  There has been a great amount of discussion due to the proposal of some of the Southern Baptists to remove their children from the public schools. At this point I will not argue my entire side of the issue, mainly because I don’t have time, but I just want to briefly reflect on one point. One reason people give to keep their children in the public schools is so that they can be a light to the world. They consider putting their children in a Christian school or home-schooling them, as hiding them under a bushel. Or they say it would be ignoring the Great Commission to put them there, unable to interact with and shine among non-Christians. This is not true because: 1. The whole point of school is to get an education; it is a time of learning and development on the child’s part.
The main point of going to school is not to evangelize. Also, putting children in a Christian school, or home-schooling them, does not mean that they have no opportunities to interact with non-Christians. 2. Putting a child in the public school from Kindergarten through high school means they will be spending much of the day in the secular world, more than they spend in Church, Sunday School, youth group, prayer and devotions put together. Without the time spent in a Christian environment how are they to evangelize well, anyway? 3.
Putting Christian children in public schools brings in a lot of competition for the parents. They have to compete with their children’s exposure to all the enticing temptations of the secular world. Even if Christian children avoid the temptations, they will certainly not try to evangelize and mark themselves out, risking seclusion. Peer pressure like that from Kindergarten is not healthy for a young Christian’s growth, and if a Christian child is weak, how can we expect strong evangelism? 4. From a scientific perspective, it is unwise to put Christians in the public schools because it will only make them weaker in one part of evangelism: the public schools teach the theory of evolution as a fact rather than a theory. Even if they refer to it as a theory they offer no alternatives. Christians, then, will have no knowledge of the Creationist theory, and will not know all of the scientific evidence against evolution and for Creationism. This will leave them very weak, and ignorant. And if they try to evangelize later on, this could be a very weak point. 5. The triumphs and down falls in Christian History are not taught in the public schools, nor are they taught in Sunday Schools.
(The Sunday Schools have a hard enough time combating with what the kids are bombarded with in the public schools to even think about teaching Christian History. ) Where are Christian children ever to learn about their heritage? The children of the secular world will have more training in their beliefs than the children of God. And then God’s children will have their impressions of History, Science, Literature, Art, Music and Math molded by those of the secular world. (God isn’t the Lord of all His creation for nothing. God is present in all areas of learning, and we should teach our children accordingly.
) The children of God will surely suffer for it. Well, that wasn’t very brief, but I think that it shows why I believe that, on the whole, putting our Christian children in the public schools will only weaken their light, and will only weaken them in their fulfillment of the Great Commission, rather than the opposite. I will also add that the responsibility to give children an education falls solely on the parents of the children. Therefore if the parents chose to educate their children through the public schools, any mistakes made by the teachers in the public schools fall on the heads of the parents of the children, for they are ultimately responsible. 
