Kevin Swanson discusses in this audio message the topic of education. He explains why he has decided to homeschool his children. There are many reasons to do so and if you examine the dangers and pitfalls of enrolling your children in public school, the choice becomes quite clear.

Proverbs 22:6 (NKJV) - "Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it."

I want to share a little bit with you concerning our journey in the area of education. Education was always important to my family. My mother and father homeschooled us in the 60s and 70s, as I think I mentioned earlier. And we still homeschool our own children to this day. My son is 21 years of age and my daughters are 19, 17, 15, and 12 years old.

My daughter Rebecca Joy is with us this weekend. She's working the table as well. But does anybody homeschool here? Okay, okay. Just wanted to make sure that I wasn't offending anybody.

But there are several personal reasons why we like to homeschool and I thought I'd share some of these with you before I get started. Just a little insight into the Swanson. So can I do that? Just give you some of the personal reasons why we have chosen to homeschool ourselves. The first reason is that we don't have to ask the school district for permission if we want to go on holiday to Australia for three weeks in October.

We just go. We don't have to ask anybody for permission. We just go. The second reason why we like to homeschool is we can pray anytime we want to. We can read the Bible all day long and we can read from Leviticus.

Ooh, now we're getting daring. Leviticus chapter 18, chapter 20. Does that make sense to anybody here? Okay, just Just checking. Okay, another reason why we like to homeschool is that our children can be in four grade levels at the same time.

People have asked my children, are you homeschooled? What grade are you in? My children give them that dumb look. It's kind of embarrassing, you know. They gotta step in and say, ma'am, he's 10 years old, he's in algebra 2, so back off.

The next reason why I like to homeschool myself is because as a homeschool graduate, I can have a class reunion anytime I want to. It's convenient. Another reason why we like to homeschool is we just prefer pajamas to school uniforms. You guys have all kinds of school uniforms here, I noticed that. Everybody's got school uniforms.

We just go with pajamas. You can bring pets into the classroom with you. Can you do that in public schools here? Can you bring your dog and cat and all your birds and no you can't do it. Okay.

Another reason why we like to homeschool ourselves is that you can bring guns to school with you. My son just felt like he studied better with his 22 leaned up against his desk. That was okay, you know, and besides though one time my daughter got a license for a deer and it was a deer walking by our window and just so she got the 30-06 and took a shot from our laundry room ten yards away dropped it and we had venison for three months. So see it's called homeschooling, okay? And also our children have never missed the bus.

It's a kind of a benefit, you know. My children like to wave it as it goes by. There goes the jail bus dad. Do we rescue them? Shall we rescue them?

No, no, no. Okay, another reason why I like to homeschool is that there's always somebody to take out the trash. And finally, the last reason why we like to homeschool is that the school staff, we're in love with each other and we kiss and hug in front of the class. Can you do that in public schools out here? I didn't think so.

Okay, well just a few reasons why we like to homeschool. And you know, homeschooling has, I think, at points been stressful for my wife. Any of you ladies ever been stressed out by homeschooling your kids? You see, my wife can be a little stressed out. And so, you know, my encouragement, of course, is that I was executive director of Christian Home Educators of Colorado and we couldn't quit.

At one point she said, can we just like move to Australia and change our names or something, you know? But I had committed so much to home education. Number one, because I thought it was important. I really did. I thought home education was a really significant way to do something about the increased secularization of the age.

I think there are a lot of parents who are concerned about the fact the faith is dying. I think there are pastors who are concerned that the church is dying in Australia. I think there are people who are concerned about the disintegration of the family and it seemed as if the reintegration of the family and education would be a good way to address this. So there are a lot of reasons why I wanted to homeschool our children, but you know, there was also a lot of this idea that it takes professionals to do it. One time we got a brochure in the mail from a Christian school, it was written by a guy with a PhD and an EDD and an FDD and a GDD and a HD, lots of DDS, so you know that he knew what he's talking about.

And this guy said, it is sometimes said in some circles that one does not need a university degree or a teaching certificate to teach children, unqualified persons should not perform brain surgery. So, in other words, what he's saying is, and I think every single homeschooling mom and dad understands this idea that it takes a professional. And you know, we've had 10 generations of this since Jean-Jacques Rousseau, right? Haven't we had a lot of people saying it takes a professional to educate a child. Actually we have in the church too.

We have it takes a professional to disciple your children. Don't try this at home. It takes a highly trained seminary trained professional to educate your children and disciple your children. On the one hand, education of children is important, but also discipleship of children is important. And so the churches say, we'll let the professionals educate the children in the public schools and it takes a professional to disciple them in the churches and so parents are pretty much irrelevant and and parents lack a lot of confidence to do this.

And so I think the reason why my wife gets pretty stressed out about this, and she still does after all these years, you know, she'll wake up in the middle of the night and grab my arm and say, I'm just not qualified to do this, hon. I don't think our children are gonna turn out very well. I'm giving your children a substandard education. You understand that? I usually say, yeah, yeah, I do.

Just go to sleep, I'm fine. I'm fine with that. I can live with it now, you know. But the reason why my wife is so concerned about this, I think, is because education is important. It is important.

