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Public school: Should we abandon it?

Jim Coggins

When I attended high school (part of the public school system and the only high school in our town), the principal was a highly respected Christian man (he received a 5-minute standing ovation from students at an assembly called to honour him when he retired). In the public elementary and high schools I attended, many of the teachers were Christians, and Christian moral standards were generally taught, even though only a minority of students were devout Christians. Some students smoked, but this was discouraged by teachers and school administrators. A fair number of students drank alcohol, usually illegally; I never saw or heard of drugs until I reached university. Some students were sexually active in high school, and there were a few teen pregnancies, but even though this was before abortion was legalized, students with babies were rarer than they are now.

Twenty years later, when we adopted our daughter Jaeda, our social worker advised, “The local elementary school is a good one, but don’t send your kids to the local high school. There are drugs and gangs there. Social workers and the police are there every week, and the principals don’t seem to know or care why we are there. Send your kids to the Christian high school.”

These two experiences illustrate that times have changed. Schools today are not the same as they were a generation ago. Drugs and premarital sex are present even in public elementary schools. There seem to be fewer Christian teachers and administrators (just as there are fewer Christians in other occupations and in the populatiion generally). In place of Christian moral standards, students are taught to make up their own minds about right and wrong. The curriculum and its underlying philosophy contain many elements opposed to Christianity.

I do not know where we would have sent our children to high school if we had not moved away from that not-recommended public high school. Public schools vary considerably in their quality, and no one decision is right for every family and every student. Nevertheless, we have sent our two daughters to public elementary and high schools. They are now in grade 12 and grade 8, and we have not regretted that decision.

Dangers

We recognize that there are real dangers in the public school system, and we and our daughters have encountered some of them directly.

Beginning with the most blatant danger, on at least one occasion, one of our daughters has been threatened with physical violence by another student. The threat was never carried out, and we are pleased that the school authorities work very hard to limit physical violence.

The same daughter has encountered students who were involved with witchcraft.

There have been incidents of drug and alcohol use at our daughters’ schools, but these have been dealt with by the school officials, and so far have not seemed to have been a big temptation for our daughters.

We have had some concerns with school policies. We have resisted attempts by our daughters’ schools to rely on lotteries and bingo nights to raise supplemental school funding. This resistance has not always been successful.

We have had some concerns with curriculum. In particular, our older daughter’s classes have been taught the theory of evolution. Class discussions have presented the positions that abortion is a woman’s right, and that young people should use birth control to avoid pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases. To her credit, our daughter has defended in class: creation, the pro-life position and sexual abstinence before marriage. With her teacher’s permission, she read Genesis 1 to her class when it was studying evolution. We have generally found teachers and school officials willing to listen to both sides on these questions and to not force students to accept teachings in conflict with their beliefs. Teachers and school officials, however, are not open to making Christian teaching part of the curriculum.

Perhaps more troublesome has been trying to shield our daughters from the general attitudes of the society around them. For instance, there is relativism: A higher value is placed on being able to debate than on learning, and opinions are considered more important than facts. As well, teenagers are encouraged to be independent of their parents, somewhat prematurely, I think. However, our daughters have been influenced in these directions more by the media and their peers than by the school system.

The influence of other students, has, in fact, been a greater cause for concern than the school curriculum, partly because this influence is less formal, more subtle and harder to combat. We have had some concerns over some of the friends our daughters have chosen, but we have been able to discuss these issues with them, and they have often made wise decisions. Often they have been able to walk the tightrope of remaining friends with non-Christians while not participating in the things those friends participate in.

Related to this is the fear that our daughters, surrounded by non-Christians, will “fall in love with,” and end up marrying, a non-Christian. Early on, we taught our daughters two key principles in this area: They should not date non-Christians, and they should not “date” until they are 16. So far, they have observed these principles.

Reasons

In light of these dangers, why have we chosen to send our daughters to public schools? Money (the high cost of tuition at Christian schools) has been one factor, but I would not say the only one. (I remember well an occasion when government funding for our children’s inner-city school district was frozen at the same time as the government increased funding to private schools, including the Mennonite Brethren school that other, generally wealthier members of our congregation sent their children to. That situation created considerable tension, in our minds if not in the congregation.)

The main reasons we chose to send our children to public schools were spiritual, not financial.

Education

I don’t mainly mean reading, math and science. Public schools have excellent resources and trained teachers. Yet, academic subjects can often be better taught in the one-on-one setting of the home (provided the parent has the required knowledge and some teaching ability), and Christian schools often have excellent academic programs. Rather, I’m talking about the education you can gain in the school of hard knocks, learning to get along with unreasonable people who live immoral lives and don’t love or even like you. People who have known only loving Christian parents and loving Christian teachers may expect other authority figures (such as governments and employers) to act the same way; they don’t. How can we as adults get along with and even witness to non-Christians when we have never learned to know or understand them?

