4. Education and the Family (Remastered)

Education and the Family

R.J. Rushdoony

Deuteronomy 4:5-10, “Education and the Family.” 

“Behold, I have taught you statutes and judgments, even as the Lord my God commanded me, that ye should do so in the land whither ye go to possess it. Keep therefore and do them; for this is your wisdom and your understanding in the sight of the nations, which shall hear all these statutes, and say, Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people. For what nation is there so great, who hath God so nigh unto them, as the Lord our God is in all things that we call upon him for? And what nation is there so great, that hath statutes and judgments so righteous as all this law, which I set before you this day? Only take heed to thyself, and keep thy soul diligently, lest thou forget the things which thine eyes have seen, and lest they depart from thy heart all the days of thy life: but teach them thy sons, and thy sons’ sons; Specially the day that thou stoodest before the Lord thy God in Horeb, when the Lord said unto me, Gather me the people together, and I will make them hear my words, that they may learn to fear me all the days that they shall live upon the earth, and that they may teach their children.”

When the Ten Commandments was given, both before and after the giving of the commandments, we have statements similar to these just read, whereby the people of God were commanded not only to take heed of God’s Word but to teach them to their children and even to their son’s sons, their grandchildren. Thus, when the law was given, the law was given not only to be heard but to be taught, and it was placed upon the parents as their responsibility to educate their children. 

Last week we discussed the economics of the family and we saw that one aspect of economics of the family was the responsibility to care for one’s children. This, of course, involves education in the broadest sense of the word. 

Now, when we discussed the responsibility of education by the parents, in order that there may be a law-keeping younger generation, in order that the younger generation may indeed honor their father and their mother, education in this broad sense involves, first of all discipline. We are all familiar with the words of Proverbs 13:24:

He that spareth his rod hateth his son:

But he that loveth him chasteneth him betimes.

Again, Proverbs 19:18 says:

Chasten thy son while there is hope,

And let not thy soul spare for his crying.

In other words, when God spoke through Solomon these words, He was aware that all of us are inclined sometimes to be too tenderhearted and to spoil our children, and foolish pity is decried, for example:

Withhold not correction from the child:

For if thou beatest him with the rod, he shall not die.

Thou shalt beat him with the rod,

And shalt deliver his soul from hell.

Proverbs 22:15.

Discipline, we are told, is necessary because:

Foolishness is bound in the heart of a child…

Character requires discipline, and St. Paul, in Hebrews 12:11, says that if we are not chastened by our parents then we are to all practical intent, bastards, we are not legitimate children. And so God, St. Paul declares, disciplines those who are His children that He might be able to make them truly heirs. The sad fact is, in terms of the Biblical Law, most children are brought up as bastards today; they are not disciplined.

We are further told in Proverbs 22:6:

Train up a child in the way he should go:

And when he is old, he will not depart from it.

This verse in particular is especially rich because when it says, “Train up a child in the way he should go,” the implication of the Hebrew text there, “Train up a child—discipline a child—in terms of his bent, in terms of his direction, his aptitudes, his abilities.” In other words, we do not train up a child who has aptitudes, for example, for engineering, in terms of music, nor a child who has aptitudes in terms of farming, in terms of law. As soon as we see the aptitudes and the abilities and the direction of the child, we discipline him, we train him in terms of his aptitudes, and when he is old he will not depart from it. 

So that, not only does Scripture require discipline, but it requires discipline in terms of the realities and the aptitudes of the child, the two must go hand in hand. And one of the sad facts is that so often, discipline is without intelligence. And too many parents, and we can add, sometimes, too many wives, try to make out of their children, or out of their husband, something for which he has no aptitude.

Then further, we are told that a child left to himself, untrained, undisciplined, is a shame to his parents.ⁱ Thus, basic to the parental responsibility to educate, to teach, is discipline. But second, we must say from a study of Scripture, that discipline is not a substitute for sound instructions and for proper teaching. As a result, parents have a duty to provide the child with a godly education. We are told, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge,” and also, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.”