We all I think know that's important. Even atheists by the way know it's important. There was this atheist that visited a a science museum, a creation museum in America. There's actually a museum that that that advocates that God created the world some 6, 000 years ago, which are very rare in America. There's only five colleges in America that teach a young earth perspective in biology.

One college out of 3, 000. Okay, what is that? Like 0.0004% or something? I mean, you know, 99.95% of universities in America are teaching that man evolved out of a rock by a method that we cannot describe, define. It was punctuated equilibrium.

We're not exactly sure what that is, we have no data, nothing really in the fossil layers in terms of the missing links, and we've never repeated in a laboratory, but we really think that this highly formed complex life form called a human being evolved out of a rock by total chance over 4 billion years old. Trust us on this one, we have a PhD. Read it. PhD. I'm a smart guy and a human being turned into a rock by total chance.

Okay and there's you know like 99.999% of our educational facilities teach this kind of thing in all the museums and all the rest. Okay? It's everywhere. It's all the way through. But there's always the little guy in the Emperor's New Clothes Procession.

You know the Emperor's New Clothes? Do you get that in Australia? Okay, so you get this Emperor's New Clothes Procession and there's always the little guy who stands up saying, hey dad, dad, that guy doesn't have any clothes on. And everybody goes, would somebody shut him up? Just shut him up!

You see, All the propagandizers just go crazy. So this is effectively what happens whenever somebody shows up on a television show, I have done this before, and says, I can't believe what you're saying. God created the world 6, 000 years ago and they go crazy. So this atheist responds to the Creation Museum and blogs, we are in a battle over the hearts and the minds of the next generation. And you know what I said?

Yeah! What he said, I agree with the atheist on this one. We are in a battle over the hearts and the minds of the next generation. And friends, the other side is winning. Big time.

The atheistic, naturalistic, materialistic ideas that are taught in universities and k-12 schools in Australia and America is changing the entire fabric of the faith and everything and I think it's breaking down science. So the first reason why I believe that my wife gets a little stressed out over education is because There is a spiritual battle involved in the field of education. And if anybody wants to show up in the war of the worldviews, I mean the most intense war of all, the most dangerous war of all, the war that will determine whether or not hundreds of thousands if not millions of children wind up in hell or heaven, wind up believing the wrong things or the right things. Okay, if anybody wants to be relevant in the war of the world views in the 21st century, they're gonna show up on Omaha Beach on D-Day in the War of the World Youth and that my friends is education and I hope that there are some faithful Christians in Australia engaging these things in conferences at every single state in this country every year and I hope there are tens of thousands of people engaging the battle because education really matters.

It really matters. The second reason why my wife gets so stressed out is because what do you do when you ruin a batch of biscuits? We call them cookies, you call them biscuits. What do you do when you ruin a batch of biscuits? You burn them to a crisp, black all the way through.

What do you do? You toss them out. What do you do when you ruin a batch of kids? See, isn't that isn't that running through the minds of parents? And wouldn't you like to have a practice run in it in raising children?

Wouldn't that be nice? See, education is important because it has to do with the future of our children and we're not just preparing our children for the university, we're preparing our children for heaven and that makes a difference. When we talk about education we really need to know how to educate our children. It matters. People who send their children to the wrong schools will lose their children.

They'll lose the children's hearts and oftentimes they'll lose the children to the culture. They'll lose their children's faith. They'll lose their children from the church. They'll lose their children. They'll just lose the children.

And you know what? There are of parents here love the children and they would like the very best for the children. They really love their children and they would like the best education for the children. So this is a worthy discussion. What is it?

Should we send our children to this school or that school, this Christian school, that private school, this classical school, this form of homeschooling? What does the Bible say about education? That was the question that hit me. If all scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, etc., etc., to equip the man of God in every good work, then do you think that the Bible is sufficient to equip the man of God in the area of education. Now I had to believe that it did.

So I went into the Bible and I looked into the concordance for the word education and I couldn't find it. And so I said, oh well the Bible has nothing to say about education. Now of course that's what some say. Some will say, yeah, the Bible really isn't dealing in the area of education. And that's the viewpoint of a guy named Thomas Aquinas, who set the entire Western world on a track that was not a good track.

Foundationally, it wasn't good. He was the brains behind the modern university movement from the 1200 into Cambridge, Oxford, Harvard, Princeton, Yale, all of the universities across the Western world. All of them rooted in Aquinas' ideas and Aquinas said we're separating the Bible or sacred knowledge from philosophical knowledge and whatever happens in universities in education. So the Bible will not instruct us in the area of education. We will do the secular university and sacred knowledge will be overhearing, will separate the two things.

Now that kind of idea really has affected a lot of us. So when we go to the Bible, we're not thinking, what does the Bible say about education? You're not going to find that in most Christian colleges that train teachers. You're not going to say, what does the Bible say about education? Generally speaking.

Well, as it turns out, if you go into the Bible and you look for knowledge, wisdom, and understanding, you'll find out that there's actually a book in the Bible dedicated to giving mallet's wisdom and understanding to a young man or young woman. And it turns out to be there's a book in the Bible, a whole book in the Bible dedicated to telling us, parents, you know, parents, people like you and me who love our kids so much. There's a book in the Bible dedicated to telling us how to educate our children. Praise God! Isn't that?

