Why Christian Education?

By WCS Headmaster Dr. Roger Erdvig

Parents have the hard job of deciding what kind of school is best for their children. Of the many options available, which will have a more positive impact on their child’s life long into the future?

All parents want their children to become well educated, responsible, and productive adults. Part of this vision for the future is the hope that they will have a healthy marriage and family of their own. 

So how does parents’ choice of school relate to this important goal for the future?

---

Interested in this question, four researchers* set out to examine how school experiences shape family outcomes later in life. As they looked at adults who had been to different kinds of schools, the researchers discovered that students who attended private schools--and particularly those who attended Protestant private schools--were much more likely to be married, less likely to be divorced, and less likely to have a child outside of marriage than those who had attended other kinds of schools. Even when controlling for factors such as race, economic status, parents’ education, and gender, the implications were clear. Individuals who attend Protestant Christian schools are more likely to live out traditional Biblical family values as adults.

According to the traditional Biblical worldview, marriage is a life-long covenant relationship between one man and one woman, marriage is desirable and good, and God’s ideal is for children to be raised in a family with a mom and a dad. This is what solid Christian schools teach (and model), so it makes sense that when they do that well, students will ultimately live in alignment with these values.

Students spend 7-8 hours a day in school and over an entire K-12 experience, that's over 17,000 hours. Those hours are extremely influential in a student’s life. Parents who long for their children to grow up to live out Biblical family values are wise to carefully consider where their children are spending those 17,000 hours. 
​
Schools develop the whole child--who they will become in life. And as this new research suggests, Christian schools reliably help students to become faithful husbands, wives, moms, and dads. ​