From the TeachingtheWord Bible Knowledgebase

Part one of a series. We also suggest you read Are You Thinking About Sending Your Children Back to Public School This Fall? In the Name of God, We Implore You Not To.

Thanks to COVID-19 mandates, the public school environment has become "big brother". Children's behaviors and beliefs are being monitored, massive amounts of data about them are being accumulated, and there is no effective control over how that data will be used - or by whom - to prey upon young people now and in the future.

These evils, now fully entrenched, will not go away with the removal of mask mandates or the resumption of in-class instruction. They will only be used to exercise greater control, and to condition children to accept the ungodly "woke" mentality and "cancel culture" thinking that are aimed at the very foundations of authentic Biblical Christianity. For Christian parents to not take personal responsibility for educating their children is to barter away their souls.

We constantly receive communications from Christian parents asking about homeschooling their children. They phrase their questions and concerns in many different ways, but most of them revolve around these four issues:

Quality: Is homeschooling really a better choice? Can my children obtain the same quality of education they would in the public schools?

Finances: If I homeschool I will still be paying taxes to finance the public school system and will receive no aid from the government. I (usually the mother) will need to give up my job in order to homeschool, and we are not sure we can make this work financially.

Capabilities: I do not know if I can do it. I wonder if my children will do well with it.

Socialization: I am afraid that if I homeschool my children they will be stunted socially.

Public Schools' COVID-19 Response Reveals a New Grave Danger in Government Education

In addition to these concerns, the closure of schools under coronavirus restrictions and the resulting implementation of "homeschooling" in many public school systems has brought a new phenomenon to many homes: Parents are now much more aware of the dangerous, anti-Christian, anti-Scriptural propaganda their children are receiving as "education" every day courtesy of the government-run school systems. What some parents are not aware of is this: Most public school systems were able to quickly convert to "homeschooling mode" because they were already using dangerous learning tools from Google in the classroom. This made the conversion to the use of Google tools for distance learning relatively easy.

What is the problem with Google for education? Actually, there are many. Eighteen months ago, 80 million educators and students around the world were using Google Classroom and 30 million more were using Google Chromebooks inside and outside the classroom. With the advent of COVID-19 and the closure of public school classrooms in many nations, the use of Google's tools has skyrocketed. What are some of the dangers? The Google curriculum supports abortion, homosexuality, same-sex "marriage" and euthanasia; denigrates Christ and the Bible; ridicules the Genesis creation account; revises the histories of the United States and other countries to exclude their Biblical foundations. And that is only the beginning. Google tracks students' performance, thinking patterns, and many other kinds of behavior. Columnist Michelle Malkin, not a Christian but a homeschool mother, has conducted extensive investigations. She writes:

Tim Berners-Lee, who conceived the first internet browser 30 years ago this week, warned of its increasing threats to "privacy, security and fundamental rights." To mark the anniversary, he argued that demanding transparency is key to stopping the web's "downward plunge to a dysfunctional future." So, where to start?

Berners-Lee specifically cautioned against the dangers of internet browsers' keeping "track of everything you buy." The world's top browser is Google Chrome. But spying on our purchases is the least we have to worry about with Google and its $800 billion parent company, Alphabet.

It's bad enough that the company's executives match your offline credit card purchases to your online user profile without full disclosure, employ mobile tracking apps that collect location data even if users have turned off location tracking, hide and downplay massive security breaches (like the photo-sharing "bug" and hacker-friendly browser "flaws" revealed this past week), bow to Chinese communist censors and exhibit explicit bias against conservatives. No, it's much worse. Google's predation starts early, often with the most vulnerable members of society: our children.

The Silicon Valley giant has hooked legions of children and teachers into its data mining products through lucrative partnerships with public schools across America. Learning no longer starts with A, B, C but with G, G, G:

G Suite, Gmail, Google Cloud, Google Drive, Google Docs, Google Sheets, Google Slides, Google Hangouts, Google Vault, Google Jamboard, Google Chromebooks and Google Classroom.

Don't forget: Google now [this was March 2019] has 80 million educators and students around the world using G Suite for Education, 40 million students and teachers in Google Classroom and 30 million more using Google Chromebooks inside and outside the classroom. [These numbers have grown exponentially since this article was written. Google's tools, and the ungodly agendas they instill, are now the de facto standard in American public school education. - ed.] Despite a report last fall from the U.S. Department of Education's inspector general blasting the feds for failing to investigate a backlog of Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act violations, the Trump White House has done nothing to repair the damage to FERPA done by the Obama administration. The Democrats' tech-chummy bureaucrats busted open the door to third-party sharing of children's personal data with government agencies, nonprofits and private educational technology vendors.