That's praise God! I mean God didn't leave us with nothing. He left us with something to train our children with. By the way, I think it's very, very important because we're training the next generation for life and eternity. So, it turns out to be, of course, the book of Proverbs.

So, I mean, again, a shock to our system. We didn't really think of it in these terms. We always thought that you separated education from the book of Proverbs and the book of Proverbs has very little to say about education. We thought because the book of Proverbs had nothing to say about geometry. The Pythagorean theorem was not in the book of Proverbs and that just you know that was just an error because the Pythagorean theorem a squared plus b squared c squared beautiful little geometric equation and you know why did God forget to include the Pythagorean theorem in the book of Proverbs and here's the answer the answer is really really straightforward because it's not that important.

And this is where your little 13 year old boy goes, yes, I'm so glad we came here tonight. Mom, take notes. Let's get our papers out. Let's take some notes here. Well, as it turns out, when it comes to education, if we're to liken the education or training of a child to a building, the substance of education, the foundations, the studs, the drywall, the substance of education is ultimately character.

And geometry, geology, and geography is just the wallpapering. It makes the place livable, it makes it kind of pretty. Now imagine trying to put wallpapering on walls that didn't exist. Try it sometime. Use a lot of glue.

It's going to be very difficult to do that. See, the book of Proverbs, it deals with a lot of things. Everything that's important, by the way, to establish life on planet Earth. If we're going to re-establish social systems, banking systems, economic systems, political systems, leadership, etc., etc., you're going to have to use the book of Proverbs. I know that we've taken about a hundred years and we follow John Maynard Keynes and Margaret Sanger and other people who and Karl Marx and others who have a whole different way of looking at all these things and they are systematically breaking everything down.

So set them all aside, go back to the book of Proverbs, it's got everything, all the basic stuff, epistemology, metaphysics, ethics, leadership, political leadership, banking, economics, human relationships, psychology, anthropology, it's all there in the book of Proverbs. But what the Proverbs does is it wraps a character lesson around everything. So it doesn't want to separate character from all of the lessons that it's teaching and that is, and this is the first principle, the first principle in a biblical education of a child, character and faith is preeminent in the education of the child. Now we decided that we were really going to emphasize the book of Proverbs with our children. We couldn't find any other resources that went through the book of Proverbs verse by verse.

I mean all 978 verses and so I put together a three-part series on the book of Proverbs because I was so convicted that we were focusing on mathematics but we weren't really teaching our children the book of Proverbs. They didn't know the book of Proverbs as well as they knew how to factor trinomials and other things like that. So I would encourage you to be sure to use a curriculum that deals with the Book of Proverbs as the very, very, very, very core of the education of a child. Because in my perspective, God is smart and God knows a lot about a lot of things including human beings and how to educate them. Now I just say that I'm not I'm not I'm not kidding here.

It turns out that most Christian colleges and and most universities do not teach the book of Proverbs. Did you know that? They just don't. Well, the book of Proverbs presents characters preeminent in the education of a child. And I learned this as well with my son and I began to focus on the area of character.

I would teach him math, yes. I'm not against teaching math. I think music is better than math, it's more fundamental than math, but teach some math, that's all right. It's legitimate. You're allowed to teach math.

Teach your children some mathematics. But as you teach mathematics, what's the focal point? What are we doing? What are we really doing in the instruction of the math subject? My son is doing well in math for a number of years and then he was just kind of kicking back.

It was apparent to me he wasn't trying very hard. He was getting the 75% on the tests and so forth and so I said son You know here's what we're gonna do with our Saxon math lessons You'll take four to five lessons Then you'll take the test if you get less than 85% of the test You've got to redo all five chapters over again. Okay, so that's the way we're going to do this from now on. Well, of course he was pretty confident first, but he fell short. Right away, I was grading the math test and he wasn't doing very well.

You know, red mark, red mark, red mark, red mark. And you know some people say math isn't emotional but as I'm grading the test I'm hearing him, you know, I can hear kind of the whining noise and it turns out math is very emotional and it can be a spiritually enlivening, sanctifying experience for all involved. And so I said, son, you missed it. You got to redo all five lessons all over again. And he said, no, no, dad, no, I already know this stuff, I know it doesn't work, I don't want it to work all over again, why do I have to do this?

I said, son, I'm not teaching you math right now, I'm just teaching you character, I'm using math to do it. See, math has a wonderful way of cranking it down on somebody who, say, a proud, arrogant young man who thinks he can handle anything is maybe a little slothful. So add a little, you know, two ounces of slothfulness, six ounces of pride, and then you give him a really tough math lesson. And after a while you turn to your son, you look at the math books, you say, you haven't been working on your math for the last two weeks, what's the deal? I don't like math anymore.

It's too hard. I don't want it. I don't like it. I don't like the math anymore." And you come back to him and you say, oh, so there's a lion in the streets. There's a lion in the streets.

And for the fact that there's a line in the streets, this lawful man will not plow his fields. Now, how many times do we ever run into a lion in the streets in average, ordinary life? Where you wake up on a Monday morning and you gotta go to work and you gotta face somebody, you gotta make a phone call, you gotta deal with a bug in a computer program that won't go away, and it's just oh there's a lion in the streets. So what do you do with a young man who's facing the lion in the streets? Here's what some moms and teachers do.

