Sending Christian Kids to Public School — is it the Right Decision?
It’s a long-standing dilemma: Should Christian parents send their kids to public school?
As a Christian, I feel like the minority parent with sending my children to public school. Most of my friends from church either homeschool or send their kids to Christian private schools. It definitely makes me question my decision from time to time. Between forms that require you to "select your pronouns," and controversial content found in school library books, navigating public school environments as a Christian can be challenging. And the less Christian families that enroll their children in public school, the more secular influences they’ll be surrounded with.
The Biggest Concerns for Christian Families with the Public School System
From what I’ve gathered, the two biggest concerns for Christian families considering public school are the risk that secular education may sway their children away from their faith (or at least have negative influences on them), and the possibility that children may face bullying for standing up for their beliefs. These are definitely legitimate fears, and can be true for some families, schools or circumstances, which is why it’s important to make a careful evaluation of what’s best for your children, individually.
Positive Aspects of Public School
While concerns about public schooling are valid, it's important to recognize the many positive aspects that these institutions offer. Public schools offer a wide array of learning activities and specialized programs—such as music, science, technology, arts, and sports—that support a comprehensive educational experience. Public education exposes students to different perspectives and ideas, encouraging critical thinking and enhancing emotional intelligence. Moreover, most public school teachers are certified professionals with specialized training and experience. They bring diverse teaching methods to the classroom, catering to different learning styles and enriching the educational process. Interacting with a variety of teachers and administrators helps students learn to respect and collaborate with different authority figures. The diverse and dynamic environment of public schools prepares students for the real world, teaching them to navigate complex social situations and adapt to different settings, ultimately equipping them with essential life skills.
Struggling to Decide if Public School is Right for Your Christian Family?
If you’re struggling to decide if public school is right for your children, I’d love to share this interview with you, with guest Elizabeth Spencer. I first ran into Elizabeth on a Christian parenting blog, and loved hearing her story there about sending her kids to public school so that's what we're going to dive into. This conversation was originally planned for my podcast, but the audio quality was choppy, so I’m sharing the transcript instead.
Interview with Elizabeth Spencer:
How she decided to send her Christian children to public school and how they faired in the public school system
Lauren
I am very excited to talk with Elizabeth Spencer today. We are talking about her journey of sending her Christian kids to public school. And I know that a lot of young families struggle with the question of, do I send my kids to public school or do I do private school or homeschool, especially as Christians.
So I wanted you to hear Elizabeth's story and everything she did with her kids and just her experience. So welcome, Elizabeth, share a little bit about who you are and your family, your kids, and where you're all at now.
Elizabeth
Hi, thanks so much for having me. Yes, I'm Elizabeth Spencer and I'm a mom of two daughters. My younger daughter is just about to be 21 and my older daughter is 25. I've been married to a very patient man. We've been married for 29 years. I was a stay at home mom for all of their growing up years and also a freelance writer.
And then now I work with my husband at his law practice, so I'm his pseudo legal assistant. We live in an old farmhouse in the country, in Battle Creek, Michigan.
Lauren
So Elizabeth, tell me a little bit about when you started discussing with your husband, whether to send your children to public school or what other options you might have been considering.
Elizabeth
So when my husband and I were engaged, I had a book that had a list of things to talk about before you get married. It ran the gamut, everything from how do you want to spend the holidays, to do you want children… a whole list of things. And I think one of the questions in there was about schooling so, I'm launching this at my fiancé at the time, and I think he just kind of went along for the ride, but it was important for me to see where we were both at and to be aware of that ahead of time.
So we discussed that: What did we think about that? Did we want to consider public school at all? Did we want to consider anything else? Both of us were public schooled all the way through and had had good experiences. We did ultimately come to the decision at that point that, from where we were standing then, that we would plan on public schooling for kids, assuming that guidance was in place.