This is how Google has gotten away with unauthorized scanning and indexing of student email accounts and targeted online advertising based on search engine activity, as well as auto-syncing of passwords, browsing history and other private data across devices and accounts belonging to students and families unaware of default tracking.[1]

Now more than ever, Christian parents who are not yet homeschooling their children need to face these facts and take action. At this time of year when many parents are considering whether to begin or continue homeschooling, let me briefly address each concern in a series of articles.

The Realities of Public Education

Is homeschooling really a better choice than public school? Consider these facts.

All education is spiritual education. All education has a theology behind it. In the public school system, the spiritual, theological component is entirely humanistic and pagan. Christianity is excluded.

The public school environment is not only self-consciously secular, it is openly and often maliciously anti-Christian. Children are bombarded with the God-denying, God-opposing thinking that the Holy Spirit through the Apostle Paul describes in Romans chapter one as the reason that the wrath of God is revealed from Heaven against all of humanity apart from Christ. Today the public school agenda very openly and defiantly includes two things that Scripture condemns specifically in that chapter: the denial of God as the creator of mankind and thus as the sovereign, holy Lord to whom all must give account, and the "normalizing" of the sexual perversion which that chapter describes in detail. The public education system has now produced more than a full generation of pagan souls who have no idea what it means to have been made in God's image, and who see no reason to subject themselves to any "morality" except some form of situation ethics.

In the last twenty years, public schools have become increasingly dangerous places. Of course the rise in the number of school shootings receives the most media attention, but student-on-student violence has become far more common and is truly pandemic. Educators' and law enforcement's efforts to create "drug-free zones" around public school campuses would be laughable if they were not such a consistent and tragic failure.

The public school environment has become "big brother". Children's behaviors and beliefs are being monitored, massive amounts of data about them are being accumulated, and there is no effective control over how that data will be used - or by whom - to prey upon young people now and in the future.

We could cite many more evils of the public school system, but they all stem from its inherent paganism.

We Must Not Barter Away Our Children's Souls

How should Christian parents view these things? Let me answer that by pointing you to the words of the Lord Jesus:

When He had called the people to Himself, with His disciples also, He said to them, "Whoever desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me. For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake and the Gospel's will save it. For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul? Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul? For whoever is ashamed of Me and My words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him the Son of Man also will be ashamed when He comes in the glory of His Father with the holy angels." (Mark 8:34-38)

But whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in Me to sin, it would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck, and he were drowned in the depth of the sea. (Matthew 18:6)

"What will a man give in exchange for his soul?" The sense of Jesus' question is this: "What will a man barter away as the price of his soul?" Let me submit to you that the same question applies to parents in relation to the children God has entrusted to them. What will you barter away as the price of your children's souls?

Furthermore, Jesus condemns the parent - or anyone else - who "causes any of these little ones who believe in Me to sin." The sense in the original is to place a spiritual stumbling block in front of a child, to cause a child to begin to distrust and to desert the one whom he ought to trust and obey - on a human level, the child's parents; on a spiritual level, the God of the Bible.

Dear Christian parent, do not barter away the souls of your children by committing them into the hands of the enemies of God, those who "take counsel together against the Lord and against His anointed, saying, 'Let us break Their bonds in pieces and cast away their cords [i.e., restraints] from us' " (Psalm 2:2-3). We must always remember that we are in a warfare:

For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places. Therefore take up the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand. (Ephesians 6:12-13)

You must take up the armor of God yourself, and you must see to it that your children are equipped with it. This is not something you can merely subcontract to pastors or Sunday school teachers; you must build the foundation at home.

You may agree with these exhortations, but wonder how you can implement Biblical homeschooling in your own household. Dear friend, you can. We shall examine that aspect of the homeschooling question as we continue.

References:

1. Michelle Malkin, "How to Protect Your Kids From Google Predators", Conservative Review, March 13, 2019, as viewed at https://www.conservativereview.com/news/malkin-protect-kids-google-predators/

Next - Homeschooling: Counting the Cost

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