Historically upon Christianity’s inception Christian Education closely followed. How did the early church parent living in Rome view state education?
“They were bitterly opposed to subjects taught in the pagan school, and blamed pagan culture for the vices and corruption of pagan society. To them its literature was full of impurities; its art depicted immoralities and was associated with immoral religions; its philosophy undermined and destroyed Christian faith, because it led to trusting one’s own wisdom…the pagan school was the enemy of the church, and its curriculum was to be despised by all true believers…Physical training, literature, art, science, rhetoric, human philosophy – all were eliminated from early Christian education; and subjects quite foreign to the later pagan schools, moral and religious training, took their place.”
Elmer Wild
In writing about early Roman education French historian M. Boissier wrote:
“All the schools were pagan. Not only were all the ceremonies of the official faith… celebrated at regular intervals in the schools, but the children were taught reading out of books saturated with old mythology. There the Christian child made his first acquaintance with the deities of Olympus. He ran the danger of imbibing ideas entirely contrary to those which he had received at home. The fables he had learned to detest in his own home were explained, elucidated, and held up to his admiration every day by his masters. Was it right to put him thus into two schools of thought?”
I hope you see the parallels with our current state schools, how their official faith will be celebrated this month and children taught to read out of books saturated with this ideology. What Christian parents and church leaders need to be asking is, is it right to put their children thus into two schools of thought?
