Foundational to all true education is the Law of God.

“Now this is the commandment, the statutes and the rules that the LORD your God commanded me to teach you, that you may do them in the land to which you are going over to possess it, that you may fear the LORD your God, you and your son and your son’s son, by keeping all his statutes and his commandments, which I command you, all the days of your life, that your days may be long.” Deuteronomy 6.1, 2

The full flourishing of Israel as a nation, and of each member of the people of God, depended on their hearing, learning, and doing all the commandments of the Lord. The Law of God was to provide the foundation for all learning and all of life. As God taught the Law to Moses and Moses taught it to the people of his generation, so the fathers of Israel were to teach their sons, and their sons their own sons, in perpetuity. In every household and every community, therefore, instruction in God’s Law would provide the basis for a just society in which love for God and neighbor were the defining norms of social praxis.

We note here that education is more than instruction. Instruction is the transmittal of information from one who knows to one who does not, together with help in understanding the information as to its content and intent. But education goes beyond mere instruction to demonstrating true learning in life. The heads of Israel’s households were to teach God’s Law, not just so that all would “know” the Law, but so that they would “do” it. Obedience to the Word of God is the path to the blessings of God’s Covenant.

This commitment to the Law and Word of God as foundational to the education of the young was everywhere practiced throughout the pre-revolutionary period in colonial America. It was unthinkable that young people should be submitted to any instruction for any period of time without being taught the commandments and statutes of God, including the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Since the middle of the previous century, assailed by specious invocations of “the separation of Church and State”, educational policy in America has increasingly denied a place to God, His commandments, and His Word in the public school curriculum. The present crisis of morality and economics is only the most visible consequence of that decision.

American education is in a shambles because American educational policy has moved away from the foundations of God’s truth and become fixed to the shifting sands and unreliable tides of mere pragmatism and utilitarianism. Only a return to educational policy more firmly rooted in the fixed standards of God’s Law will return stability and fruitfulness to what has become an educational house of cards. The way back to such stability will not be easy; however, Christians who seek a just and good society, who pray for the shalom of their communities and nation and are committed to working for its welfare, must also take up the cause of educational policy reform without apology, without fear, and without mincing words.

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