Kids books...

We see books and reading (both alone and with parents) as a key part of our children's education.

Contemporary education seems to be much impoverished in this regard. Contemporary technocratic, statist, secularist societies lack imagination.

Kids need imagination to imagine a different world, one living under the Lordship of Christ; to see behind the curtain and think about being transformed and transforming.

Books open horizons; help us to assess and analyse the subtle spiritual propaganda of the enemy of souls, and think differently. Books help us to place ourselves within much larger contexts than the narrow ones we see when we only converse with figures our existing four walls.

Then the question is - which books? Friendly recommendations are always helpful. So I'm grateful to Justin Taylor for publishing this list used by his school, which will give us some material to take a look at and think about getting:
http://thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/justintaylor/files/2012/05/Classical-School-reading-list-1.pdf

Ways to destroy your child's imagination

Justin Taylor, quoting a newly published book, lists ten ways to destroy your child's imagination (or that's what he says - I count only eight or nine!):

Esolen shows how imagination is snuffed out at practically every turn:

• in the rearing of children almost exclusively indoors;
• in the flattening of love to sex education, and sex education to prurience and hygiene;
• in the loss of traditional childhood games;
• in the refusal to allow children to organize themselves into teams;
• in the effacing of the glorious differences between the sexes;
• in the dismissal of the power of memory, which creates the worst of all possible worlds in school—drudgery without even the merit of imparting facts;
• in the strict separation of the child’s world from the adult’s;
• and in the denial of the transcendent, which places a low ceiling on the child’s developing spirit and mind.

 My immediate thoughts...

• My children are used to playing outdoors every day. They spent last week without their usual big garden... and there have been many tears. (Of course, this gives an opportunity to try to encourage them to focus on the good things they had instead, but it was very interesting to me and mum to listen to them).
• "Destroying your child's imagination" means destroying your child's creativity, which means giving great damage to their usefulness. At least, destroying their usefulness in not being drones to carry out the will of our society's present secularist thought-leaders, that is. I suppose that's what is meant by the quote in the original blog-post, "As author Anthony Esolen demonstrates in this elegantly written, often wickedly funny new book, almost everything we are doing to children now constricts their imaginations, usually to serve the ulterior motives of the constrictors."
• I wonder what Esolen sees as a way towards a solution. Taylor doesn't say anything in this regard, neither does the blogger he got it from. Obviously, the present state-controlled education system is a huge factor in promoting the above list. To reform state education would be part of a solution, but that's a generational project - it's not going to happen in time for any of our children today. Being aware of the problem is only one necessary - but not sufficient - step towards actually mitigating its effects...
• ... and so surely one of the necessary steps for parents today is to either use, or if it's not available from others, to themselves organise alternative, solidly Christian-based education. Is it not? What we pass on to the world ultimately is our children (both physical and spiritual). If this organising isn't worth it, what is?
  

Shock news: Caesar trains ... Romans!

A quote worth chewing on from a product description that came in an e-mail the other day...

"If you send your children to Caesar, don't be surprised if they come back as Romans."

Legislation allowing state to enter homes and interview children alone dropped

Hallelujah! In the pre-election "wash-up", the government has been forced to drop its plans to empower local education authorities to enter home educators' homes and interview children alone - and to forbid the parents to home-educate if they object. (Currently the law only allows a "order to compel school attendance" in the case that the state can prove an inadequate education. The proposed legislation deemed that if you refuse to allow the LEA officer to interview your child alone, then that would be sufficient to make a verdict of an inadequate education! In other words, a huge state take-over of parental prerogative). There were various other iniquitous proposals in the package too - I'm not sure of the status of all of them. Compulsory state-approved sex instruction for 15-year olds has been dropped also.

Home-educators well know that this is not the end; the war will continue. The education secretary Ed Balls has stated that it will be his priority to launch these measures again in the very first session of the next parliament. Alternatively if he doesn't get into power after the election the fact is that all our political parties are very statist, and seem to have grossly underdeveloped concepts of the rights of families in particular, believing that central legislation and control can and should be used to bring in any utopia/nightmare they wish to dream up... the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats were both heavily opposed to these particular proposals, but it is unclear as yet at least to me how much of that is politicking and how much is conviction...

On-the-money quote from Lord Lucas in the House of Lords debate:

"We are considering a section of the Bill which will cost £20 million per annum, which is about £1,000 per home-educated child. These children receive no money to help pay the costs of examinations; no money to buy textbooks; no money to buy materials; no money and no tuition to help them over difficulties in education. Now the Government can find £1,000 for each of these children-and will spend it on auditing them. Not one penny will go to help the children; it will all go on auditing them. What have these people done to deserve that?"

Even if you're not a home educator, you can understand this proposition: home-educators have chosen their path for a number of reasons, but overall it will be true by implication that they believe that they have chosen a better choice than the state system. You can understand how we might feel at the state taxing home-educators first to pay for a state system that they do not use, then taxing them again in order to increasingly bring them into conformity with that system whose standards they think are in various ways inferior - and increasingly eroding their rights as parents, even within their own homes, as they do so. No thanks!

Protecting your teenage daughter

Here's a news story suggesting that teenage daughters need protection. Ha! What kind of time warp is this? What chauvinistic woman-oppressors are saying that teenage girls need protection in this day and age?

Oh, it's the teenage daughters themselves....

The other way that the teenagers quoted in this news story failed to benefit from their parents was in receiving the instruction in discernment that would have given them the self-confidence to tell their boyfriends, in a godly way of course, that they're jerks who should take a hike...

The advantages of home education

Educational choices are important and deeply personal - it concerns our children and their future.

