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How do we equip our families with a biblical worldview? How do we prepare the next generation for life? How do I grow in my walk with the Lord and in my marriage? If you wrestle with these questions, you are in the right place to find answers.
This podcast equips families so that future generations may know Christ. Learn Biblical instruction, grow closer to Christ, and apply the tools learned to build a legacy.
Eric Rutherford [0:00 - 53:44]: Welcome to the entrusting the faith podcast. I'm your host, Eric Rutherford, and today we are doing a little bit of a dive into education. I ran across this article a few days ago, and it just shook me to the core in some ways. And in some ways, it provided so much insight. So the article is titled why the Schools went public. The subtitle is. In the early 18 hundreds private schools were thriving. Then a small group of wealthy intellectuals decided education must be socialized, and in 40 years, they had largely accomplished their goal. Here, for the first time, is the story of their campaign. It was written by Samuel Blumenfield, and it was from the March 1979 issue of Reason. So again, this was from March of 1979. This is what he wrote. He also went and wrote other books, but this was fascinating. I wanted to share not only the article with you, but some of my own observations from the article. So what I will do this week is I'm going to read and quote directly from the article and where I am, you know, making my own observations. I will. I will make those clear. So let's just get started. The article begins, why did Americans give up educational freedom for educational statism so earlier in their history? You will not find the answer in the standard histories for the simple reason that the question was never asked. It has always been assumed by educational historians that whatever preceded public education had to be a less desirable. Whatever precede of public education had to be less desirable than, and therefore inferior to what came after. Otherwise, why would Americans have adopted public education? This is the mindset that has prevented historians from telling american educational history objectively. They start from the premise that public education is an indisputable good, and they reinforce this basic assumption with a good deal of dogma and legend, often at the expense of accuracy. For example, Horace Mann is usually dubbed the father of public education by these historians. But public schools, or common schools as they were originally called, existed in New England for 200 years before man came on the scene. So he was clearly not the father of public education. If he was the father of anything, it was of american educational statism. Therefore, anyone attempting to revise this history as I did, meaning the author, eventually comes to the realization that he must start from the beginning. Other writers, such as E. G. West, Murray Rothbard, and David Tyack, have done pioneer work in revising the slanted history of public education, but their critiques have tended to deal with developments after public education was established. I did not find the answer to that primal question in their writings. As for the standard histories, they give the impression that Americans adopted public education because private education was woefully inadequate, chaotic, or elitist, incapable of satisfying the needs of the new democratic society. Yet the historical evidence indicates that prior to the introduction of compulsory public education, Americans were probably the most literate people in the world. Nor did the preponderance of private schools preclude the poor from getting an education. In some towns, there were more charity and free schools supported by private philanthropy and school funds than there were poor pupils to go around. In Pennsylvania, the state paid the tuition of any child whose parents could not afford to send them to a private school. Biblical literacy despite the existence of slavery in the south, the United States for its 1st 50 years was a society as unregulated by government as has ever existed. For education, it meant complete freedom and diversity. There were no accrediting agencies, no regulatory boards, no teacher certification requirements. Parents had the freedom to choose whatever kind of school or education they wanted for their children. There were private schools of every sort and size, church schools, academies that prepared students for the colleges, seminaries, dame schools for primary education, charity schools for the poor, private tutors, and the common schools. The common schools were the original public schools and were to be found in New England and contiguous areas to which New Englanders had migrated. They were first created in the very early days of the puritan Commonwealth in Massachusetts as a means of ensuring the transference of the calvinist puritan religion from one generation to the next. The reformation had replaced papal authority with biblical authority, and the latter required a high degree of biblical literacy. In addition, the puritan leaders had been impressed with the public schools created by Luther and the german princes as a means of inculcating religious doctrine and maintaining social order in the protestant states. Also, Harvard College had been founded in 1636 with the aid of a government grant as a seminary for educating the commonwealth's future leaders, and it was found that a system of lower feeder schools was necessary to help find and develop local talent and to prepare such youngsters for higher standards at Harvard and future careers as magistrates and clergymen. Thus, the common schools of New England, supported by the local communities, came into existence. The Massachusetts law required the creation of common schools in the smaller towns, plus grammar schools in the larger towns where Latin and Greek were to be taught. Latin and Greek were required, as well as Hebrew in the colleges because these were the original languages of the Bible and of theological literature. All of the schools were strictly local, however, financed locally and controlled by local committees who set their own standards, chose their own teachers, selected their own textbooks, there was no central authority dictating how the schools were to be run, just as there was no central authority dictating how the local church was to be