Sally Thomas looks at whether Christians really have an obligation to send their kids to public school in a piece at FIRST THINGS:
The idea of sending a child daily into a hostile environment--if not actively hostile, as in bullying, then certainly philosophically hostile--expecting him not only to withstand assaults on everything his parents have told him is true but also to transform the entire system by his presence, seems sadly misguided to me. There may be many valid arguments for sending a child to school, but that one doesn't wash.
In the Sermon on the Mount, in addition to the salt-and-light business, Jesus also tells the multitude, "Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also." A child's greatest treasure, to my mind, is his childhood itself. He has only one, and it's over quickly enough. If we as parents invest that treasure in sex education that makes us cringe, history we know to be a lie, and busy work we recognize as meaningless, we should perhaps not be too surprised if at the end of the day these things, and not the things which are above, have claimed our children's hearts.
She goes on goes to point out how children can be just as much "in the world" at home as they supposedly are at school.
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