"Fathers,...bring [your children] up in the training and admonition of Yahweh" (Eph.6:4, NKJV).

The Torah specifies in great detail the legalities of ownership and stewardship. Yahweh protects those rights and obligations provided we remain submitted to Him but the moment we rebell and deny them, the enemy can claim rights to possess and oppress. Indeed, parents are given heavenly rights over their children until they either come of age (at 20) or they marry in which case there is either a transfer of ownership or headship. He never gives those rights to any 'State'.

Whenever you send your child to a school, you are entering a legal agreement with the school (and therefore the 'State' - in reality, the existing government and its proxies at the municipal level) that gives these people toqef (authority) over your child so long as that child is in the school building or on school transport. This is known, in legal circles, as in loco parentis - that is, the school (through the teachers) becomes 'location-based parent'. In Marxist countries like China, Vietnam, Laos and even in nominally Western countries like Sweden where I live, the state actually claims to own the child with prior rights over parents, a trend that is becoming more and more widespread in Europe and America.

From a spiritual point-of-view as Christian or Messianic parents we can never, of course, ever accept this. Children belong to Yahweh who has given them to the parents in set-apart (holy) stewardship - we are held accountale for what we teach them, how we treat them, and how we overall raise them. If we, as parents, delegate any element of toqef (authority) to others such as school teachers or that mythical entity called the 'State', we need to make absolutely sure that those proxies are carrying out our instructions and not someone else's. The moment we do that, we give the proxy parent toqef (authority) to speak blessings or cursings over our children which can not only create soul-ties (good or evil) between teachers and their wards but also open doors to all kinds of dark spirits we would never want around our children! And a soul-tie enables rapid spiritual transfer between the proxy and the child, whether it be the Ruach or dark powers.

Children are very impressionable, especially when they are very young, and despotic governments (which is the vast majority these days) know this, and exploit this as a means to politically indoctrinate and socially engineer our wards. The way things are going a time is coming when the state will demand total control over children with parents having few if any rights at all.

The social environment in secular state schools is bad enough (bullying, drugs, bad language, insolence, etc.), compounding the risk for spiritual and emotional damage - the legal rights signed over to teachers, who are not all good, is not the only potential problem. Indeed, what you end up with is insecure, immature children raising each other in the ways of the world with a jungle and uncaring tooth-and-claw mentality when a strong, healthy, loving and Christian parental presence is required. On balance school has a negative impact on children, in my experience as a professional educator and a parent. Though there are good teachers and sometimes good school environments, they are few and far between.

My advice to parents is two-fold:

• 1. Homeschool if you possibly can - that way we can best fulfil our commission in Ephesians 6:4; or
• 2. If you are forced to send them to state school because of your circumstances, and you are unable to change those circumstances, give them quality time at home, a wonderful home environment, pray over them and daily break any curses over them that may come about as a result of in parento loco legalities.