The Family University Network: Disconnecting Institutional Higher Education
Why not build a Christian family business with the energy, funds, and infrastructure that would otherwise be built by state or private educational institutions?
It is common knowledge today that there are serious moral problems in families, churches, schools, universities, corporations, and in the political arena. These problems have academic, moral and philosophical roots that go back centuries and have been promoted by the systematic separation of knowledge and faith in God. The significant amount of teaching required to equip people with the ability to discern the times and apply the Scriptures by faith in all areas of life requires diligence in all areas of learning and at all levels of education.
Secular universities are openly hostile to the Christian worldview, and the best Christian universities cannot replicate the family outside the home. The Nehemiah Institute’s worldview assessment of 1,177 students at 18 Christian universities over 7 years showed that Christian students are graduating from Christian institutions with a secular humanistic worldview, even when their professors have a biblical theistic worldview. Even above-average Christian universities are little better than their secular counterparts because the curricula are developed under the same institutional accreditation guidelines, the same textbooks are used, many of the faculty were trained in secular institutions, and are ignored. the family learning context.
Even the best of Christian distance education does not intentionally involve the family in the learning process, nor does it tie in with individual family convictions, nor does it utilize the family’s knowledge base, nor does it generate family income. It is time to unplug institutional higher education and bring higher education home.
Establishing universities and family networks based on church fellowship is one solution. This can help individuals and families implement the Christian philosophy of education by developing their own family college and complementary businesses as part of the dominion mandate (Psalm 8).
A college education must be reinvented with a biblical understanding to strengthen the family and the church. Christians can easily learn how a family college can uniquely provide the ideal, humble, relational, Spirit-led Biblical higher education for its young adults to participate in building a strong Christian family, church, and culture.
The benefit of a network for learning was envisioned by Ivan Illich, a philosopher of the 1970s who spoke in favor of homeschooling. He stated that “if the networks I have described could emerge, each student’s educational path would be his own and only in hindsight would it take on the characteristics of a recognizable program. The wise student would periodically seek professional advice: assistance in setting a new goal, understanding of difficulties encountered in choosing between possible methods. Even now, most people would admit that the important services rendered to them by their teachers are advice or advice, given in a casual meeting or in a tutorial. Unschooled world, would also come to his thing and he would be able to do what frustrated teachers are trying to pursue today. ” Ivan Illich, Unschooling Society, 1970.
At the moment, there is only one network of family universities of this type in operation, but the time has come for this concept and therefore this is likely to be only the beginning of the expansion of homeschooling towards the home college.