Oh, let me help you with the problem. Oh, I will do it for you. Now, see, wrong, wrong, wrong. What you say is, son, there's a lion in the street. Here's what you do with lions.

You go get your .45, you put it to its head, pull the trigger, bang, you kill the lion and go plow your fields. And that's an attitude that's got to be taught, exemplified, and the lesson has got to be repeated again and again and again and again and we'll do it in math, we'll do it wherever we need to do it, but see character is preeminent in the education of a child. It's not about teaching math. Are you with me here? So how many moms are like, oh she's just not getting it.

You know, it's all academic, academic. What you're dealing with is character and you're dealing with character throughout the entire class and it's more about the character than anything else. That's what it's all about. That's why you're there. That's why you're doing math.

You're doing it for the character. Now it is helpful that they're learning math because you know in some math lessons if you forget the decimal point where you forget a little parentheses here and there you're probably going to miss the problem and you know sometimes your son comes back to you and says, but dad I put so much work into it all I did wrong was put the parentheses in the wrong place. The slothful man does not take the meat that he has taken in hunting, right? He doesn't cut all the meat off that he's taken in hunting. He's not meticulous in his diligence.

Same problem with the kids who walk out of rooms and will not turn off the light switch. Does that ever happen to you? It just takes too much energy, takes too much time. Walking out and saving dad six cents won't do it. You know, it just takes too much time.

That's what a slothful man is, right? It's just like, they're just not meticulous. Well, here's what you tell your son. You say, son, not giving you extra credit today. You miss the problem.

Minus 20 percent. Because here's the deal. If you forget the decimal point or the parentheses when you're designing bridges they don't give you extra credit when they fall down. Okay so characters preeminent in education of a child. Now there's a guy named Dr.

Thomas Stanley's written some books in our country about the free market system and how effective the free market system is. He's interviewed 720 American millionaires to determine what it was that contributed to their success. It's not that money is the only indication of blessing or that money will always be the blessing that attends the obedience and all the rest, but here I'm here to tell you that the the most honest nations in the world, the corruptions perception index done by the Transparency International Organization always takes a look at the most honest countries in the world, always the most free countries, always the most prosperous countries, and as it turns out, the countries in the world that are the most honest are always, without exception, Protestant nations that have a solid, solid, solid rooting years and years ago in the book of Proverbs and the teaching of the Bible. As you get further and further away from the Christian faith inevitably every single step you take away to the Roman Catholic is the second most prosperous nations, most honest nations, and then you go to the Orthodox, then you go to the Muslim, then you go to the Hindu, then you go to always goes to the worst possible religion, always creates the absolute worst hell holes on planet earth, always, always, always.

So the teaching of the Word of God, inculcated in discipleship as we sit in the house, as we walk by the way, as we rise up, will bless nations hundreds of years from now. It's amazing what happens when you teach the Word of God to your children. The worldview impact of those lessons, amazing. They transform nations hundreds of years from now, never wasted. It's amazing what happens when the Word of God is inculcated and taught in the homes.

So anyway, this Dr. Thomas Stanley writes this book on the millionaire mind and he finds out that that those millionaires that got a PhD in chemistry or straight A's in college 4.0 etc etc in college they did very well in academics the academic element was like number 26 on the list of important factors for millionaires. It just wasn't important. The schooling wasn't important. It was a non-issue for the most of the millionaires.

Number one most important issue for millionaires in America that actually accomplished something in the American free marketplace was tell the truth. Tell the truth. Tell the truth of that. Does that lesson show up anywhere in the Book of Proverbs perhaps? Has anybody read the book of Proverbs here?

That's like every other verse. I did a statistical survey of the book of Proverbs to figure out, you know, which lesson is God really trying to pound home? And it turns out, tell the truth and the use of the tongue, number one. It's the most important, most important lesson. Okay, so the millionaires got that one right.

Number two on the millionaires list was was hard work. So hard work, important. We've talked about that already. So and then self-discipline comes in number three which is related to hard work. Number four was getting along with others, which again, isn't that tied into the book of Proverbs?

Yeah, it's like every other verse, the book of Proverbs. Yeah, amazing. Number five, millionaires said number five, this is really it, you want to be successful, You want children to be successful, what should you focus on? Number five was get a supportive spouse. Now, I want you to think for a moment, where would we find a lesson like that?

Let me suggest the book of Proverbs to you. And what you'll find is there are 30 chapters, and it's mainly dad. And see, by the way, the book of Proverbs is dad and mom. So apparently parents are important. Sorry, John Jacques Rousseau, but parents are important, really important.

So 30 chapters, Dad is really working hard to inculcate these lessons and then mom shows up in chapter 31 and what does she say? She says, my son, get a supportive spouse. Her price is far above rubies and this is what she looks like, qualification, qualification, qualification, you need to get us the most votes. Okay now isn't it amazing what God has learned from these millionaires? Maybe he did the survey.

I'm just testing your epistemological authority here just for a second. Okay, so the book of Proverbs indicates that character is preeminent in the education of a child. Now let me move on to the second principle, this is very, very important, vitally important, and that is the principle of individuality. Now this is all based in 1st Corinthians chapter 11 and 12 where Paul talks about the varying gifts and such. And also based on the first thing you say when your second child shows up.