run. Ministers were elected by their parishioners, and both schoolmasters and clergymen were paid by the towns. But the school laws did not preclude the creation of private schools by private individuals. Thus, the biblical commonwealth in the Massachusetts colony was a network of communities linked by a common calvinist ideology, with a governor and representative legislature overseeing the whole, exercising a civil authority limited by the higher laws of God. The churches ran the towns, and church members ran the legislature. While the ideology was orthodox, the political forum was quite democratic. The community conferred authority only on those it delect it only on those it elected. Was this a theocracy? Scholars have never been able to decide one way or another, for there was enough of a separation between the civil authority and the clergy to make the colony much less of a theocracy than it has, than it has gained a reputation for being. There was no religious hierarchy, and the governor was purely a civil figure. But one thing we do know is that of all the english colonies, Massachusetts was the least tolerant of publicly expressed heretical teachings. Were it not for religious reasons, it is doubtful that the Massachusetts legislature would have enacted its school laws, for none of the other colonies, with the exception of Connecticut, enacted such laws. This did not mean that the people in the other colonies were less devout or had less religious content or had less religious content in their education. The other colonies, populated by a variety of sects, mainly maintained a greater separation between church civil authority. So let's pause right there for a second. So what we see here is the common schools, which were really introduced into Massachusetts when it was a colony. The goal was to really support and train up people to go into Harvard University. So this was the goal of, this was nothing education for everybody. It was really to set this foundation. In fact, as the author writes, you know, the grammar schools, which were the next level up, where Latin and Greek were taught, all of it was related to biblical teaching, understanding, and scholarship. This is fascinating. And then the other colonies did not have this in the same way that Massachusetts did, because Massachusetts really wanted to make sure that what was being taught was biblical in nature, which is incredibly ironic. Okay, let's jump back into the text. Private schools flourish. The biblical Commonwealth did not last long. The growth of the colony, the development of trade, the influx of other religious sects, the increased general prosperity, and the emergence of religious liberalism tended to weaken the whole of the austere puritan orthodoxy, enforcement of the school laws grew lax, and private schools sprang up to teach the more practical commercial subjects. By 1720, for example, Boston had far more private schools than public ones, and by the close of the American Revolution, many towns had no common schools at all. In drafting its new state constitution in 1780, however, the Massachusetts legislatures decided to reinstate the old school laws, primarily to maintain the continuity of its educational institutions. John Adams framed the article that both confirmed the special legal status of Harvard and emphasized the commonwealth's continued interest in public education. The strongest support for the article came from the Harvard Boston establishment, which wanted to maintain the link between government and school. Harvard had been created with the help of a government grant and had been the recipient of many such grants over the years. In addition, members of the government had been on the Harvard Board of overseers since 1642. The new constitution maintained the continuity of that relationship. Connecticut, which had modeled its colonial laws on those of Massachusetts, followed suit and maintain the continuity of its common schools. New Hampshire did similarly. In New York state, the legislature in 1795 appropriated a large sum of money for the purpose of encouraging and maintaining schools in its cities and towns. Many towns took advantage of the school fund and established common schools, but these were only partially financed by the state fund. The counties were required to raise matching funds, and tuition was also paid by parents. In addition, wherever state governments showed an interest in promoting schools, private schools were also eligible for subsidies. At the start of the new nation, Boston was the only american city to have a public school system, but it was hardly a system in today's sense of the word. Primary education was still left to the private dame schools, and literacy was a requisite for entering the public grammar school at the age of seven. There was, of course, no compulsory attendance law. The pride of the system was the elitist Latin school, which prepared students for Harvard. Most of the children who attended it came from the upper ranks of Boston society. Thus, the public school was not conceived in the post revolutionary period as a means of lifting the lowly masses from illiteracy. It was simply an institutional holdover from earlier days. At the same time, private schools were flourishing, and most parents preferred them to the public ones. For the next 20 years, public and private schools coexisted in Massachusetts, with the more efficient private sector expanding slowly at the expense of the public sector. Outside of Boston, the growing middle and professional classes were abandoning the dilapidated public schools for the new private for the new private academies. Only in Boston did the public schools hold their own, and it was in Boston in 1818 that the first move to expand the public sector at the expense of the private was made. This was a complete reversal of the general trend away from the public school. The promoters of the move wanted the city to establish a system of public primary schools and phase out the private dames schools. There were too many delinquent children roaming the streets, they said, and too many poor parents who could not afford to send their children to the dame schools, thus depriving them of the literacy necessary for entering the public grammar schools. Irony, inflection is of my own. The text goes on. To find out if this were indeed the case, the school committee appointed a subcommittee to make a citywide survey of the schooling