These quotes are taken from the writings of Mrs. Ellen G. White unless indicated otherwise.
"Efforts to educate children in the fear of the Lord, without making the study of the Word prominent, are sadly misdirected. Unless there is such a training as will lead to a recognition and an abhorrence of sin, moral deformity will result. Our children should be removed from the evil influences of the public schools, and placed where thoroughly converted teachers may educate them in the Holy Scriptures. The students in our schools should take the Word of God as the grand rule of their lives." {RH July 25, 1907, par. 17}
"As men and women who profess to believe the truth for this time, we have no right to place ourselves in any wrong relation to God or his cause. We have a work to do for the Master, a work to do for the rising generation. We can not afford to send our children to the public schools. This has been presented to me for years. For years we have been establishing schools, but they are not perfected yet. There are some who think that we must pattern after the schools of the world if we would give our youth a complete education. What we need to give them is a complete education in that Book which assures us of that life that measures with the life of God. If we will obey his commandments, we shall live. This is the Book of books. It is to be the great study book for all who profess the name of Christ." {RH March 25, 1909, par. 1}"
“From the teachers in the public schools they receive ideas that are opposed to the truth. But further than this, they receive a wrong education by associating with children who have no training; who are left to obtain a street education. Satan uses these children to educate children who are more carefully brought up. Before Sabbath-keeping parents know what evil is being done, the lessons of depravity are learned, the souls of their children are corrupted.... I would rather that children grow up in a degree of ignorance of school education as it is today, and employ some other means to teach them.”—P.C. {PH140 11.2}
"In our institutions of learning there was to be exerted an influence that would counteract the influence of the world, and give no encouragement to indulgence in appetite, in selfish gratification of the senses, in pride, ambition, love of dress and display, love of praise and flattery, and strife for high rewards and honors as a recompense for good scholarship. All this was to be discouraged in our schools. It would be impossible to avoid these things, and yet send them to the public schools, where they would daily be brought in contact with that which would contaminate their morals. All through the world there was so great a neglect of home training that the children found at the public schools, for the most part, were profligate, and steeped in vice."—The Review and Herald, January 9, 1894. {PH081 12.2}
"In sending children to the common schools, parents are placing them under demoralizing influences—influences that corrupt morals, habits, ways, and manners. They are, as it were, being nurtured in a den of thieves, among corrupters of habits and practices. They receive instruction of such a character that they are trained to be enemies of Christ. They lose sight of true piety and virtue. The baneful influence of vile-hearted boys and girls who practice the most degrading habits—boys and girls who are experts in sin—permeates the schools and has a degrading power over innocent children. And the children playing on the street are also obtaining a training that thoughtless parents will sometime learn leads to recklessness and lawlessness. {Ms129a-1901.1} Arouse, parents! Your children have souls to save or to lose. Take your children out of the common schools. Place them in a school where God’s Word is made the foundation of all education. But are you sure that the children who have been instructed in vice, and who now attend a church school, will not in turn instruct the children who are uncorrupted? What will the end be? I should have the children and youth, who come to school, thoroughly, searchingly interviewed. Are they under control at home? Have they learned how to work? {Ms129a-1901.2}