Back to school—praying about issues in education

Today is the first day of school for students in the district where I taught eighth grade for the last nineteen years of my thirty-two year career. Honey, they didn’t shrink the kids—they shrunk the summer!

Let’s face it. What’s been going on in public education has weighed heavily on many people’s hearts and minds. Movements have been underway this past year to attempt to wrest control out of the hands of “experts” who are enforcing the year-old nationwide implementation of  Common Core curriculum. These “highly qualified professionals”—to state it bluntly—institutionalize ideologies which promote concepts, practices, and worldviews that undermine the heart of principles which have built American greatness and goodness for generations. We all know that our school systems are, to a large extent, sadly lacking; we know that they have been hijacked in great part by those who care more for their pet political agendas than for your child’s ability to read with comprehension and enjoyment or his capacity to calculate math with proficiency and ease.

However, as I read articles online about the latest indignities in our educational system, the comments that follow are becoming more and more insulting, accusatory, and malicious—and many of them are from conservatives and even those who identify themselves as Christians. The outrage against the educational systems in our nation is escalating, to say the least.

A huge divide has been forming within our country—a divide of ideology, morality, and vision. Unfortunately, Satan has put our children in the crosshairs of it all, and they go about their childlike and youthful pursuits oblivious to the warfare being waged around them.

And like I said, we know that our educational system is sadly lacking and has been increasingly guilty of undermining traditional values. But I want to challenge you: the animosity that you may feel in response to what appears to be the purposeful destabilization of academics and culture needs to be channeled in the right direction in order to accomplish meaningful reform—whether on a small scale or large.

Here’s what I mean. You need to know what your child is being taught. You need to make yourself known and available to his or her teacher and administrator. You need to talk to your teen about our nation, our culture, our history, and right and wrong. You need to work daily on fine tuning their moral compass—and your own.

And you need to pray—every single day. Pray for his teachers. Pray for her peers. Pray in the Spirit. Pray the Word over your school district and let the living God move through you on its behalf. Then allow your prayers to encompass the nation’s students, schools, and policies.

The Lord understands your frustration with the agenda of darkness that your children and teens are exposed to on a daily basis; He understands the intensity of the outrage you may feel. But you must pray. You must pray with as much passion in the Spirit as the passion you feel boiling up in your disgust with this system—or with specific people in the system—who appear to twist truth and teach lies.

Take every bit of your concern and angst to the Lord in prayer daily on behalf of the schools and your children. Pray for all those involved on the school scene and pray for all you are worth.

God will hear your prayers and use them to create questions that only He can answer in the hearts and minds of children, teens, and adults. He will use your prayers to protect your children, their friends, and their schools. He will take the substance of your prayers and use it to transport laborers to a reckless teen, conviction to a hardened teacher, or the revelation of truth to an administrator wrapped up in political agenda.

Don’t fall into the fatalistic despair of those who lament the undermining of our educational system. Yes, you must assess clearly its current dismal state, but be persistent and bold as you pray in faith and by the Spirit of God about all that He leads you to pray. And do not let up.

The soul your son’s teacher may be mere weeks or hours from coming to Christ. Your daughter’s classroom may be just this side of a move of God. Linchpins holding the entire ungodly system together may be closer to falling apart than you dare think.

Pray, and do not stop praying.

Dorothy