Sacred vs. Secular Education

I've begun reading Wisdom and Eloquence: A Christian Paradigm for Classical Learning by Robert Littlejohn and Charles Evans. They argue that progressive education propounded by John Dewey "vocationalizes" and "secularizes" education. Growing up in America, we assume that the separation of church and state into sacred and secular realms is a practical good for us personally and society. Littlejohn and Evans assert the contrary:

It is a characteristic of un-Christian thinking to separate the sacred and the secular. To the extent that our curriculum structure in our schools do not uphold a consistent, pervasive integration of the sacred into the students academic and social experiences, we have allowed ourselves to become secularized (24).

We must seek to restore the Christian vision of education, which is one of discipleship in all subjects as part of God's creation and redemption in Christ:

Hear, O' Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on your doorposts of your house and on your gates (Deut 6:4-8).

If we are not deliberate about this kind of education and delegating it to those who can train our children in this way, the world will only be too glad to fill the void.

The drive to reform and to be open to reform, together with the inner honing device that should guide such reform, is most easily acquired when we are children.