The Voice Of One Crying Out In Suburbia

More from Tim Challies on public versus home schooling

I came across this post kind of after the fact (originally posted 12/17/07), so the commenting has died down. But Tim has in the past been a pretty vocal opponent of Christian parents homeschooling their kids. When I ran across this, I felt it deserved a look and a response. Tim posted the blog in response to the upcoming book by Dr. Albert Mohler, Culture Shift (which is already in my cart on Amazon!). In the book, which Tim has read and I have not yet, Dr. Mohler uses his essay Needed: An Exit Strategy to argue for Christians to leave the secular public school system behind and explore homeschooling/Christian schools for their children. Tim doesn't seem to agree.

There is something about conservative Christians who choose to send their kids to public schools that makes them especially sensitive. I am hoping that there is not a sense that they are looked down upon or ostracized by homeschool parents, although I suspect that is true in some cases. Every discussion becomes a heated battle as if their fitness as parents is being questioned.

Tim makes this statement:

If the time comes that we feel it would be right to take our children out of the public education system, I will be left with two great and related concerns I would need to reconcile.

Just when will that time be? How much more hostile must public schools be towards Christianity to trigger that time of removal? Short of burning Bibles and requiring all children to swear allegiance to the state on a copy of God is not great: How religion poisons everything, I can't see how much more hostile the public school system can be to children who's parents seek to raise their children in the fear and knowledge of the Lord. From advocacy of sexual promiscuity and homosexuality to dogmatic insistence on Darwinism as the only acceptable explanation of the world, the schools have turned into an overtly hostile climate to Christian children.

Schools are increasingly no longer merely ambivalent about faith, but openly hostile towards it. Everything that is taught is taught from a secular viewpoint. Religious expression is rapidly being stamped out, even in silly ways like refusing to call Christmas by it's name, instead making up drivel like winter break or the generic "holiday season". We all know what is being celebrated on December 25th, but we are forbidden to speak it's name.

Tim's concern is that by removing our children from public schools, we lose our voice in the school system and create a self-fulfilling prophecy. In a sense he is right. If we remove our children we are in a sense abandoning the remaining children to secularism. But if we don't, we throw our children to the secular wolves and hope they survive. For every great school system which advocates of sending Christian kids to public schools seems to live in, there are dozens of other schools that are broken beyond repair. Even in the best schools, God is not spoken of, He is not revered, He is nothing more than a cultural fairy tale. Is that how we wish our God to be portrayed to our children 40 hours a week?

As I have mentioned before, the Christian parent who sends their child to public schools for their education runs a very real risk of unintentionally creating a divide between faith and learning. Faith becomes something we just do, especially on Sundays. Learning is completely separated from faith, and the two become mutually incompatible or outright hostile. I barely trust the government to deliver the mail, much less be responsible for watching, protecting and educating my children for the better part of 40 hours a week, plus homework.

We send kids to school because that is where they go to learn. But what they learn stands in stark contrast to what they are raised to believe. So that begs the question: which is correct? If we believe that what kids are taught to believe is so important, why then do we permit a government agency to mandate that we send our kids to their schools, to learn what they choose, and in turn learn to reject what they hear in Sunday school, camp, Vacation Bible school and (hopefully) from the pulpit? Our children get a mixed message, and when it comes to God there is but one message that is acceptable, and that is not the message they get when they are interred in public schools. We can't have it both ways, so every parent must look honestly at what they are doing for their children's education and ask if it honors God or exalts man. I think we all know what the answer is.