Why Christian children don't belong in public schools

It is for this reason that C.S. Lewis, among others, has suggested that the pinnacle of classical education is to set our gaze on that which is ordered, harmonious, and ultimately beautiful, precisely because it prepares us for that final beatific vision of the Triune God. Perhaps, then, one of the greatest litmus tests for determining schooling’s effects on students is to see, by graduation, whether they still retain that childlike capacity for wonder and awe.

This is where public schools are desperately failing and Christian classical schools are thriving. As G.K. Chesterton quipped in his “Tremendous Trifles,” “The world will never starve for want of wonders; but only for want of wonder.” The loss of wonder and beauty is one of the greatest tragedies in our modern climate of education.

Perhaps the most damning case against public education is that it neither teaches nor believes in the transcendentals of truth, goodness, and beauty, the very pillars of the education that built the western world. The consequences of this dichotomy are life-changing: classical schools are producing students who are deeply attuned to these objective realities, while public schools are producing students whose spiritual vision is dimmed to objectivity itself.