When Christians speak to each other about them, it is helpful to distinguish between matters of principle and matters of preference.

One matter of principle is that God commands us to educate our children in a comprehensively Biblical understanding of life, which is taught in both Testaments:

Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates. (Deuteronomy 6:49, ESV)

Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. (Ephesians 6:4, ESV)

But in how this principle is carried out, other principles apply. I am totally answerable to God for everything about my child's education: I have the responsibility to consider all the options and choose the best one, all things considered. But other Christians are also totally answerable to God, and not to me, and they also possess the liberty to weigh things before the Lord themselves. This does not mean that I think all ways are equally valid, or even don't think that some ways are not the New Covenant equivalent of burning your son as an offering to Moloch.... but there are many distinctions that need to be made before we go into all of that. And that is not my point today. This is just by way of introduction.

In this post I do not want to argue that home education is compulsory (I certainly do not believe that anyway), or that it is the most appropriate Christian option in every circumstance (I do not believe that either). I simply want to present a single point as to why it is often better, as a pedagogical choice. That is, that home education conducted by parents normally leads to a higher standard of learning. So this is not about the issues of distinctly Christian education, secularism, the dangers in state schools, etc. - it is simply about educational standards.

I want to say this because the meme "but I'll never be able to educate my child as well as a qualified teacher can!" is wide-spread. It seems to have seeped into the common currency. It is repeated often, but I don't think the people repeating it have thought it through or critically analysed it. Certainly if you get together a group of home educators you may find that several of them, especially at the beginning, have a fear that they will not be able to be "as good"; but the longer it goes on, the more that fear gets replaced with the reality - it is simply not true.

Why is it not true? Simple, really...

• In home education, the child generally has the same teacher tracking him/her, year after year. The teacher is not having to acclimatise/adjust to your child for new each September.
• And what is more, that teacher knows that child really really well anyway - because generally it's mum, and perhaps some of dad too.
• This also has a bonus in the area of discipline. If mum/dad has laid the foundation before formal education begins, then by the time the child is starting on their A, B, C, then the spade-work of teaching respect to parents and good behaviour is mostly done. The issue of the child learning that "teacher" can be played up in ways that mum/dad never could never arises. Generally good discipline is an enormous advantage.
  
• Add to that the huge bonus of class-size. At school, it's perhaps 25, 30, 35. At home it's never as high as that - begins with 1 and increases in 1s (or perhaps 2s!) from there. There is basically full time individual tuition. Or perhaps in a co-operative effort of several home-schoolers, maybe a group which is likely to be in the single digits, and 20 would be as high as you might see.
• The advantage of this personal tuition can not be over-stated. You move at the pace of your child, not the class. The "problem kids" from the problem homes are not sucking up 50% (or more) of the class's time and the teacher's energy. The curriculum is not pitched at a medium or lowest common denominator level that your child is not at.
• Not only the pace, but also the curriculum can and will be tailored to your child, instead of the one-size-fits-all national curriculum which is fixed like the law of the Medes and Persians before your child even enters the school gate.
  

This just the beginning, but these advantages are huge. Yes, perhaps mum is not a degreed physics teacher. But really, how does this fact affect the teaching of A, B, C to 5-year old Johnny or of long division to 8-year old Ursula? It's a red herring. For many of the earliest years, the issue is just that mum/dad is a few steps ahead, not that they've laid out the whole plan in stone for the next decade (which would be bad pedagogy in any case). There are all kinds of options available by the time you are getting to that kind of level, and this involves other issues. (For one thing, by that stage a properly trained home-school child will have acquired the necessary skills for self-learning, and will only need occasional access to an expert to clarify difficult issues - unlike in school where you still need to be led on a fairly short lead even to the age of 18. But I digress, and too much digression may obscure my basic point...).

No doubt education outside the home has its own advantages. Everything needs to be weighed. But quality of education, and whether the child will be held back, is in my mind a definite plus for home education, not a minus. I'd like to encourage Christians who are thinking through these issues to see through the simplistic assertion that because state-trained teachers have state-training, therefore they are going to be better than mum at it. It's simply not true. Mum does not need to live in fear that because she hasn't got the state's rubber stamp, therefore she will probably not be up to it educationally. In reality, all other things being equal or thereabouts, mum is the best qualified teacher there is. All other things being equal (so whatever families of freaks you have anecdotal knowledge of don't count!), on average a home-schooled child will not be behind, or even equal with, a mass-schooled one. They'll be leading the pack.

Good news for home educators?

It's only possible good news, and it's only one battle in the long war against the slow, gradual, creep-creep state take-over of parental rights in the UK, but this is encouraging: "Tories: we'll block home school plans". The providence here is that in the run-up to an election, the government does not have time to push through all its plans, and needs to do deals with the opposition. The two opposition parties are both strongly opposed on these proposals, and at least the Tories are promising to make preventing this one a priority at the present time. PTL!

Whose children? The miseries of modern secularism

This news story reports that a UK parliamentary committee is advising that the right for parents to decide whether their children should receive their (state) school's sex education lessons should be revoked, and the school should have the authority instead.

Of course, for "school", read "state" - because the schools will be following centralised government "guidelines" when making these decisions.

This is the ultimate state take-over of parenthood. Once the state awards itself the right to control sex education against the wishes of parents - as sensitive and personal a topic as there can be - then that's about it. What rights should not belong to the state in preference to parents, if this one should? If the state knows more about how to teach your children about sex than you do, then what does it not know?

