the existence of rights and wrongs, truth in particular.
It seems that everything is on the social justice butcher table these days. Nothing is sacred and it seems that nothing is worth defending except, of course the many causes of the social justice warriors, who often make a mockery of the very freedoms they claim to be defending. However, there is one thing that has avoided criticism from seemingly every agency advancing nearly any cause in every corner of the world.
Nobody touches the sacrosanct value and esteemed position of public education. Indeed, calls are being made in Alberta to amalgamate separate schools into public schools, defund and/or outlaw private schools, and to make home education as difficult as possible, essentially advocating that all students must attend a compulsory, secular humanist, public school monopoly.
In fact, the “progressive” NDP Government, likely an anomaly in Alberta’s political history, has undertaken the rewriting of the entire k-12 curriculum with the objective of making students “who are agents of change to create the globe that they want to be a part of.” Yet, very few people expose schools for what they are.
To challenge the status quo indoctrination system is a very dangerous thing to do, as not only does it involve the Godless, un-biblical, anti-Christian sentiment of the masses, but questions the daycare system parents have grown to enjoy in the name of “parental freedom from child-rearing responsibility.” To oppose public schools is therefore to make the world your enemy.
If you can look past all the rhetoric, the craziness, the name-calling, the belligerence and self-righteousness; if you take a serious look at what is happening, two things should become clear to those who subscribe to the Christian worldview.
The first is that the modern day enemy of the “new society” is God, particularly the Judaeo-Christian God. Since God has declared Himself to be the only God, with expectations of the mankind He has created, He has gotten in the way of the “all-things-are-good-if-you-feel-they-are” mindset being established as the “new norm.”
The second observation is that public education is essential to bringing about change to the existing system.
Now, I am not going to pretend that I can see, or know, or understand, all that is going on in the world today, but I can say that it has drastically changed, especially in the last few years.
From my Christian perspective, it appears like all hell has broken loose and that the most effective way to disseminate the “message” of the “new world order” is through the un-scrutinized government programming used in nearly every school in the English-speaking world.
Therefore, my audience is everyone with even the slightest concern about what the public school is advocating and normalizing, but particularly Christian parents, both present and future, as they decide on the best approach to the training and teaching of their children. This includes a variety of people at different stages in their lives and with differing backgrounds, experiences and “hang-ups.”
There are the seriously proactive parents with “preschool” children or no children at all. Then, there are the parents of “school-aged” children including: those just starting; those who have had some exposure to a school system; and those who are wanting to escape from the school system they brought home, favouring traditional home education or un-schooling, instead.
Even if we may have some fundamental differences in philosophy, it is assumed that we all share some common beliefs, including:
– Parents have the authority with respect to their children regardless of claims otherwise.
– Parents teaching their children in the safety of their home are better than strangers teaching them in a school.
– Parents usually desire the best for their children and take that responsibility seriously.
– Parents are usually best able to meet the individual learning needs of their children.
By now you have come to the conclusion that I will be coming from a Christian perspective. You should also know that I have to pick some starting point, so I will be approaching most topics from the point of view of only and always having home educated.
Please go to the Home Education Guide at www.educationunlimited.ca/resources for a more comprehensive discussion of starting points.