What's the first thing you say when your second child pops out of the womb? The first thing you say. They're so different. It's like this big revelation, right? Oh, I can't believe they're so different.

But what happens with modern education is that we've had this standardization and this centralization of power in education that's happened over the last 100 years. Just the last 100 years. Most of these nations grew up on home schools. You know that? They were homeschooling on the prairies and stuff, and little one-room schoolhouse here and there.

That's the way things happened for a long, long time until the experts showed up. And when the experts showed up, they said, let's centralize power over everything. Let's build humongous nation-states where we'll centralize power and we will establish standards for every eight-year-old kid. He's got to have this book and every nine-year-old kid will have the four book and every ten-year-old kid will have the five book and we'll put numbers on doors and if you're eight years old you go in that three door and if you don't go in the three door there's something wrong with you. Right?

Isn't that basically the system? That's what happened. My daughter Emily was not good in math at all. She just wasn't good at math. I mean and we have to take standardized tests in Colorado and so she's approaching third grade and she she's not getting this one plus one equals two business and boy we went from stacks of math to to what we call math you see where you get these little blocks and they're kind of manipulative You do the blocky thing and stuff.

It didn't work at all for Emily. She just wasn't getting it. I mean, you know, here is one chair, here's another chair, two chairs. Could you go over that one more time? You know, and I was just, I mean, we were just, we didn't know what to do.

We started just doing these little exercises where you got a one, you got a one, put a two, it's kind of curlicue, just put a two, it doesn't matter what it means, you know, and we get on and on and on and on and Emily wasn't getting it. Then one day out of the blue she just gets it and I don't know how she got it, she got it, just got it And she did pretty good for that aisle. It was amazing. I learned that day that people do not learn on one little line nicely organized by the Department of Education. And it's not like you have three lines where you have the average line, then you get the smarty line, and then you get the dummy dumbs down here and everybody gets their own little line.

No, no, no. It turns out that children learn like this, you know. One learns like this, one learns like this, one kind of learns like this, one learns like this, and one doesn't learn anything for like 14 years and then they get it in like two weeks, you know. And then sometimes it's like my daughter or Becca Joy one time, she was like 14 years old, and my wife comes to me and she forgot everything she's ever learned about math. It's all good!

I said, well just start over again. And the second time through it took a little less time. I said, fine. But see every child is so unique. Every child is incredibly different.

God has designed our children with different gifts, talents, and abilities and we need to challenge them and encourage them wherever they happen to be. Rebecca Joy was never quite as academic as the others. I mean, she hasn't been. She's more artistic. She's always been more artistic than the other children.

Emily and Daniel were doing the 95 percentiles and 99 percentiles, meaning that they were the top four to five percent of the nation. It was really cool for homeschool numbers, you know, and so I was pretty excited about that until Becca Joy comes out with like a 57 percentile. I mean it was right there at the average. You know, I'm like executive director of a major homeschool organization and my child is not contributing to the national average. You know, that was kind of my attitude about the whole thing.

But Becca, again, a little more artistic than the other children. Okay, I don't know if you've seen her, she kind of walks artistically, you know, she kind of does everything artistic. She does all her signs and stuff. She does dishes artistically, you know, where she usually takes a lot of time, you know, she's kind of takes like 10 minutes to do three, you know, just I mean just she takes her time and she everything's pretty, you know, nice. Well anyway, she was gonna do her test for math in the fifth grade, so I was there, I was kind of overseeing the whole testing situation, and so she's doing the test, and here's the way she does, she puts a page out in front of her, and she takes a look at it and then she starts to make pretty drawings along the margins, you know, just you know kind of frame it in a little bit, make it comfy and nice and I'm standing there going, honey this is a time test, can't we like get on with it?

But she has to make it nice, you know? And you send that in to the professional testers of America, and send it through the machine, they don't even bother looking at the margins, you know that? Machine doesn't say, well this is pretty. She did a really good job on this one. What's wrong with that?

You know what's wrong with that? You know what's wrong with that? My daughter, Becca Joy, has been blessed by God with an amazing talents and abilities that is not being detected by this test because the testing the testing the academic world is just looking at a very narrow narrow narrow narrow band of human experience and And one time I was gloating over my son's 99 percentile because he was hitting the 99. I was, oh man, too bad they don't give you a decimal point on this. You know, 99.999, how many nines, you know, and all that.

And my wife was saying, yeah, but they didn't grade him on character there. You know, and I was thinking, what? What is like preeminent education? Do you remember what we said like five ten minutes ago in the presentation? They may remember back that far.

Oh, yes character wasn't it characters preeminent education, and they don't even grade you on that You see how useless the academic system is They're just not focused on what they need to be focused on. Isn't that amazing? So character preeminent, the principal individuality essential. Children are unique, creating an image of God in amazing ways. Children are not widgets.

You can't put them through a manufacturing line. I was a manufacturing engineer and when you make stuff through a manufacturing line you put something through that machine it kerchunk kerchunk kerchunk you get other stuff off the other end. But what goes into the machine has to be sized and shaped exactly alike, otherwise you get junk out the other end. Okay, that's the way manufacturing works. That's what supplier quality is all about.

So here's children coming into the black box That's standardized and centralized by big powerful governments that are in control of all reality on planet Earth. And we're putting these children, we're jamming these children through this machine on this side, you know, kicking them through. Get that kid through that machine. Kick, you know. Get a larger hammer.