We didn't decide on public school because that was our experience — just “this is what we know, so let's just go with a default”. We did make that decision intentionally and continued in the years between that discussion and actually having children who were ready to be in school to evaluate, “is God asking us to do anything else? Is he leading us in any other direction? Do we feel any inclination?” And all the way along, neither of us had any sense we were supposed to do anything else. We both have a lot of respect for professional education and for what they could give our children that we did not feel we could give them.
So that was a piece of it. We always felt we would be our children's first and primary teachers. But we wanted to avail ourselves of the skills and the gifts and the passions of other people that could teach them in ways that we could not. So, that's kind of where we started and where we continued. We eventually did by house in a district that we felt comfortable with and just kept moving in that direction. And never, at any point in that initial conversation or when we had a school age child, it was about eight years or so, felt God pulling us any further.
Lauren
Yeah, I love that. I have one kid in elementary school, he just finished kindergarten, and he is in public school. I did the same thing where I prayed about it and said, “God, if there's a different way, if you want me putting him in a different school, reveal that to me”. And there was definitely no calling towards that. And then I just felt a peace about sending him to public school. And there were a few different factors. I won't get into that now, since I'll have my own episode on how I chose public school. But yeah, I think there are a lot of benefits to the public school system. And we did make sure that we bought a house, even before kids, in a school district that was known to be a very strong school district. We were in this house for maybe five years before having kids. And my son's actually attending the elementary school that I had attended. And it's been great so far.
So what do you feel were some of the biggest benefits to the public school? I know you mentioned a few things already about having other teachers and professionals be able to provide the education. Have you found anything else that was a benefit?
Elizabeth
We felt like in school, that our girls were able to take the faith that we were developing and that we were trying to build in them, and make it their own. This was hugely important to us. We really wanted them to be able to put that faith into practice in a setting where it would be refined and strengthened. We felt that, at some point in their life, they would find themselves in a setting where they were surrounded by people who did not believe what they believed and who potentially would challenge that. And we wanted them to get used to living faith out, in a setting apart from our home, apart from church, which we were very involved with, in a way that was safe. And that we could still have influence. We could still have conversations. We could still know what was going on. So we just wanted them to have that opportunity to start to see what it looks like to be a Christian in the world. To be in the world, but not necessarily of it, as we often hear said. So that was a benefit to us to be able to have them have that experience.
They did have the chance to have Christian friends and non Christian friends to understand how to navigate that balance. They had a chance to live their faith out. We didn't send them to school to be missionaries. We didn't send them to school to evangelize everybody they ran into. And I know that can be something that gets brought up. Your children are not supposed to be missionaries. That wasn't our focus. We just wanted them to go because we always tried to look at faith, not as a spoke on a wheel — like here's the faith spoke, and here's the school spoke, and here's the sports spoke, or the music spoke — but rather that it would be a center, the center hub, and everything else would sort of spin around it.
We wanted them to have a chance to see what that looked like, to weave that in, and in a gradual way, not just, “Hello, you're 21, or 25, or whatever, and here's your first job, and bam, plop you into the middle of something that was so unfamiliar.” So that was a benefit to us, to be able to closely monitor what they were hearing and learning and teaching, to have discussions at the dinner table, about friendships and challenges there. That was just something that we were so grateful that they had the chance to experience.
Lauren
Yeah, I love that you didn't send them there to be missionaries. I know sometimes people question me or judged me for sending my kids to public school for either A – you're putting your kids into a secular environment where they're going to be influenced by negative influences or B – how dare you send your kids to be missionaries when that's not their role.
So now, with your kids, you mentioned they did have Christian friends and non Christian friends. As far as the Christian friends, did they find some of those Christian friends in school and in classes, or were they just outside of school at church?
Elizabeth
No, for sure in school, just in the natural courses of conversation. They would just be talking about life and one of them would mention church or one of them would mention youth group or that kind of thing. So they had many Christian friends in school that they just ran into in the natural course of things.
Lauren
Yeah, that's great. I think that's so important. For me, I grew up in public school as well, and best friend that I met in my 5th grade class, who had just moved to the area, brought me to her youth group, and I got really involved in that starting in middle school.
