Who Owns the Child?

A century ago, John Swett, fourth state superintendent of schools in California (1863–1868) and the real founder of the state’s public school system, made some amazing claims. In his First Biennial Report, for the school years 1864 and 1865, Swett denied that parents had any rights in the public schools. “In private schools … the parents there, in legal effect, are the employers of the teacher, and consequently his masters; but in the common and public schools they are neither his employers nor his masters.” Moreover, Swett stated, “Parents have no remedy as against the teacher.” The public school is a state institution and basically and essentially controlled by the legal agencies of the state and its counties. Public schools therefore are not extensions of parental authority but are “wards of the State,” and children, on entering these schools, become wards of the school, except, as Swett noted, when the school is a private one. In 1874, during Henry N. Bolander’s term as state superintendent, an attempt was made legally to prevent parents from sending their children to Christian, parochial, or private schools without permission from local state school trustees. The governing principle of this first attempt by the state to strike at non-statist schools was that the children belong to the state. John Swett spoke of school age children as “the children of the State,” i.e., they belonged to the state, although the parents still had some limited status. However, Swett added in his Elementary Schools of California, “children arrived at the age of maturity belong, not to the parents, but to the State, to society, to the country.” This, of course, is the fundamental thesis of socialism and communism: instead of a government of, by, and for the people, belonging to the people under God, the people belong to the state, both as children and as adults.

But man was created, not by the state, but by God, and man belongs, therefore, not to the state but to God. Children are a gift and an inheritance from God, given by God and to be committed to God by faith and godly nurture and education. No man owns his child, even though the child is committed to him by God. For a man to claim ownership of his children is not only morally wrong but also especially offensive. How much more wrong it is for the state to claim ownership of both child and man!

But this is again, and more than ever, being asserted. It has even reached the point where some educators, with their eyes on many Negro homes in particular, have gone so far as to say, as one state superintendent in a Western state has, that we should consider “removing some children from the influences of their environment [parents] for 24 hour a day schooling.” Is the answer to one evil a greater evil? Only a few slave owners of the Old South separated mothers from their babies; are our modern educators planning to make an occasional ancient evil a new way of life?

The basic answer to this socialism is that children belong to God, and all men, as God’s creatures, are God’s property. We had better then, place ourselves under God’s law and liberty, and enjoy the prosperity of His blessing and grace, or we shall find ourselves and our children groaning under the slavery of socialism.

A Word In Season: Daily Messages on the Faith for All of Life, Volume 1, pp. 78-80