situation. The survey, the first of its kind ever to be made in this country, revealed some very fascinating facts. About 2360 pupils attended the eight public schools. That was in Boston, but more than 4000 attended 150 or so private schools. The survey also revealed that 283 children between the ages of four and seven, and 243 children over seven attended no school at all. In short, over 90% of the city's children attended school, despite the fact that there were no compulsory attendance laws and the primary schools were private. Let me pause there for a second. So the survey found that over 90% of the children there, they were already in school. There was no compulsory attendance laws, no mandated curriculum, nothing of the sort. Over 90% of the children attended a school. Let's jump back into the text, and it was obvious that even if primary education were made public, some parents would still keep their children at home, since there were already and in existence eight charities primary schools for poor children. The committee thus recommended against establishing public primary schools, since the vast majority of parents were willing to pay for private instruction, and the charity schools were available for those who could not afford to pay anything. Let's talk about that. They ran the survey, the first of its kind. They found that there was zero desire for a public school system. Zero. Everybody was happy where they were. So now let's jump in and see what the rest of the article says. Why go public? But the promoters of the public primary schools waged a vigorous campaign in the press. The fact that over 90% of the children were in school was, to them, no cause for rejoicing. They focus on the several hundred who were not. What are those children doing? They asked. Who has charge of them? Where do they live? Why are they not in school? They warned that unless these children were rescued from neglect, they would surely become the criminals of tomorrow, and their cost to society would be far greater than the cost of public primary schools. Sorry, I've got a pause. This sounds incredible. Incredibly like the music man when Professor Harold Hill goes into town, does it not? And he says, you've got trouble because of the pool table. They are making monsters where they do not exist, is what it sounds like. Let's jump back into the text. What is curious about this campaign is that the promoters never suggested that perhaps the city might subsidize the tuition of children whose parents could not afford to send them to the dame schools, thereby saving the taxpayers the cost of an entire public primary system. What they insisted on was an expansion of the public school system to include the primary grades, and they would not settle for anything less. Let's pause. The promoters had an agenda. They wanted a public school system, even though it would have been less invasive, it would have cost much less to simply subsidize students and children for the other schools that were in existence. They decided they needed to add this layer, to add this burden for their own ends and means. Let's jump back into the text. Their persistence paid off, and primary education was finally made public. Three of the campaign's most active promoters, in fact, were appointed members of the new primary school committee. Okay, there is great irony when that happens, don't you think? That the very promoters themselves suddenly become in charge of the new public school system? That's my parenthetical thought. Let's jump back to the text. Who are the promoters of this campaign? Why did they wage it with such fervor and determination? And why did they not seek a solution to the problem through private philanthropy or public subsidy solutions far less costly to the taxpayer at a time when the public, through its market choices, clearly showed that it favored the private approach to education? Why did the promoters insist on an expansion of the public system? I found out the answers to all of these questions, but only after an enormous amount of digging. These questions, of course, had never been raised by previous historians, because to them, the expansion of public education was a natural, progressive march to democratic equality, as self obvious as a parade of Fifth Avenue? Their question is usually why did it take Americans so long to adopt public education? Nothing. Why didn't Americans give up educational freedom so early in their history? Who are the promoters of the Boston campaign for public primary schools? The names meant nothing to me, and I had to become a historical detective, a tracer of obscure biographical data, before there emerged an interesting pattern that revealed not only a fascinating network of people in action from about 1805 to 1850, but also the ideas that motivated them. It took me a full year to get a handle on all of this mainly because nothing in my previous reading or education had prepared me for what I was to uncover. Now, after the fact, it doesn't seem quite so earth shaking, but it has so completely changed my view of american and world history that I find it very difficult now to read the standard historical text without becoming upset. The distortion in these texts is so great that it is not near really a matter of simply revising history to correct it, but of actually telling it for the first time. Okay, so that's what the author was saying right there. That was the author's text. It took him over a full year to get a handle on all this obscure data because it was never published. And I'm going to repeat the last sentence that he wrote before jumping further into the text. He wrote, the distortion in these texts is so great that it's not really a matter of simply revising history to correct it, but of actually telling it for the first time. You see, what he is sharing is that man. This hasn't been discussed. It has been repressed. Okay, let's jump back into the text. Man and God. The first 50 years of american history are generally passed over lightly by scholars on their way from the revolution to the civil war. We know some general facts about the period, the framing of the constitution, the Louisiana purchase, the war of 1812, the battle of New Orleans, the Jacksonian erade. But we are seldom made aware of the incredible intellectual and philosophical changes that were taking place in that transition time period from pre industrial to industrial society. The