She didn’t end up being in any of my middle school classes, but we'd run into each other in the hallways and pass each other notes. And I still have some of these notes that are like, “Oh, I can't wait to share Jesus with this one girl in my class.” It was great to have each other as a support system. And I did evangelize to people in my class and people knew that my convictions were strong. Even though that wasn't my parents mission for me it still naturally happened. In the public school that I had a chance to share the light of Christ probably more than any other time period in my life, because I was so surrounded by so many people that I saw every day.
I'm now a stay at home/work from home mom, so I don't encounter as many outside people as I did when I was in school.
So did you have any instances of the school teaching some secular worldviews or anything that went against the Christian faith? And, if so, how did your kids handle that?
Elizabeth
There was never anything that came up that just really sort of rocked their world where they came home and they said, “Oh, we learned about this and what is this, and I don't know how to incorporate this into what you've already taught me.” We didn't have that. I do remember one time, one of my girls was, I think it was some kind of a high school history class or civic, something like that, and they were actually discussing world religions. And it was fascinating to hear my daughter talk about what she was learning about those religions. What struck her was just, honestly, the hopelessness of them; the sadness of it. Just these beliefs that were apart from Jesus that did not have him as the hope. And that actually made them more appreciative of their Christian faith because they could see the contrast. And it did not woo them in. It made them feel like, “Oh, this is so sad.” There's just not this core of hope and eternity and personal relationship and all the pieces of their relationship with Jesus that they appreciated. They could see that contrast. So that was just one example that I remember.
Again, it was not as if they came home and said, “Oh, we've been introduced to these other ways of thinking and why didn't you tell us about this?” And they were older at that point. Both of them had trusted in Jesus since they were little, so they'd had a long time to walk with him, but that was what struck them… just the, the contrast between the hope of Christ and the lack of hope in other worldviews.
So there wasn't ever really a time when they came home and said, “I don't know how to process this. It goes completely against what I have always believed my whole life.”
Lauren
What I'm picking up from this, too, is that you laid a really strong faith foundation from the beginning with your kids and so that they had that to stand on when, so within the public school they could recognize that, “Hey, Jesus has so much hope and it's sad that these other religions fall so empty.” So yeah, that's great.
Elizabeth
We did try to we did try to be intentional about laying that foundation. I would always tell my husband something I read one time… When your children are young, their hearts are malleable, and their minds are malleable, and that's when you have the chance to write on them, to etch truth on them, to shape them and form them with God's precepts and truths and that sort of thing. And I would say, “we’ve got to get in there now, when they're little, while we really have the opportunity.” So we did try to do that from the beginning.
And that was 100% by grace. That is not a, “Oh, look at us, weren't we amazing!” by any stretch of the imagination. It was just, we both were at a place in our life where we could see the difference that that faith in Jesus had made in our lives and we just wanted that for our girls. And we just didn't really want to take any chances… we wanted to to use our season of opportunity and set them up to be able to live out faith as they moved along and as they were in different settings, whether it was at school or eventually in the workplace, with friendships, that kind of thing.
Lauren
Yeah, I think it is great to be doing that instruction at home. When your kids see your life and see when you mess up, you say, “Hey, I need forgiveness. I'm not perfect and I fall short of the glory of God as well.” It has to come from somewhat at home. You can't just depend on the church to teach everything. They have to be seeing it daily in order to then emulate that at school.
Elizabeth
Right, right. I am very grateful to our church community. That was something that was also a piece of our puzzle. My oldest child was in church when she was five days old and it just went on from there. And they had some so many people there loving them and teaching them, in Sunday school every week and VBS and those kinds of things. I was very grateful for that community that fed into them. And I think that was part of setting them up for being able to be in a different kind of a setting and not have it pull them away from truth.
