Blog & Mablog Burn All the Schools
7 snips
Nov 26, 2025 Doug Wilson stirs the pot with a controversial essay on the reform of public education. He passionately argues for evangelicals to withdraw their children from government schools, labeling it a sinful compromise. He questions how dire the situation must become for Christians to abandon the system altogether and critiques the cultural decay that makes once-unthinkable practices acceptable. Wilson emphasizes the pastoral duty to protect children from godless institutions, challenging the idea that public schools can nurture 'salt and light' in young believers.
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Mencken's Provocation Framing Reform
- Wilson recounts H.L. Mencken's hyperbolic proposal to 'burn all the schools and hang all the teachers' as an illustrative provocation.
- He uses the story to frame his own sharper exhortation about Christian withdrawal from public education.
Remove Children From Public Schools Now
- Get evangelical children out of government schools immediately rather than waiting for incremental outrage to accumulate.
- Doug Wilson urges parents and pastors to remove covenant children from public schooling now to prevent spiritual harm.
Vivid Hypotheticals Of Moral Decline
- Wilson imagines ever-more extreme school scenes, like pole-dancing labs with football teams forced to attend, to show where toleration leads.
- He uses vivid hypotheticals to illustrate how far norms can shift and when the last holdouts might finally protest.