But note this.... the way this issue has been framed, the battle is already lost. The right is already awarded. If a parliamentary committee can legitimately discuss what rights you should or shouldn't have, then that committee has already deified itself. If it's up to them whether to let you be a parent or not, then in reality they are already the parent and not you - they've just kindly let you have a play at it for a while.

Historically, it was believed that individuals and parents possessed certain inalienable rights. Rights were not awarded or withdrawn by committee: they existed by virtue of your existence, as a human being made by God. It was not up to governments to decide if they liked it or not: parents and individuals were entities existing in the sight of God just as much as governments were. Each had their own sphere, and each was accountable to God for not overstepping. Government no right to invade the family.

This comes from a Christian world-view, where each of the individual, the family (and the church) as well as the government exists as an entity under God. Where God rules over men. Each is answerable for itself, and has no right to trample the rights of another in a different sphere.

But in the secular world-view, God is abolished. There's nothing (in our thinking) over-head. This means nothing to keep each in its own place. Historically, for a time each then wanders around in its own confusion. But inevitably, and normally sooner rather than later, government starts to climb out of its place to assert its rights over all other spheres. In the absence of a God that government is answerable too, government then starts to make individuals and families answerable only to itself. The idea of inalienable rights of families disappears from view, and all must submit to the all-powerful state. Nothing is inalienable - government committees can then decide every question they please.

Result: eventually, a centralised, totalitarian nightmare. The 20th century ought to have taught us this, with its all-powerful states: Hitler's Germany, Stalin and Lenin's Russia, Pol Pot's Cambodia, Hoxar's Albania, etc.

But even if we have been taught it, what can we do about it? With God abolished from the secular mind, there's no other reality there to keep the state in its place. There is, unless God himself is merciful and restrains the evil or even turns it around by a work of revival, a tragic inevitability. With no God to worship and serve, we must end up having to serve man: there is no alternative. "Progressive" and "modern" are the words the authors of this tragedy use - but history tells us that "regressive" and "miserable" are far more accurate. God-less utopias do not exist. Man is never truly free until he is in the delightful "slavery" of acknowledging and obeying his Maker. Then he is truly free, free to do what he was made for, and what he ought, and what is right.

The alternative is man's freedom: the true slavery, where you cannot even instruct your own children about something so intimate as sex as you see best without the state, by force of law, over-riding your wishes. May Jesus have mercy on the modern UK!

Family Worship

Family worship seems to me from my limited experience to be one of the "great omissions" of modern Christianity. I as going to say "Western", but I don't see it here in Kenya either.

By "family worship", I mean a time, daily (as far as possible), when the whole family (which might just be the married couple if they have no children or they have left home) gathers together to worship God. It could be at any time of day, though after one of the meal-times is the most natural as the family is often together then already.

I think it is hard to argue that every family ought to have family worship:

• Are we meant only to worship God one day a week? Is that consistent with his worthiness, and his daily care for us?
  
• God created the family as a fundamental unit in creation (there being only two others - church and state) - is it meant to not have organised times to return worship to him?
  
• The book of Proverbs gives us an extended model of a father giving instruction to his son, in a comprehensive range of subjects. How can this happen without organised times?
• The Bible explicitly commands, in both Testaments, fathers to ensure that their children have a comprehensive Christian education that is woven into the fabric of family life (Deuteronomy 6:4-9, Ephesians 6:4). Is this really meant to happen by accident, and without routine worship? Can we really expect our children to learn the teachings of the Bible just by osmosis? If temporal learning needs 5 or 6 days a week of organised activity (whether at home-school or an outside school), how can godliness only need one?
  
• The Old Testament festivals were family events (e.g. the Passover in Exodus 12); is it consistent with the greater glory of the New Covenant that New Covenant worship is meant to be solely for individuals and churches?
• The ten commandments are addressed to family contexts (e.g. in particular the 4th) - is there really meant to be no formal family religion?
• Can we really defend finding time for sport/TV/browsing the web or whatever your leisure/hobby is, but not for the worship of God?

"Worship" does necessarily mean a 90 minute formal service with 40 minute sermon, or whatever! It simply means reading the Scriptures, praying in praise, thanksgiving and request, and singing of psalms/hymns/spiritual songs. Incidentally, where there is family worship it seems to me that part of Biblical reformation of our family worship is to restore the element of singing (e.g. what is Psalm 127 for if it is not a family Psalm? Is it only meant to be sung outside the family?)

Where did family worship go? Historically, it used to be unquestioned and unquestionable amongst evangelical Christians of all stripes: there was simply no argument. Christians worship God, of course they do - and families are the most fundamental unit in society and hence a primary place where worship ought to be: of course they are! How could we lose such a fundamental part of our walk with God, and how can there be so little (to my knowledge) being said about it?

Have you ever heard a sermon, or read an article on the importance of family worship? Whence this silence? How to carry it out in practice of course is another topic - a practical matter that may need some guidance and help if it has never been done before. But carry it out, we must - if we want to see the kingdom of God advance, and not just a bare-bones Christianity limping and struggling on as it seems to do in much of the world today.

Select committee rejects Badman

Here and here.

Government take-over of parental rights provokes record protest

This is encouraging:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/8404635.stm
http://www.politics.co.uk/mps/press-releases/party-politics/conservatives/mass-petitions-against-home-education-clampdown-set-to-break-house-of-commons-record-$1346196.htm
http://www.christian.org.uk/news/home-schoolers-protest-over-monitoring-plans/?e101209

Permission to be a parent

Wow - just wow. A stunning new development in the UK government's progressively more Orwellian plans to take-over the rights of parents:

The government body OFSTED is now proposing that parents who wish to teach their own children must be cleared by the Criminal Records Bureau and obtain an appropriate document of clearance:

Parents face criminal checks before teaching own children
http://www.christian.org.uk/news/parents-face-criminal-checks-before-teaching-own-children/

As Normal Wells, cited in that report states, the logical implication of this is that if parents require such permissions before being with their own children during the hours when state schools (which these children don't attend) are open, they should also require the same permission to be with the same children out of school hours, at weekends and during holidays. This issue is not a home-schooling issue; it's a parenting issue. The government is progressively taking to itself the right to be the parent, and to delegate permission to today's parents to be involved as and when it sees fit.

