My name is Leazel Beukes and there are two questions that I need answers for. 1. How the church perspective influence values and education? 2. How the school can influence values and education?
From a biblical perspective, one’s religious convictions based on biblical teaching ought to regulate everything in one’s life, including values and the effect secular education is allowed to have on a child of God. The apostle Paul, when citing the proper Christian slave’s dutiful deportment toward his master, wrote: “And whatsoever ye do, do it heartily, as to the Lord, and not unto men” (Colossians 3:23). This conviction of “do it heartily, as to the Lord” should pervade the entire disposition of every Christian toward seeking first to please God (Matthew 6:33). The sentiment of Colossians 3:23 is comparable to the same idea expressed in Colossians 3:17, “And whatsoever ye do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God and the Father by him.”
However, young people spend a disproportionate amount of time away from their religious associations and families under the control of school systems. Hence, schools typically directly or indirectly through peer association influence those being educated more powerfully and thoroughly than home and church combined. Consequently, especially among nominal religious people of all stripes, value systems (morality and ethics) or the lack there of propagated in schools come to dominate the lives of our offspring.
Parents have the God-ordained responsibility to ground their children in God-given religion (Deuteronomy 6:6-7; Proverbs 22:6). Parents are not authorized to abdicate their parental responsibilities, for instance, to secular educators. The cost of having done so is too high, namely the loss of our children to the Christian faith.
