Ideas

Public School Can Be a Training Ground for Faith

My daughter will wrestle with worldliness in her education, just as I did. That’s why I want to be around to help.

Christianity Today September 6, 2024
Illustration by Mallory Rentsch Tlapek / Source Images: Getty

Depending on your circles, mentioning โ€œpublic schoolโ€ may elicit strong reactions. Many Christians in America avidly allege its degeneracy, while many others fiercely defend its merits. And although this debate isnโ€™t new, it has come back to the foreground of our public life in recent years.

Last month, for example, a video went around in which actor Kirk Cameron described Christian parents who send their children to public school as โ€œsubcontract[ing their] parenting and discipleship out to the government,โ€ warning them to expect โ€œlittle Marxists, little statists, little atheists, drag queens, strippers, drug dealers … you name it.โ€

By contrast, writer Jen Wilkin has made faith-led arguments in favor of public education, citing benefits for children including a more diverse socialization, a healthy exposure to different worldviews, and fulfilling the call of being a Christian witness in the world. โ€œOur participation in the public school system was directly related to loving our neighbors,โ€ she said in a Gospel Coalition debate on the issue.

As a new school year starts with an election underway, I think the Christian case for public schooling is worth revisitingโ€”not only because itโ€™s a pressing conversation right now but because it prompts us to examine how we think about education, discipleship, and the faithfulness of God.

First, though, I want to recognize this is a practical question as much as a theoretical one.  We ultimately make our decisions based on the actual situation, options, and children before us. That means weโ€™re not talking about โ€œpublic schoolโ€ in general, but the specific public schools in our districtsโ€”and the specific private, Christian, and/or homeschool resources in our areas. And weโ€™re not talking about kids in general, but our specific kidsโ€”and we all know that every child has different needs. So, take all that follows with the recognition that it may not be possible for you to make the same decision I would.

Our daughter is just a toddler, so sheโ€™s not in school yet, and itโ€™s possible something in the next few years will lead us to change our minds. But, for now, my husband and I have decided to send her to public school.

One of the most important considerations for me in making that choice is that studies show there are more important elements for building and safeguarding our kidsโ€™ faith than the school they attend. As Iโ€™ve previously reported for CT, research suggests that taking children to church regularly matters more than finding the โ€œrightโ€ school.

In fact, as I discovered two years ago in my interview with Christian public health expert Tyler VanderWeele, director of Harvardโ€™s Human Flourishing Program, childhood church attendance is one of the highest predictors of overall wellbeing as an adult. Though homeschooling provided some unique benefits, researchers found, there was very little difference, across a host of outcomes, between public and private school kids.

Another major consideration is that I would rather most of my childโ€™s first close encounters of the worldly kind happen while sheโ€™s still under my roof, not after she leaves home. That preference is informed by my own unique educational background.

Growing up, my parentsโ€™ ministry positions moved our family around a lot. I started in public school for kindergarten and first grade, switched to a private Christian school for second and third grade, was homeschooled from fourth through sixth grade, and then returned to public school for middle and high school. Then I chose to attend the private Christian university where my parents worked at the time.

While researching this piece, I asked my parents how they had made their schooling decisions each time they moved. They said theyโ€™d weighed the quality of available education against the influence of the local atmosphereโ€”pretty much as most parents do. And it wasnโ€™t until I was approaching high school, they said, that warnings against the โ€œdangersโ€ of public education really started to influence their Christian circles.

Looking back, my experience at Christian school was mediocre, whereas I enjoyed homeschooling and saw its benefits. That said, it set me up for a massive culture shock when I went from homeschooling in Miami to public school in Washington State. We moved halfway through my sixth gradeโ€”possibly the worst time to transition from one end of the country to the other, from a Christian homeschool bubble to a secular outpost, from a setting of urban diversity to suburban homogeneity. Most of my time in middle school was spent figuring out how to fit in.

By the time we moved to Northern California, where I began high school, I was faring far better socially, culturally, and academically. But, there, a new obstacle arose, one Iโ€™d only gotten a taste of in middle school: I was bullied for my faith at school.

There was a group of boys, and even a couple teachers, who often teased me for my faith. Once in class, for example, we were reading a passage fromย Heart of Darknessย by Joseph Conrad and came to this line: โ€œOr you may be such a thunderingly exalted creature as to be altogether deaf and blind to anything but heavenly sights and sounds.โ€ My teacher interrupted to say, โ€œLike you, Stefani.โ€ The same teacher signed my yearbook, โ€œYou have a great brain. Don’t be hindered by dogma.โ€

Now, I know I did myself no favors in how I respondedโ€”due to my strong personality, deeply ingrained convictions, and ministry upbringingโ€”but it was bullying all the same. It was, at times, rather miserable. But it was also motivating.