Again and again these statements are made in Scripture. We might note in passing that there is a difference between knowledge and wisdom. Knowledge is learning, it is accumulated, and a sound learning has, as its beginning, the fear of God. But wisdom is not learning, it is more than learning, it is the insight, it is the common sense, it is the ability to use learning intelligently. And whether it be learning and knowledge and wisdom, the fear of God is basic to both. And wisdom, true wisdom, rests on faith. And true knowledge presupposes God. 

Now, when Scripture emphasizes that there must be godly knowledge and wisdom, we must add further that, in terms of Scripture, there can be no neutrality in education. There is nothing neutral under the sun. We are either for something or we are against it. Education by the state will have statist ends, it will promote statism or socialism. Most of us grew up when schools still had teachers who were, by and large, godly, and of outstanding character, so that we did not see the implications of state schools in our day. But as those of you who have read my study, The Messianic Character of American Education know, all the philosophers of the public schools from Horace Mann to the present (with the exception of Bernard, over 100 years ago), had socialistic premises. Their purpose in bringing about state support and state control of the schools was to abolish Christianity, to socialize the child. And in recent years, of course, they have been able to bring their philosophies to full fruition. Education by the state will have statist, that is socialist, ends. And the hippie is the natural end product of our education.

But we are not then to turn to education by the Church, because education by the Church will have churchly, ecclesiastical ends. And the school should not be subordinated either to the Church or the state, each will promote itself. After all, the church of our Lord’s day, taught, as we saw last week, that men should give to the church, that is to the temple, rather than caring for their parents. In other words, the church of our Lord’s day was teaching sin as a virtue, and churches still do that.

Now, according to the Law, children are required to obey their parents, and the counterpart of this is the duty of parents to teach their children the fundamentals of obedience. And the fundamentals of obedience are only taught through God’s Law. And hence, as our Scripture declared, the obedience to, “Teach thy sons and thy son’s sons.”

One of the requirements in the law was that all parents and children should hear a reading of the Law, or read through the Law once in every seven years. This was done in Old Testament times every Sabbatical year, every seventh year, there would be a series of days when all would gather together to hear the priests or Levites read the Law through in its entirety. 

Now, this was a duty that was taken seriously by the Church for centuries. And the result was the Lectionary which those of you who are Episcopalian in background are familiar with. The Lectionary provided for the reading of the entire Scripture over a period of time so that one would hear at morning and evening prayer each Sunday, portions of Scripture read, so that the whole of the Scripture over a period of years would be read through regularly. This then is an obligation; a thorough knowledge of the Scriptures in order that the child might learn his duty to God and his duty to his parents. Sound instruction, therefore, a knowledge of God’s Word is basic to the education of the child.

But third, we must add according to Scripture, that because the Law is practical, it’s down-to-earth, Biblical concepts of education appear very plainly to be practical. As a result, the common opinion came to exist in Israel which summed up the teaching of Scriptures, that, “A man who did not teach his son the Law of God and a trade reared him to be a fool and a thief.” Moreover, we find this saying from Simeon, who was the son of Gamaliel, whom we meet in the New Testament in the Book of Acts:

“…not learning but doing is the chief thing.” ⁱⁱ

When Josephus, the Jewish historian, compared Hebrew education, Biblical education, with Greek education, he pointed out that the fallacy of Greek education was that it was either entirely abstract and theoretical, or it was totally practical; it did not have a proper connection between principle and practice which Biblical education had. 

Fourth, we must say that Biblical education was family-centered. It emphasized the responsibility of parents and children. Now, this is a point which Christian schools have found to be a very, very interesting one. I’ve talked with a number of school boards in the state of California, incidentally, that have had a great deal of experience with having children that are charity students. And invariably, each school has had this experience. If they take in some children who are too poor to pay a tuition for their schooling, these children are the discipline problems in the school. But the minute they drop these children as a total charity patient and say to the child or to the parents, “We will take your child without any tuition since you have no money, but so many hours of work are required around the school by the parent, the mother or the father, or the child,” there is no discipline problem. In other words, there is now a sense of responsibility, and the entire character of that child changes. When there is a responsibility for providing for the education, in other words, through money or through work, there is immediately a sense of responsibility.