Forgot the link

Ooops. On that last story, I forgot to supply the link: http://www.number10.gov.uk/Page21550

Government to parents: thanks, but we come first

The UK government has published its response to the petition on its website which protested against the new right it is seeking to award itself - namely the right to interview your children, without you present, and decide whether on that basis whether you should be allowed to choose how to educate your child or not or whether that choice should be taken out of your hands.

The government's reply is basically, "sorry, but government's opinions about a child's best interests must ultimately trump the parents'." Oh, and other countries do it this way, therefore it must be right.

The petition raised the legitimate question of who is the "parent of first resort". It's a zero sum game - either government has got to trump parents, or parents trump government. You can't have a tie. Either parents have the right to decide that they need to protect their children from the bad education being offered by the state; or governments have the right to decide that they need to protect children from the non-state-approved education that parents are giving them at home. One or the other must win. (This has nothing to do with the question of child abuse which is already a criminal offence).

Until now the status quo has been that parents trump government. The government is now attempting a legislative reversal. The difference is that before the disagreeing party just had to deal with it (if the LEA officer doesn't really like home-schooling, they'll just have to put up with it); but when governments trump parents, if you disagree they confiscate your child or cart you off to the slammer. Not really a level playing field, is it?

As for other countries doing it this way.... this response totally ignores the history of the countries at question, presuming we're talking about Europe. Home-schooling became illegal in Germany under the Nazis because the Nazis didn't wish children to learn any ideology from their parents that contradicted Nazism. It was outlawed in the 1930s by the National Socialist party, and its that same ban which has remained on the books. Likewise, home-schooling is illegal in Spain, which has only emerged from fascism in living memory. Home-schooling is suppressed in other countries because of those countries totalitarian histories, and has been a right of parents without the threat of government take-over in the UK because of the UK's heritage of freedom, based on its Christian past.

I find the rest of the government's response nauseating in the extreme. The home-ed community is up in arms about these appalling proposals; but the response keeps banging on about how helpful they're being by providing these new "services". The home-ed community doesn't want them; people choose to home-ed because they've looked at what happens when the government takes over education, and they'd rather not, thank you. It's no coincedence that this "review" with its proposals was cooked up by someone whom the government hand-picked from outside the home-ed community, who was a state education system insider. And lo and behold, his proposals were to make home-edders conform more to the state system - exactly what they're trying to avoid. To have these new "blessings" enforced by law unasked-for is one thing and bad enough; to be lectured about how wonderful the government is to condescend to grant you them when you suck so much at the same time is beyond the point of extreme nausea that my constitution can stand.

I have no idea what the government's timetable is, or what happens to such reviews if there's a change of government. Will it run out of parliamentary time and come to nothing? Here's praying!

Whose children?

This came in via e-mail, something to consider and act upon...

I don't think there's a British Christian who has not been dismayed to see the moral collapse and rise of anti-Christian sentiment in the UK under this present government. But this issue is very serious indeed...
 
 Graham Badman (not a Bunyan character, but his real name), Kent County Council's Managing Director for the Children, Families and Education Directorate has submited to the government a review of elective home education, which recommends, "systems for keeping children safe and ensuring that they receive a suitable education". That sounds nice...
 
 But it is precisely the education this government believes 'safe and suitable' that home educators are opting out of! And with good reason.
 
 Dissatisfied with the amoral, godless, pluralist propaganda the government pumps into our kids in the state schools - they are now gunning for those who withdraw from that system to provide a Christian Education for their children.
 
  The Badman recommendations aim to supplant parents altogether by making the government-run LEA responsible for determining what is 'a safe and suitable education'.The recommendations in this report are nothing short of totalitarian control.
 
 Quite apart from the compulsory registration of home educators (perhaps with a gold star!), there's the recommendation for LEA inspectors to have 'right of access' to home educator's homes and the right to speak to children without their parents present.
 
 Whether you are in favour of Christian home education or not: that's not the issue...
 
 You are your child's parent, not the state.
 
 You have the right to decide what education your child receives, not the state.
 
 You are responsible, under God, to decide what is good, suitable, and right for your child, not the state.
 
 Eph.6:4  And you, fathers, do not provoke your children to wrath, but bring them up in the training and admonition of the Lord.
 
 Whatever your views on Christian vs State education - this is an issue of whether parents or the state have the right to choose what education our children receive. Signing this petition tells the government that you care about your rights as a parent, and that they should reject the sinister, intrusive and godless recommendations of the Badman Report.
 
 Please read and consider signing the petition by clicking the link below:
 
http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/EHEreview/

Home education - there's a long way to go

There are more stories in the media in recent years about home education, and they're less negative than they used to be - it's gradually becoming more accepted as normal.

But there's still a long way to go. See this story today from the BBC. The assumption is still that it's a quirky choice. School is the norm. Of course, that reflects reality as most people experience it; school is assumed. But I think we should step back and ask - how on earth did something like that become the norm?