I look back on that time now as pivotal for my spiritual formation. Until then, Iโ€™d mostly been living under my parentsโ€™ faith; it was something I just took for granted. I didnโ€™t know how to articulate my beliefs because Iโ€™d never had to defend them.

Once I was regularly provoked at school, I had to learn why I believed what I believed. I had to make my faith my own. With my parentsโ€™ guidance, I began reading apologetics books so I would know how to respond when someone attacked my views. That decision began a trajectory that led to who and where I am today, serving as theology editor at CT.

Itโ€™s worth noting that I attended high school from 2003 to 2007, near the height of fervor around New Atheism. That context, especially in California, made it socially acceptable in my school to openly mock Christianity and anyone who identified with it. But children in most public schools probably wouldnโ€™t have the same experience today. New Atheism has fallen out of style, and some recent research has shown that vitriol toward religion generally and Christians specifically has significantly declined over the last decade or so.

And though bullying is terrible, and no parent wants their children to experience it, keeping children out of public school doesnโ€™t guarantee theyโ€™ll never be bulliedโ€”while putting them in public school may give you the opportunity to guide them through this and other early challenges to their faith. You can remind them of what is true about themselves and what God says about them.

Think of it like strength training: Your children need to build muscles of faith, and public school can provide weight to lift while youโ€™re around to spot them. Let them wrestle with worldly counternarratives to Godโ€™s truth while theyโ€™re still under your care. That may feel risky, but the alternativeโ€”keeping them sheltered, then letting them be exposed to everything all at once when they leave home for work or collegeโ€”is risky too. 

Christians are called to be โ€œchildren of God without fault in a warped and crooked generationโ€ (Phil. 2:15), and we also know how seriously Jesus takes harm against children and how gravely he judges those who fail to treat them with the proper dignity. Anyone who despises a child or causes one to stumble is better off drowning in the depths of the sea (Matt. 18:1โ€“6) than facing the wrath of God for their actions.

As parents, we canโ€™t permanently protect our children from the world and its influences; and at the very least, theyโ€™ll encounter the worldliness of our own sin. Nor can we protect them from the inevitable and necessary struggle to truly understand and claim their faith for their own. The only question is when theyโ€™ll face that challenge and who will be around them when they do. As a mother, I want to be thereโ€”in person, every dayโ€”when those questions first come up for my kid.

That presence isnโ€™t just about talking apologetics or exploring Scripture together, which we could do over phone or email after my daughter leaves home. It includes many other things we as parents can do to help our kids and their faith flourish: maintain a good marriage, attend to their physical and emotional needs, raise them in a healthy church environment, and practice the faith we preach.

Donโ€™t get me wrong, Iโ€™m still worried about what could happen to my daughter at public school. But my worries are more about her physical safety (especially when school shootings happen an hour away) than her exposure to people and ideas that might cause her to wrestle with her faith, values, or sense of selfโ€”even at a young age. And thatโ€™s not only because I know Iโ€™ll be there to guide her through the pitfalls of our fallen world. Itโ€™s because I trust Godโ€™s sovereignty far more than my control over my daughterโ€™s future.

Much of the rhetoric urging Christian disengagement from public education in America has to do with the larger question of how Christians should interact with the broader cultureโ€”with what it means to be โ€œin the world but not of it.โ€

That saying is a paraphrase from Jesusโ€™ high priestly prayer at the Last Supper: โ€œMy prayer is not that you take them out of the world but that you protect them from the evil oneโ€ (John 17:15). It comes after his warning to his followers that โ€œin this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the worldโ€ (16:33). And itโ€™s not the only time he said  the world would be hostile to Christians. โ€œI am sending you out like sheep among wolves,โ€ he said when commissioning his 12 disciples for ministry. โ€œTherefore be as shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves. Be on your guardโ€ (Matt. 10:16โ€“17).

That hostility is the reality in which we parent as Christians, and that tension of witness and holiness, shrewdness and innocence is what we must faithfully navigate, whatever schooling decision we make. Itโ€™s a dance of both entrusting our kids to God and knowing that God has entrusted them to us. And itโ€™s a dance we donโ€™t undertake lightly, for at the end of all days, we will be held accountable for how we performed.

Stefani McDade is the theology editor at Christianity Today.

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