Gary North

Neutrality is a myth. Therefore, developing a curriculum is not neutral. Neither is teaching one.

The classical curriculum was based on the #1 premise of humanism: the ethically neutral human mind and the possibility of neutral education. This goes back to classical Greece: the philosophical academies.

You can be sure of this: if it's classical, it's humanist. It may be baptized Greek humanism, or baptized Roman humanism, or baptized Renaissance humanism, but it is humanism. That was what classical thought, culture, and politics were.

If you force your children to read classical sources, you are morally obligated to show them why and how the tradition was anti-Christian, document by document, case by case. There was no neutrality then. There is no neutrality today.

If you adopt a classical Christian curriculum, you will have to learn the material thoroughly, then unlearn large chunks of it, and then teach your children the truth. It is a great deal of extra work for yiu and your children. But, to avoid intellectual schizophenia in your children, you must do this extra work.

At some point, your child may ask the obvious question: "Why do you want me to read all this stuff?" And this one: "Isn't my time better spent reading things I don't have to re-learn?" I ask: "Isn't yours?"

The classical curriculum was the old humanism. After Darwin, it was replaced by the new humanism, one based on the evolution model. This new humanism is taught in government-funded schools.

GOVERNMENT-FUNDED SCHOOLS

The tax-funded schools promote the myth of neutrality, because this myth favors tax-funding. After all, if education is not neutral, then it is immoral to force one group of parents to pay for educating the children of other groups that do not share the government's version of the truth.

The myth of neutrality is in fact the most successful political lie in the world today. Every civil government forces children into its schools. Most parents cannot escape. The United States is more open to home schooling than most nations. The government schools indoctrinate children in the Party Line of the government, all in the name of neutrality.

So, if Christian parents reject the myth of neutrality, they have a moral obligation before God to search for curriculum materials that reflect their view of what God has said.

Where should a Christian parent begin? With an explicitly Christian worldview. Where is this worldview articulated? Begin here:

If this outlook is true, then a Christian parent must re-think everything the government schools teach today or used to teach.

A Christian parent probably was indoctrinated in the government's schools. The textbooks were all published by companies that hire humanist professors to write them. Then a committee of humanists screens the manuscript. Then state-level committees screen the available textbooks. All traces of Christian thinking are stripped out of them. The result is humanist propaganda. This has been going on for over a century and a half in the United States.

How can a Christian parent re-learn everything? Can a parent safely trust textbooks published by Christian publishers? How are these textbooks different in content? Has the parent ever sat down and read a standard high school public school textbook, comparing it with the Christian textbook? No. Is there time? Yes, but not many parents will take the time. And what if it turns out that the textbooks are pretty much the same? What can a parent do?

You see the problem. It is a huge problem. It has been a huge problem for over 500 years: the printing press.

What about classical Christian curriculum textbooks? In what way are they different from the local government school's textbooks? Do you know? Are you ready to find out for yourself by reading them? If you aren't, then whose word will you trust? Should you trust anyone's word?

CONCLUSION

Fact: we are at the beginning of self-conscious Christian education, not the end.

This is why Christian parents must teach their children to ask worldview-based questions as they read. The children must serve as self-educators, not regurgitators. They must be challenged to think for themselves.

This is why there must be a daily writing assignment. Parents must monitor how their children are thinking. Are the children learning how to apply a Christian worldview to the material they read? This is the supreme intellectual skill that the child can learn.