You know, boom, boom, get that kid in this machine, you know. And so kurchunk, kurchunk, what do you get out the other end? Huh? What do you think you get out the other end? Junk.

The principle of individuality is liberating. Why do you talk to my children, honey what grade are you in? And they go, grade? They don't know what grade they're in. Why?

Because they're individuals created by God with different abilities and you can maximize their abilities and I believe this is the most liberating principle of all. Let's move on to the next principle, the principle of relationships. Relationships. Children are not wedgits and they are not computer hard drives where you're stuffing information into their brains. They're not.

They're human beings created with personality in the image of God, by a God who's eternally relational. See now this is why the Unitarians in America created educational institutions as large, as centralized, as boring, as cold and institutional as you could ever imagine. Why? Because their basic metaphysic does not include the Trinitarian God. Period.

The Trinitarian God is relational and our systems are going to be inherently relational. There are theological reasons for what we're saying. Nevertheless, relationships are very, very core of the book of Proverbs. What do you get throughout the book of Proverbs? Is it like a lecture?

And furthermore, I'd like you to turn to page 27, and This is the metaphysical chapter where we are going to discuss Claus, are you still awake? No, this is a father engaged with his son. Chapter 5, son don't go the way of the harlot, you'll go to hell with her! He's emotional, he's passionate, he's engaged he's imploring, he's begging, he's tied in with, his son is teaching the most important lessons of all for his son who's going to be a leader, a king, a responsible father, a church elder, whatever it is, this is a father who in chapter 23 says, oh my son give me your heart, come close observe my ways. University professors say that, you know, in their universities, you know they're the chemistry classroom, oh my sons and my daughters give me your heart, I'm teaching you chemistry.

No, because relationships are meaningless, are meaningless, are meaningless in the modern education system. I never had a university professor come to me and say, Kev, I'm sensing a little pride with you. I got a problem with your character. How's your lust life? You know, are you hitting the wrong websites?

They could care less. I went to seminary. I never had a seminary professor say, you know, Swanson, I've been sensing a little pride in some of your papers. Why don't they deal with character? Why don't they build relationships?

Why not? Because that's not what universities do. That's not what educators do. They don't build relationships. Relationships are meaningless.

You get a different teacher every year, a highly qualified professional teacher who knows exactly how to teach the third grade. And you get a new teacher every class, every hour, every year in your biology class and your algebra class in your high school, etc. Why do they not give you teachers where the relationship forms over years and years and years and why do the teachers not invite you over to their houses for connection, for relationship, because that's not what teachers do. It's not important in modern education. You're not supposed to kiss them, you're not supposed to hug them, you're not supposed to spank them.

You're not supposed to discipline them, you're not supposed to love them, you're not supposed to have a relationship with them, you're not supposed to focus on their character, you're not supposed to do anything that the Bible says about education. Forget the book of Proverbs, forget relationships, it's not worth anything. Forget the principle of individuality, Forget character, forget discipleship, forget all of that. That's not what educators do. Now I'm here to tell you there are some seminaries and some teachers that are trying to incorporate something of a relational approach.

So I don't want to negate any of that. I have taught myself in public and private schools and I have found that there are some who are trying to move in the direction of discipleship but it's few and far between. Okay, let's move on. Well, let me just give you an illustration here for relationships because I think this is somewhat helpful. My dad sent me the story about a family up in northwest Oregon, out in the big woods in Northwest Oregon.

The police found this family, his father and daughter, living in the woods up in Northwest Oregon about four to five years ago. And they'd been in the woods for four years. The daughter was eight years old when they went into the woods and they found him at 12 years of age. And the father had just gotten out of the city, gotten out of the schools, he was seeing what's going on with the peer groups, and he just said, I'm out of here, I don't like what's going on, I'm just gonna go somewhere, kind of like my dad did, just you know where you hit the panic button, and he just went out into the woods and they lived in the woods for four years. A father and daughter.

A police found him and everything was okay, it wasn't as if there was anything negative. She was getting fed and stuff, but they were in a little lean-to and there was a little brick going by and they had a little garden and they had some access to a local town I guess but but they were the police found them there in the National Forest and and they tested the girl because they were concerned. She's been in the woods for four years and they tested the girl she's 12 years old she tested out as a 12th grade high school graduate at 12 years of age. That's like six years before you're supposed to graduate in America. That was astounded.

It was amazing. And what they had for curriculum was like a Bible and a world book encyclopedia set. There's a picture of it online. And the police were astonished, just astonished. They couldn't believe it.

And the police deputy who was quoted in the story said it was amazing how dysfunctional the living conditions were, but how close in a loving relationship they had with each other. If you read that, if you think about that, is it that simple? Could it be that simple? You know, is it, again, what did they have in the woods? Did they have any certified teachers?

Not unless the squirrels were certified. Did they have testing? Did they have like $3, 000 a year of government funding? Because you know we need government money to do something as technical, as home educating our children. We need government money for this to fund us.

We need government money to fund our private schools and our Christian schools and eventually, yeah, the governments are probably going to encourage home schools and Christian schools in Australia to teach pro-homosexual ideology? Absolutely that's coming. Absolutely. What the government funds, the government controls. So families are like, oh I need the $2, 000.