Lauren
Right. Definitely. My husband and I had broken off from our family church when we were first married because it didn't have as many young adults and young married couples. We had gotten married straight out of college and wanted a church with a young adults group. But when we got pregnant and went to start a family, we realized we should really go back to my family church. It had a ton of kids and young couples with babies, but t’s also where my parents attended church, where my sister and her kids went, where my brother was going and we wanted to make sure they were being raised with their family and so that they have all of those influences pouring in on them, as well as being able to go to VBS with their cousins and have that experience.
Elizabeth
Yeah, we did the same thing and it was great. And obviously not everybody has that opportunity for a variety of reasons, but if you do, it can be a good thing. And if you don't, you can have kind of surrogate grandparents and just other people who just can step into that void in your church community.
So the, I mean, the body of Christ is a beautiful thing. And it's certainly not perfect. We see examples of that every day. But it is still God's design, along with marriage, for teaching children and raising them up and feeding faith into them and then watching them make it their own, so that they can eventually make the decision for themselves to take a seat at the table with Jesus.
Lauren
Did your kids ever have any issues with bullying or persecution for their faith in the public school?
Elizabeth
No, never. Now, again, our district was its own thing. I know that it's not representative of every district in the world, but they didn't have any issues. There were a few teachers that we knew of who were openly antagonistic toward Christians. My girls didn't have interaction with those teachers in particular, but they were never bullied for their faith. And sometimes students would make comments about, “I know you're a Christian,” but usually it was in sort of a respectful way. They would maybe use some language and then they would notice one of my girls and say sorry, or whatever. People could just tell from the way my girls spoke that there was something different about them. So, it would maybe be noticed, but it was not commented on in a negative way.
And they didn't have issues with, apart from a few teachers, like I just mentioned, that they knew of who could be antagonistic. They did not have that in their experience and in fact had supportive teachers. They had several teachers who were Christians and who made that known and were very encouraging in that way. We had heard some warnings about negative things going in like, “oh, you know, your kids won't be allowed to pray or they won't be allowed to talk about Jesus” and that kind of thing. And I'm sure there is some basis to that in some places, but we did not have that experience. And that really does speak to this too.
One of the reasons that public school worked for us was because we had a public school that was available to us that we felt was a safe environment for our Christian children. If it had been a different kind of a place, it's not like we were so set on our kids being in public school that we would have just sent them just anywhere just because that's the decision we'd made. But the school that was available to us was supportive and gave our girls what we were looking for. So we didn't have to make that decision. I know that's not the case for everybody, obviously, which is why this is such a personal decision; personal for different families, maybe different children, even within the same family, maybe different seasons, maybe elementary school works, but high school doesn't, that kind of thing. Our girls went to public school all the way through, but that would not necessarily have been the case if things had been different.
Lauren
Yeah. I think that is so important. All that you just said about making the individual decision because every school district and every school and the teachers and your kid's personality plays into how they do. Because if you have a kid that is easily influenced by the world, by outside factors and by negative things, or they're making bad friends that are bad influences on them within the public school or whatever their circumstance, then yeah, it might be time to pull them out, find a private Christian school, do some homeschooling, whatever works for their family.
I know I'm taking it year by year. I've always said I would not homeschool, but if God calls me towards that or if I think it's the best choice for our family, I would definitely homeschool. Middle school terrifies me because that was my hardest time. I feel like the hormones that are going on.
Elizabeth
Yeah, absolutely. Nobody says middle school was their favorite time, I don't think.
Lauren
I knew somebody that had been homeschooled all through elementary school, she went to public middle school and then she was homeschooled through high school. I'm like, “Oh no, your parents got it backwards.”
So anyway, I think just taking it kid by kid, moment by moment and school by school. And that's why we paid a little bit more to be in the school district that we're in. And I know our school has some Christians on staff. The Vice Principal goes to my church and Carson's kindergarten teacher is a Christian. She moved in two doors down from us halfway through the school year, which is fun.
So, what advice would you give to other Christian parents who are considering public school or if their kids are already in public school and they want to keep that faith foundation?
