At the end of May 2020, I gave a speech to the administrator’s conference of the Mid-South Association of Independent Schools. The speech was titled “Why Independent Schools Are Worth the Cost.” I have broken the speech up into part 1 (The Costs of Educational Independence) and part 2 here.

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Maintaining the True Purpose of Education

Educational independence costs a lot—hard work, money, and dedication. But it is well worth the cost. This is because there are many glories of educational independence.

The first glory of educational independence is that it allows you to maintain the true purpose of education. The goal of education is moral. This is something missed by the vast majority involved in education today. Many educators think education is just about learning subjects such as math, science, reading, and writing. Others think education is all about job training. We need more STEM subjects because this is where the jobs will all be.

And while education certainly involves learning content and it should help equip students to find productive employment, that is not its primary goal. The ultimate goal of education is moral formation. And I do not think you can separate morals from religion. I think this is proven by the secularization of the public schools.

By kicking God out of the schools, they removed the very foundation for morality. On what basis do you tell a child, “Do not steal,” if there is no Judge of the earth to whom we are accountable? Some public-school advocates will still talk about education having the goal of forming good citizens. And this is true. We want students to be good citizens. But it is not primary.

The goal of education is to form godly men and women who love God with their heart, soul, and mind and love their neighbor as themselves. This is first the task of parents. But independent schools—especially Christian schools—come alongside parents in supporting this task. And schools need to hire teachers and set curriculum according to this task.

What good is it if we graduate students with good grades, but they are moral deviants? What good is a future generation where men abandon their wives and children? Or betray their friends? Or take bribes as politicians? Or where women trade children and family life for more money and materialism? The goal of education is not just intellectual. It involves the heart as well as the mind. Intellectual endeavors are important. Finding a vocation is important. But they are not ultimate. We want to train boys and girls to become godly men and women. But you can only maintain this true purpose of education with independence.

Setting the Curriculum According to This Purpose

The second glory of educational independence is that it allows you to set the curriculum according to the true purpose of education. If education is moral, the curriculum must aid this. Many independent schools base their curriculum on that of the public schools, maybe adding a Bible course and chapel and creation science.

I think independent education should be far more radical than this. Though in a sense, this radicalness is really just going back to an older tradition. There was an older model of education to which we should return.

I think education should first and foremost be religious. All education prior to the modern era was, whether Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, or some other belief. As I already stated, education is moral and thus religious. So our curriculum should include Bible and theology class. But every subject should also be taught from a Christian perspective, or “worldview.” There is no neutrality in education.

You are either training children to think biblically and as a Christian, or you are training him to think apart from God, a-theistically. But you can’t do this if taking government money, at least not legally. The federal courts have secularized the public school curriculum.

I also think there should be a heavy emphasis on the liberal arts. History, theology, philosophy, literature. Certainly teach math and science, but not to the exclusion of the liberal arts. History is such an important subject. Many in modern society want to tear down the past. American was founded by a bunch of racist, sexist white men. So let’s tear down their statutes and erase them from the history books.

There is an attack on history by the education establishment, both at the K-12 and collegiate levels. They ignore history and distort it. They distort history by rewriting it. Rather than investigating the complexities of the past, it’s much easier to paint everyone as good or bad, mostly bad. Europeans were always evil oppressors of minorities. And the “Civil War” was about the righteous North freeing slaves in the evil, racist South. The educational establishment has portrayed complex events of the past in a cartoonish way.

But mostly, they ignore history by wiping it from the curriculum. Most schools cover “world history” in one year, followed by one year of American history. Let me just say this—you cannot adequately cover all the history of the world in one year. This usually results in the neglect of church history.

Why not spread this out over three years, with one year of American history, and thus have a history class every year of high school? Things do not get any better at the college level. Western Civilization courses are being removed from the curriculum. As of 2011, zero of the top 50 U.S. universities required Western Civ, and 34 did not even offer the course! This should be foundational, but it is being intentionally ignored. They are remaking America and the West.

I am also an advocate of the trivium – grammar, logic, rhetoric. I think this way of education goes “with the grain,” teaching young children lots of facts, middle school age reasoning, and high school age speaking and writing.

Not everyone will agree with me on these points about curriculum. But here’s the great thing—educational independence allows your school to do things the way you want. I don’t get to tell you what to do, nor does anyone else. Your school decides how it’s going to train children. And the parents get to decide if they think that’s the best school for them.

Hiring and Training Your Teachers as You See Fit

The third glory of educational independence is that it allows you to hire and train your teachers as you see fit. Public schools have some choice in which teachers they hire, but this choice is significantly limited. Their pool of teachers is limited to those who went through colleges of education and received a state teaching license. The independent school is not subject to a state teaching license, nor should it be. It is not the job of the civil government to tell a school who is qualified to teach there.

