In The Times at the weekend, England’s chief inspector of schools, Sir Martyn Oliver, is quoted as saying there’s a surge in homeschooling because parents are ‘desperate’, but he worries that some children will miss out on the ‘socialising’ that schools provide. Really? Maybe he should set foot in some of the classrooms parents are fleeing.
For many Christian families, it is precisely the social environment of state schools — the erosion of discipline, the sexualisation of childhood, the pressure to conform, and peer cultures openly hostile to Christian conviction — that has driven them to seek better options for their sons and daughters. If this is the ‘socialisation’ offered by state schools, parents can hardly be criticised for wanting something different.
Christian parents know what the Chief Inspector does not appear to grasp: that the task of raising children belongs first to families, not to the state. Scripture is explicit — it is parents who are instructed to bring up their children in the fear and nurture of the Lord. Schools may assist; the state may support. But responsibility does not transfer upwards.
