Public School as a Training Ground for Faith?
My oldest son spent two years in public schools, one in the UK, one in Canada. By the time we had moved back to America, and he was ready to enter first grade, we never again had a child in public school. Canada was already introducing transgender ideology into its schools in 2011, before it began to infiltrate American school in a widespread fashion. I’m not categorically opposed to the concept of public schools. They need not be ideologically corrupt, antagonistic to Christianity, nor intellectually deficient. Until certain supreme court cases (primarily in the 1960s), in fact, American public education was largely (and overtly) supportive of Christianity. Even more recently, there could be found many instances where it was at least not hostile to Christians. Those days are now gone.
Instead, we have an entire educational system that has been conquered by dangerous ideologues and ideologies, from various shades of wokeness to the aggressive promotion of sexual perversions. Is it possible someone, somewhere, can provide a counterexample to this claim? Sure, though that will not remain the case for long. The time-tested model of Cultural Revolution is running its standard course through our public schools: plead for tolerance when in the minority, exclude dissent after passing over into the majority, demand explicit conformity and punish deviance when little resistance remains. America’s public schools are in the latter stage of this process regarding the whole spectrum of anti-Christian ideologies. I spent most of the last year serving as an interim pastor in a small town in northeast Texas. The town has some factories and industry, but it is still a mostly rural part of Texas. It is exactly the kind of place most Christians and conservatives would feel confident would never succumb to BLM or transgender insanity or other forms of extreme leftism. And to a certain degree that would be true among most people in that town. But even its public schools have fallen into the same grotesque ideological diseases as the public schools in America’s leftist urban centers. And yet Christians continue to insist that their children should be sent to public schools, with a healthy dose of guilt-tripping from many to top it all off: “Our participation in the public school system was directly related to loving our neighbors” (Jen Wilkin).
Christians who have spent even a little time reading about public vs. private schools will know most of the arguments in defense of each. It is not my intention to rehash all of those here. There is a particularly insidious claim, however, that continues to be made frequently, and that comes in a form that for some reason is attractive and persuasive to some. It goes like this: our children need to be exposed to the ungodliness of the world, or else they will be overwhelmed once they enter it. This is plausible because it contains an element of truth. If children aren’t taught what to believe and why to believe it, if they don’t embrace the truths of Scripture as their own, they will be defenseless when those truths are attacked later in life. “Mom and dad believe it so I guess I should too,” won’t cut it in the world, even though it is entirely reasonable for children to trust their godly and knowledgeable parents.
A recent Christianity Today article, entitled “Public School Can Be a Training Ground for Faith,” put this clichéd argument (if it can be called an argument) for public schools like this:
Think of it like strength training: Your children need to build muscles of faith, and public school can provide weight to lift while you’re around to spot them. Let them wrestle with worldly counternarratives to God’s truth while they’re still under your care. That may feel risky, but the alternative—keeping them sheltered, then letting them be exposed to everything all at once when they leave home for work or college—is risky too.
The element of truth is this: Christian parents must teach their children how to respond to “worldly counternarratives to God’s truth while they’re still under [their] care.” But the broader context in which this true idea is placed is perverse in the extreme.
The Christian responsibility toward children is clear in Scripture. Ephesians 6:4 (KJV) states this responsibility succinctly: “Fathers, provoke not your children to wrath: but bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.” Education, then, is not merely a matter of grammar rules, historical dates, and multiplication tables, as important as such things are. It is fundamentally a matter of moral, as well as mental, formation. There are many different types of schooling in which this intellectual and spiritual education can be brought about. But the contention of the author of the Christianity Today article is truly staggering, namely, that Christian parents would knowingly place their children (in their most impressionable years) into a setting in which their mental, moral, and spiritual formation consists in “worldly counternarratives to God’s truth.” This is a catechesis in atheism, nihilism, perversity, and death. It is, in fact, as things stand in our schools today, a defiant refusal to bring our children up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.
I recognize that there are Christian parents who send their children to public schools for other reasons, whether financial, educational, social, or otherwise. I would likely disagree with those reasons too, but at least they are reasonable, even if misguided: private school is expensive; we rightly desire our children to be well-educated; and the social interactions of children (in the right social context) are indeed healthy. But the claim that we should willingly send out children to be catechized in “worldly counternarratives to God’s truth” five days a week for 12+ years, and then expect them not to come out having thoroughly embraced that catechesis, is astoundingly naïve. Children are made by God to be impressionable. They naturally trust their earliest teachers, especially their parents. They seek to please them. This is as it should be in a world as it should be. But modern public education is not that world.
To adapt a saying of C.S. Lewis:
We raise children without sound education and expect of them faith and knowledge. We laugh at “sheltering” and are shocked to find apostates in our midst. We catechize in worldly counternarratives to God’s truth and bid the catechumens be faithful.
It is true that our “children need to build muscles of faith.” But how does one go about building muscle? By overeating and a refusal to leave the TV couch? Of course not. One builds muscle by consistent lifting. Children build muscles of faith through the means God has ordained: God’s word, sacraments, and prayer, as well as through their parent’s instruction and care. Does drinking a bottle of poison strengthen me to withstand its effects? Does jumping out of a plane without a parachute land me softly on the ground? Why would we expect that a catechesis in the apostasy would lead to a strengthened faith? God has ordained precisely the opposite for Christian children.
Perhaps the most striking thing I encountered in this Christianity Today article is the author’s paraphrase of Matthew 18:1–6: “Anyone who despises a child or causes one to stumble is better off drowning in the depths of the sea than facing the wrath of God for their actions.” Christian parents must consider the import of those words for how we educate our children.
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But doesn’t Dunson’s article lead to the belief that we don’t need the world to be educated at all? For what can unbelievers teach believers? Of course, that would be a rhetorical question from Dunson’s point of view.
