Home-School Honoree Examines 'Fruit' of Public Education
by Jim Brown
November 29, 2004
(AgapePress) - The founder and chairman of the Home School Legal Defense Association is urging Christian families to embrace the idea that God gives children to parents -- not to government schools. Mike Farris, who also is president of Patrick Henry College in Virginia, was honored last week for advancing education freedom.Farris, a long-time advocate of home schooling, believes the public education in America is largely responsible for the moral relativism to prevalent among today's young people. During SepCon 2004, the recent Alliance for the Separation of School and State conference in Washington, DC, the Christian attorney delivered a speech titled "Judging the Fruits of Secular Statist Education." Farris cited research that shows only nine percent of born-again teens believe moral truth is unchanging.
He asked a question likely pondered by many Christian parents in his audience -- and offered his own insightful answer.
"Why do born-again teens so overwhelmingly reject the idea of moral truth [and] the idea that the Bible guides their own moral decisions?" Farris asked. "You cannot see those statistics and fail to conclude that it's their education and the media that are the sources of the values that they're getting."
The consequences of K-12 public school education are severe, Farris adds. He says most parents believe that taking their children to church and providing their own instruction at home will overcome what happens to them in public schools during the week. But Farris says according to research, that is the case for less than nine percent of Christian children.
"The reasonable conclusion [we can make] from the evidence in front us is that education and media serve has a more powerful influence in the lives of children than do parents and church," the home-schooling advocate says. "And that is the reason that when they're 29 years old, only 42 percent of them who went to church every week [when they were in their parents' home] still go to church at all."
A recent incident in the Golden State lends credibility to Farris's accusations against public education. Steven Williams, a public school teacher in California, has filed a lawsuit against his district and principal for barring him from using several historical documents in class because they contain references to God and Christianity.
The fifth-grade Cupertino teacher filed the lawsuit last week, saying his elementary school principal prevented him from using handouts from documents including the Declaration of Independence, "The Rights of the Colonists" by Samuel Adams, and President Bush's 2004 Day of Prayer proclamation. District officials acknowledge receipt of the lawsuit, but provided no further comment pending review of the suit by their attorneys.
Perhaps that is one reason Farris contends the "re-creation of the Christian Ivy League" is needed to ensure that the nation's best and brightest children are not trained by those who would systematically seek to undermine everything that is true, good, and virtuous in their lives.
Defender of Home-Schooling Families
Farris's contributions to education apart from government-run schools is not going unnoticed. The father of ten home-schooled children has been given the Alexis de Tocqueville Award by the Alliance for the Separation of School and State for his work in the home-schooling movement. The award was presented by Tim and Beverly LaHaye.
Mrs. LaHaye says Farris was influential in brining home schooling to her family's attention. "Three of our grandchildren have been raised with home school, went on to college -- and I'll say they did very well -- so home school didn't hurt them one bit," she stated. "In fact, it really helped them."
And Mr. LaHaye says Farris has "fearlessly defended" thousands of home-schooling families. "Bev and I can't tell you how very proud we are personally," he told Farris during the presentation. "But the audience has expressed that they share that pride in you and what God has done through your humble, obedient life."
According to the well-known Christian author, Farris has "stood up to unions and other minions of collectivist state power."
But Farris deflected the praise, choosing instead to focus attention on those parents who have chosen to educate their own children at home. "The real heroes of America, and the real people who are doing the things that are revolutionary to this country, are the home-schooling moms in this country," he said. "It has been such a privilege to be able to work with their families and to defend them and to see God bless."
Farris, who is also an ordained Baptist minister, has been working with home-schooling families since 1983.