emphasis in the history books is always on political and military events interlaced with material progress. The invention of the steamboat, the development of the railroads, the invention of the cotton gin. But what also took place during that period was an intellectual event of great importance, probably the most important in american history, the takeover of Harvard by the Unitarians in 1805 and the expulsion of the Calvinists. That takeover made Harvard not only the citadel of religious and moral liberalism, but also the citadel of anti calvinism. It took me months to understand the significance of all this because it required a detailed study of calvinism and the rise of the unitarian heresy in the heart of puritan, in the heart of the Puritan Commonwealth. But when I did, the intellectual history of America suddenly began to make much more sense, for no event has had a greater long range influence on american intellectual, cultural, and political life than this one. The issues at stake were fundamental, the nature of God and the nature of man. The liberals, brought up in the moral, benevolent atmosphere of a free, prosperous, ever expanding society, could no longer accept the calvinist worldview, which placed the Bible at the center of spiritual and moral understanding. The liberals found the calvinist doctrines of innate depravity, predestination, election, and reprobation particularly repugnant. Calvin's was a God centered worldview in which a man's life is determined by his personal relationship to an all powerful God who has expressed his will. In the Old and New Testaments, the ten Commandments were the essence of God's law. They provided protection to life and property and codified commitment to God and family. They were the restraints that would save men from becoming the victims of their own innate depravity. The Unitarians rejected all of this. They could not believe in the existence of an unfair, unjust God who elects a few and rejects others, a God who favors some and condemns the rest. Calvin was the first to admit that these doctrines seem unjust and repugnant. But he answered that God has placed a limit on what man is permitted to know, and that man, therefore, has no choice but to accept God's will as revealed in the scripture about the cold facts of life. Those facts included the existence of evil, the sufferings of the innocent, the triumphs of tyrants, the general difficulties of human condition in a world ruled by an omnipotent God who, despite all of this, is still a benevolent God because he created man to begin with. The Unitarians accepted the notion that God created man, but they also insisted that man was given the freedom to make of his life whatever he can. It is man himself who can decide through his life on earth whether he goes to heaven or hell. He is not innately depraved. He is, in fact, rational and perfectible. As for the existence of evil, they believe that it is caused by ignorance, poverty, social injustice, and other environmental and social factors. Education, the Unitarians decided, is the only way to solve the problem of evil. Education will eliminate ignorance, which will eliminate poverty, which will eliminate social injustice, which will eliminate crime. Moral progress is an attainable, is as attainable as material progress once the principles of improvement are discovered. Okay, let's pause there for a minute. So, first, the author is not doing the research from this position of a strong, reformed Christ follower. Like, he's digging into this and trying to figure this out for himself, and he's like, whoa, this. This is fascinating. And he's. He's really looking at, okay, from this calvinist principle, what I would say call a very biblical principle, where scripture talks about human beings are sinful to the core. There is nothing in us, nothing good. Apart from God's grace, which he imputes to us through faith in Christ, there's nothing good in us, right? The only thing, in fact, that we can say is every part of us is corrupted by sin, yet we. We're just thankful that we do not sin more than we do. There is nothing beyond the scope. There's no sin beyond the scope of what any of us are capable of. So the educators before then, the position before them, was, we needed to be able to teach from this biblical worldview, and that's what was needed. And then the Unitarians said, no, God. The problem is people just need more education, that people are inherently good, that we are just. We can educate ourselves out of it. This is back in the early 18 hundreds, 200 years later, 200 plus years later, these arguments are still being made, and we are looking around and we're going, why is the system broken? The system was always broken, because what they decided was education is the solution. Education doesn't fix it. Sorry. Education doesn't fix it. Not the moral sense. It doesn't change and improve the morality of human beings. Morality is an act of the will, is volitional. It is about understanding who we are and what we are. So this is incredible. This is incredible as he's digging back in. And so with the Unitarian takeover of Harvard, Harvard being the most influential, and that's where it began. Let's jump back into the text. Secular salvation. It was therefore only natural that the Unitarians would shift their practice of religion from the worship, a harmless, benevolent God of limited powers to the creation of institutions on earth to improve the character of man. Pause just for a second. This is the author saying, okay. The Unitarians again believe that God is harmless, limited in his powers. It's therefore up to us, to human beings, up to all these little gods, to improve the character man. This is not biblical at all, but this is what the Unitarians held to, and they had sway. Okay, back to the text. The one institution that the Unitarians decided could be used to carry out this formidable task was the public school. Their first organized effort was a campaign in 1818 to create primary public schools in Boston. Why only public schools and not a private or charity schools? Because private schools were run and controlled by individuals who might have entirely different views concerning the nature of man. Besides, private owners were forced by economic reality to concentrate on teaching skills rather than forming character. As for the church schools, they were two sectarian, and the charity schools were usually run by