The Value of Protecting Values ~ Dean Bowen

Of all the important choices parents have to make when raising children, choosing where and how they will be educated tops the list.  After all, what children and teens are learning now will lay the foundation for who they will become. 

Solomon said it this way: “Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it” (Prov. 22:6).  Woke culture would convince parents that who the child should become is to be left up to the child to decide. 

But Solomon says otherwise. 

It’s the job of the parents to decide the way the child should go and raise him or her in that way. 

In Plato’s Republic, the classical Greek philosopher addressed the topic like this:

"Shall we just carelessly allow children to hear any casual tales which may be devised by casual persons, and to receive into their minds ideas for the most part the very opposite of those which we should wish them to have when they are grown up?  We cannot . . . Anything received into the mind at that age is likely to become indelible and unalterable; and therefore it is most important that the tales which the young first hear should be models of virtuous thoughts. (emphasis mine)

We all have certain values we want to pass along to our children. Their education should mirror those values.  But in many places, it does not. 

Take socialism for example.  In a 2016 Gallup poll, 55% of people ages 18-29 considered socialism favorably.  But 73% of people from their parents’ generation frowned upon socialism. 

That is a very large generational gap. 

If parents are not teaching their children to love socialism, who is?

Before he was elected as our 40th president, Ronald Reagan famously spoke about the idea and value of freedom being instilled in our children:

"Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction.  We didn’t pass it along to our children in our bloodstream.  It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it was once like in the United States where men were free."

Reagan’s words continue to hit home as we can see how freedom is under assault.  But his words ring true for more than just freedom, they can also be applied to our own values. Our values are not passed along to our children in our bloodstream. They must be fought for and protected in the hearts of our children constantly.  

But this advice did not originate with Reagan, Plato, or even Solomon.  It comes directly from the heart of God. In the Old Testament, Jehovah instructed Moses to command the Israelites to fight for and protect their values in the hearts of their children:

"And these words which I command you today shall be in your heart.  You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you rise up" (Duet. 6:6-7).

His instruction to teach the children diligently was to be followed when they were sitting around, when they were walking to various places, when they were being tucked into bed at night, and when they were getting up for the day. 

In other words, he was stating that this instruction should be happening constantly because values are not passed along through the bloodstream, but rather they are fought for, protected, and handed down from generation to generation.

Unless children are being homeschooled, parents do not have the opportunity to pass along their values throughout the day as could readily happen in Old Testament times. This is why it is most important that your child’s education align with your own values, not feverishly work against those values.  They should be paramount in the stories we read, the songs we sing, and the poems we recite.  They should be told and retold. They should be fought for and protected. 

Solomon, Plato, Reagan, and Moses all had this one thing in common: They understood the value of protecting values.  Parents must choose a school for their children that understands the same.


    

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