For more than a century, American Christians have assumed, without biblical warrant, that the civil government ought to oversee the education of children. I believe Christians should not pour their efforts into reforming government schools, but rather should abandon them entirely in favor of distinctly Christian education.
Reform is neither possible nor biblically appropriate, because the government-school system is built on philosophical, theological, and structural foundations wholly incompatible with Scripture.
- The Purpose of Education Determines the Proper System
Scripture teaches that the purpose of education is discipleship—forming a child’s worldview so that they learn to love, obey, and glorify God. As I wrote in my book, Education: Does God Have an Opinion?, “The purpose of an education is to know our Creator” and all learning must be interpreted through a Christian worldview.
Government schools do not and cannot serve this aim because they are constructed on naturalistic, humanistic, and frequently anti-theistic presuppositions. Their purpose is not Christian discipleship but economic utility, social conformity, and ideological formation.
Since educational systems always disciple—never neutrally—the question is not whether children will be discipled, but by whom and into what. The government school system openly acknowledges its role as a shaper of values, not a dispenser of neutral facts. John Dunphy (a self-avowed Secular Humanist) explicitly calls the public classroom “the arena of conflict between the rotting corpse of Christianity and the new faith of humanism.”
This is not a system that needs tweaking; it is a system that has pledged itself to a rival religion.
- Government Schools Are Not Reformable Because They Were Never Christian in Origin or Intent
Government schooling was birthed from Enlightenment rationalism, Unitarian theology, and statist ideology—not Christianity. Horace Mann and other architects of the system envisioned the school as a mechanism to reshape society through the molding of children. Mann famously described parents as having given “hostages to our cause.”
A system not built on Scripture cannot be expected to produce godly fruit. Reform efforts presume that the institution is merely sick and needs healing. But we should remember that government schooling is not an institution God designed or delegated to the civil magistrate at all. The State’s God-ordained role is to punish evildoers, not to train children (Rom. 13). Education was given by God to parents, not to Caesar (Deut. 6:6–7; Eph. 6:4).
To “reform” an institution God never instituted is a category error. I do not desire to reform (or create a more conservative version of) street gangs, drug cartels or brothels; I wish to abolish them! Likewise, Christians should not attempt to create a more conservative version of socialism, because the problem is not the degree—the problem is the socialism.
- Government Schools Are Not Neutral—and Cannot Be
Many Christian parents cling to public schools because they believe the myth of neutrality. Yet Scripture, reason, and history all agree: neutrality is impossible. Jesus declared, “Whoever is not with me is against me” (Matt. 12:30), and Kuyper famously affirmed that “there is not one square inch” of human existence over which Christ does not claim ownership.
Government schools, by design, exclude the authority of God from every academic subject. This exclusion communicates a theological message louder than any sermon: “God is irrelevant.” As R.C. Sproul has stated, teaching children about life “without reference to God” screams that “there is no God.”
That message cannot be accepted as morally harmless or reformable. It is a competing gospel (the “good news” of man-centered Humanism).
- Sending Christian Children as “Salt and Light” Is Biblically Backwards
One of the most common objections addressed in Answers for Homeschooling: Top 25 Questions Critics Ask, is the claim that Christian children should attend public schools as missionaries. Scripture repeatedly warns that “bad company corrupts good morals” (1 Cor. 15:33) and that the companion of fools suffers harm (Prov. 13:20).
Children are not missionaries; they are the mission field.
Furthermore, placing impressionable children under the authority of teachers who often hold anti-Christian worldviews directly contradicts God’s command that parents—not the State—disciple their children. It violates the principle in Psalm 1:1 that instructs us not to subject our children to the “counsel of the ungodly.” No parent would send a child into a Mosque daily to learn theology from Imams while expecting them to evangelize Muslim children. Yet this is functionally what Christians do when sending children into an aggressively secular school system for 10,800 seat-hours of instruction.
- Christian Education Is Both Biblically Mandated and Proven Effective
Christian education is not merely an alternative but the biblical standard. Parents are repeatedly commanded to train their children diligently in God’s Word, to saturate daily life with biblical instruction, and to guard their children’s hearts and minds.
Additionally, as I demonstrate (through research) in my Answers for Homeschooling book, parents are qualified to teach their children. Homeschooling produces excellent academic outcomes, and the cost, while often used as an excuse, is usually a matter of priorities, not impossibility.
Conclusion
Christians can only rightly “re-form” what Christ has formed. When an institution Christ has formed falls into decay, we have a moral obligation to reform (i.e. The church, the family, etc.). But Jesus did not prescribe the creation of government schools.
Christians should not try to reform government schools because the problem is not merely curricular drift or moral decline. The problem is structural, philosophical, and theological. Government schooling was built on anti-Christian presuppositions and the Marxist notion of forced redistribution of wealth. It rejects God’s authority, promotes rival worldviews, and displaces the God-ordained role of parents.
Reforming such an institution is not only fruitless—it is unfaithful.
The biblical solution is not rehabilitation but replacement. Christian parents must reclaim the responsibility God has given them and provide their children with an intentionally and thoroughly Christian education. Only then can we hope to disciple the next generation to know, love, and serve the Lord with all their heart, soul, mind, and strength.