Calvinists only. The public schools controlled in Boston by the affluent unitarian establishment could become that secular instrument of salvation. You see? Let's step back real quick. See, the schools were not there. They were not created to instruct. They were not there to help people get jobs. They were there to ultimately form character. Right? As the author was saying, private schools, the ownership by economic reality to concentrate on teaching skills rather than forming character. Public schools controlled in Boston by the affluent unitarian establishment, could become the secular instrument of salvation. Okay, that's back to the text. But why did the first organized effort take place in 1818? Because at around that time, a man in Scotland had proudly broadcast to the civilized world that he had discovered the basic principle of moral improvement. His name was Robert Owen, and we know of him today as the father of socialism. Owen was a self made manufacturer who became a social messiah when he discovered what he considered to be the basic truth about human character, that a man's character is made for him by society through upbringing, education, and environment, not by himself, as the religion is taught. Children in a cannibal society grow to be adult cannibals. Children in a selfish, competitive society grow up to be selfish and competitive. No one is innately depraved or evil. An infant is a glob of plastic that can be molded to have whatever character society wishes him to have. Clearly, Robert Owen did not have children. That's just my thought, but clearly he did not have children because he would first and very well understand that that is not the case. We are affected by sin from the day that we are born. Back to the text. Owen started publishing his ideas in 1813 and to prove that he was right in 1860, an established, famous institution for the formation of character at New Lanark through a secular scientific curriculum, coupled with the notions that each pupil must strive to make his fellow pupils happy, Owen hope to turn out little rational, cooperative human beings devoid of selfishness, superstition, and all the other traits found in capitalist man. Bless their hearts. All these ideas were music to the ears of the Boston Unitarians, who wanted confirmation that man is indeed perfectible through the process of education. But Owen had stressed that the earlier you start training the child, the better chance you have to mold his character, which is why the Unitarians launched their campaign to create public primary schools. And this was only the first step, for in 1816, Owen had published an essay outlining a plan for a national system of education whereby the character of a whole nation could be molded to the good of all. He wrote in a new view of society. At present, there are not any individuals in the kingdom who have been trained to instruct the rising generation as it is for the interest and happiness of all that it should be instructed. The training of those who are to form the future man becomes a consideration of the utmost magnitude, for, on due reflection, it will appear that instruction to the young must be, of necessity, the only foundation upon which the superstructure of society can be raised. Let this instruction continue to be left as heretofore to chance, and often to the most inefficient members of the community. And society must still experience the endless miseries which arise from such weak and puerile conduct. On the contrary, let the instruction of the young be well devised and well executed, and no subsequent proceedings in the state can be materially injurious. For it may be truly said to be a wonder working power, one that merits the deeper attention of the legislature with ease. It may be used to train man into a demon of mischief to himself and all around him, or into an agent of unlimited benevolence. Thus, socialism began as an educational movement to reform the character of man into future mandy. Today we call it a soviet man. Leaving education to chance meant leaving it private, and that is why in 1818, the Unitarians insisted on creating public primary schools rather than subsidizing pupils to attend private ones. It was also the beginning of the organized movement that was to culminate in the creation of our compulsory public education systems. Again, let's pause for a second. This idea of perfecting human beings through education, this future man, truly has impacted everything that has happened since then. This idea that erroneous, completely erroneous. That if we just educate enough, people will be good when nothing can be farther from the truth? I'll give you an example. How many of you listening know that the best thing to eat are dark leafy greens? How many of you, just as you're sitting there listening to this right? And then how many of you, on a daily basis, have two or three servings of dark leafy greens? How many people understand that physical activity is necessary and helpful for the body? And how many people do it on a regular basis? We know more things than we ever apply. It's not about learning more. The problem is not we aren't educated enough. We are educated beyond our willingness to act. We are educated well beyond our willingness to do as we read through scripture. We are educated well beyond our obedience to a holy God. So if we want to know where things went off the rails, they went off the rails with public education in the beginning. Let's jump back to the text. Socialized education from the very beginning, the Unitarians and socialists were the prime movers and leaders of this long ranging, sustained effort. Between 1823 and 1825, James G. Carter, a Harvard Unitarian, published a series of essays deploring the general trend away from the common schools and advocating the expansion of public education and the creation of state supported teachers seminaries. Owen had stressed the need for such seminaries and in his book called them the most powerful instrument for good that has ever yet been placed in the hands of man. The Harvard Unitarian elite gave Cardiff's proposals their strongest endorsement and widest circulation. Let's pause. What happens here is they are now pushing for this idea of a educated elite of teachers so that these teachers can impact and influence the students under their charge to become this. This perfect man, which. This future man, forgive me, this future man. So they're starting