Abandoning the kids in public school

Christian homeschoolers need to face head on the accusation that we are abandoning the kids in public school to hell by pulling our children out. After all, the main command given to Christians is to “Go out into the whole world and teach every creature about [Jesus].” We would be sorely sinning to be disobeying this command.

The fact is that most Christian homeschoolers are doing no such thing. We just have looked at the facts and come to a different conclusion; one I believe is more in line with the Bible.

When someone says they are sending their children to public school to be witnesses they are making a few assumptions.

1) All children of Christian parents have accepted Jesus as their savior by the time they are five. Obviously they think this or they wouldn’t be sending their children to school at the same age as everyone else. They would instead be saying “I will send my child to public school to be a witness as soon as they get saved. Until then I will homeschool/ private school them.” I have never heard anyone say this. Ever.

Sending a child of any age to school to evangelize their peers, who has not accepted the Lord into his heart, is, at best, naive. At worst it is plain stupidity or outright lying about the motives for sending your child to school.

2) All saved children are mature enough and well founded enough to sit under a heathen teacher’s authority, (learning from them, obeying them, respecting them), and under the tutelage of textbooks written by heathens (repeating their statements as fact in order to get good grades), surrounded by heathen peers (and suffering the peer pressure without any true avenue of escape) and still come out of the class not only with their own salvation intact, but evangelizing everyone there in the process. Paul said to “lay hands suddenly on no man.” I have known many children in my life and have yet to find any that were able to do the above. Oh, a few of us got out of public school with our salvation, but only at the cost of our faith in the Bible and God being severely shaken. I, for one, have spent more than twenty years putting back together my belief in the whole Bible and God’s guiding hand.
The fact is that anyone who believes a small child is equipped to handle the most severe peer pressure and spiritual testing of his life is again either very naive, stupid or lying about their motives.

3) Children are capable of bringing a revival in school. I actually believe that the schools are a great place to evangelize. Anyone who looks at the facts would have to agree. 150 years ago, when public school was first introduced, 90% of Americans went to church at least once per week and everyone lived (or at least pretended to live) by Christian morals, even those who said they were atheists. If you truly believed the Bible’s morals were not good, you didn’t dare say so. Today, it is quite the opposite. I believe this is a direct result of public schools. They were founded by atheists for the purpose of dividing the family and conquering the church. They have done a bang-up job of it, too.

The fact is that if children attending a heathen school was a great way to start a revival for God, we would be a Christian nation today. Those Christian children attending school 100 years ago would have brought all their classmates to the Lord, since they were the majority. Today, the church is hemorrhaging children. As many as 85% are leaving the church once they reach adulthood. If my church had a witnessing program where 85% of our workers backslid, I would recommend to the leadership of the church that we STOP THAT PROGRAM! Brother and Sister Christians, it is time we quite throwing our pearls of children to the swine of heathen education.

4) Public schools are religiously neutral. I have dealt with this lie before, but it bears repeating. Jesus Himself said “He that is not with me is against me: and he that gathereth not with me scattereth. (Luke 11:23)” There is no such thing as neutrality. Jesus said so. Our public schools do not teach a Christian education, so, by definition, they teach a non-Christian education. They do not teach God at all, so they can not teach God’s Hand-in-all.

Parents are commanded to provided their children with a Christian education (Duet 6:7, chapter 11, Ephesians 6 for starters). I have a novel idea: let’s do what the Bible says and see if we can keep our children in church. After all, when Jesus told the disciples to “Go into all the world,..” He told them to begin at Jerusalem. He told them to begin at home.

That is what we should do too.




(And just to finish the point about the heathen children in public school, our children can not be effective witnesses to them, but we adults can be. I have no problem with Christian ADULTS being teachers, administrators, volunteers, etc. in public schools. Being a missionary is always a good thing. I also have no problem with Christians witnessing to these children outside of school. Pray about it and God will open a door for you to reach out to them. Just don’t sacrifice you own child in the name of witnessing.)