They had a $5 set of encyclopedias. I was at the Czech conference when the story broke and my wife, we have a Czech conference, Colorado, it's coming up this week actually, three days, we have four thousand people there and we have a vendor hall as big as Walmart, I mean as far as I can see, hundreds of vendors as far as I can see. And everyone of them is saying, you gotta buy my stuff, otherwise you're giving your kid a substandard education. And my wife comes out of this like kind of shaking. Oh honey, what do we do?

Do I buy all of it? And I had just read this story. I said, honey, here's what we're gonna do. Blindfold me and I'm gonna walk into that hall and I'm just randomly picked like seven things and we'll use that. See, people have this idea that it just takes a high-tech, high-expense form of education.

It's going to take a professional, come into our homes and educate our children, give them a good education. See, I have this idea. No, no, no, no, no, no. It turns out God has hardwired something into parents that is awesome, that has an amazing impact on the relationship, the education, the discipleship of our children. The next principle is life integration.

I gotta move a little faster here. Life integration. God's word talks about life integration. If you're going to do education, biblical style, you need to do it in a life integrated fashion. James 1, a man who hears the word, doesn't do the word, is like the man who sees himself in the mirror and straightaway forgets what man or man he was.

Most education is not retained. 99% of education is a waste of time. It just is. Now I know we repeat it over and over a hundred million times and finally they get like one fact After like a hundred million times of working it into their brain, okay? But it's not life integrated and we learned this again throughout our homeschooling It was Emily was like 10 years old one day and it was like at midnight we're going to bed my wife shoots up and says Emily forgot to do her grammar today and I said well let's get Emily out of bed and we'll work to 2 a.m.

Get that grammar done you know and but then I'm on my way she's been in bed for two hours, you know. Let's not do that. So every now and then better since. And so I said, why didn't Emily do her grammar? You know, we had like, didn't we have like 14 hours of waking time?

Yeah, but she was busy writing a letter to grandma. Now at that time Emily was writing like two-page letters to grandma explaining everything about our house. It was a little embarrassing at points, but she was going through all the details of what was going on in her home at the time and she was communicating these long letters to grandma. She's only like nine or ten years old at the time. And so I got to thinking, why do we do grammar?

Why do we do grammar? Is it so that when Emily is 26 years old, she gets out of bed and says, it's grammar time, time to do grammar. More grammar, I've prepared all my life to do more grammar. Is that why we do grammar? Or do we do grammar in order to write letters to grandma?

See, there's a disconnect in our minds because of the way that we've been educated for the last 400 years. There's a disconnect in our mind. It's like we're trying to learn how to ride a bike by taking bike for 12 years. Bike 101, Bike 102, Bike Accident Recovery Workshop, Bike Repair, Bike this, Bike that, Bike bike. We've never gotten on bike.

Education is very much out on an island. It's apart from life, where people are out there with white gloves and white masks, dealing with children away from life, family, work, and everything else. We do it out on an island, where, by the way, A students wind up teaching and B students go out there and work for C students. As homeschoolers, as Christians, let's life integrate education. You walk by a well, your son says how deep is that well, we're in trouble.

Especially if he's taken physics, right? You walk by a well, your son should know that's a one-half gt squared moment. Dad, one-half gt squared. That's right son, But why won't he say that? Why won't he look down and say, how deep is that well?

Why won't he say 1.5 gt squared? The reason is because he sat there and stared at a two-dimensional textbook a hundred times. And it made no sense to him. And he had not a clue that he could have dropped a rock and done the 1 and 2 and 3 and squared times 32 or whatever it is, 9.8. That's all he needed to do.

But he didn't think that. Why? Because 99% of education in the modern world is a waste of time. It's disconnected from reality. God's form of knowledge is a two-step process.

You get some knowledge, you get some kind of knowledge, and that's only halfway. You've got to plug it in somewhere. You have to plug it in to real life. And that my friends is one of the most powerful forms of education of knowledge you could ever imagine. It comes from God's Word.

The Greek form, the Hebrew form of knowledge, of education, completely different. And if we could just capture this vision, I've tried to put in my book Upgrade the 10 Secrets to the Best Education for Your Child, if you could just capture the vision I've talked about today, we would revolutionize massively reform education. Our children would be way better prepared for life, for work, for eternity. It would be amazing if we could get a renaissance in the area of education and pull away from the secular humanist Greek model that is destroying education in the West. Personally I think whatever Christian education we had over previous centuries helped the development of science in the 1700s and early 1800s.

It's only been since Darwin and others. Well Dewey and all the educational geniuses have destroyed education since then. But okay I've talked about all these various factors I just think are so important. I mean You've got to bring them in. You've got to focus on character.

It's a 724. It's preeminent education. Individuality, wow, liberating, liberating. If your little seven year old boy can't read, you don't need to bolt him to the chair for seven hours a day and fill him with Ritalin to get him to read. No, let him go plow the fields with Dad for the next 10 years.

And let him go fish in the afternoon. Mom can read to him every night for the next six or seven years, and when he's 14 years old, you come and we'll talk about whether he needs to learn how to read at 14 years of age. See, is that radical? That's radical. Some of you say, that's got to be against the law.

