In many of our circles Christian Schools have long been established and accepted. Their major problems seem to be that of getting the interest and real support of people who are supposed to believe in them and the even more difficult one of achieving or regaining a really Christian education in them.

The Christian school movement which has long been a tradition among us is a new and growing development in Australia. Professor Keith V. Warren, editor of Trowel and Sword, published by the Reformed Churches Publishing House at Geelong, in the March, 1985, issue of that paper, states the case for Christian schools. His aptly formulated argument deserves our attention.

In view of the “better facilities, bigger teaching staff, more experience” and “better standing” of public institutions, why should anyone favor the struggling little Christian schools?

“State education, by its very nature, is like a smorgasbord of educational , religious, philosophical, moral, social political, ethical and other points of view. For that reason state education cannot possibly give the student a firm and consistent direction upon his entry into the adult world.” Although public schools may not turn all their students into “unbelievers and haters of God,” they are “not designed to help turn” them “into lovers of God either,” and they have “a tremendous power to pollute young minds with respectable godlessness” because of their secular humanist philosophy.

God has no central place in the instruction there; human experience is the key to all knowledge; man‘s mind is the criterion of all truth; man‘s improvement is the end of all learning.

“In the state system, there is no absolute standard of truth and error, right or wrong. What is true and right in 1985, may be untrue and wrong in 1986,” because in it “there is no anchor point for making judgments outside of the human mind.”

Editor Warren cites a front page article in The Australian entitled, “The Lies they teach Our Children,” which criticizes the anti-Australian, anti-U.S., anti-capitalist, anti-European, anti–industry, and anti-Christian bias of material used in the public schools. It finds them mediocre and unscholarly. “The general thrust of curriculum reform in Australia in the past few years has been to water down traditional and academic courses in favor of more ‘life-centered’ and ‘relevant’ courses, designed to be easier and more interesting for students.” “European settlement of Australia is increasingly portrayed as some kind of hideous crime against humanity . . . .” The article criticizes “values clarification techniques” in which students are to determine by discussion what their values are. It observes that in the “discussion group inquiry methods,” popular in the last 10 to 15 years, students are required “to have opinions about issues on which they are almost entirely ignorant.” Applied to sex education these methods convince students of the relativity of all morals and develop in them a tolerance of homosexuality. “Having abandoned Christian morality, the Australian education system has adopted an entirely fraudulent position of moral neutrality.” It sees in the schools a political bias of the teachers’ unions by which “left–wing activist groups who support policies which have never been supported by a major political party are being given the right to teach those policies as dogma in schools.” “In general, Australian education is a disaster.”

Editor Warren finds this article the more striking because it appears on the front page of the weekend issue of a leading newspaper. It is cited as supporting his observations that secular education (1) does not educate students for sincere obedience to God’s word, (2) does not teach Christ Jesus as Lord of Life, and (3) that it, during a child’s most impressionable years and for half a dozen hours each day, trains him to think, believe, and live apart from God. In all these it is exactly opposite to Christian education which claims that God exists, and that He matters in everything we do or think.

This does not mean that secular state schools turn out only misfits, and that all products of Christian schools turn out to be capable and well-adjusted men and women. But considered on principle, the Christian school is and ought to be “way out ahead.”

The editor sees dangers against which the supporters of Christian education need to be alerted, the dangers of such schools becoming ghettos, of having their “salt” become tasteless, of merely training for comfortable entry into an increasingly secular culture, of exclusive preoccupation with merely staying in operation, and of mistaking classroom piety for Christian education.

Thanks to Editor Warren for a timely reminder of Christ’s calling to train His children for Christian living.