It seems like anything can become a political issue nowadays. Schools are no exception.

IFI has frequently sounded the alarm about the indoctrination of students occurring in today’s education system and, Lord willing, we’ll continue to do so as long as it’s happening.

However, as our basic anatomy teaches us, it’s always good to look at an issue from multiple perspectives. 

The government school system is indeed busy teaching students all sorts of things that it shouldn’t. At the same time, the system is failing to teach them the things that it should.  

Don’t believe it? The Illinois Policy Institute recently published some sobering statistics on Illinois’ third grade classes. Take a few seconds to scroll through the list of Illinois school performance—depressing, to say the least. In the significant majority of Illinois schools, a majority of third graders fail to read at grade level. A few schools even return a 100% failure rate with not a single student being able to read as they should.

Why is third grade so important, you may ask? As Illinois Policy notes, third grade is a particularly important year for a child to develop strong reading skills. In fourth grade, students move away from simply learning to read, and reading begins to become their primary method of future learning. 

Accordingly, students who finish third grade still struggling to read are likely to have a rough time in future years of school when they’ll need to continually rely on their reading skills to learn their other subjects.

A few thoughts on this sad state of affairs:

First, in my opinion, this is the cherry on the cake of reasons to leave the public school system. I still believe the spiritual darkness in mainstream education (particularly the sexual perversity in the curricula) is the primary reason that Americans should get their kids out as soon as possible.

Yet, it would be one thing if schools still offered quality education at the same time. Not only are the government schools failing on basic spiritual grounds, but they’re failing to uphold the specific purpose for which they are supposed to exist! Even for those parents who are—for some reason—fine with the perversity taught in public school, the educational quality at least ought to give them serious pause.

Second, I was somewhat convicted when writing this piece because I realize that the urgency to flee does not mean we should abandon prayers for reform. Despite the large numbers of families switching to private, charter, and home schools, the majority of kids are probably going to stay in the deteriorating public school system for the foreseeable future.

Public schools are probably not going anywhere anytime soon. (To borrow from Ronald Reagan, government programs are probably the closest thing to eternal life we’ll ever experience on this earth.) And therefore, until the majority of people in this nation wake up, the state of our schools will likely predict the state of our nation.

Don’t get me wrong—I don’t believe government education should exist. But right now it does exist, and as long as it does, it will determine what the next generation of America looks like. National security, cultural depth, and scientific progress are all inextricably linked to education, and they all suffer when it suffers.

Let’s pray that our nation survives the stunted growth it’s inflicting on itself and will remain a strong protector of freedom on the world stage.

Finally, there’s one more thing to keep in mind: Education failure is not the schoolchildren’s fault, which makes it all the more tragic that they are the ones primarily being harmed.

Even as we strive to get our children out of harm’s way, let’s not stop praying for the other children who will continue to be stuck in harm’s way through no fault of their own.

Lord, there are many young souls in this nation who are simultaneously being robbed of the quality learning they’ll need for life and being barraged with demonic lies. Even as the older generation fails them, please ensure that their souls are guarded and their minds are trained so that they may live upright lives, and that they may provide their children with a better upbringing than they received.