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Should Christians Send Their Kids to Public School?
By Movieguide® Contributor
Homeschool pioneer Heidi St. John and public school advocate Katy Faust discussed their chosen form of education and why, no matter what, parents need to equip their children for battle.
“I see myself as kind of on a rescue mission trying to help parents remove any obstacle that they might face or feeling like they can’t home educate their children…” St. John told “The Spillover” host Alex Clark. “I look at it this way, you know, 25 years ago when I was introduced to homeschooling, we ended up doing it, [and] I was really running to something I saw as better for our family; it would give me more time to be with our children. Today’s homeschool parents are largely running from something — they’re running from a system of education that is bankrupt, morally and educationally and spiritually, and so my job is to give them something to run to.”
While Faust agrees that the public school system is broken, she believes that parents can raise children with strong Christian values if they discuss the failing areas and prepare their children to walk into the battlefield.
“Obviously if you send your children in unprepared, it will ravage them, but we also know that we have the truth, and we were confident that we could fortify our children in ways where the friction coming from not just the culture but the schools sharpened them rather than ground them down,” Faust said. “And so we did that in age appropriate ways with our kids through elementary school, middle school and high school…our main message is you are arming your kids for war whether you homeschool, private school or send them to public school. You are the primary trained, the primary [teacher], and you need to set you kids up for success.”
Faust also believes that sending kids to public school allows them to face trial by fire and receive real-world experience standing up for their beliefs. It also allows them to be leaders among their peers and bring light to their lives rather than leave them for the darkness.
“You actually do get, I would say, an incredible education by being exposed to the bad ideas and learning how to fight against them. And so, our kids are, I would say, well-equipped and unafraid, you know. And we don’t worry about them,” Faust said. “We’ve told our two daughters that are now college bound, you can go anywhere you want for school, like if you want to go to school, you can go anywhere…because they’ve already encountered all of the bad ideas of the world. We’ve had a chance to shepherd them through it in our home and they have been tried and tested.”
St. John, meanwhile, believes it is best for parents to shelter their children from the bad ideas of the world so that they can build a solid foundation before fighting the ideologies thrust upon them by society.
“We care more about sheltering tomato plants in this country than we do sheltering our children, and so my responsibility as a mother, the way I see it, is to shelter my kids,” St. John said. “And while I’m sheltering them, I’m equipping them for the battles that they’ll face when they leave our home. Six of our seven [kids] have graduated now, so six of our kids — three of them are married — six of them are in the workforce and they’re entrepreneurs, they’re doing just fine out in the real world.”
Homeschooling is growing across America. Parenting Mode reported that there are currently 3.7 million homeschooled students in the U.S., and households with homeschoolers doubled from 5.4% in March of 2020 to 11.1% in March of the following year.
While there is no absolute answer to whether parents should send their kids to homeschool or private school, there is a reason why Faust and St. John agree on the fact that parents need to take responsibility for the education of their children.
The things kids learn when they are young determine how they will see the world as adults. Proverbs 22:6 teaches to “start children off on the way they should go, and even when they are old they will not turn from it.” Thus, parents need to focus on teaching their kids biblical values from the start so that they hold them tight amidst a barrage of immoral teachings they will face throughout life.
Movieguide® previously reported on education:
A new study reveals that homeschooling has continued to surge after over one million students left public schools during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Homeschooling saw a 30% increase in 2021-2022 while public school enrollment fell by more than 1.2 million students within the first two years of the COVID-19 pandemic,” The Christian Post reported.
The study from the Urban Institute found “private school enrollment increased by 4.3% between the fall of 2019 and the fall of 2021. Data collected between the 2019-2020 school year and the 2021-2022 school year showed that homeschool enrollment rose by 30%.”
“[I]ncreased private school enrollment accounts for roughly 14 percent of the decline in public school enrollment, but increased homeschooling accounts for 26 percent,” Thoms S. Dee, the Barnett Family Professor of Education at Stanford University, explained.
“For every one-student increase in private schooling during the pandemic, homeschooling increased by nearly two students,” he added.
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