Now, a person reared and schooled in the doctrine of responsibility to obey, and, if needed, to care for his parents and to provide for his children, is a person who is a disciplined person. And he passes on an inheritance to his children of moral discipline, of example, of material wealth and of a sense of responsibility. But when the state takes over education, the state then becomes the responsible party, and it becomes, as we saw last week, the true family, the true father, and the true child of man. When man has the responsibility and the duty to be competent and to provident, the dignity and the masculinity of man is furthered. 

One of the very, very significant differences between a Christian school system and a statist school system is the performance of boys. When our schools in this country were predominantly and, in fact, earlier, entirely Christian schools, the outstanding pupils were the boys. But as education progressively became statist, progressively, the performance of the boys deteriorated and the performance of the girls began to pass up that of the boys. So that today, by and large, the outstanding pupils in any class, in any school, are girls, and the boys do not compare in their performance. This is a most significant fact.

Since responsibility is the basic aspect of man under God, he is to be responsible for the care of his household, he is to be responsible under God for leadership in society. An educational system which is geared to this faith produces boys who are more responsible, but an educational system which is geared to the statist concept that the state is the responsible agency, has a psychological destructiveness on the male student. Thus, in our Christian schools, although our society by and large is still geared to the socialist concept, boys, on the average, while they have not yet in most schools surpassed the girls, are performing to a far higher level than in the public schools. And this is a most significant fact. In other words, the Christian school, because it restores man to his proper place, because it restores the family orientation, restores masculinity to the boy. And it also restores a womanly characteristic to the girl. In statist education, women either become fluffy luxuries or aggressive competitors to men. There is no stability because there is no center, God. There is no sense of true function, and therefore education becomes abstract or vocational.

One of the fearful things about our education today is that it has become so over-specialized. I recall when I was doing graduate work at Berkeley, as I came to know a number of the very superior scholars whom I in particular liked, the thing that struck me most forcibly was their total specialization, so that an important fact that tied into their field but happened to be in another field, they totally ignored. In fact, they prided themselves on their ignorance of something that was outside their specialty, even though it might be very closely related. They drew such arbitrary lines in terms of their specialization that they would not look outside their field, and so there was no sense of relationship to other fields of knowledge. 

This is the consequence of this lack of center, of lack of meaning in education. In modern education the state is the educator, the parent and the true family of man, and so the child is taught to look to the state. And what is the answer to all problems? Another law, win an election and you have salvation, pass a law and you’ve answered all problems. So that the orientation becomes the state, the state has the answer, rather than the fact that each man on his own through his work, through his independence, must solve his problems. Moral decision is transferred to the state instead of residing in the person.

Fifth, we must say, in terms of the Biblical Law, that basic to the calling of every child is to be a member of a family. The family is the first and basic institution of Scripture, of life. Virtually all of us, virtually all people, are destined to become someday husbands or wives, fathers or mothers, and all are born as children. And so, all of us have a responsibility to live in terms of family life, but we are not educated for this.

The statist school, when it deals with the family, deals with it in terms of facts. “Let us give them some facts,” sex education. “Let us teach the girl home economics.” “Let us teach the boy something about this or that aspect of life,” and there are boys’ courses in family living. But it is not facts that make for family living, and the best teacher of home economics is always the mother. And so, the effect of the school as it approaches the family is factual and destructive, and only the Christian school, only godly education which is family-oriented and family-controlled can meet the need, can teach the child truly to honor his father and his mother.

