junior kindergarten

The Danger of Junior Kindergarten

***I want to clarify that this post is not an attack on those who send their children to Junior Kindergarten. No one I know does so with malicious intent. They do it because we've been taught to believe that our children are better off being taught by "experts." This post is an attempt to examine where that idea came from.



Recently, several Christian schools in our province have followed the trend in the public education system and instituted Junior Kindergarten programs for 4-year-olds. Whether it's because school administrators see value in going the way of a culture or whether they feel they have no choice but to provide the option to families who would utilize the secular system otherwise, I'm not sure. Perhaps it's a combination of both.

In any case, many of those who were once repulsed by the idea of sending their children away to school any earlier than they already are, have thrown up their hands in defeat and sigh, "I guess it must be for the best." Who's going to dare hold their child back for one more year at home if all the other kids are taking advantage of the perceived "head-start"?



5 years from now, it'll be normal in our Christian community to wave "good-bye" to our 4-year-olds as they climb the stairs to the big, yellow bus in search of a brighter education. We'll forget that five used to be the normal send-off age for a child. It'll all come back to us, however, when, after the dust has settled, we find ourselves facing legislation that will require shipping our 3-year-olds off to school too.



"3-year-olds?! Don't be ridiculous! That'll never happen!" Really? The likelihood of mandatory schooling for tots is just as likely as the social experiment they're conducting on our 4-year-olds right now. Why? Because it's been part of the devil's agenda to destroy the Christian family all along.



Jean Jacques Rousseau, an instrumental figure behind our modern education system, was a heartless father who abandoned each of his own five children on the steps of an orphanage as babies. He applauded Plato's idea of an ideal state where "temporary sexual liaisons produced the children and where no parent should know his child, and no child should know his parent.1" In his book Emile, Rousseau prescribed education "with an unmarried tutor who would draw the child away from his parents and relatives as much as possible.2"



How sickly ironic that philosophers like Plato, Rousseau, Marx, and Dewey who clearly had no regard for God's law or a love of children somehow became the founding fathers of a modern education system which indoctrinates our children for over 15,000 hours during the most formative years of their life. But perhaps even more tragic than their mission to destroy the family through increasingly younger compulsory attendance laws, is a Church who says, "Yes! and Amen," to the downward direction of a godless institution.



Besides the fact that there is no educational benefit to beginning school early (also see here and here), a Christian school considering the option of offering Junior Kindergarten or preschool programs must also investigate the spiritual ramifications of removing a child from the home at such an early age. This new educational "reform" has not proven to be a "tried and true" method, nor does it jive with the biblical model of parent-led, home-based discipleship (Deut. 6:7; the Book of Proverbs; Eph. 6:4; 1 Thess. 2:11).



The JK phenomena we're facing in both public and private Christian schools begs us to ask the question, why 4-year-olds? Why not 3-year-olds? At what point will the line be drawn, or will we be okay with birthing our children onto a socialist conveyor belt? Has the morality of our culture changed for better or for worse since 1852 when America first adopted compulsory attendance laws? Is it pure coincidence that the more time we spend in a classroom, the more immoral we become? Would spending less time in the classroom with peers and more time with parents who love the Lord be better or worse for a covenant child?



Parental convenience and worldly conformity are not matters warranted by Scripture. So if it's true (and the evidence is compelling) that God has given the responsibility of child-rearing to their mother and father, and if it's true that there is no educational benefit to early classroom instruction, what reason is the Church left with for providing Junior Kindergarten programs in their Christian schools? Each family would do well to investigate the answers to these questions themselves rather than assuming that the "Christianization" of a secular idea is what's best for their child.