and moving away from everything that has been in history to this new idea, which is horribly flawed. Back to the text. In 1825, Robert Owen came to America to establish his communist colony at New Harmony, Indiana. The experiment received a great deal of newspaper publicity and attracted a large number of followers. It was called an experiment in social reform through cooperation and rational education, but in less than two years, it failed. The problem, Owen decided, was that people raised and educated under the old system were incapable of adapting themselves to the communist way of life, no matter how much they professed to believe in it. Therefore, the Owenites decided that rational education would have to precede the creation of a socialist society, and they subsequently launched a strong campaign to promote a national system of education. Owens son, Robert Dale Owen, and Francis Wright, setup headquarters in New York, helped organize the workingmen's party as a front for owenite ideas, published a radical weekly paper called the Free Inquirer, and lectured widely on socialism and national education. Their anti religious views turned so many people away from Owenism, however, that they were forced to adopt covert techniques to further their ends. One of the men attracted to their cause was Orestes Brownson, a writer and editor whose remarkable religious odyssey took him from Calvinism to universalism to socialism to unitarianism, and finally to Catholicism years later. Describing his short experience with the Owenites, Brownson wrote, but the more immediate work was to get our system of schools adopted. To this end, it was proposed to organize the whole union secretly, very much on the plan of the cabanari of Europe, of whom at that time I knew nothing. The members of the secret society were to avail themselves of all the means in their power, each in his own locality, to form public opinion in favor of education by the state at a public expense, and to get such men elected to the legislatures as would be likely to favor our purposes. Have other secret organization extended? I do not know. But I do know that a considerable portion of the state of New York was organized, for I was myself one of the agents for organizing it. So now into the quote. So now we know that as early as 1829, the socialists had adopted covert techniques to further their ends in the United States, techniques that they continued to use for decades. It was also in 1829 that Josiah Holbrook launched the lyceum movement to organize the educators of America into a powerful lobby for public education. While I have not as yet found absolute evidence that Holbrook was a covert owenite, circumstantial evidence convinces me that he was. And if the socialists decided to further their cause by working through the instrument of public education, we can then understand why the system has had such a pro socialist bias for as long as any of us can remember. Indeed, public education was to become the socialist primary instrument for promoting socialism. Let's pause there. You see? So, primary instrument for promoting socialism. We just have to repeat that, because that's what the intent of compulsory public education was. It had nothing to do with equipping for jobs. It had nothing to do with anything other than this idea of educating people to the moral good, because we are in. You know, they. Again, they held that we are inherently good. We just need better education, which is absolutely the opposite of scripture that says we are inherently bad and we need a savior. Back to the text, unlimited good. In promoting socialism, one also promoted the state, for the secular state was to be the primary political instrument for exercising man's rights. Rational power. When Frances Wright, the one I feminist, lectured in the United States for a national system of education, she left no doubt that the state was to be the ultimate beneficiary of such a system. She wrote in 1829 in the Free Inquirer that one measure by which alone childhood may find sure protection, by which alone youth may be made wise, industrious, moral, and happy, by which alone the citizens of this land may be made in their, indeed free and equal. That measure. You know that measure. You know it. It is national, rational, republican education, free for all at the expense of all, conducted under the guardianship of the state, at the expense of the state, for the honor, the happiness, the virtue, the salvation of the state. End quote. But while Josiah Holbrook, with active help from the Unitarians, was organizing the educators through the Lyca movement and the Onis were agitating for a national system of education, the american people were going in the opposite direction. The free market favored private education, and new private academies were springing up all over the country, particularly in Massachusetts, where the town supported common schools were being abandoned by the middle class. Thus, had free market forces been permitted to operate in the educational field without ideological opposition, the common schools would have either disappeared or been reduced to their most rudimentary function as dispensers of free elementary education to a dwindling consistency. In the long run, it would have been more economical for the towns to pay for the tuition of poor children to attend private schools than for the towns to maintain free public schools. So the problem was never one of economics. It was, from the very beginning, philosophical. If both the socialists and the Unitarians embraced educational statism as the future way to human moral progress, it was for two reasons. First, they rejected the biblical calvinist view of man. And second, they rejected the biblical view of history. Man as sinful and depraved was replaced by man as rational, benevolent, innately good, and perfectible. But the american form of limited government, with its elaborate checks and balances, have been created on the basis of the calvinist distrust of human nature. The Calvinist didn't believe that power corrupts mandy, but that man corrupts power. Man is a sinner by nature and therefore cannot be trusted with power. Only a true fear of God, they believe, can hold sinful man in check. As the orthodox faith waned in the 19th century and faith in rational man grew, western culture began to accept a reverse philosophy of human nature. To explain why man does the evil things