Douglas Pietersma, Ed.S.
No doubt you have heard the anecdote of how a frog dropped into boiling water will react violently and do everything possible to escape. In contrast, a frog placed in tepid water, heated slowly, will lethargically accept the situation without any attempt to escape inevitable death. In full disclosure, I’ve never attempted to prove or disprove this by experimentation, nor do I plan to do so. The analogy is nevertheless applicable to things we become accustomed to over long periods of time, that we otherwise would react to violently if they occurred abruptly.
Education, specifically as it pertains to Christian families, is one such case. So how did America go from being a nation of Christian founders (Eidsmoe, 2012), who crafted this country without the benefit of compulsory public education (Cox, 2003, p. 506), to a nation of compulsory schooling where Secular Humanism has become the religion of the state, confirmed by ardent humanists themselves (Dunphy, 1983, p.26)? How did public schools become the churches (Cox, 2003, p. 296) for the propagation of this faith? The answers, just like the frog.
It all started with one small step away from the Word of God, which clearly assigns responsibility for the education of children to the parents (Deuteronomy 6:4-9, Ephesians 6:4, Proverbs 22:6). Christian parents first allowed for local one-room school houses, then other community schools, being convinced that these organizations were effectively and appropriately teaching biblical morals, values and character. Schools got bigger, government became involved and over time the content of that education became not only secular, but ant-Christian, anti-Bible, anti-God and anti-character. A comprehensive review of this history is beyond the scope of this article, but it should suffice to say that it wasn’t until the late 1970s (Green & Hoover-Dempsey, 2007), and the decade thereafter (Wayne, 2017, p. 178), when some Christian families woke up to the realization that their children were being boiled alive in the cauldron of public schooling. Thus, an explosion ignited the modern Christian homeschooling movement and gave rise to many church schools, which I grew up attending.
Read the rest of the article here: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/christians-public-schooling-comfortable-slavery-pietersma-ed-s-/?fbclid=IwAR1y4L6mKOgbYc-oRMzowBVMjgkzcGykw8EvBCSotwLBPnA1OBKvS7N4uQAT
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Needing help for your home schooling journey: https://hef.org.nz/2011/needing-help-for-your-home-schooling-journey-2/
And
Here are a couple of links to get you started home schooling:
Information on getting started: https://hef.org.nz/getting-started-2/
and
Information on getting an exemption: https://hef.org.nz/exemptions/
This link is motivational: https://hef.org.nz/2012/home-schooling-what-is-it-all-about/
Exemption Form online: https://hef.org.nz/2012/home-schooling-exemption-form-now-online/