Independent schools can use their own standards for hiring. First and foremost, independent schools should be concerned with the moral character of teachers. It does little good if a teacher is skilled in his or her subject but sets a bad example for students, inside or outside the classroom. This is something that I think is completely lost on the public schools.

I’ve known several public-school teachers whom I would not let babysit my children. This is not a good thing. Independent schools should desire godly men and women who live a righteous life and make Christ known in everything they teach. We want people who love God’s Word and apply it to their subjects.

Second, independent schools should be concerned about the knowledge and ability of teachers, not their degrees or licensure. This is not to say degrees do not matter. Ideally, a science teacher has a science degree. However, teachers can learn subjects they did not study in school. I love to read, and there are many subjects I have learned quite well because I studied them on my own, not because I learned them in school.

Knowledge is not limited to a degree. Further, a degree does not mean a person knows a subject well. Maybe he went to a poor university or maybe he just forgot what he studied. Moreover, at an independent school, teachers usually have to teach a variety of subjects—and they couldn’t possibly have a degree in all of them. Much of teaching requires some on-the-job learning. And the first year is stressful regardless. But the great thing about being an independent school is that you get to do licensure and credentials your way.

Supporting Parents Rather Than Supplanting Them

The fourth glory of educational independence is that it allows you to support parents rather than supplant them. This ties in with the purpose of education, but it is also built on an important point—parents have the primary responsibility for their children. Not the state, not the church, not the schools.

It does not “take a village” to raise a child. Rather, it takes parents to raise children. And the lack of parenting is why so many children suffer today. Kids need a mom and a dad to love them and teach them how to live. And no school can thrive without parents doing their part at home.

What we need today is a proper understanding of the relationship between the different spheres in life. God has created three spheres of rule—family, church, and state. The family is the central unit, with the church having spiritual rule and the state having civil rule. Each sphere has particular responsibilities and certain limits. It is not the job of the state to tell the church what to preach.

And it is not the job of the state to raise children. The state is there to protect life and property. This error of confusing the spheres has led to the public schools—government schools—to usurp the role of parents. Parents so often treat public schools as daycare, as if the school is supposed to do the parents’ job. Parents have also abdicated responsibility for teaching their kids morals and so often pass that on to the schools. But schools are there to support parents, not take on their role. Moral teaching should start in the home.

So where does the school fit into these spheres? There are many schools run by churches. However, most of these schools have their own boards, and the church mostly provides oversight and funding. In this sense, Christian schools fall under the broader term “church.” But I think independent schools are mostly an extension of the family. Parents can educate their children on their own. They do not necessarily need a school. Hence homeschooling exists, and it is a great option for many families.

So why have a school at all? The idea behind independent schools is that they provide something that is lacking for many parents. They are there to help parents train their children by teaching them difficult subjects that parents are not well-equipped to teach. Even homeschool families use books and online teachers. The fact is that students need teachers. And there are benefits to in-person and live interaction. The independent school provides that, but it comes along to support parents, not supplant them. Thus, independent schools help maintain proper boundaries and help families thrive.

This also means independent schools have the power to turn some families away. They can have standards for students. Some families are not a good fit for a school, whether it's behavior or academic ability or beliefs. And that’s okay. It’s often a necessity for the school to properly support its families. This is the freedom of an independent school.

Conclusion

I want to end with a quote on parenting. But aren’t we talking about education? Yes, but as I’ve said, the goal of schools is to support parents in the task of moral formation. Last year, I edited a book by Robert Lewis Dabney, a 19th-century Presbyterian and champion of private Christian education. The book, Dabney on Fire, includes an essay titled “Secularized Education,” but also a sermon called “Parental Responsibilities.” From the latter, Dabney said:

[T]he education of children for God is the most important business done on earth. It is the one business for which the earth exists. To it all politics, all war, all literature, all money-making, ought to be subordinated; and every parent especially ought to feel, every hour of the day, that, next to making his own calling and election sure, this is the end for which he is kept alive by God—this is his task on earth.

On the right training of the generation now arising, turns not only the individual salvation of each member in it, not only the religious hope of the age which is approaching, but the fate of all future generations in a large degree. Train up him who is now a boy for Christ, and you not only sanctify that soul, but you set on foot the best earthly agencies to redeem the whole broadening stream of human beings who shall proceed from him, down to the time when men cease to marry and give in marriage. Until then, the work of education is neverending.

Parenting is the greatest task in the world. And schools get to come alongside and aid parents in this task. But only free and independent schools can function according to God’s design for education. They can fulfill the moral purpose of education and set the curriculum and hire teachers as they see fit. As an independent school, no one has control over you. You can serve God and families according to your conscience. And that is a glorious thing.

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