"If children see that their teachers despise what their parents desire, there is and must be a conflict of authorities. And there is, and must be, in the modern State, a monstrous discovery; that it is the more new and unnatural authority that has the power." -- G.K. Chesterton (New Witness, Dec. 27. 1918)
When the State has access to your children 8 hours a day, they have more sway than you do. God has hard-wired children to want to please their parents. Godly parents leverage this to point their children to God and His grace and see their children grow to follow Him in step along side them. However, this blessing of persuasion can be forfeited. Unconfessed sin can obliterate the bond, of course, as we have certainly seen in some families, but so can abdication. Sending your children to alternate authorities can undermine the authority of the home.
This does not have to be the case per se, if the alternate authorities respect the place of parents and/or if they share the same values and vision of life and livelihood as the parents. But when the alternate authorities hate the home and see themselves and their 8 hours a day as an opportunity to evangelize and catechize their students, the home can't keep up. Not, mind you, because it doesn't have the ability or authority to do so, but because it surrenders its authority to do so by failing to fight for its own.
All that to say... Christian, get your children out of the government schools. Educate and nourish them at home. Send them to a Christian school which you have vetted perhaps. But whatever you do, don't send them to Caesar unless you want a world full of Romans -- that is to say, a world that is antagonistic to the Christian faith of our fathers.
“We cannot continue to send our children to Caesar for their education and be surprised when they come home as Romans.” -- Voddie Baucham
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