In home education one of the person who loves you most in the world supervises your education. It's also the person who knows you best. You likely have a class size of one to five (more kids than that and you probably do them in batches or the older ones have been taught effectively to self-teach 90% of the time). The schedule has maximum flexibility. The teaching approach can be tailored to the child's aptitude. No time is wasted on travelling to school, uniforms or the other paraphernalia. No time is wasted by the kids in the class who don't want to learn, or because the teacher changes every year, or on bullying, or staff strikes (well, not often!), or the like. The class goes at exactly your pace. You can choose your children's friends (it's nonsense today that home education has to mean social exclusion - in most areas now there are such large numbers now that you can link up with as many groups as you like as often as you please).

Given all those advantages, sending your kid to the local school ought to be the non-normal choice. Without exceptional circumstances, why would you choose what you find there rather than the above?

The only cloud on the horizon is that the government has over the last few years been trying increasingly hard to bring home education more under its all-competent (ha!) control. This can't be because the standards in state schools are so high that it'd be good if they spilt over into our homes too - it's surely much more to do with the government's belief in its unlimited competency and lack of realisation that government should govern, not parent. Also many secular and atheist groups have, with no data presented to back it up, successfully spread around the "meme" that home schooling is a cover for child abuse. As often, the scare story becomes the pretext for more centralised control.  It's following a familiar path, though we're at early days yet: government has consultations which don't get the required results, so it has more consultations. Then it says change is needed even though the overwhelming response to the consultation was that change wasn't needed. At first the government just brings in registration and oversight. Then once the foot is in the door, it gradually awards itself more powers. Eventually you might end up in Germany - where if parents wish to educate their children themselves instead of having the government do it, it's a criminal offence that will lead to your child being taken away (Google - you'll find plenty of cases; Hitler brought in that law and it's been used with some zeal by the German government lately). Here's a BBC story on the UK government's attempts to do more in this area. At first it'll be registration; then you'll have to apply to register; then the list of conditions to fulfil will grow longer and longer; before you know it the controversy will be that only the government-approved view of this or that can be taught at home... the time to pray to God and to campaign is now, before it all arrives.

"Unbiased sex education is a child's right"

A piece in the Guardian by the British Humanist Association's education officer, Andrew Copson:

"Unbiased sex education is a child's right: Allowing faith schools to skew the curriculum in order to argue against homosexuality and sex before marriage is a mistake"

At the outset I should say that my position is that the decision on how a child should be educated belongs to the child's parents - not the state. As such, how British state schools educate their children is none of my business - I don't have any children there. Unlike Mr. Copson, I don't presume to dictate that each and every child in the nation should be educated according to my views, whether their parents like it or not. But having said that, here we go...

"No parent or school should be able to prevent a young person receiving good, high-quality sex and relationship education."

Starting off with the assumption that there is an uncontroversial definition of a "high quality sex and relationship education" is not a good beginning. Of course, I definitely agree with the statement above; every young person should be being taught all that the Bible says about sex and relationships, and shown from a Biblical viewpoint why alternatives are mistaken. That means, showing how we're made in God's image and are accountable for him; how sex is his precious gift; how he gave a binding pattern on us regarding how it is to be used, etcetera. Fine. But the note of autonomy in the sentence is not fine. Actually a parent should be able to decide what a young person is or isn't taught. A genuine free-for-all isn't possible. If parents don't do it, the role must go to someone else... and note that the sentence doesn't include the word "government". Government forbidding young people from hearing the "high-quality" (i.e. Biblical!) view is what I am worried about - especially campaigning humanists via government enforcing their views on our children. The above sentence sounds like a typical humanist.

 Typical, some would say, of the view of humanists and others ...

I just said that.

who believe that sex and relationships education should be an entitlement for all our children, and are often accused as a consequence of riding roughshod over the rights of some religious parents and the "rights" of religious schools.

Um, no. I never met a parent who didn't believe that "our children" should receive "sex and relationships education" as part of their entitlement from their parents. What we didn't believe, though, was that it was our children's right to receive a humanist indoctrination of their view of sex, at our expense, and despite our protests. That's the bit where the "riding roughshod over the rights" comes in. Surely Mr. Copson can't be so dim as to not know the difference between those two things?

But this is not the voice of your stock strident secularist, but a 16-year-old

Poor kid. Looks like the humanists and secularists got him early. Or perhaps it was just bad parenting.

, speaking as a representative of the Youth Parliament today.

Well, that explains his case. Bodies of that ilk are stuffed full of the young gullible primed to say what the adults want them to. That's their purpose. Ever read a news story in which that kind of youth body didn't parrot what their funders didn't want them to say? I haven't come across one yet.

Young people themselves are some of the strongest supporters of sex and relationships education, and recognise that it will improve their ability to deal with the emotional, moral and practical difficulties of adolescent and adult life.

That's an excellent argument against what Mr. Copson wants. If young people support it more strongly that those who are older, wiser and more experienced than them, then perhaps it's a bad idea? When I was at school, lots of us also thought that French tests, chemistry exams and homework were really bad ideas - very nasty of those adults not to listen to us. Where was the Youth Parliament when we needed them then, eh?

But again, in fact nobody I ever knew of objects to the idea in the line above. "Sex and relationships education" is fine. It's when that education comes from a humanist standpoint we have a problem. Notice again how Mr. Copson, as most of the liberalisers of society in recent decades do, simply announces his position as the objective, neutral one and takes it from there ... and instead of interacting with counter-arguments, instead just smears anyone who disagrees with him as irrational or too far off the scale to be worth his time.

The Youth Parliament has been a key leader in the drive for compulsory sex and relationships education

Of course it has. That's why those of Mr. Copson's ilk set up and fund such bodies - because the self-selecting participants can be relied upon to support his agenda. Are we meant to be fooled? Sorry.