Clarity

A friend’s son attended a Christian high school for one year and then returned to the public system because he found the Christian school too confusing. Some supposedly Christian students at the Christian school held non-Christian beliefs and engaged in immoral practices, and he found it difficult to know what and who was actually Christian. We do not expect the public school system or the non-Christian teachers and students there to hold Christian principles. Our children know they have to be deliberately counter-cultural, to adhere to different standards from those around them. It is much harder to counter false ideas and immoral practices when they are presented by fellow students who are supposedly Christian.

Testing

At some point, our children’s Christian faith and Christian standards are going to be challenged by the non-Christian world around us. Testing deepens faith and clarifies beliefs. If our daughters can survive the public education system with their faith intact, I know that they will have a good chance of surviving the secular work world with their faith intact. Conversely, those who are raised in the Christian atmosphere of a Christian school may seem to have a strong faith, but the reality and depth of that faith will only be known once that faith is tested. By sending our daughters to a public school, my wife and I run the risk of them losing their Christian faith – in the hope that they will ultimately have a stronger Christian faith.

School supplies needed all over the world Mennonite Central Committee is urgently requesting donations of school supplies for less fortunate students overseas. MCC has received requests for an unprecedented 85,000 school kits this year. Kits are scheduled to be sent to a number of countries, including Serbia, Bosnia, Haiti, Jordan and Liberia. Responding to major crises, such as war in the Balkans and Hurricane Mitch, has seriously depleted MCC’s stocks of school kits. Parents and children out shopping for back-to-school supplies are encouraged to pick up a few extra items for needy students elsewhere. A school kit should include: 4 spiral-bound notebooks, 70-80 pages each (21.5 cm x 28 cm) 4 unsharpened #2 pencils 1 ruler, flexible plastic (30 cm) 1 large pink pencil eraser 1 box of 16-24 crayons The items may be placed in an 11-inch by 16-inch, double-drawstring cloth bag which participants can sew or pick up from MCC. Financial contributions for kits are also accepted.  – MCC B.C. news release

Prayer

Having our daughters in a public school system has forced us to pray more and to teach more urgently. We know we cannot leave their Christian nurture to the church and the Christian school. I pray for each of my daughters before school each day, that they will do well academically, that they will be kept safe and that they will be “honest, truthful, loving, kind, wise and faithful to Jesus.” Extensive debriefing is also required. We have talked at length with our children about what they are learning, what they think about what they are taught and what the Bible says.

Witness

It is true that our daughters have been influenced by the non-Christian school system and their non-Christian fellow students. However, it also true that our daughters have influenced their classmates. There are non-Christians attending our church’s youth groups and our church, one or two of whom have become Christians, because they have become friends with our daughters. My wife and I have also come into contact with non-Christian parents and teachers. We need to trust God that the power of Christ in us is more powerful than the power that is in non-Christians.

Encouragement

At one of the first parent-teacher meetings at our daughter’s junior high school, I ran into a Mennonite Brethren teacher who was thrilled that I as a Christian leader would send my children to a public school. She and her Christian colleagues felt abandoned by the Christian community; they were discouraged by the constant criticism of “ungodly” secular schools in their churches. There are Christian teachers, administrators and students in the public school system, and their witness there needs to be encouraged.

Abbotsford, B.C., the city where I live, has a population of about 100,000. Of that population, there may be as many as 7000 students attending private, mostly Christian schools. We have a relatively good public education system, with relatively good values. There are Christians on our school board. However, I wonder how much better our school system would be if those other Christian students and their parents were also involved with it. If we abandon the public education system, we forfeit our right to influence what happens there.

As Christians, we are called to impact society, to live in the world but not be of it. No one option is right for everyone, and I think Christian schools are useful. Still, sometimes I wonder whether, for the most part, they are geared for the wrong students. We should not forget the lesson of the prophet Jeremiah that in seeking the good of the pagan city in which we live, we will ourselves find good. I have greatly admired the mission agency World Impact, which has established Christian schools for poor, largely non-Christian children in inner-city ghettoes in the US. In contrast, Christians generally provide Christian schools for those who need them the least. They send Christian kids to Christian schools and abandon non-Christians to an increasingly godless public system. In so doing, they are sacrificing the long-term safety of their children for short-term safety. Eventually those children will graduate, and then they will have to face the consequences of the decision to abandon their peers; after graduation, they will have to make it in a world they don’t understand and which is increasingly anti-Christian.

We send our daughters to a public school because, as Christians, our vision must go beyond our own family and churches. We send our daughters to a public school for their sake and for the sake of the Kingdom.

Jim Coggins is editor of Mennonite Brethren Herald and a member of Central Heights MB Church in Abbotsford, B.C.

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Last modified September 28, 1999.

© 1999 Mennonite Brethren Herald.
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