Why Christian parents should not send their children to public school

This is the site’s position

Reformed Education holds that Christian parents should not place their children in public (government) schools, and that they should choose a Christian school, a classical Christian school or home education instead. That is an editorial position of this site, stated openly. It is not a doctrine of the Westminster Standards, the Three Forms of Unity or any denomination we list.

Reformed Christians do disagree about it. Some faithful parents use public schools and some churches do not press the matter. This article gives the reasons for our view, then says what it does not claim.

1. God gives the education of children to parents

The great Old Testament text on teaching children is addressed to parents: “And thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up” (Deuteronomy 6:7, KJV). Psalm 78:5–7 says the Lord commanded the fathers to make his law known to their children, so that each generation would set its hope in God.

The New Testament gives the same charge: “ye fathers, provoke not your children to wrath: but bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord” (Ephesians 6:4, KJV). The Westminster Larger Catechism, in answer 129, lists what parents and other superiors owe those under them: “to instruct, counsel, and admonish them”, and it cites Deuteronomy 6:6–7 and Ephesians 6:4 among its proofs.

Parents may use teachers, as they use doctors and pastors. But the responsibility stays with them. Choosing a school is choosing who will stand in the place of the parent for about thirty hours a week, and that choice belongs to a father and mother before God.

2. No education is neutral

Every subject, from history to science to literature, is taught from some view of God, man and the world. A school cannot teach without assuming answers to the questions ‘What is man?’, ‘What is right?’ and ‘Where did we come from?’

A government school that serves a whole nation is in a difficult position. It cannot teach the gospel, so it teaches as if God did not matter. The Presbyterian theologian A. A. Hodge saw this coming. In lectures published in 1887 he argued that if every party has the right to remove from the public schools what it does not believe, then “he that believes most must give way to him that believes least”, until nothing is left that assumes God. He warned that, carried through consistently, “the United States system of national popular education will be the most efficient and wide instrument for the propagation of Atheism which the world has ever seen” (Popular Lectures on Theological Themes, ‘The Kingly Office of Christ’, p. 281). Hodge wrote that as a prediction of where a consistent secular system leads, not as a description of every teacher or school.

3. Children are discipled by whoever spends the most time with them

Jesus said, “The disciple is not above his master: but every one that is perfect shall be as his master” (Luke 6:40, KJV). Children become like the people who teach them and the people they grow up among. “He that walketh with wise men shall be wise: but a companion of fools shall be destroyed” (Proverbs 13:20, KJV).

A school day puts a child for most of his waking hours among teachers and classmates whom the parents did not choose and who may share none of the family’s convictions. The Christian parent has to ask honestly who is forming the child’s loves, habits and friendships.

4. The aim is more than safety

It is common to defend public school by saying that Christian children can be light in a dark place. There is truth in this for grown believers. But children are not sent to school to be missionaries; they are sent to be taught. Parents are told to train them first (Proverbs 22:6), and a child who is still being formed is not the best person to hold a position against a system built by adults.

The positive aim matters more than the warning. Christian education seeks to teach every subject as a part of God’s world, under Christ, with the catechism and the Scriptures as the frame for the rest. That is hard to do in a school that has to stay silent about him.

What this does not claim

• It does not claim that every child in a public school will lose the faith, or that every public school teacher is an enemy. Many are kind and capable.
• It does not say that Christian schools and homeschools are automatically faithful. Some are only moral or only academic, and they need the same testing. See ‘Choosing an alternative to public school’ on this site.
• It does not condemn parents who have no other choice. Some families cannot afford a school or cannot teach at home. The church should help them, and they can still do most of the work of discipling at home (see ‘Parents cannot farm out their children’).
• It does not settle the question for your church. Ask your elders, and compare the views of your own denomination.

If your children are already in public school

Do not panic, and do not wait. Begin family worship and catechism if you have not. Know what they are being taught and talk about it at the table. Talk to your pastor and elders, and pray about a move. Look at the options in the Education section of this site, and consider the cost, the distance, the time and the help your church can give.

Related articles

• Choosing an alternative to public school
• Parents cannot farm out their children

Sources

• archive.org/details/popularlectureso00hodg

States the site’s position as an editorial judgment. The Hodge passage was checked against the full text of Popular Lectures on Theological Themes (1887), pp. 280–281, on the Internet Archive; the catechism answer is from the Westminster Larger Catechism as held in this site’s catechism data. Reformed churches differ on the application.