he does, they turn from theology to psychology. The first scientific attempt to explain the origin of criminal criminal behavior was phrenology, and its teachings had considerable impact on the thinking of many 19th century educators, including Horace Mann. As for the biblical view of history, the romantic movement projected a new heroic image of man as conqueror and innovator, and mankind was viewed in a universal sense as one big progressive family. Thus was born the myth of moral progress, the idea that man is always getting morally better. Better, just a quick parenthetical thought. If you look through scripture, human beings have not changed. And as you look through history, human beings have not either. We are not getting better and better. We are just as bad as we have always been. Scripture is very accurate. But the problem with that is if you hold that the Bible is true, then you have to do something with God, right? You have to do something with Jesus Christ. So if you say, well, the Bible is not true, we're going to completely throw it out. Where do you come up with this idea of evil in the world? There is no sin in that worldview. That's where they're at. They've rejected what the Bible says. They're going completely and making human beings their own God. Let's jump back to the text. The prime modern promoter of this idea was the german philosopher George Friedrich Hegel, from 1770 to 1831, who formulated the dialectical process of human moral progress, a process liberated from the strictures of the Old and New Testaments. He replaced the objectively real God of the Bible with a subjective pantheism in which man is revealed as the highest manifestation of God in the universe. Rational, heroic, perfectible man was thus elevated to godlike status, and his secular state was expected to dispense a justice and equality not to be found in the scriptures. Liberated, unrestrained, rational man would create not unlimited evil, as the Calvinists believe, but unlimited good. Oh, how he was a fool. Let me just reread that part of that paragraph. Hegel replaced the objectively real God of the Bible with a subjective pantheism in which man is revealed as the highest manifestation of God in the universe. This is what Romans one, starting in verse 18, says, for the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived ever since the creation of the world and the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him. But they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things. Therefore, God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and serve the creature rather than the creator, who is blessed forever. Amen. You see what Hegel talked about and what he was promoting as the greater good. This new revelation Paul talked about very clearly in Romans one, that this is what it looks like and the results of when you reject God, you become God yourself. God with a small g. We can't even figure out how long we're going to individually live, let alone do anything of any consequence. Back to the text from Hegel to Mann. It was only natural, therefore, that the Harvard unitarian elite would look toward Prussia for their status models, and they found exactly what they were looking for in the prussian state system of compulsory education, with its truant officers, graded classes, and uniform curriculum. That system had been set up in 1819, and Robert Owen claims in his autobiography that the prussian system was built on his ideas. Of course, Lutheran advocated public schools at the time of the reformation, but the prussian system was a model of centralized control, and it had the one feature that Owen considered indispensable for a successful state system, state training schools for teachers. It was acknowledged by the Prussians that you really cannot control education until you control the teachers and their indoctrination. In other words, teachers were to be the frontline troops for statism. Let's pause statism. This model was adopted because once you train the educators, as he wrote, indoctrinate them, they have incredible influence over those under their care. So whatever is required of the teachers to teach from a moral standpoint, from an education standpoint, from any of that, it will be passed down, and then the students will believe it to be true, whether it is or not. That's what they're doing. That's what started out. It's back to the text. Members of the Harvard unitarian elite had acquired a taste for german education while studying in Germany, but Americans had no interest in adopting such a system for themselves. In 1833, however, a french professor of philosophy, Victor Cousin, published a lengthy report on the prussian system for his own government, which was subsequently translated into English and published in the United States. It was exactly what the public school movement needed, and it was distributed among american educators, who began to arrive at a consensus that the prussian system was the way to go. The fact that Cousin had written the report added to its prestige, for cousin was the main transmission belt for Hegelianism to the Harvard elite. His series of lectures on Hegel's history of philosophy was widely read among the Harvard Unitarians, many of whom became transcendentalists. Thus, by the time Horace Mann entered the scene in 1837 as the first secretary of the newly created Massachusetts Board of Education, the groundwork had been thoroughly done by the Owenites, Unitarians, and Hegelians. Mann, a talented lawyer legislature, was chosen by the Harvard unitarian elite to bring educational statism to Massachusetts because he had demonstrated that when it came to legislation, he could give the liberals what they wanted. They had enormous confidence in him, and he never disappointed them. If any single person can claim credit for changing America's social, academic, and ultimately, political direction from a libertarian to a status one. The credit must go to Horace Mann, for it was Mann who was able to overcome the considerable opposition to statism while others could not. The key to his success was in his peculiar sense of mission, combined with his practical political experience as a legislature and the strong financial, cultural, and social backing of the Harvard unitarian elite. He hated Calvinism with a passion and fought calvinist opposition with a ferocity that disturbed some but delighted most of his unitarian backers. But he