The Responsibility Was Always Ours: Part 1
We Didn’t Give It Away—It Was Stolen
I used to say that parents gave away their rights.
But after sitting with it longer—reading John Taylor Gatto’s Dumbing Us Down, praying through Deuteronomy 6, and really listening—I realized something:
We didn’t just hand it over. It was stolen.
And it’s time we tell the truth about that.
We Were Set Up to Doubt Ourselves
This was never about helping families.
It was about breaking them.
The modern school system didn’t rise up to support parents; it rose up to replace them.
To make us feel inadequate.
To convince us that education belonged to “the experts” and not to the ones who love these children most.
John Taylor Gatto said it plainly:
“None of this is inevitable. None of it is impossible to overthrow.”
This was by design.
And if you’ve ever felt unqualified to teach your own child—you were groomed to feel that way.
But here's the truth:
You don’t need permission from a system God never authorized.
God Already Qualified You
Before there were schools, before there were standardized tests, before there were “experts”...
There was God.
And there were families.
And He gave clear instructions:
"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."
(Deuteronomy 6:6–7)
He not only told us what to teach (love the Lord with all your heart),
He told us how to teach it:
By living it.
By weaving it into everyday life.
The Training Model vs. The Discipleship Model
For generations now, we’ve been trapped in a training model—one that treats children like products on an assembly line.
Move them through the system. Test them. Sort them. Grade them. Prepare them to serve the machine.
But that was never God’s way.
God’s design is the discipleship model:
Relationship first.
Life together.
Learning woven into the rhythms of home, work, worship, and wonder.
“Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it.”
(Proverbs 22:6)
Notice it doesn’t say, “Test a child into the way he should go.”
It says train—through living, modeling, walking together.
We Don’t Need Their Validation
You don’t need a degree to teach your child.
You don’t need a classroom to educate your child.
You don’t need a system’s permission to obey God’s call.
You already have the only validation that matters:
The Word of God and the assignment He gave to you as a parent.
And that Word hasn’t changed just because the world did.
This Is Our Call: Forsake Institutional Training, Return to Discipleship
It’s time to wake up.
It’s time to tear up the permission slips we thought we needed.
It’s time to stop sitting on the sidelines while the culture disciples our children into confusion, fear, and bondage.
We’re not here to “keep up” with the world.
We’re here to call our children home to the Kingdom.
One conversation at a time.
One bedtime prayer at a time.
One walk through the woods at a time.
Because this is how real education happens.
This is how real faith is passed on.
This is how families are rebuilt.
Coming Up Next in This Series:
Part 2: "How the System Was Designed to Steal Your Authority"
We’ll dive deeper into the real history behind compulsory schooling, and how it was never about education—but about control.
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