, and has called not just for all state schools – including religious schools – to be legally obliged to teach it, but for parents not to be able to opt their children out of it.

That must be why the Bible says that "folly is bound up in the heart of a child". What's the argument here - adults should roll over and grant whatever "youths" want them to?  ounds like some of these youth parliamentarians went short of a smack or two when they were growing up. Whoops, did I say that out loud? What I meant to say was to point out that Mr. Copson hasn't yet owned up to the point that the "it" that he wants everybody else's children to be indoctrinated with is not "sex education" per se, but particularly humanist sex education. Crucial omission!

It's not a surprise that young people want this education.

That hasn't been established yet. All we've established so far is that the "Youth Parliament" said so. But even if it was established, so what? My children want ice creams and no school every day. But they've already learnt, unlike Mr. Copson who's apparently an adult, that what children want ranks some way down the list of priorities - a fact whose importance and rightness will grow upon them year by year; especially in the years when they themselves become parents!

We know that the sexual health and wellbeing of young people is improved by sex and relationships education.

If you mean "humanist sex education", then no; you couldn't possibly know that. If you knew, you'd know that humanist education displeases God, and means his wrath burns fiercely against you. That's the God who said that it would be better for you to have a millstone tied to your neck and for you to be thrown into the midst of the sea rather than for you to teach one of the little ones to stumble. Fornication and other perversions do not lead to "health and wellbeing"; they lead to judgment. That of course raises the question - what is the yardstick of "sexual health and wellbeing" that Mr. Copson uses to measure the results of his humanist education? Oh - it's a humanist one. Things like whether lifelong committed monogamy and stable one-man-one-woman families result, isn't part of his measuring method. So what he's telling us is that humanist education brings good results, as long as those results are measured using humanist assumptions. That's not really a big deal. The big deal is he actually wants to force this on everyone and not just people who think like he does.

We also know that teaching only abstinence in schools has no effect on the likelihood of teenagers to have sex (they are just as likely to do so – it simply means they are less able to take the proper precautions and negotiate complex relationships).

No, you don't know that; you just know that when that teaching is not effective done in schools where the context is totally divorced from a Christian worldview in the school and family. A thin bit of abstinence icing on a secular cake still poisons the person who eats it; a Biblical Christian would never expect otherwise. A worldview has to be built from the ground up. Am I saying that all state schools must adopt the Christian worldview, without compromise? Obviously that's a non-starter... we've got to start somewhere else before we can even begin that conversation. That means God-sent revival; short of that, everything's a patch-up job. Some of those patch-up jobs will be OKish in their results; others will be like what Mr. Copson describes.

What Mr. Copson says, though, is at heart nonsense. If teaching abstinence has no effect on abstinence, why does he believe that teaching "proper precautions" will lead to anyone taking "proper precautions"? If he thinks what is taught in sex education has no effect, then that undermines the whole point of his piece, which is to influence what is taught in sex education!

I was taught that sex belonged in marriage. I've never been involved in sex outside of my marriage, and the reason is because I believed that what was taught was true. So how can this humanist say that what is taught has no effect? It's self-refuting nonsense.

Young people have a right to expect that we as a community will provide it for them

Note that for humanist activists like Mr. Copson, the "rights" always belong to the individual (to be able to escape any non-humanist convictions of his parents) and the duties to the "community", which is a code-word for "humanist-dominated government" (the right being, to over-ride the wishes of those pesky parents again). Note that the parents never seem to be ending up with any of these rights.

Who exactly is this "we"? "We", the British Humanist Association and those who think the same as we do? You can be sure it doesn't include those upholding the historic Christian position. We have the right to shut up and hand our children over for indoctrination from secularists like Mr. Copson!

– and when we say that young people have a right to such education this is in fact literally true. As Article 13 of the convention on the rights of the child says,

That's cute. The UN's human rights convention is Holy Scripture after all. Its teachings are all to be taken as literal truth. Remember that this article is titled "unbiased sex education is a child's right". Nobody can argue with this kind of logic. The humanist position must be true, because the UN endorsed it - anyone else is evil or mad. We crazed religious fundamentalists who think that the holy text we should all obey is one slightly more tried-and-tested than the output of the UN (not yet 100 years old!) must hand over our children to those who have seen the true light. Welcome to 1984!

"The child shall have the right to freedom of expression; this right shall include freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers … "

Does this mean a child have the right to seek, receive and impart information and ideas about necrophilia? Satanism? The contents of the governments secret files? I would have thought it obvious that nobody would mean this statement to be interpreted in an absolute way. Mr. Copson really does seems to be an extreme religious literalist; are my children safe in his hands?

What is this about, though? Mr. Copson hasn't yet told us just what it is that he's worried that the non-humanists won't teach their children. The Bible's got plenty of sex in it - nobody who reads it will miss out if that's their aim. What's your beef?

In the face of overwhelming evidence that sex and relationships education improves the lives of young people, what right do we have to deny them it?

Sadly this overwhelming evidence hasn't been paraded. But, let's put the boot on the other foot. It's an overwhelmingly proven fact that people who attend regular religious worship are shown, in survey after survey, on average to be happier, more settled, healthier, and many other things. So, what right do we have to inflict humanist teaching on children when it's proven to be so damaging?

