The school experience, in my opinion, is centered on one teacher in one given classroom. Or a few, as in High School. If you have a Christian teacher that year, your experience will be a thousand percent different than if you have a raving lib.
A good, Christian teacher can make for a life-changing year in the life of a student, whether or not he preaches the gospel. Speaking the Truth is always compelling, whether it is a light in the darkness or one light among many.
Did the Apostles only speak to believers? Did they only go where it was safe and already Christian? No. Christians have always been small lights in the darkness, and it is never counted a sin.
We homeschooled, however.
The kids aren’t stupid. They know that the Christian teacher is merely attempting to sneak in more rational values. Why shouldn’t they just conclude that Christians are sneaky?
They know that a brave Christian, that was serious about his faith, would likely have been fired long ago. So?...Do they conclude that Christians are cowards?
My mother taught public school for 40 years, and retired 10 years ago, but in her day, she put up Bible verses on her bulletin boards, read Bible stories to her students, and quote Scripture regularly, without any reprocusion from administration. This cannot be done today. So the question is — Can a committed Christian who believes in the admonishishment of believers by Christ to live holy lives and to reflect the character of Christ, to walk faithfully with the Lord, while teaching with a perspective that is completely and totally void of any reference to faith of any kind, or to a Master Creator who purposefully made the world and all people in His image? Should a Christian purposefully mask their relationship to Jesus by blending in to a profession that disallows the mere mention of faith to be made in any context within the school day of teaching?
This is, I believe, the real question, and I don’t know how a believer in Christ might answer this by defending their choice to teach in public school. My mother’s era of teaching in public schools is over. She still thinks Christian teachers can use verses on bulletin boards and read from Bible story books to their students. She doesn’t get that it is no longer possible to live so openly as a Christian teacher in the school system, the way she once did those years before.
I am a single Christian adoptive homeschooling mother of four, who recently put one of my four back in public schools for 10 weeks, because he (my 11 year old) seemed to need more structure and was not responding to my leadership the way I thought he should. Those 10 weeks recently of dealing with my son at a “very good” neighborhood school was quite eye-opening for me. I tried hard not to be the paranoid, deranged, anti-public school mother — but it was very hard to do. Let me just list a few things that happened within two days of enrolling him this last spring:
The female principal was charged and sentenced for rape of a child (a female student she’d been having sex with for years). My son was shoved to the ground twice, and called names for being a “goody goody” (he is polite, well-behaved, and eager to learn). He was excluded from every single playground activity / game because he was “too short” to play, according to other students. One little girl came up to him the first week, and told him, “You’re too stupid to be in 5th grade.” Lovely. The last straw was when he and a younger friend were leaving school, and a group of older girls with BATS attacked the boys, and my son found a large sharp piece of metal on the ground to defend himself with (which made these girls run away). After that, I was in the principal’s office declaring our family would never come back, and that homeschooling was the only way to keep my children safe and happy. Done with that. I teach my children to stand up for themselves and be a “light in the darkness”, but THAT was ridiculous and pure insanity.
Just some thoughts from my side of the fence...
“Did the Apostles only speak to believers? Did they only go where it was safe and already Christian? No. Christians have always been small lights in the darkness, and it is never counted a sin.”
But I question your comparison with the Apostles. The Apostles never spoke to unbelievers without preaching the Gospel to them. I can’t image any one of the Apostles taking a job as a school teacher in a Pagan school, and not using it as a platform to directly preach the Gospel of the Grace of God. They would have been willing (if necessary) to be fired, drug out of the school, beaten, and killed.
The correct Biblical prinicple has never been infiltration, but rather separation
Speaking the Truth is always compelling, whether it is a light in the darkness or one light among many.
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Regarding children in the government schools:
There is no evidence that Christ used children as missionaries. Missionary work is a hard enough job for an adult to do!
Regarding Christian teachers:
Teaching only half the truth is a lie. Trying to sneak in a few Christian principles is being sneaky. And...If a Christian were a true Christian and boldly taught the whole truth they would be fired.
I concluded that Christian teachers who manage to keep their jobs aren’t teaching the whole truth. That means they are lying. Lying is spreading darkness, not light.