The family is, after all, the best and the truest educator, there is no education that compares to that given by the parents, there is no educator to equal the mother. We are today given a constant brainwashing to the effect that the parents should not interfere with the education of the children. In fact, there was an article in the papers just this past week which stated that a psychiatrist had given a report based on a study of three or four children, that these children had become virtually psychotic when their parents were trying to teach them. But the minute the parents backed off and said we won’t interfere with the education of our children, then these children blossomed and began to do marvelously. Now, of course, this is rubbish. There is no teacher equal to a father or a mother. And the most difficult task, as I’ve pointed out previously, in all education, is accomplished by every mother when she teaches her baby, who can neither speak nor understand any language, the mother tongue. Now, there’s no professor or no teacher from kindergarten up through graduate school who has a more difficult task than that; to teach someone who can neither read nor write nor understand any language a language. And it is done in a very short time by every mother. That’s the most difficult task in all education, and it’s done routinely.

But even greater than that, the task of moral training, the discipline of good habits, is an inheritance of the father and the mother which surpasses all others. And this is taught routinely by family living, and there is nothing that can take its place. Nothing that the public school can do or the Church can do can equal that moral discipline and training from the home that becomes second nature to each child.

Finally, Biblical education not only emphasized learning, but godly learning. Earlier I cited the proverb, just as a man is required to teach his son the Torah, the Law, so is he required to teach him a trade. Another proverb, incidentally, said:

He who teaches his neighbor’s son the Torah [the Law - RJR], it is as if he had begotten him. 

But there is another Hebrew proverb that comes from ancient times that is very, very revealing. 

An ignorant man cannot be saintly. 

An ignorant man cannot be saintly. Holiness is not a self-generating act. Holiness requires growth in grace and obedience to God, which requires knowledge. Thus, an ignorant man cannot be saintly. He must have a knowledge of the Word of God, or he cannot conform to God’s requirements, and he must have growth in that knowledge and growth in grace. Hence, “An ignorant man cannot be saintly.”

Education therefore is an important aspect of the parental duty and its goal is that the child grow up in the fear and admonition of the Lord. 

“…take heed to thyself, and keep thy soul diligently, lest thou forget the things which thine eyes have seen, and lest they depart from thy heart all the days of thy life: but teach them thy sons, and thy sons’ sons…”

Deuteronomy 4:9 

And so, in order that we may have a generation that honors parents, godly education, Christian education is basic. The commandment declares:

“Honour thy father and thy mother, as the Lord thy God hath commanded thee; that thy days may be prolonged, and that it may go well with thee, in the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee.” ⁱⁱⁱ

Let us pray.

* * *

Our Lord and our God, we give thanks unto thee for our parents and for their discipline and their training of us, and we pray that we, in turn, may pass on a goodly heritage unto our children and our children’s children. We thank thee, our God, that thou has called us to be members of thy family, and because we are thy sons and not bastards, thou dost discipline us and teach us, and by thy chastening we have been made heirs of thy kingdom. Our God, we thank thee. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

* * *

Are there any questions now with respect, first of all, to our lesson?

Yes…

[Audience member] Question about the nature of knowledge and wisdom.

[Rushdoony] No. Knowledge is learning, it’s a knowledge, for example, of Scripture. But wisdom is the common sense, the insight, the ability to apply it.

[Audience member] But is it not knowledge born without wisdom?

[Rushdoony] Knowledge without wisdom, of course, is nonsense.

We have, for example, many learned fools in our universities. They have an abundance of knowledge, but no wisdom.

