Christians in the 1800s Foresaw the Issues of the Education Act
I was doing a bit of archive reading relating to the education system, and what I read was wildly fascinating. As I was searching up publications regarding the 1870 Education Act (known as the Elementary Education Act or Foster’s Education Act), I came across a pamphlet titled “Elementary education: a letter to the clergy of the Archdeaconry on the new education bill” written by the Archdeacon of Wilts, Thomas Stanton in 1870. What he had to say in protest about the bill, and the issues it could bring have been greatly materialised today, and I want to share it with you.
For many who know me, I am very much drawn to old traditions and customs (as long as they are good and biblical), and I wanted to really deep dive into what I and my husband should do in regards to the education of our children. This therefore involves me reading what people in the past did e.g. Classical Education and understanding how the education system as evolved over the years.
Christian education is fundamental
For Christians, the education of our children is no small matter, and how they are educated can frame their mindset for the better of for the worst as they grow up into adulthood. In today’s world, it is even more paramount to rethink the way we educate them. We essentially have to employ counter-cultural teachings in a thorough and robust way. It is why, more and more, the possibility of home educating my children is growing increasingly appealing and for many households around the world too.
Purpose of the 1870 Education Act
I have been wanting to understand the origins of the conventional education system and seek out what its purpose was. For centuries, families employed their children to help out in the home and earn income for the family. This was either working on the farms, being employed as domestic servants, taking on apprenticeships, and working in factories, to name some examples. The issue was that many children were working under rough conditions and were underpaid. It was the proliferation of these atrocities, despite many places employing children under fair conditions, which inevitably brought about the 1870 Education Act. This act put into place the motion for the state to set up schools in areas that were lacking and made it law for children between the ages of 5 and 13 to be freely educated in a non religious way.
And the Syrians had gone out by companies, and had brought away captive out of the land of Israel a little maid; and she waited on Naaman’s wife
2 Kings 5:2 – naaman’s wife’s servant girl was under the age of 12
Issues of the 1870 Education Act
Many Christian leaders voiced their disapproval of the act, foreseeing a slow take back of their control over the education system in Britain. Although schools were free to include christian teachings, parents were also free to remove their children because of that. Unfortunately today, state funded schools, although able to teach about Christianity, are prohibited from teaching about creationism as science, a great win for the humanists.
BHA Head of Public Affairs Pavan Dhaliwal commented, ‘In 2011 our “Teach evolution, not creationism” campaign called for enforceable rules saying that creationism cannot be presented as a valid scientific theory in any publicly-funded school. Now the Government has extended such an explicit rule to all new Academies and Free Schools and made it clear that it believes that existing rules mean that no Academy or Free School can teach pseudoscience.
from Humanists UK (2014)
The future Prophesied in the 1800s
What this has done has made it difficult for the great majority of Christians who wish to send their children to school to be confident that their child will receive an education intertwined with a biblical Christian worldview. Only independent, fee-paying schools have that liberty, yet not everyone can afford to send their child to such institutions. And so, what did the Archdeacon of Wilts write in his letter? Well I have pulled out some excerpts below for your read:
The most pressing and immediate danger at the present time relates to the subject of “Elementary or Primary Education;” and unless that danger be averted, in the good providence of God, it requires no great perception to foresee that the schools which the clergy have been greatly instrumental in erecting, and principally concerned in maintaining, will soon become mere seminaries of “secular” learning and instruction.
Heartburnings and dissensions will rapidly increase, until at last we shall, one by one, be forced, as clergymen, to abandon the work of combined education in despair. We shall be driven to act too late, but most determinedly on the conviction that secular learning is not Christian education, and bewail the day that we were led to consent to the adoption of such a dangerous scheme.
But worse than all, my Reverend Brethren, are the dark shadows which threaten the coming future.
Once establish a School Board such as is proposed, consisting of men who hold every variety of faith; once admit the obnoxious Conscience Clause, to be applied and acted on by them, and there will follow, of necessity, a train of endless compromises in school management and teaching, until at length the Bible will be eliminated from our schools, and then will follow that godless system of secular learning and instruction which, even now, the Birmingham League are endeavouring to establish and enforce.
Events repeat themselves because we fail to learn from history. The bible alone has proved this through the many accounts written down.
Education is a form of indoctrination
Whether a school is purely secular or religious, there is a set basis for its moral guidance and teachings that is passed on to the students. The government and various groups in society wish to remove all religious context from schools because it instead wants their teachings, on evolution, sex, etc to be promulgated as fact. John Morley, in his publication “The Struggle for National Education” (1873), pushed back against the editor of a religious paper who asked the questions how Genesis can be take out from Geography. His reply was “I see no more connection between geography and Genesis than between Macedon and Monmouth”. He further expresses his strong disapproval on parents who do not want their child to attend a school that provides no religious instruction, writing that they might as well not pay any tax.
CONCLUSION
As with any strong changes that happen in society away from long age traditions, I have learnt it is good to understand the whys, whos, and whats. Are the reasons for such change purely benign, or is there a hidden agenda, that though not immediately seen, will come to fruition in years to come? In the case of the education system, I think it is fair to say that the agenda is now clear as day and we Christians need to fight back for the sake of our children.
