About 25 years ago I attended a Christian Institute event where the title of the meeting was ‘How we can exert a Christian influence in education’. I had experience of teaching in a state secondary school and the question in my mind at the end of the meeting was this: can we exert a sufficient influence so as to prevent disobedience to the apostolic command in Ephesians 6:4?
This is a question that all Christian parents and especially Christian fathers need to wrestle with personally before God. Can the raising of my children be described as ‘training in the nurture and admonition of the Lord’ when such a significant part of it takes place in the state education system?
Certainly we should pray that the influence of the home and the church will be the predominating influence. Certainly we should seek to mitigate the worst excesses of the state school influence.
