Public Schools, Puny Scholars, and Some Pedagogical Sense

Perhaps it isn’t wise for me to say such things publicly, but here goes: I’m not a big fan of long-term public schooling. This is not so much because I want to shelter kids from worldly influences, but because public shools produce poorly educated children. Of course, there is a chorus of mothers (perhaps my own mother included) now saying, “My kid went to public school and he turned out alright.” To this I offer a couple of responses. First, if I turned out alright (some would perhaps dispute this), in my judgment, it is largely because of other factors besides my public education–good parenting and the grace of God, to name just two. In other words, some students turn out “alright” not because of public education but despite it. Second, educationally speaking, I might take some issue with whether many kids (such as myself) actually “turn out alright.” Perhaps we’ve placed the cookie on too low of a shelf when it comes to our definitions of “alright.” Some might consider me to be a well-behaved and well-educated person, but I regularly lament how little I know and how little I learned about certain subjects. At age 30, I feel like I’m playing catch-up on a lot of things. I believe we can do much better than long-term public education in the pursuit of shaping our kids into mature thinkers who make a significant impact on the world for the sake of Christ. Infinitely more should be said on this subject, but, for now, I can only point to a good book on education that I heartily recommend to parents who are thinking about the long-term education of their children. It’s a good starting place. It is called Wisdom and Eloqence: A Christian Paradigm for Classical Learning (Crossway), by Robert Littlejohn and Charles T. Evans. More to come on these issues later.