Responsibility for education is local, beginning with the family.

“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

Americans have become so accustomed to government running the educational program of the nation that, apart from here-and-there efforts at private schooling, we can’t envision any other way to train the children of the land. The American program of education did not begin this way, however. It began with local communities, led by heads of households, taking full responsibility to create and manage schools through boards and local governments. Only gradually have the states and the federal government managed to wrest school control from parents and local communities, and to impose an agenda of economic productivity on the curriculum children are exposed to for twelve years and more.

Granted, local school boards still exist across the land. However, their purpose is not to serve the interests of parents who are seeking to prepare their children for moral and spiritual fruitfulness in an economics based on justice and neighbor-love. Rather, local school boards today serve the interests of governments and teachers’ unions in advancing a pragmatic and economic curriculum designed to make responsible consumers and producers out of the students. Christian parents who have tried to serve on school boards find that their efforts to return schools to a sounder and more stable foundation are often impeded by outside interests and the courts. But this must not be an excuse for our failing to lead the way in returning school control to local communities and, in particular, to parents.

Governments and teachers’ unions have made shipwreck of American education. The attempt to impose a uniform national curriculum, concentrated on economic productivity and managed from above, has not only ruined the schools but has led the nation into a crisis of morality and ethics. The solution is to bring control of the schools, and of every aspect of the work of education, back to the local level, where parental involvement in the education of their children can be more meaningful and effective toward proper spiritual and moral ends.

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