Delivered at the Presbytery Education Annual Summer Seminar for Trainees & Probationary Teachers, August 2022
“Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it,” Proverbs 22:6.
In answer to the question given me to deal with, I will start by turning to God’s Word.
I. The Bible teaches the duty to teach children, the methodology to be used and the content of the curriculum that is to be followed.
The Bible teaches the duty to teach children, the methodology to be used and the content of the curriculum. This was part of the Law laid down by the Lord.
“Give ear, O my people, to my law: incline your ears to the words of my mouth. I will open my mouth in a parable: I will utter dark sayings of old: which we have heard and known, and our fathers have told us. We will not hide them from their children, shewing to the generation to come the praises of the LORD, and his strength, and his wonderful works that he hath done. For he established a testimony in Jacob, and appointed a law in Israel, which he commanded our fathers, that they should make them known to their children,” Psalm 78:1-5.
1. The word ‘train’ in Proverbs 22:6, quite literally means ‘educate, initiate, instruct’.
The word ‘child’ is explained in Genesis 21:18. “Arise, lift up the lad, and hold him in thine hand; for I will make him a great nation.” This has to be a young chid and yet the word is also used of older lads. “And the boys grew: and Esau was a cunning hunter, a man of the field; and Jacob was a plain man, dwelling in tents,”Genesis 25:27.
They were to be trained “in the way he should go”. The way laid down by God entails the teaching of the child that God has a directed a ‘way’ in which all should go! It is not something that may be chosen by us!
Left to us how wrong would we be! “There is a way that seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death,” Proverbs 16:25.
2. It was the practice as far back as Abraham’s day for this duty to be undertaken in the context of the family.
The Lord said of Abraham: “For I know him, that he will command his children and his household after him, and they shall keep the way of the LORD, to do justice and judgment; that the LORD may bring upon Abraham that which he hath spoken of him,” Genesis 18:19. It was part of the family discipline and structure. He commanded, it was the ‘law’ within his house that the children “ keep the way of the LORD.”
3. In the days of the law of Moses, the matter of the education of children was addressed.
“Now therefore hearken, O Israel, unto the statutes and unto the judgments, which I teach you, for to do them, that ye may live, and go in and possess the land which the LORD God of your fathers giveth you.. . . . . Only take heed to thyself, and keep thy soul diligently, lest thou forget the things which thine eyes have seen, and lest they depart from thy heart all the days of thy life: but teach them thy sons, and thy sons’ sons,” Deuteronomy 4:1, 9.
The method of teaching was strictly laid down. Today, many children are taught about Christ, based upon man’s notions of what he looked like. That is wrong even though it is the practice of many engaged in child evangelism. We form an opinion of Who Christ was and what He was like from what we are told about Him in the Word of God. We are forbidden to venture into the world of ‘human imagination’ and supposedly set before children images of what we believe Christ would have looked like.
“Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth,” Exodus 20:4. Of these words John Gill says: “or any likeness [of anything] that is in heaven above; any form, figure, portrait, or picture of anything or creature whatever, whether in the supreme, starry, or airy heaven.”
How many ignorantly violate the 2nd commandment in order, as they say, to promote God’s truth amongst children. Such a thing is utter folly and so very self-contradictory. You cannot promote God’s truth by defying God’s law. Please remember that sin is ever presented in an apparently innocent form at the first. So it was with Eve, Genesis 3:11-2. This Paul enforced, 2 Cor 11:14-15.
4. It was still in vogue in the early church.
“And, ye fathers, provoke not your children to wrath: but bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord,” Ephesians 6:4. The word ‘nurture’ means ‘disciplined instruction’ and the word ‘admonition’ carries a similar meaning. All this was to be done so that the child might obtain a knowledge of divine things, the things of the Lord.
It may be said that the Bible is referring only to the ‘spiritual content’ of that which is to be taught to a child. It surely must follow that nothing that is contrary to that ‘spiritual content’ may be taught them!
That is the issue facing Christians today. What the State Sector teaches is uniformly in absolute opposition to what God would have us teach our children.
II. The State Sector of Education must of necessity follow the spiritual trends of the nation since it is out of such that there springs the essence of that which is to be taught in schools.
Who can deny that the current spiritual doctrines preached by modernist theologians, the corrupted philosophy of the scientific world and the vain philosophy of today’s ‘thinkers’ is what is taught in the State Sector?
Darwinism, the immoral ‘morality’ of the LGBT+ perverts, the anti-Bible, anti-God ideology filling the atmosphere of the nation, this is the ‘State school curriculum today!
Thus what we encountered in 1979, when our oldest boy was about to leave the comparative safety of Primary School and enter Secondary School, persuaded my wife and me that it would be utterly wrong in the sight of God to allow that to happen. In the providence of God, my wife had been given an opportunity to see for herself the corruptions that had taken place within the field of education since she had left Grammar School, some 15 years earlier. She had obtained a teaching position in Fivemiletown High School in 1977 and resigned in June 1979.
How much worse is not the State sector now, some 45 years later?
The case for Christian Education is a thousand times stronger today than it was in 1978.
III. Today, there is no section of society embodying the spirit of antichristianity to the same degree as does the State School!
Consider these vile ravings of one, Dr Eleanor Draeger (MBBS, FRCP) a Sex Education Trainer and Medical Writer, with 16 years of experience working as a doctor in the NHS, where she specialised in Sexual Health and HIV!
Dr Eleanor Draeger shares her thoughts on the importance of teaching LGBTQ+ Inclusive Education in schools.
I've been thinking a lot over the past few weeks about the outcry that has ensued over some aspects of the new Relationships and Sex Education guidance that has just been approved by the UK parliament. From September 2020 all primary schools will have to teach children about different families, including LGBT families, as part of mandatory Relationships Education. And all secondary schools will have to teach children about sexual orientation and gender identity, as part of Relationships and Sex Education. This has caused outrage among some parents, with protests outside Parkfield Community School in Birmingham, where some of the parents are furious that the ‘No Outsiders’ programme has been delivered there. This programme teaches children about the equalities act, and includes picture books that depict same sex families, and some parents have been concerned that 'exposing' children to LGBT issues with (erratum) ‘sexualise them’. Ofsted, meanwhile, have no such concerns, and after a recent visit they praised its record on promoting “tolerance, acceptance and mutual respect” and confirmed the school’s Ofsted rating of “outstanding”.
(https://rb.gy/ogfv9z)
It is such perverted absurdity and utterly ungodly twaddle that dominates and controls the State Sector and ‘woe betide’ the teacher who would voice opposition to it.
That there is no opposition of any significance is obvious in that this trend has been developing and advancing steadily over the years with no real hindrance being mounted.
It would not be ‘woke’ to do so!!
Rev Ivan Foster (Rtd)
9th August 2022