We should first note that the objection that Dunson is attempting to answer is like having ripped a dollar bill in half, one gives one half of the dollar bill to a friend and keeps the other half to spend. In reality, we are not to separate ourselves from the world (see I Cor 5:9-11 with special attention on vs 11 where being verbally abusive is a legitimate reason for shunning those who profess to believe), This is opposite from what the Israel was commanded to do. Why aren’t we allowed to separate ourselves from the world? The Great Commission is one reason why.
And so now we have two reasons for not making what Dunson proposes into a mandate. The first is to avoid the arrogance that follows the belief that unbelievers have nothing to teach us. The latter part of Romans 2 seems contradict how Dunson sees the world. In addition, the implied message that we pass along to unbelievers when we act as if we have nothing to learn from them is that we are demanding that they listen to us while telling them that we not only need not listen to them, but that we should not listen them. The second reason is the combination of what is written in I Cor 5:9-11 and the Great Commission.
What is implied by the above article is that the only time that we can be with the world is when the world is Christian. I guess that is why there is such an urgent call by some for a return to Christendom. But history shows us the error of such thinking because of the atrocities that occurred during Christendom which were either supported or practiced by fellow believers in Christ. And so here we should draw reference to a quote from James Boyce. When arguing against the monastic approach to the world, which could also apply to those who want a return to Christendom, he wrote the following (see pg 104 of his book, Two Cities, Two Loves: Christian Responsibility In A Crumbling Culture:
‘First, it overestimates the godliness of the godly. Second, it underestimates the value of the world’s culture and government, since there is such a thing as common grace by which even rank unbelievers are able to create objects of beauty, launch worthwhile social projects, and perform secular responsibilities with integrity and skill.’
However, there is also the passage in II Corinthians 6:14-18. We are not to be mismatched with those who would lead us astray. Noting that, perhaps, the unbelievers whom Paul referred to were a special class of unbelievers considering history of Corinth and all of what Paul wrote. During Old Testament times, the Israelites were to completely expel those who were not Jews from the land because God was punishing those people for their sins and so that the Israelites did not adopt their gods especially through intermarriage between Jews and non-Jews. For us, we are to be like the Israelites who were exiled except that we are to mingle with those outside our community of faith to carry out the Great Commission and to work for the benefit of where we live. But we need to take care that while we carry out the Great Commission, that we don’t adopt the gods of those whom we are evangelizing.
Should Christians parents send their kids to public schools? There is no one-size-fits-all answer. This is where what is needed is wisdom.
As the parent of a toddler I’m quite invested in this.
But what I don’t understand, is what is the ideological rot that a child would be taught at a public school? Gender and critical race theory? Is that it? What are some actual examples that one could expect in a public school in an area that’s not ultra liberal? The tide is turning against both of those things – is this really a legit concern 5 years from now?
Also, I’d like to add that education itself glorifies God. Math, science, literature – the study itself honors God. Even if the teacher and system are secular. Let’s not forget that.
Like it or not Christians need to accept the culture war has been lost. The days of hegemony of a Christian worldview in North American culture are over. We are going back to the status of the Church in the pagan Roman Empire pre-Constantine. We have to build institutions for our families and local church communities that can withstand in the evil day, educational institutions especially.
While getting Christian children out of the public school system is not the only thing, it is one of the most important things. This is an extremely urgent matter bearing not only on the child’s spiritual safety, but their physical safety and even their basic education.
The extent to which pastors and other church leadership support private Christian education and homeschooling is a key indicator of how serious they are about equipping the people in their care for the challenges the future holds.
The extent to which Christian parents do whatever is required to get their children out of public school is a key indicator of how serious they are about their Children’s Christian formation.
Rather than relitigate the arguments pro-and-con Christian children in the public schools, I’m going to categorically state a proposition:
You cannot place children for 13 years under the tutelage of a system whose foundational worldview is atheistic materialism, whose creation myth is mechanistic Darwinian evolution, whose sacraments are safe sex and abortion on demand, where marriage and family are whatever combination of people seems right to the people involved, where basic biological differences between male and female are denied, and expect that those children’s spiritual condition will not be adversely affected.
This proposition doesn’t even address the fact that in many cases the public school system fails in even its basic mission of graduating minimally literate, numerate young adults.
Families will have to either make a lot of money to afford to send their children to a private school, assuming a suitable one is available. Or, one parent will have to stay at home to homeschool the children (there are a few single parents who, heroically in my view, manage to homeschool and are due massive credit for their commitment).
Churches will have to unlock that building that sits empty for six days a week, get involved in supporting Christian schools, and pass up buying that new espresso machine for the coffee bar to help moderate the cost of tuition. Churches will have to stop treating homeschooling like some kind of bizarre hobby for a few weird families who can afford for one parent to stay at home and not work outside the home.
Christians who do not have school age children will have to dig in and help families who do with the financial end of their child’s education either directly gifting the parents, or by contributing to the school [OUCH! Just left off preaching and got started meddling].
Educating children in a private school or at home is of course not a guarantee that they will grow up to be Christians. You can only do what you can do, at some point it is up to them. God calls us to do what he’s called us to do, the results are in his hands. Ultimately it’s up to you to decide if God is really calling you to get your children out of the public schools. Just like it was up to Lot to decide if God was really calling him to get his family out of Sodom. Pro-tip: don’t look back.
John,
Perhaps if we never fought any culture wars, we wouldn’t need to respond in the way you are promoting. In fact, I don’t it is necessary to respond that way anyway.
Suppose we were satisfied with culture coexistence, others would be more interested in what we have to say. But instead, we have a track record that has tarnished our own reputations and that of the Gospel by trying exert control over the culture. And that is despite the fact that we are warned against ‘lording it over’ others.