Lutheran Education

  Our Large Catechism addresses the education of our children under the Fourth Commandment: “For all authority flows and is propagated from the authority of parents. For where a father is unable alone to educate his child, he employs a schoolmaster to instruct him(141).”  We confess that the first, the preferable, way to educate children is for the father to do it. If he, in conjunction with his wife is unable to do it, then he should employ a schoolmaster.  Lutheran education should be seen as flowing not from the state or church, but from the home. What every Lutheran pastor and church, even those with day schools, should be doing is admonishing parents to take personal responsibility for the education of their children. Lutheran homeschoolers have done just this, and the fact that our synod doesn’t mention and promote this is telling. 

This is because of how we have been schooled in America. In 1833 the last state officially disestablished (i.e. stopped paying for) the church. In the 1830s the first state-run school was opened.  In other words, the nineteenth century saw the disestablishment of the church and the establishment of out-of-the home education.  The “established” school is a problem.  Schools and teachers have gained far more prestige and authority than they deserve. For decades it was a debate in America whether teaching could legitimately be called a profession. Now who dare gainsay it?

 Professional education has become an official religion of the United States.  Our coins would be truthful if they said “In Professional Educators We Trust” rather than “In God We Trust.” The tenets of this religion is that teachers are never paid enough; all property owners must pay for the education the state wants, and by no means are tax dollars to be used to pay someone to educate his own children.  Furthermore, the school year now determines the ebb and flow of daily life even as the Church Year used to. Everyone in the community knows when the first day of school, spring break, and the last day of school is.  Read nineteenth century literature and earlier, and you will find authors dating things relative to the commonly accepted Church Year.

Lutherans who confess that the authority and responsibility for education are entrusted by God to the home not the state or the church ought to be at the forefront in encouraging parents to homeschool. Right now, as we all know, the movement is dominated by Reformed theology. It doesn’t have to be this way. But no district or synodical leader, to my knowledge, has dared to champion home schooling for fear, I suspect, of offending the Lutheran school system. This is wrong-headed.  I do not see large numbers of confessional Lutheran mothers, fathers, or pastors coming out of a Lutheran school system where 30 to 75 percent of the students are not Lutheran. Sound Lutherans are not raised in an adversarial environment any more than sound vegetables are raised in an adverse environment.

Doubtless someone will object: I would be all for homeschooling if it weren’t for the socialization aspect.  How will the children get socialized if they are educated in the home?”  Two points: Home school children are not socialized like every other child in the educational system, and that in my mind is a plus. The one thing noted by their teachers about all of my home schooled children (4 thus far) who have gone on to public high school is that they are leaders in the classroom.  Second, why would parents want anyone other then themselves socializing their children? The dictionary defines socialize as “to make social; make fit for life in companionship with others.” You do not make children “fit for life in companionship with others” by throwing them into a group of their peers! That’s called peer pressure. In my experience it is not the school or the teacher who does the socializing in schools. It’s the class clown, loud mouth, show-off, or troublemaker.  By the way, the word “socialize” came into English between 1820 and 1830, right when the public school system was being established. 

 Still many Lutherans will say, “I could never teach my own children.” Here we have arrived at the problem that Lutheran and public educators not only fail to address but exacerbate. “Professional educators” implicitly or explicitly say, “Of course you can’t. You should trust us to educate your children.  “What Lutheran educators should say is, “Why do you think God gave them to you if not to educate them?”