[Audience member] In my experience, I know that the responsibility is rapidly being taken away from the boys at school. But what is worse to me is the responsibility that is being assumed by the girls, which is making it… I feel that the girl’s responsibility is to the home and family, to the raising of the child, and that’s completely being destroyed. And sometimes I think that the, the giving of the girls such responsibilities now and they’re assuming such manly responsibilities and responsibilities over the boy, which is destroying the boys. ^iv

[Rushdoony] I think one of the most interesting things done in this area is at St. Thomas School, the Rev. T. Robert Ingram in Houston, Texas, an excellent Christian school. But in that school, which is for both boys and girls, the boys and girls are in separate classes throughout the grade school. So that there are two first grades; one for the boys and one for the girls. They have all kinds of contact on the school grounds and so on, but they are taught separately. This has very interesting repercussions. The boys, when they are in coeducational classes, don’t like to compete with the girls. And as a result, the girls, who like to please the teacher, do better. The girl naturally wants to please. The boy has a more critical temperament. So the girl, in a coeducational class, is naturally the teacher’s pet. But in these classes, where the girls are in one class and the boys in another, the boys compete with one another and do far better. So the results have been quite remarkable. I think this should be the pattern of education, when there is a competition between boys, it’s a wholesome competition and the boys are ready to compete and do their schoolwork much more ably and effectually.

One of the finest books in this area is by Dr. Zimmerman of Harvard, and Cervantes, Dr. Cervantes, entitled simply The Family. And in the course of that book, the point is made that in every cell of their body, boy and girl, male and female, are different, so that even a single cell, when examined, reveals the differences between male and female—totally different. And yet, as they point out in this book, these two educators, we have assumed that there is no difference, and of course, the point they make is that it has had rather deadly effects on both male and female.

Yes…

[Audience member] They are attempting to convert all colleges that are same-sex colleges to co-educational colleges. ^v

[Rushdoony] Yes. There is no harm in having coeducational schools, of course, provided that the kind of thing done by St. Thomas School is carried out. There they are together, which is wholesome, but they are educated differently. And it isn’t that the girls’ education is any bit inferior at St. Thomas, it’s every bit as good.

Yes…

[Audience member] Question about male and female teachers in different grades at St. Thomas school .

[Rushdoony] No, they aren’t able to carry that out thoroughly, and I don’t think it’s necessarily good. I think it’s good to have some women as teachers, especially in grade school.

Yes.

[Audience member] I’m finding out that the children that do the best are the ones whose parents are actively interested the schools. 

[Rushdoony] Yes. Yes, I think that is on the whole true. The best students are those whose parents do take a part in their education and an interest in it. But of course, things like this report by the psychiatrist are being done deliberately to break down the parental authority and the parental responsibility.

Yes…

[Audience member] Question about the growth of administrators in education and the relation of that phenomenon to a growing irresponsibility. ^vi

[Rushdoony] Yes, well, of course, the breakdown of responsibility is such that now in the newer schools that are being built (I think I’ve mentioned this to some of you before) there is a supervisor for every four teachers, and the supervisor sits in an office with a switch so that he or she can switch on each classroom and listen in and make sure that the teacher is teaching exactly what he or she has been told to teach and is not slipping in anything that deviates from the curriculum or the textbook. So you see, the responsibility is going back further. And since the textbooks now are Federally-sponsored textbooks, all of them, this further destroys responsibility. It isn’t the State that is choosing the textbooks. the State is choosing several textbooks out of some that the Federal government has given as possibilities.

Yes.

[Audience member] What part does the U.N. play in shaping education in our schools? ^vii

[Rushdoony] Well, the part the U.N. plays in education is the part the Federal government chooses that it should play. There’s a great deal of U.N. material that is included in the curriculum.

Yes.

[Audience member] Women work better under a man than under a woman. 

[Rushdoony] Yes. Yes, women usually will work better under a man than a woman.

Our time is really just about up, but there are a couple of things, since one of you asked that I comment on what’s happening on the monetary scene.

We are, of course, seeing on the monetary scene today the grossest kind of immorality as the various governments are trying to play fast and loose with their peoples and in effect to rob them. Franz Pick has spoken of all kinds of bond today, government bonds in particular, as ‘certificates of guaranteed confiscation.’ Devaluation is staring us in the face, but everything has been done lately by our administration to postpone it so that the next administration will have to bear the responsibility. Whether this will… the crisis will last that long, I don’t know.

