What Doug Wilson says about public schools and education

For example, when obedience would get a little raggedy around the house, we would confer, talk about it, and perhaps decide to tighten things up. We would line up the kids and tell them that there was too much squabbling or fussing or whatever. We would tell the kids we were sorry for letting that happen, and let them know we were going to have a short reign of terror. That meant no warnings, and spankings for all offenses.

When our kids were little, do what you just described, trying to play mom off of dad or playing dad off of mom, when our kids were little, that was a spanking offense... So, if you say, "Mom, can I go out in the backyard?" "No, I'm about ready to put lunch on the table." "Dad, can I go out and play in the backyard?" If dad hears that you just asked your mom that 30 seconds ago, that's a spanking. Because in this house, you're not allowed to act like we're on different teams.

▶Watch from 23:57

He clearly needs discipline, but he's on a public sidewalk and you don't want to discipline in view of all the passersby, who will, half of whom will misinterpret what's going on. But that kind of behavior calls for an admonition on the rear end.

▶Watch from 5:33

Even the youngest infant understands causation at some level, but the younger the child the more immediately he should be disciplined. The Bible teaches this, “He who spares his rod hates his son, but he who loves him disciplines him promptly” (Prov. 13:24). Discipline must be painful—“Now no chastening seems to be joyful for the present, but painful” (Heb. 12:11a). If the discipline is not painful, then it does not qualify as discipline. The tenderness of parents, particularly of mothers, is a common point of stumbling. This tenderness which refuses to discipline is a “kindness” which kills. God has required us to inflict pain on those who are dear to us.

A father may have confused his sentimentalism with a biblical love for his children. But any attitude a father has which does not discipline is not love but some sort of destructive counterfeit. Men who do not discipline their children have contempt for them.

If you are fine with corporal punishment for juvenile delinquents or for rowdies or hoodlums, how much more will you accept a judicious application of a mini-rod to a mini-person? Also, I think swats should generally begin after the child is mobile and can get into things. Occasionally you need a flick for a nursing baby, but it should be little things like saying “no biting.”

I do believe that if a toddler is told to take his nap and he gets up, I don't have any objection to godly, loving corporal punishment for sensible infractions that are sensibly applied... [Cenk Uygur: "How much can you hit your kid?"] What I teach people is that it should sting but not damage.

▶Watch from 1:02:20

Those who attempt to tear down respect for our own institutions are actually setting in motion a contempt for all institutions everywhere, and so then no one should be surprised when an alumnus of this multicultural curricular farrago heads down to their alma mater in order to shoot up the cafeteria.

Spanking should sting and should hurt, but it ought not to be damaging. If your child defies you when you spank him, it’s not painful enough for him to not want it to happen again. So instead of having ten spankings with three swats each, it would be far better to have one spanking with ten swats. You want to win decisively in the first round.

If you do not discipline your children effectively, you hate them. If you do not discipline them in accordance with God’s Word, I do not care what your emotional framework is—you are not loving them. […] the Bible says that if you do not discipline your kids, it is functionally disowning them—and that includes disowning them by doing nothing more than whumphing the diapers.

I’d like to add one more thing to this third principle for discipline: keep calm and spank anyway. […] In Proverbs 23:13–14 it says, “Withhold not correction from the child: for if thou beatest him with a rod, he shall not die. Thou shalt beat him with the rod, and shalt deliver his soul from hell.” […] If you refuse, then you are failing to head your child off as he is headed for destruction.

As a whole, the government school system has said yes to drugs, and students by the thousands found themselves on Ritalin, Prozac, Luvox, Paxil, or other related drugs. In many government school systems, such drugs are actively promoted by the administration as a means of keeping order in the classroom. It is not uncommon for the school to help administer dosages, making sure the kids stay medicated. But the problem is in one of the potential side effects of many of these drugs. Virtually all of the recent school shootings have been perpetrated by kids on officially sanctioned drugs. Of course, these drugs do not turn every user violent, but they appear to have this effect on a significant number. Kip Kinkel of the Oregon shooting was using Prozac. Eric Harris of the Columbine shooting was taking Luvox, which causes mania in one out of every twenty-five taking it.

