The Responsibility Was Always Ours: Part 2

How the System Was Designed to Steal Your Authority

Every year—right around the same time—it would rise up in me.

As the holidays faded and the new year began, I’d feel this strange pull to research the history of the school system.
Not just once, but year after year. It became a rhythm I couldn’t ignore.

What was odd is—I wasn’t searching because I needed to be convinced. I was already homeschooling.
I wasn’t trying to win a debate. I wasn’t prepping to prove a point.
But still, there it was… this deep, stirring curiosity to understand how school came to be.

Each year I’d uncover something new—an article, a quote, a documentary—and I’d tuck it away.
At the time, I didn’t know why. But now, I can see it for what it was:

God was planting truth in me—seeds of understanding that would bloom when it was time to break free.

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Deschooling Started With Revelation

It wasn’t about gathering facts just for the sake of knowledge.
It was about recognizing the root of the system we’ve all been living in…
and realizing that if I wanted to embrace everything homeschooling could be,
I had to first break the chains of what it was never supposed to be.

When the Lord led me to deschool, those years of research started to make sense.
What I thought was just curiosity was really the Holy Spirit preparing me.

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Schooling Was Never About Education

Reading Dumbing Us Down again, this one quote hit like a flash of clarity:

“It’s just impossible for education and schooling ever to be the same thing.”

There it was—everything I had felt, named.

Education is about wisdom, wonder, discipleship, discovery.
Schooling was designed for conformity.

Gatto goes on:

“Schools were designed… to be instruments for the scientific management of a mass population.
Schools are intended to produce, through the application of formulas, formulaic human beings whose behavior can be predicted and controlled.”

That’s not education.
That’s behavioral engineering.

And the more I realized how intentional it all was…
how the system was built not to support families, but to separate them…
the more I knew—I couldn’t bring any of that into my home.
Not just the structure, but the spirit of it.

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The System Was Built to Replace You

This didn’t happen by accident.
It was planned, layered, and rolled out slowly—until most parents forgot they were even meant to lead.

• In Early America, children were taught in homes and communities. Families discipled. Literacy rates were high. Learning happened in life.

• Then came Horace Mann and the Prussian model—an education system built not to free minds but to manage behavior, produce obedience, and prepare children for the factory floor.

• The goal?
  Replace the parent. Control the child. Normalize dependency.

And it worked.

If you’ve ever said,
“I’m not qualified to teach my kids,”
“I don’t have the patience,”
“I’m afraid I’ll mess them up,”
you’re not broken.
You were targeted.

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We Didn’t Give Up Our Role. It Was Stolen.

That’s what makes this so important.

For years I thought parents had just surrendered their rights.
But the more I read, the more I understood—those rights were stolen.
Stolen through decades of cultural messaging, institutional programming, and fear.

The system made you believe it was “best for your child.”
But the fruit says otherwise:
Anxiety. Confusion. Shame. Burnout. Performance-based identity.

This is not the Kingdom.

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It’s Time to Return to the Ancient Way

This is a scripture my mother has planted in our hearts for years.

“Stand at the crossroads and look; ask for the ancient paths,
ask where the good way is, and walk in it, and you will find rest for your souls.”
— Jeremiah 6:16

The crossroads is here.
We’re not choosing between homeschool and public school.
We’re choosing between systems—between Babylon and the Kingdom, between training and discipleship.

God’s way has always been the family.

• Talk with them when you walk.

• Teach them when you rise.

• Remind them of who He is through how you live.

“Train up a child in the way he should go…” — Proverbs 22:6
That was never the state’s job.
It was always yours.

And here’s the truth:
You’re not late.
You’re not behind.
You’re exactly where God needs you to be—waking up and rising up.

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Coming Up Next in This Series:

Part 3: “Forsaking the System: The Call to Discipleship”
We’ve exposed the system. Now we rebuild something better. A home-centered, Christ-centered, Kingdom-rooted way of living and learning.

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Your Turn:

Reflection Questions:

• Have I confused schooling with education?

• What patterns do I need to break?

• What truth has the Holy Spirit been planting in me over the years?

Scriptures to Dwell On:

• Jeremiah 6:16

• Proverbs 22:6

• Deuteronomy 6:6–7

• John 8:32