Elizabeth
Well, you know, it's the standard Christian answer, but it's standard for a reason. First of all, just pray like a mad woman or a mad person or whatever.
Pray, pray, pray constantly, about your decisions. I felt like I wandered through my days when my girls were at school and I was home just constantly praying, “God, please this, please that,” you know, just praying for them constantly throughout the day. In general, I think that God invented parenting to get people to pray more because I've prayed more as a parent than any other time and wait till you have adult children, then you really, really pray.
But anyway, so just definitely pray about it and look for other people who have made this decision in your community, in your church, that kind of thing that you can talk to to make sure that you're getting the clear, full picture. It can be a little bit scary if all you're hearing are people saying, ”oh, we heard that this happened at some school” or “oh, why would you do that? Our family didn't do that and why would you do that?”
You want to be able to round up some trusted counselors and people who maybe have already made the choice that you're considering making who can encourage you and give you an accurate picture of what you're getting into. Then just continue to check in and evaluate lots of conversations around the dinner table or in the car on the way to and from places, of what was going on that day.
I was in the classroom from the get go as a volunteer mom, and that was a really good way for me to get a little bit of a first hand account of what was going on, and the atmosphere. I also felt like that was important because if something had come up, if there had been an issue and I felt like I needed to go to one of my children's teachers or potentially an administrative person, I wanted it to be as someone who they knew was in the school, who they knew was supporting them, who they knew valued what they were doing. Not just somebody who just showed up to complain. So I never really did have to take action, but I wanted to lay the foundation that if I went to them, they would say, “This is, this is a mom we've seen around. We know her, she's making popcorn on Fridays. I mean, a lot of popcorn on Fridays, and going on field trips,” that kind of thing. I mean, if you'll do a field trip it just gives you an in. So I just wanted them to know, this is someone who's supporting what we do.
And I had the chance to overhear teaching and I would literally stand there and just be amazed. I'd be like, I don’t how do they do this! What they’re doing — it's just incredible. Like I would tell people, my girls didn't just have okay teachers — they had excellent teachers who were gifted at what they were doing. And I was honored to be able to witness it. And I would tell them, “you are amazing... I cannot imagine doing what you're doing.” If God had called me to that, I assume he would have filled in those gaps, but I never felt like he did. And so it was a privilege to watch that. So I wanted them to know, I appreciate what you're doing. And so making those connections and establishing that foundation of support I felt like was important in case I needed to bring up something that was touchier.
So those are a couple of things to consider maybe doing.
Lauren
Yeah, those are great tips. I love the idea of going into the classroom to not only make connections with the teacher, but also for your kid to see you're involved with their schooling. And that way you can overhear what's going on. You can see what the environment is like and you can be a part of that education.
Well, this was so, so great. I loved hearing your story. I think there's so much value in hearing other people's perspectives, as you said, success stories, because there are a lot of scary stories out there. And I think usually those are the ones we hear more often because people who have just a generally good experience aren't out there blasting it from the rooftops. But when someone has a bad experience, that's when they are making a big deal out of it.
Tell everyone where they can find you online and connect with you if they want to learn more or read your blog.
Elizabeth
Well, I am online as Guilty Chocoholic Mama on Facebook. I have a blog that doesn't get as much attention as it once did, but I do have quite a lot of content there from the past, from a season when I was doing that a little bit more. So yeah, it's Guilty Chocoholic Mama.
Lauren
All right. Awesome. Well, thank you so much for your time and for sharing!
About the Guest: Elizabeth Spencer
Elizabeth Spencer public-schooled both her children from kindergarten through high school and is now a "roomier nest" mom to two young adult daughters. She is the author of the devotional Known By His Names: A 365-Day Journey from The Beginning to The Amen and is a contributor to the best-selling book So God Made a Mother, as well as to various websites including Crosswalk.com, Grown and Flown, and CollegiateParent. She lives with her exceedingly patient husband of 25+ years near Battle Creek, Michigan, in a 100-year-old farmhouse with no closets but lots of character.
