The Case for Classical Christian Education Quotes

“Education is fundamentally religious. Consequently, there is no question about whether a morality will be imposed in that education, but rather which morality will be imposed.”
― Douglas Wilson, The Case for Classical Christian Education

“The ground for the necessity of Christian schools lies in this very thing, that no fact can be known unless it be known in its relationship to God. And once this point is clearly seen, the doubt as to the value of teaching arithmetic in Christian schools falls out of the picture. Of course arithmetic must be taught in a Christian school. It cannot be taught anywhere else.”
― Douglas Wilson, The Case for Classical Christian Education

“Every Christian school must adopt an implicit, absolute, childlike wonder at the glory of the Scriptures. We must be people of the Book, knowing it top to bottom, front to back. And we must resolve, before the fact, to have absolutely no problem with any passage of Scripture once the meaning of that passage has been ascertained through honest exegesis. This means, among other things, that Christians must be prepared to condemn sodomy, embrace the doctrine of creation, say that husbands are the heads of their wives, believe in giants and dragons, and believe in Noah’s ark right down to, if necessary, the giraffe’s head sticking out the window.”
― Douglas Wilson, The Case for Classical Christian Education

“Every culture has blasphemy laws. They are not always called that, but no society allows citizens to rail against the reigning deity. In our pluralistic times, these blasphemy laws are called “hate crimes” legislation, among other euphemisms, but they are really religious protections to keep the reigning god, demos, from being blasphemed.”
― Douglas Wilson, The Case for Classical Christian Education

“...one of the glories of education is the opportunity to hear the truth come out of a human being with blood in the veins and air in the lungs, and not just off a printed page.”
― Douglas Wilson, The Case for Classical Christian Education

“Nonbelievers can teach the truth in any given area only on the basis of common grace—that is, if they borrow Christian categories on the sly in order to do so. But when nonbelievers grow increasingly aware of their epistemological assumptions, they begin rejecting the very concept of truth—every manifestation of it—and they embrace the absurd. And this is why the only place where academic integrity can flourish over time is in a Christian school. The”
― Douglas Wilson, The Case for Classical Christian Education

“The Hellenistic/Enlightenment mind delights in disembodied truth, while the Christian faith is centered on the embodied truth.”
― Douglas Wilson, The Case for Classical Christian Education

“Some other obstacles are more pedestrian. Starting a school takes money. We might like the idea of opening a school but are too cowardly to face the opposition and controversy we know it will generate—perhaps in our families or churches. One of the reasons for controversy is that classical Christian education cannot happen without discipline (see Heb. 12:5 again!), and discipline in our day is controversial.”
― Douglas Wilson, The Case for Classical Christian Education

“Christian worship leads to Christian dining rooms, Christian schools, Christian communities, Christian nations.”
― Douglas Wilson, The Case for Classical Christian Education

“But in the meantime, private schools that care about their academic integrity need to resolve to have nothing to do with vouchers themselves. He who takes the king’s coin becomes the king’s man.”
― Douglas Wilson, The Case for Classical Christian Education

“The Christian faith is not a condiment to be used to flavor the neutral substance of secular knowledge. Paul tells us that every thought is to be made captive to Christ (2 Cor. 10:1-4). Christ says that anyone who does not gather with Him is scattering (Matt. 12:30). The Christian faith does very poorly as mere decorative material. Jesus said that we are to disciple the nations, and to the extent that we see anything out of line with His Word, we are to call that into obedience.”
― Douglas Wilson, The Case for Classical Christian Education

“Rather, all people are sinners, but the grace of God has been revealed to us, and we should want to teach all people so that they might come to salvation and grow in their gratitude to God for His grace.”
― Douglas Wilson, The Case for Classical Christian Education

“Our civil disintegration in the schools is the clear result of two principal factors: Our children are under-disciplined and overmedicated.”
― Douglas Wilson, The Case for Classical Christian Education

“We must be true radicals; the word comes from the Latin radix, meaning “root.” We need to get to the root of the matter. When we discover the source of the problem, we must deal with it thoroughly.”
― Douglas Wilson, The Case for Classical Christian Education

“Excellence in education is the result of vision, hard work, parental love, and a clear sense of mission. It does not depend upon bureaucratic accreditation.”
― Douglas Wilson, The Case for Classical Christian Education

“At the root, the problem with charter schools and vouchers is not difficult to understand. I’ve written elsewhere that the theological case against such programs should actually be grounded in the prohibition against stealing.10 When the government taxes us in order to perform the duties assigned to the civil government by God, Christians clearly can have no consistent ethical objection (Rom. 13:1-7). But if the government adopts responsibilities that God never assigned and begins massive redistributions of wealth accordingly, this creates an ethical problem.”
― Douglas Wilson, The Case for Classical Christian Education

“The ultimate reason why the democratic impulse is so strong—why we resist such differences—is that the sinful heart resents the final discrimination made in the judgment of God when He separates the sheep from the goats. Spelling tests smack of the Last Day. The way we manage our schools shows how, deep down, we would really like to abolish the Great White Throne Judgment. This resistance extends from the democratic government school system down to the most trivial awards ceremony. And judging from our awards ceremonies, many modern educators do not want God to separate the sheep from the goats. They want Him to hand out participant ribbons to all.”
― Douglas Wilson, The Case for Classical Christian Education

“We have grown accustomed to thinking of our democracy as a good thing, and it surprises us to learn that the founding fathers of our nation were deeply suspicious of democracy and tried to place whatever restraints on it they could. They established a constitutional republic, not a democracy, and it is a sign of our current ignorance that we do not even know the difference between the two. This”
― Douglas Wilson, The Case for Classical Christian Education

“Now it makes sense, for example, if the children are taking a vocabulary test of 100 words, and one of the kids misses thirteen of them, to give him an 87 percent. But we go far beyond this. A student writes an essay on a sunset, let us say, and the teacher writes 87 percent at the top of that paper. What he is saying, in effect, is that there is a mathematical metaphor operative here. The figure of 87 is to 100 what this submitted essay is . . . to what? What on earth is this supposed to mean?”
― Douglas Wilson, The Case for Classical Christian Education

“...if the athletic program is not helping the kids understand God, man, sin, and salvation, then the program is failing, regardless of the win/loss record. But the same thing is true of the “classroom program.”
― Douglas Wilson, The Case for Classical Christian Education