As Christians, where should we educate our horrible children?

Probably the most important issue in the Church right now is whether we should homeschool our awful children, or send them off to school, where the pagans are.

Every so often, a bunch of Christians who don’t have enough to do get on social media and start telling other believers how to raise their families. Then other Christians hear what is going on and are like “yes, I think I will make this all about me” and they ride in on their tricycles and start hollering, even though no one cares what anyone else thinks about anything; everyone is just wound up and looking for some relief before they explode, like a Baptist youth group.

Anyway, it is that time again: Christians are arguing about where we should educate our repressed hellions.

Some Christians say that we should homeschool. This is because Jesus was a homeschooler. Don’t believe me? Let’s look at the facts:

• Whenever his parents couldn’t find him, he was hanging out with old people

• He knew a lot about the Old Testament

• No girlfriend

Other Christians feel guilty about everything all the time, and these are the ones who say that we should use public schools. This doesn’t make them feel any less guilty, but nothing ever really does.

There used to be a third group, who said that we should pay for expensive private Christian schools, but that was before a 12 pack of Dr. Pepper cost one thousand dollars. Now, the private Christian schools are mostly just elite athletes who used to go to public school until that one pastor saw them run fast and he told the private school’s Athletic Director and suddenly there was an outreach scholarship available, because The Great Commission or whatever.

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The argument against public schools is that they are not safe for Christians. In reality, the exact opposite of this is true: who will protect the public schools from the dangers of evangelical youth? Imagine, if you will, cliques of Christian adolescents roaming the halls of our local schools, turning the social order upside down with their style and swagger. Chick fil A sandwiches will be passed in the cafeterias like currency. Pagan boys will be streaming the newest saccharine worship anthems between classes in a frenzied attempt at staying relevant. Teen girls will dart into bathrooms to send each other screenshots of Kate Shellnutt articles. Then the principal will get scared of all the Christian teens and say that worship music is against the town law, then one of the Christian teens will go to the school board meeting and read Psalms but John Lithgow is still like nah, and then everyone goes to a grain mill outside the town to do worship music and Chuck shows up with his gang to attack Willard and Kevin Bacon but the Christian teens fight him off, anyway that is why Christian teens are too dangerous for public schools.

Conversely, we must examine homeschooling, and ask ourselves: is it safe to keep my child at home? Not all homeschoolers wait until they are 27 to deconstruct; what if it happens while they are still at home? Your child might accidentally cause you to deconstruct as well. One moment you are questioning Answers in Genesis; the next, you are listening to Michael Gungor songs, and it is too late.

However, do not lose heart; this would not be a Christian article if I didn’t tell you what to do. Given all of the dangers associated with public and home school, the only sensible option is to do both. This is why I send my children to public school for 8 hours and then immediately cancel that out by homeschooling them for 8 hours when they arrive home. Sometimes they get tired, but I just give them each one sip of Dr. Pepper.

*Weekly-ish articles are free; periodic special articles are behind the paywall. Substack won’t let me set the monthly subscription lower than $5, so I made the yearly subscription $30, which is $2.50 a month, which seems about right. Thanks for reading :)