Churches and Education

For several thousand years the synagogue (and later church) was the formal educational center for most communities. If children could not study in their synagogue or church, the were educated in their homes. Higher education was handled through apprenticeships. Boarding schools began to appear prior to the Medieval Age when children were sometimes sent to live in Monasteries where they were educated. In AD 850 the University of Constantinople was established and the shift from apprenticeships to the formal classroom began fro higher education . Private tutoring at home remained the norm for the aristocratic families, but after the sixteenth century it was increasingly accepted that adolescents of any rank might best be educated collectively. The government run public school for secondary and elementary education is actually a relatively new concept. On January 1, 1643, by unanimous vote, Dedham, Massachusetts authorized the first U.S. taxpayer-funded public school.

Churches throughout the world have continued to offer formal classroom education for elementary and secondary education. Many great universities around the world were started by churches and some still have very close ties to the church. It has become more common for colleges and universities to distance themselves from these religious ties by changing their names to remove religious affiliations or removing themselves from any control by the religious institutions.

What could possible have created such an anti-religious education atmosphere? Science has had a large role in creating an anti-religious bias. The arena of political correctness has done the same by making Christianity the only group for which it is acceptable to hold a public bias towards. I am certain that there are others reasons, including the inability for many Christians to agree with each other over such things eternal security or the color of carpet for the hallways.

I am strongly concerned that many churches have moved further from the educational process instead of trying to find a method for getting back into this arena. We consider such things as cost of electricity or lack of space to be more important than training the young minds and hearts of our children. Granted that God's Word did not exactly instruct the synagogues to teach math or Hebrew or Science to the children. We do know that King David hired 2000 professional musicians to go out into the nation to train musicians. We know that God instructed his people teach their history to those who came after. We know that the children learned to read in the synagogues. We know that they knew how to add and subtract as a part of trade and that they had to pay taxes, so somebody was teaching math.

I believe that churches need to be actively involved in education. Churches should be strongholds for the support of home education. Churches need to be leaders in providing free educational information for parents, children, teens, drug rehab, financial responsibility, etc. What do you think?