Parents of faith have concerns beyond liberty, safety and academic standards when it comes to the schools their children attend. Important as these things are, most people who hold to serious religious principles long to see their children embrace those principles as the foundation of their lives.

Rev. Max Victor Belz, PCA pastor, founder of Cono Christian School, and father of eight children, said,

I don't want my children fed or clothed by the state, but if I had to choose, I would prefer that to their being educated by the state.
 

Rev. Belz was one of many men of faith who recognized the damaging effects of state schooling on children. Consider these thoughts from others. You'll see that this is not a new concern. People have long recognized that government-controlled education erodes faith. While these quotes are from Christians, the concern is the same for all parents committed unequivocally to raising faithful children.

I am as sure as I am of Christ's reign that a comprehensive and centralized system of national education, separated from religion, as is now commonly proposed, will prove the most appalling enginery for the propagation of anti-Christian and atheistic unbelief, and of anti-social nihilistic ethics, individual, social and political, which this sin-rent world has ever seen. - A. A. Hodge, 19th century Princeton theologian

When the Pharisee admitted the coin was made in the image of Caesar, Jesus told him to render unto Caesar what is Caesar's and unto God what is God's. I ask my fellow Christians, 'Are your children made in the image of Caesar? If not, why do you render these innocents to Caesar for six hours per day, 180 days per year, for 13 years? - Marshall Fritz [Plano Star Courier, February 21, 1999] 

The formation of a child into a responsible adult is a full time activity. - Marshall Fritz

I would say to you, dear friends, it may require some sacrifice, but I urge you to send your children to godly schools... to Christian schools that they might receive a godly Christian education. If you send them off to some public school, keep in mind that you are shooting dice with your children's eternal souls. It is a gamble that no Christian should be willing to make. Don't send an eight-year-old out to take on a forty-year-old humanist. ... I have never seen any more unhappy people than fathers or mothers who have come to me and said, "Where did we go wrong? We gave him everything, and now he's turned his back completely on everything we believe." Yes, you gave him everything but a Christian education. - Dr. D. James Kennedy, Training Your Children

God does not give Christian parents the right to a free education for their children. Instead, he gives them the solemn responsibility to raise their children in the fear and admonition of the Lord, to keep before them his commandments day and night, to saturate them in his word and way that they may be holy even as he is holy. - Anonymous

Still, many may feel the case is overstated, that these men are over-reacting. Consider the other side of the coin. These are statements from public school leaders and advocates — and a very small sampling of many similar statements.
 

Let our pupil be taught that he does not belong to himself, but that he is public property. He must be taught to amass wealth, but it must be only to increase his power of contributing to the wants and demands of the state. [This education] can be done effectually only by the interference and aid of the Legislature. - Benjamin Rush, Thoughts Upon the Mode of Education Proper in a Republic (1700s) [Separating School & State, p. 37.]

[T]he child should be taught to consider his instructor... superior to the parent in point of authority... The vulgar impression that parents have a legal right to dictate to teachers is entirely erroneous... Parents have no remedy as against the teacher. – John Swett, Superintendent of California Public School System (1860s)

Our schools have been scientifically designed to prevent over-education from happening. The average American [should be] content with their humble role in life, because they're not tempted to think about any other role. – William T. Harris, U.S. Commissioner of Education, 1889

We who are engaged in the sacred cause of education are entitled to look upon all parents as having given hostages to our cause. - Horace Mann, first secretary of education in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, "Father" of public schooling [Separating School & State, p. 48]

The children who know how to think for themselves spoil the harmony of the collective society which is coming, where everyone would be interdependent. – John Dewey, educator and philosopher

Only a system of state-controlled schools can be free to teach whatever the welfare of the State may demand. – Ellwood P. Cubberley, former Dean of the Stanford University School of Education

In our dreams...people yield themselves with perfect docility to our molding hands. The present educational conventions [intellectual and character education] fade from their minds, and unhampered by tradition we work our own good will upon a grateful and responsive folk.  – John D. Rockefeller, General Education board (1906) [The Underground History of American Education, p. 45]

We shall not try to make these people or any of their chldren into philosophers or men of learning or men of science... The task we set before ourselves is very simple...we will organize children...and teach them to do in a perfect way the things their fathers and mothers are doing in an imperfect way... – John D. Rockefeller, General Education board (1906) [The Underground History of American Education, p. 45]

I am convinced that the battle for humankind's future must be waged and won in the public school classroom by teachers that correctly perceive their role as proselytizers of a new faith... The classroom must and will become an arena of conflict between the old and new -- the rotting corpse of Christianity, together with all its adjacent evils and misery, and the new faith of humanism, resplendent with the promise of a world in which the never-realized Christian ideal of "love thy neighbor" will finally be achieved. - John J. Dunphy [The Humanist magazine, Jan/Feb 1983]

If you still have doubts about the intent of those who control public schooling, consider this November 2, 2005 statement by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appearls.

The Ninth Circuit case was specifically addressing interviews conducted with children in a California school in which students in first, third, and fifth grades were asked explicit sexual questions as well as other disturbing and intrusive questions. The parents who sued lost their case.

Excerpt: [O]nce parents make the choice as to which school their children will attend, ...their fundamental right to control the education of their children is, at the least, substantially diminished. The constitution does not vest parents with the authority to interfere with a public school’s decision as to how it will provide information to its students or what information it will provide, in its classrooms or otherwise. See Yoder, 406 U.S. at 205. Perhaps the Sixth Circuit said it best when it explained,

“While parents may have a fundamental right to decide whether to send their child to a public school, they do not have a fundamental right generally to direct how a public school teaches their child. Whether it is the school curriculum, the hours of the school day, school discipline, the timing and content of examinations, the individuals hired to teach at the school, the extracurricular activities offered at the school or, as here, a dress code, these issues of public education are generally ‘committed to the control of state and local authorities.’ ”

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Further Reading:

On Being Salt and Light
by FREDERICK C. FOOTE
Excerpt:  Our understanding of the Bible on this point suggests that quite the opposite conclusion may be true. If we really want our children to be salt and light in this world, the public school classroom may be the last place they should be.

We Are Losing Our Children

by T. C. PINCKNEY
Remarks to the Southern Baptist Convention Executive Committee by T. C. Pinckney, Nashville, TN, September 18, 2001.
 

Dear Sisters: Give to Caesar What is Caesar's

A plea from BONNIE J. HORN

Excerpt: ...greed took hold in my heart. I had discovered that "Caesar" (the state government) would fund our home school efforts via an independent study charter school. We were promised funding... as long as... We could teach doctrine "on your own time"... I was choosing to pull out of the private sector and place over our schooling efforts an authority that required me to separate God within our home. I would have been teaching our children a double standard: God is O.K. for home but not for our school. 

Can Darkness Teach Light?

by JAMES BOYES
pdf file - Get Adobe Reader

Excerpt:  There is not one subject area left untouched by the Spirit of our Lord Jesus Christ. Everything is seen through His mind and Spirit -- from the Biblical worldview, if you will.

 

Why Muslims Need Separation of School & State
by IMAD-AD-DEAN AHMAD, Ph.D.
Excerpt: Knowledge cannot be acquired from any single source but must come from a combination of three sources: reason, experience, and transmission from reliable sources.