But it is significant that this week, Friday and Saturday in France, beginning, in fact, Thursday, many storekeepers began to shut their doors, even though they had a lot of stock and people were crowding the stores to buy. They closed their stores rather than accept paper money. In other words, they do believe that devaluation is only a question of time. And rather than accept paper money and then find that they’ve lost 20% or 30% of its value by devaluation, they are closing shop and refusing to sell. If this movement, which is spreading in France increases, it will precipitate a crisis within a week or two, a very serious one.

Now, the French crisis, we must understand this, is not the worst crisis today. The French do have a monetary crisis. There is a run on the franc. But the pound and the dollar are in worse condition. The reason for the crisis in France is this: the average French peasant and a lot of the French people in the cities, but especially the peasant, understands gold, he distrusts paper. And whenever there is any sign of a weakness on the part of the paper money, he immediately starts selling it to get gold, discounting it. And this is exactly what’s been happening. And it’s because the French people are more alert than those of England and America that France is in the crisis today. If the American public and the English public were alert, our crisis would be far worse than that of France.

Now it’s hard to know what the consequence will be, how soon the crisis will head up. But meanwhile, the price of coins has been moving up steadily. The price of bullion has been high, although it’s been fluctuating. That’s a more controlled market, and it’s hard to determine what the realities are there. But a crisis is at present building up as a result of this business in France of closing shops. It will be interesting to watch it in the next week or two.

One of the things that will delay it coming to a head is that we are not getting anything in the way of an uncensored press. How many of you have read of this matter of the French shops closing? Have any of you read of it in the papers? Well, that’s indicative, you see. This came through coin dealers who had it direct, by direct conversation with agents in Europe, but not a word of this crisis in our papers. This delays, you see, the impact of this in other countries, since neither the English public, nor the Canadian or American or Japanese or any others are given word of this.

Yes…

[Audience member] I have heard that De Gaulle was the villain here, trying to attack the dollar. ^viii

[Rushdoony] De Gaulle was not trying to ruin our dollar. De Gaulle was just trying to take the paper dollars he had and convert them into gold. In other words, supposing you had money in a bank and you were sure the bank was going to fold up. Would that make you a bad character if you tried to get your money out? That’s all De Gaulle tried to do. His first course… Now, now I believe De Gaulle is a socialist, and I regard him as a dangerous person, but I cannot blame him for his attitude with regard to the monetary situation. All he tried to do was to convert his paper dollars into gold and we clobbered him for it and treated him as a villain. And there was nothing wrong with that. Moreover, when De Gaulle refused, about a week ago to devalue the franc, it was because, he said, we need to face up to the crisis and raise the price of gold, that’s the answer. And he was right there. I don’t like to call De Gaulle right, but you have to, you have to give the devil his due, and in this respect, he has been in the right.

Yes.

[Audience member] Question about the advice by the financial writer, Franz Pick.

[Rushdoony] Pick will not speak on anything except money. He will not step outside of his field. He can tell you better than anyone else in the world what the exchange rates are, what money is selling for, what paper money is selling for in various countries, the price of gold, and of some other metals like palladium and platinum, and diamonds, he carries reports on that. But he never steps outside of his field. He’s a specialist. So you’ll never get an answer from him on any recommendation on anything else.

Well, our time is up and we stand adjourned.

i. Whoso keepeth the law is a wise son:

But he that is a companion of riotous men shameth his father.

The Holy Bible: King James Version, Electronic Edition of the 1900 Authorized Version. (Bellingham, WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc., 2009), Pr 28:7.

ii. James Hastings et al., Dictionary of the Bible (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1909), 204.

iii. The Holy Bible: King James Version, Electronic Edition of the 1900 Authorized Version. (Bellingham, WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc., 2009), Dt 5:16.

iv.  Question added/modified for clarity and brevity.

v.  Question added/modified for clarity and brevity.

vi.  Question added/modified for clarity and brevity.

vii.  Question added/modified for clarity and brevity.

viii.  Question added/modified for clarity and brevity.