I do wonder though what planet Mr. Copson is living on. We live in a time of immense sexual anarchy and misery. The victims of the sexual revolution have overwhelmingly been children - children who grow up without a father (or with two!), with all the flood-tide of evil effects that has had on our society. That is, if those children aren't simply murdered in the womb because their mother was taught it was her "right" to do so. The other major victims are women, who are exploited on a scale unimaginable to our grandparents' generation. Womanhood has been publicly sexualised in an appalling crude way in the last 40 years, such that hardly a pre-teen escapes the strong pressure to conform to the mould. If all of this is a state of improvement, I'd hate to see a wholesale disaster when one comes along.

If we know that sex and relationships education of an objective sort improves young people's health and wellbeing (and we do)

Typical liberal propaganda - it's necessary to assert that your case is proven 10 times, without actually proving that even the first time. And what's this word "objective"? Same old story - his position is objective, bias-free, public truth to be shovelled down everybody's throats; yours, should you disagree, of course, is private nonsense that the government should protect your children from!

 and if we accept that it is the right of the child to receive information of all sorts (which it is)

'Cos the UN says so!

and if we go on to conclude that the responsibility of society is therefore to ensure that all our children receive this entitlement, then why allow state-funded religious schools to do something different?

Because, dear Mr. Copson, a society in which one minority group foists its views by force of law on all others, including the foisting controversial views on highly personal matters such as sex on pain of state sanctions, against the wishes of parents, is a fascist society. When the state decides that it is God, that a humanist point of view is neutral, objective, public truth, and that parents who think otherwise should have their rights withdrawn, then what you have is an atheist hell-hole. Like the USSR, Albania, Cambodia, and all those other houses of misery that the 20th century was littered with. The places that liberals like Mr. Copson didn't decide to go and live in because they preferred them to the society that had been built on Christian foundations that they lived in in the UK - the one where there was freedom to differ from the state, a freedom that campaigners of Mr. Copson's ilk have taken such advantage of other the last half-century.

Why in particular, as has been announced today, should the religious character of a school (which may or may not be shared by the school's pupils or their parents) be allowed to skew the sex and relationships education that children receive?

Because my good fellow, the right to educate children belongs to parents to do as they see fit. When you speak of "state-funded", you forget that it's not actually the case that Mr. Brown and Mr. Darling dip into their pockets and we live at their expense. The states funds come from... the very same parents who send their children to the state schools. And it is not the wish of the parents paying for their own children's education that their children, who choose to send their parents to a religious school, that there they should receive a humanist indoctrination. The overwhelming majority of people in the UK who pay for state education are not humanists. The question really is why Mr. Copson can't seem his own totalitarian and the illogical nature of his own ramblings: if the UK is a democracy, why should a minority view such as his be enforced by law at the expense of the majority who reject it?

In PSHE, as in RE, pupils should have the opportunity to learn about and engage with a range of different perspectives on relationships. Many different views do exist in society and sex and relationships education should engage them – as it does. But above all else, we need to be honest with young people, not withhold from them knowledge of the full range of human sexuality that does exist in reality, which they will encounter and engage with in the world outside school and which they need to be prepared for.

This is a straw man. We will teach our children to interact with the full range of views - in due time, and from a Christian viewpoint. What we won't do, though, is pretend that we think all views are equal or relative, or that we think the child choosing his own view (which they all will do) is such an enormous gain that it outweights the evil of choosing a wrong view. Mr. Copson really is asking for more humanist indoctrination. Teaching all views with an air of laid-back indifference is nothing other than teaching humanism: that man is his own god and may pick whatever way seems right to him.  Mr. Copson really wants his view to be taught as unquestionable dogma to everyone. Whatever else he'd like taught, nobody can question the supremacy of man and his right to choose!

In sex and relationships education, more than in any other area, we must place the child – not our own prejudices – firmly at the centre of our thinking.

You mean you're taking everything you've said so far back! Great!

Oh, you don't mean that. You just mean that you're pretending that your own prejudices are something else. You're simply too dishonest to allow a level playing field, allow your humanist assumptions to be put under the microscope, whilst you claim the right to have everybody else's assumptions ruled out of court. And you're going to try to pull your scam in the name of our children! No thanks!

 Young people want this education, they need it, it is their right to have it, and if we withhold it from them on grounds of our own ideologies, we will only be doing harm.

That's "harm" defined from the humanist point of view, of course. From the Christian one, the failure to teach Christian truths as true does infinitely more harm, because to love and honour God is the ultimate value - not serving whatever dog's breakfast of lusts that horribly gone-astray species which is Western man desires.

Shouldn't I be doing something more important?

Here's a common scenario. You, a Christian, used to be busy in many front-line "ministries". You were teaching people the Bible, helping arrange events, talking to outsiders about Jesus, organising help for the poor, etcetera. But now you're not. You're a full-time parent. You spend almost all your time doing "dead-end" jobs like changing nappies, tidying mess, washing clothes, giving milk and then being too knackered to do anything else. Here comes a thought into your head - shouldn't you be doing some kind of "ministry"?

Chase those foolish thoughts away with some of these more accurate ones...

• Training the next generation is the most important ministry of all. One day your generation will be dead and buried! The hand that rocks the cradle is the hand that rules the world.
  
• Godly families are a main plank of God's plan to influence the world. Who is in a better position to serve the kingdom - someone hauled out of a lifetime of open sin, completely ignorant of the things of God - or someone taught by word and example day by day for years and years?
  
• God wants to teach me that his work is a long term, patient work. I used to think that long term meant 2 or 3 years!!! Boy, I'm learning!
  
• When I'm just "doing ministry" on and off, I can hide my secret sins and hope that they won't rub off on anyone. But little Johnny or Joanna see them all - which means I have to deal with them and get rid of them!
  
• So - this is what my mum/dad did for me! I never realised. How could I be so ungrateful? Truly God has been patient with me all these years.
  
