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Now, moving from public schools to private schools, what is the priority? Notice I am not saying Christian schools, but all private schools, including Christian schools. If you are really going to do something here, you have to think larger than your own interest. What we must do for the private schools, including the Christian schools, is to stand against those who have done so much to ruin our public schools.

We must not allow those who have ruined the public schools to get a hold on the private schools, and specifically, the Christian schools, through a control of the curriculum. What we should be doing is struggling to see that the Christian school’s curriculum is not controlled by those who have with their world view ruined the public schools.

This does not mean that the state does not have a legitimate interest in the safety of the pupils in such a thing as a firedoor. There are Christian schools that have said the state has no right even to tell them not to have a fire trap. That is not so. The state has a responsibility to say that a group of people meeting in a building must have exit signs around the room, so that if there is a fire you will not all burn to death. That is equally so for the kids in school. So the issue is not something like fire doors.

The issue is that they must not begin to bring the same destructive teaching into the private schools by the back door of curriculum control that they have brought so dominantly into the public schools. We must not allow them to bring in through the back door a control of the curriculum and especially at the very point where the Bible’s content is denied and contaminated.

Therefore, the protection of the Christian school curriculum is another one of the priorities, which Christians ought to be consciously and intelligently standing for. However, let me say another side of this question of the Christian school and our protection of it. While we are saying that the Christian school is not to allow its curriculum to be corrupted, we must also say that the private school, and specifically the Christian school, should give a good education.

We must say that we are going to control the curriculum. We are not going to let the state bring in the materialistic view as the final reality through the back door. But if we are going to say that with any validity the Christian schools must be giving a really good education. It should not just be a matter of not teaching what is wrong in a twisted education that rules out a Creator. Our Christian schools should not primarily be negative oriented. They should be positive.

It is not just to be negative. It should be a superior education, if you are going to really protect the Christian school. It should certainly teach the students how to read and write and how to do mathematics better than most public schools are able to do today. It should do that but it should also appreciate and teach the full scope of human learning. Christian education is indeed knowing the Bible — of course it is — but Christian education should also deal with all human knowledge.