I can't believe he's talking like this. It turns out it's not against God's law. It's not against God's law. You say, what does God's law require? That the boy learn diligence.

He can learn it in the math books, he can learn it in the fields. The Bible doesn't specify. The Bible gives you amazing liberty and assumes that you're on your knees praying to God for wisdom as you raise that little boy who's very unique, has very unique skills and abilities and God has hardwired something in him that could do something amazing in taking dominion and doing something for the kingdom of God in years to come. I mean come on capture these things, individuality, the principle of character, preeminent education, relationships, the heart of it. Life integration is essential, but the most important principle I've missed so far, it is the first verse that deals with education in Proverbs chapter 1 and verse 7, the beginning of wisdom is the fear of God.

That's the most important principle of all. Absolutely has to be there. Be sure you do not try to teach. Be sure you try not, do not educate your children without the fear of God. You teach them history.

You teach them science. You teach them about the beauty of the universe. You teach them about the complexity of the human body, the human cell that is a hundred thousand times more complex than anything Boeing ever does and putting together as huge Boeing 747s. You were talking about trillions of these cells running through the human body and you describe these things, you ought to be shaking, man. At some point, you'll be trembling a little bit, like you're in the presence of a genius, somebody who's way more omniscient, way more wise than any human being.

One who has created the vast universes has the power to bring about storms on Jupiter that would destroy all life on planet Earth in five minutes. Those storms blow at 600 miles per hour and a half for the last 400 years. This is impressive! And you teach this to your children, you get down on your knees raise your hands and you encourage your children to raise their hands and you worship the true and living God. That kind of stuff doesn't happen in universities here in Australia very much does it?

Is there a lot of trembling and worship? Do professors fall down on their faces in the chemistry laboratories all that much? That's a problem. That's a huge problem. You do science without the fear of God.

What are you gonna do with your weapons of mass destruction? You really think man is totally under control, he's got all of his science completely under control. You think it's all working out? Everybody happy with what's going on with science? You think everything's gonna turn out fine?

Now that we have committed not to teach the fear of God and the worship of God in Australian universities for the last three, four, five generations, it's gonna be a big, big problem. Okay, I'm out of time, but let me just say this. What am I talking about? What am I talking about in everything that I've discussed so far? Talked about life integration, relationships, character preeminent, and education of a child, the fear of God, beginning of wisdom and knowledge.

Am I talking about education or is education the wrong word? Am I, are we using the wrong word? Maybe we should use the word discipleship. Doesn't it sound like discipleship? We've been using the wrong word for 800 years.

There will be those that come out of this conference who for the rest of your lives will say, I am not part of any education movement, I'm part of a discipleship movement. And for the rest of history in Australia, there will be those who are in favor of education and those who are in favor of discipleship. I am hoping that we will start a renaissance in the area of discipleship for the years to come, for the generations to come, because I think now is the time for us to settle in our minds once and for all. After eight hundred years of Thomas Aquinas, I deal with this in my book Apostate, after eight hundred years of Thomas Aquinas, it's time for us to say we're done with education. It's going to be discipleship from now on.

You know I told you about the expert, the PhD, EDD, FDD guy, and he said, you remember what he said? He says the unqualified persons should not perform brain surgery. Unqualified persons should not perform brain surgery. And you know what? After some reflection on it, I think I agree.

Unqualified persons should not perform brain surgery. But here's the problem. Here's the problem with this Christian school professor who's writing about education. Here's the problem. We're not talking about brain surgery.

We're talking about heart surgery. And nobody is qualified for that. And that's why my wife cuts off my circulation and says, honey I'm not qualified for this. She's right. She's not.

My sweet little daughter Abigail is the sweetest girl in the whole world. She is so cute and sweet and giving and loving. She's the cutest girl in the world except for your daughters I guess, but with that small exception I love my sweet daughter. She comes to me when she's, oh, it was about five or six years ago, and she had just learned how to read and write, and she gave me a Father's Day card on Daddy's Day. You know, Happy Daddy's Day.

And she gives me the card, and it's connected to this candy cane. I recognize the candy cane because I gave it to her the previous Christmas. Okay, so there's that old candy cane. It's been chewed on both sides and it's busted in a whole bunch of places, but that's okay. She's taped it all up.

She's like, here you go, daddy. Happy Father's Day, you know. And what do you think I said do you think I said well someone's been chewing on this thing you expect me this this I couldn't sell this for five cents to a garage sale you know you think that's what I said no no no no of course I I just put her in my arms and said oh honey you did this for daddy oh you just I love you honey oh you're so sweet I love you girl and and you know what that means On your very very best day and discipling your children and you had a really good day you know for the first time in like two years. You got a good day discipling your children and you come to God and you're just so happy. God, here you go, here you go God.

And you trip and you fall and the candy cane gets in the mud. That's okay, you wipe it off in your pants. You're ready to go out of the hair, God? Here you go. What do you think God's going to say?

He takes you in his arms, doesn't he? He says, and you know, the candy cane's all busted up. It's got mud on it. You've been chewing on it for the last six months. And he says, you did this for me?

Oh, I love you. Girl, I love you. I love you, Dad. I love you, Mom. And he knows and you know that you're not giving him something that he didn't give to you last Christmas.

You get it? Amen. Thanks.