The kids are taught that they evolved from some primordial goo and that their lives have no transcendent meaning. Everything is vanity, everything is worthless. Morality is what you, the student, want it to be. And then when some of the kids, natural inhibitions loosened by the drugs, take this curricular lesson out to the logical practicum and start blowing fellow students away, bits of protoplasm every one of them, those in authority wonder where this behavior is coming from.

The sooner the current government school system collapses, the better it will be for everyone, including those who were enrolled at the time the schools fell apart.

[Sam Harris: “If you find out that the teacher at your kid's school is... calling into doubt some essential feature of what you deem to be the right religion... Just how much can a good Christian be expected to tolerate on that?”] So you're forgetting, in my Presbyterian utopia there would be no public schools. So it's all private education, which means that you would fire that teacher. You would say okay, so you solve that problem immediately.

▶Watch from 53:21

And this is one of the things that delights my heart actually. Here in Moscow, about 35% of all school-age children in our town are receiving a Christian education... We're at 35% here. And my prayer, my desire is that before God calls me home, we will see the government education system dip below 50%. I want them to be the minority form of education in our town. And then defund it after that. [Kevin Swanson: "And then defund it. Yes."]

▶Watch from 29:20

Graphic and obscene materials are introduced to the little kids in the government sponsored grooming centers, the word gets out, parents show up at school board meetings, the Justice Department opens investigations on the parents as potential domestic terrorists, and other parents pull their kids out and head off down the road.

The other kind of fail, and frankly the far more common one, is when you deliver the occasional and very inconsistent wumph on top of the diapers. What happens is you just moved your kid six inches, and that is the only thing that happened. Your demon-child responds to this by saying to herself, “Ha! I defy you and all your pitiful attempts at intimidating the queen of the world!”

If you and your school have not been accused of racism yet, etc. then you are not doing your job.

The following goals are excerpted from the NEA resolutions passed at the 2001 Convention in Los Angeles: “A-13. Financial Support of Public Education. Funds must be provided for programs to alleviate race, gender, and sexual orientation discrimination and to eliminate portrayal of race, gender, and sexual orientation stereotypes in the public schools.” […] If we are numbered among those who believe that “gays, lesbians, bisexuals, transgendered people” must be called to repentance, the goals of the NEA should be recognized for what they are. We “must increase respect, understanding, acceptance, and sensitivity” toward them regardless of what Scripture says. But still many Christians thoughtlessly send their children off to be educated by these people.

Under our current circumstances, the first action to take, if it applies, is for parents to pull their own children out of the government school system and never think about putting them back in. The first motive for doing this is the protection (spiritual, covenantal, academic, etc.) of the children.

Education is a religious endeavor for every student. “Make that godless, and his life is made godless.” In the nineteenth century, secular education was established because many Christians were fatally persuaded of the myth of neutrality. They were told that there were many areas of life that could be studied apart from any reference to the authority of Scripture. They accepted the pluralistic nature of American public life, not as a social reality requiring intensive missionary activity, but rather as an authoritative voice, requiring every practitioner of every religion to submit and fit in. And this is why even today we hear “pluralism” as a code word requiring Christians to shut up. Of course, we are a pluralistic country. And ancient Rome was a pluralistic empire, but Jesus still told His disciples to preach the Gospel there. Properly understood, pluralism is simply another name for polytheism.

When boys are being taught by a staff which is largely composed of women, effeminacy can unwittingly be encouraged. The women expect boys to receive discipline in the same way that the women received it. […] If this does not happen, the women on staff can be helping to raise a generation of passive manipulators. […] [I]f those who are instructing them have egalitarian assumptions, and they teach the boys and girls as though there were no difference between them, then they are asking for trouble. The trouble they are asking for is that of wrecking masculinity in boys.

Of course, a fundamental aspect of family government remains even when a son is grown, has taken a wife, and has established a household of his own. The ultimate sanction that family government has is that of disinheritance. Just as the church excommunicates, and the civil magistrate executes, so a family has the authority to disinherit. If a son deserts the faith, he ought to be disinherited. If he marries outside the covenant, i.e., he marries a non-Christian, he ought to be disinherited.