Home School, Private School, or Public School? Pt.1

My wife and I have wrestled for a number of years with what type of schooling we would like our children to receive. We continue to wrestle.

For disclosure's sake, we both attended public schools for all of our childhood and teenage years. My wife went to a public college; I went to a private one. We also enjoyed some of the best that public education could offer. I grew up in a (generally) wealthy county with expansive advanced placement (AP) classes. My wife transferred into a top-notch magnet program in Seattle.

With ample time to reflect, there is much that we like and much that we dislike about the education we received at each stage. I have subsequently served in a classical school and had a decent opportunity to evaluate its strengths and weaknesses. And as more and more evangelical Christians flock to home-schooling, we have spent most of our recent years interacting with adults who home school or were home-schooled.

This is the first post of five on the important issue of schooling. In this post, I will outline a few opening considerations. In next four posts, I will express my current inclination for childhood, pre-adolescent, adolescent, and young adult schooling, respectively. First, some basic considerations:

1) The Bible does not explicitly endorse a position. One could certainly infer a position based on the prerogatives of family, Church, and state in the Scriptures, but likely could go no further than inference. As a result, this is a matter of Christian liberty. If it is used as a litmus test for orthodoxy, then it is used wrong and in violation of Scripture (Gal. 5:1-2).

2) The state has a legitimate interest in the life of its people, in accordance with its mandate to maintain justice (Rom. 13). At the same time, the role of the state is subordinate to the role of the family and the role of the Church in the life of a child (Deut. 6; Matt. 28). Even if one traces the origins of the state to the city founded by Cain in Genesis 4, it still follows after a previously established family structure and relationship between God and His people (Gen. 1-2).

3) The schooling options are not mutually-exclusive. A home school parent can enroll their children in rec league sports and other extra-curricular activities. A public school parent can catechize and help shape a child's worldview in the (few) hours available alongside public school. The Church certainly should do this as well, especially on the Lord's Day.

4) One's choice in schooling for his/her child will be tied close to what one views to be the rightful domain of education. Should one institution cultivate a worldview, provide the tools for learning, and inculcate a sense of morality? Should these responsibilities be divvied up between state, parents, and Church?

For what it's worth, J. Gresham Machen opposed to the proposed Federal Department of Education back in his day. He told a Senate panel at the time that such an absorption of schooling by the state was acceptable in the contemporary societies of Mussolini's Italy and Lenin's Russia, but not in a society that still respected the primacy of parents in forming their children.

At the same time, he was not altogether opposed to some form of public schooling. But he was adamant that such institutions were inherently amoral and were not to inculcate morality in children. He thought that school prayer, for example, was very much a pagan activity.

In our day and age, let us be thankful that there are so many venues for learning. And let us also find comfort in the knowledge man's growth, either in common grace learning or in the faith, depends ultimately upon God's grace alone. The Father is the gracious giver of every good gift (James 1). And for those who have Christ, how will He not also give them all things?