(continued)
As England’s formal system of education developed, the schools were at first largely influenced by the Catholic church. The political situation fluctuated and eventually stabilized under Protestant monarchs, and the Anglican church either took over or destroyed most schools that had once been Catholic.
Seeking freedom to worship according to conscience and wanting to give their children a thoroughly religious education, the Separatists left England for Holland and later settled in the New World. As settlers arrived in the New World, many educated their children with private tutors or apprenticeships. Church groups, including the Mennonites, Quakers, Presbyterians, Baptists, and Catholics, eventually formed their own schools, which offered essentially religious education to their youth. The Puritans in New England attempted a community governed by religion, and thus their “public” schools were thoroughly religious.
In 1647 the Old Deluder Satan Act was passed in Massachusetts, requiring children to be taught to read and write and understand the Scriptures. Thus, the primary motivation for much of early American “public” education was to perpetuate Christianity.
During the early days of the nation, the majority of public schools in the United States, including the universities, began with a strong religious element and continued to operate that way. Slowly, however, religious zeal waned, and movements such as modernism, individualism, and intellectualism, pushed the idea of the separation of church and state and forced true Christianity out of most schools.
Before World War II, various parochial schools, including Lutheran, Mennonite, and Amish schools, were in operation. The National Union of Christian Schools, which was formed in 1920, promoted Christian parent society schools throughout the Midwest, and Dr. Mark Fakkema, their educational director, was largely responsible for the growth of these schools. At the request of the National Association of Evangelicals, he and Dr. John Blanchard started and promoted the National Association of Christian Schools in 1946. The NACS evolved into the National Christian School Education Association in 1974 and in 1978 became the Association of Christian School International, which now represents evangelical schools.
In the middle and late 1900s, as Christian parents realized how much their children were being affected by the increasingly secular, humanistic public schools, they began to clamor for an alternative. They wanted schools with moral standards and discipline as well as a distinctive, biblical, Christ-centered approach in every subject. Pastors challenged congregations to provide Christian schools for the children so that the influence of the Bible teaching of home and church would not be nullified.
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