succeeded mainly because he knew how to divide the opposition. By the mid 1830s, even some trinitarian Protestants were being swayed by german religious liberalism. Also, protestant leaders like Calvin Stowe and Lyman Beecher, who were based in Ohio, saw in the prussian educational system a model they could use in their own efforts to maintain the protestant character of american culture in the face of massive catholic immigration. In any case, the backbone of the opposition of educational statism was made up of primarily of orthodox Calvinists who feared the long range anti religious effects of secular public education and favor the decentralized common school system as it existed before the board of education came into being. One of them, Edward Newton, summed it up in these words in the christian witness in 1844 we do not need this central, all absorbing power. It is anti republican in all its bearings, well adapted, perhaps to Prussia and other european despotisms, but not wanted. Here. It's important as we talk about anti republican. This is not talking about today's republican party. This is not republican democratic parties of today. It's the idea of republican in the serum of what the United States is. It is not a true democracy because we do not vote as a people on every specific issue. We elect people to vote for us. That's what a republic is. And so what Edward Newton was saying was this board of education, it's anti republican in all its bearings. It is well adapted, perhaps to Prussia and other european despotisms, but not wanted here, back to the text. Statism entrenched. Despite considerable and continued opposition, all attempts to stop the growth of educational statism failed. Thus, from its very inception, educational statism was the prime promoter of statism itself in America. To Mann, the symbol of the triumph of statism was the creation of first state normal school. The normal school was the state financed and controlled teachers college. No sooner had Mann been appointed secretary of the board of education by Governor Edward Everett than he got to work setting up the first normal school in Lexington, Massachusetts. It was done through the financial help of a prominent unitarian industrialist whose funds were matched by the state legislature. It was established in 1838 as an experiment. Opposition to the idea of state controlled teacher training remained strong until 1845, when the opposition was finally overcome. In March 1845, the Massachusetts legislature voted to appropriate $5,000 in matching funds to the $5,000 raised by Mann's Harvard unitarian friends to build two additional normal schools. In describing the dedication ceremony at one of the schools, Mann wrote this in the common school journal, October 1, 1846. What constituted the crowning circumstance of the whole was that the legislature, in making the grant, changed the title or designations of the schools. In all previous reports, laws, and resolves they called normal schools. They've been called normal schools, but by the resolves for the erection of the new houses, it was provided that these schools should thereafter be known and designated as state normal schools. The state, thus giving to them a paternal name, has the sign of adoption and the pledge of its affection, end quote. To man who believed the normal school to be a, quote, a new instrumentality in the advancement of the race, end quote. The linking of state power to teacher education was indeed a crowning circumstance, creating what James G. Carter had described in 1825 as a powerful engine to sway the public sentiment, the public morals, and the public religion more powerful than any other, and the possession of government. Carter was perfectly right. For once the philosophy of statism is infirmly entrenched in nations teachers colleges. That philosophy will very soon permeate every other aspect of society. The simple truth that experience has taught us is that the most potent and significant expression of statism is a state educational system. Without it, statism is impossible. Whether the state can and hash become everything. Thus ends the article. At the end, it says, Samuel L. Bloomfield, the author of numerous articles, several books, including how to start your own private school and why you need one, as well as the new illiterates. He has a couple of other books that look really, really fascinating. So let me just sum up and why. Let's just address why this matters. It matters because public education in today's world is thought to be all, end all. As a homeschool parent and a homeschool advocate, for years we have been told that we are doing our children a disservice. We are doing our children a disservice because we don't know what we're doing. We've not been approved by the state as this official teacher. You know, the master's degree and 30 plus hours of extra learning. Who are we to think that we can teach our children? And it is my counter to that that says, who are the public school boards and administrators. Who do they think they are that they think they should have the authority to teach our children? You see, this is where it came from. You see, I know my children were placed in my care by the Lord, and I am responsible for them. The way the progression that is occurring in these United States is towards not only socialism, but statism and ultimately communism. And that is ultimately going to fail, because this idea that human beings of their own will are not selfish and wicked is a fool's errand. So let me just encourage you to ask the questions. Why do we do what we do? Why do we do what we do? When we look at Romans chapter twelve, verses one and two, Paul writes, I appeal to you, therefore, brothers, by the mercies of goddess, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing, you may discern what is the will of God, what is good, acceptable, and perfect. You see, our job as believers is very much this text in Romans twelve. Do not be conformed to the world, but be transformed by the renewal of our minds. To my testing, discern what is the will of God. And by testing, that means look around, evaluate, compare it to scripture, and ask, what does scripture say versus what the world is saying? We have come so far. I don't mean in a good way. And we have bought the lies of the enemy. We have believed them. We have swallowed them. We have called good evil and evil good. Let us not do that any longer.