• In our day godly families are so few and far between. God has given me the opportunity by his grace to be a shining light in this dark world. That's a privilege.
  
• These little ones will teach me what it means to "pray without ceasing".
  
• My little ones come to me as their parent with such trust and delight - even though I'm sinful. Doesn't my heavenly father want me to do the same?
  
• I never knew I was so proud. Since when was wiping bottoms beneath me? The one I serve came to the earth to serve sinners, even to the death of the cross. I'm just being asked to serve my own flesh and blood!
  
• How much I've learnt through being a parent. I had no idea what patience, self-sacrifice and the rest were like - and what I know now is that there's a huge way still to go! Thank you Lord for teaching me this, even through changing endless nappies.
  
• This little one knows nothing about the world, life or death. When I ministered to people out in the world I had to start by correcting all their mistaken ideas. God's given me the privilege of teaching this one right from the beginning!
  
• That little smile is a gift from God worth more than 1000 dirty nappies! Thank you Lord for letting me see it!
  
• These little ones will one day reflect me to the world. I can put on a face with others because it's only temporary. These ones though see all sides of me - and pick up my habits, good and bad. Their way in the world will in large part be a testimony to the effects of being with me for 20 years.
  
• God uses means. If he's going to bring the world into submission to the Lord Jesus, it's going to be through the service of holy men and women. If there are going to be holy men and women, they need to be taught and trained. The Lord has given me an opportunity to teach my little one to his glory.
  
• God doesn't give us tasks like this to mock us. If it's his will for little ones to be saved, then it's his will for little ones to be patiently instructed about the Lord Jesus, little by little, day by day. What greater privilege and responsibility than this, to teach the little ones?
  
• This task is so enormous - I need so much help. I cannot do this unless I look each day to Jesus.
  
• Nothing worth doing can be finished quickly. There's nothing more worthwhile than raising little ones in God's world to his glory - that's why it's such a huge task!
  
• God's given me a little church. Here I can teach, question, comfort explain, hold and hug, every day. This is my dear little flock, to care for. Here we can prove that God is worthy to be glorified in big things and in little. Here we can show that it's a delight to serve him whether worshipping as a family or flushing away filthy nappies. Thank you Lord!

And many more such thoughts! Feel free to pile them on in the comments.

Your family IS your work!

I'm presently reading a biography. The subject of it was an Anglican minister who died in the early 1980s who was also what is often called a "workaholic".

He was completely devoted to his ministry of evangelising and preaching. Unfortunately, he routinely allowed this ministry to draw him into neglecting his family, which included his beloved wife and two children. He was a popular international speaker to conferences, seminaries and universities, and regularly made trips of several weeks to many countries. When at home, his study was sacrosanct and he spent vast amounts of time there, studying and praying. He seems to have been a highly gifted and valued preacher, very self-disciplined, sensitive to criticism, something of a perfectionist, and deeply concerned that his ministry should be fruitful. All of this contributed to driving him into his study when at home, and around the world as many opportunities arose (in fact he had to turn around two-thirds of invitations down).

What I want to draw attention to here is the wrong thinking that calls us to label this phenomenon with descriptions like "spending too much time on his work" or "working too hard", etcetera. Biblically speaking, I think it's the very opposite. If we were to use Biblical terminology, we'd call it neglecting your work or being lazy.

How so? Because, according to the Bible, husbands and fathers are required by God to make their own families a priority area for their work. It's not for nothing that the apostle Paul routinely made family life one of the areas that he singled out for special attention and in-depth instruction (e.g. Ephesians 5:22-6:3, Colossians 3:18-21). God instituted the family - not the office or even the pulpit - before the fall, as the fundamental unit in human society (Genesis 2:18-25). There is a plethora of Scriptures urging us to pay serious and continual attention to our families:

"Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it; That he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word, That he might present it to himself a glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish. So ought men to love their wives as their own bodies. He that loveth his wife loveth himself. For no man ever yet hated his own flesh; but nourisheth and cherisheth it, even as the Lord the church: For we are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones. For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall be joined unto his wife, and they two shall be one flesh. This is a great mystery: but I speak concerning Christ and the church. Nevertheless let every one of you in particular so love his wife even as himself; and the wife see that she reverence her husband." (Ephesians 5:25-33)

"For if a man know not how to rule his own house, how shall he take care of the church of God?" (1 Timothy 3:5)

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

"Let thy fountain be blessed: and rejoice with the wife of thy youth. Let her be as the loving hind and pleasant roe; let her breasts satisfy thee at all times; and be thou ravished always with her love." (Proverbs 5:18-19)

"Whoso findeth a wife findeth a good thing , and obtaineth favour of the LORD." (Proverbs 18:22)

As always, of course, the lazy man who doesn't want to invest the effort needed in his family can find many specious excuses. He spends so much time away from them because he loves them and wants to provide for them. He is in the office many hours to keep them in the style to which they've become accustomed. God has given him gifts in his vocation and he should use them fully, shouldn't he? He buys them the best presents and goes on holiday with them every year, doesn't he? Etcetera, etcetera.

The plain fact is, though, that God never told us to neglect our families in order to serve another cause. He told us to make them a non-negotiable priority. He tells husbands and fathers that he requires them to invest time, prayer, sweat and tears in patiently teaching, discipling, guiding, correcting and as the crown of it all enjoying the wonderful blessing of family life.

In our individualistic age Christian men need to make sure that they firmly resist the temptations to laziness which are offered on every side, that they take responsibility like real men, and that they trust God for the long-term fruit of this essential area of their work.