The problem with government education is that it’s dominated by the government and its often weaponized priorities. In but one example of this, the Biden administration is threatening to withhold federal lunch funding over the issue of trans women in girls’ sports. The government simply shouldn’t have the power to threaten to make kids go hungry over its political causes, whatever they happen to be.
In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus shares a curious parable: a demon is chased out of a man and wanders through arid places seeking rest. Finding no relief, the unclean spirit decides to return to his “house” and, delighted, discovers the soul unoccupied. And so he invites seven other spirits more wicked than himself to take up residence in the hapless man. Such was the state of that wicked generation then, and such is the state of publicly funded education now. Can that house even be cleaned?
As the founder of Classical Conversations, a global support organization for homeschooling families, I’ve no particular interest in exorcising whatever demon currently haunts the civil government school system. Public school, by its very nature, will attract more demons no matter how often we clean house because the concept is rooted in socialism and set against the God-ordained preeminence of the family. And so rather than wage endless war against these demons, I prefer to spend my time and my energy on more constructive activities: namely, advancing healthy, free-market solutions for all parents escaping the ravages of civil government schools.
Free-Market Solutions
In previous years, classical Christian education was at best ignored and at worst scorned by the world. But no longer: now it seems everyone wants to know what’s going so right with our model of education. Experts want to know how and why our students and others pursuing a classical Christian education are so successful in work, civic duties, and life itself. Aside from the obvious advantages offered by an education that grounds itself in objective Truth, namely the person called Jesus, part of our success can be attributed to our commitment to the free market. Organizations like Classical Conversations, the Association for Classical Christian Schools, the Society for Classical Learning, the Home School Legal Defense Association, and hundreds of homeschool co-ops and support groups have labored to provide privately funded options for education.
On August 12, 1986, Ronald Reagan said in a press conference, “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help.’” We would do well to heed his timeless advice by dedicating ourselves to advancing free-market solutions in education while also firmly rejecting crony capitalism, tax credits for special interests, and the various schemes being contrived to bribe parents for votes, such as publicly funded educational savings accounts, school vouchers, and charter schools. Instead, we must chart our own course, free from government influence.
I am proud of the millions of families who have proven that ordinary parents can redeem education in the United States and worldwide. Here are some of the ways in which intentional parents have filled the “house” of education.
- Classical Conversations families have partnered with over 2,800 churches that embrace private Christian education. The church I attend, for example, supports a five-day-a-week ACCS private school, a three-day-a-week hybrid school, a homeschool co-op, and one-day-a-week seminars for Classical Conversations families. Additionally, my church offers a privately funded educational scholarship for families in need. Not one of our congregation’s 120 children attends a government school. And Classical Conversations is just one of hundreds of organizations that support homeschooling parents.
- Out of necessity, parents have broken the paradigm of public school, private school, and school at home (which is not truly home education) to launch a thousand inexpensive ways to educate their children in micro-schools. Thanks to COVID, o happy monster, parents have founded a variety of affordable, flexible options—weekend schools, evening schools, summer schools, cottage schools, and cul-de-sac schools—where innovative parents band together to hire a full-time tutor for a handful of families, or where they take turns teaching so they can also work full-time. I choose to help these innovators rather than fix a system that is inherently unfixable.
- People often ask about educational funding for financially struggling families and those juggling two or more jobs. A myriad of organizations helps families to privately raise funds for education through scholarships, crowdfunding, and charities. This money is voluntarily raised by a love for charity that helps and holds families accountable to other families rather than bureaucrats and school boards. The Home School Foundation, the VELA Education Fund, and local Classical Conversations communities offer scholarships, as does every private classical Christian school we work with.
If every church, fraternal and sororal organization, business, and mutual aid society offered just one of these solutions, civil government schools would become obsolete.
And think of the cost savings. The average student in a publicly funded school costs the taxpayer $10,000 a year. About 5,000,000 students are in private, home, and micro-schools. That’s a tax savings of $50 billion a year.
Furnishing Our House
I applaud the parents who sacrifice much to redeem their own inadequate education by leading a handful of children each with their own unique abilities through dozens of subjects over one or two decades. These truly master teachers are eager to share their expertise with the greater academic community. Classical Conversations supports the parents in our organization through a partnership with Southeastern University. In May 2023, our first accredited teachers graduated with a Master of Arts in Classical Studies through that partnership, and we have a hundred more homeschooling parents committed to professionally teaching Classical Christian education in the pipeline. These home-schooling parents are preparing to contribute their knowledge, enthusiasm, and experience to schools, colleges, and universities after they launch their own children.
Parents, policymakers, and business partners, please join me as I focus on the positive solutions that freedom-lovers already provide. Let’s not waste our time clearing out a house that will simply attract seven worse unclean spirits such as the long litany of government schemes that will forever fail to produce an educated citizenry. Instead, please join us as we work to promote, support, and add to the already long list of truly free-market solutions for parents of all incomes and abilities. Please help us recover a theology of work and charity over civil government welfare to ensure once again that the family is the locus of education.
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