How Then Shall We Learn?
Not all public schools — by any means — are guilty of the ills detailed in this article. Enough are, however, that your child may be hurt — educationally and even physically — by them.
What to do? Some areas of the country offer public schools that, while they don't teach about God or the Bible, do at least offer firm discipline, an orderly atmosphere, and stress on basic educational skills.
If such an opportunity avails itself, that may be the best you can do until Christ returns.
What about a private school? Private schools come in many varieties, not all good. Some "alternative" private schools have been in the vanguard of the "touchie-feelie" educational philosophy where students only learn if they feel the "inner" need to, meaning, in practice, they degenerate and "do their own thing," learning very little in the process. A few years ago the graduate of such a school wrote a column in Newsweek magazine in which she confessed to being hardly literate herself!
Yet the "touchie-feelie" avant-garde private schools are the exception. In the 1970s, private school enrollment climbed dramatically in the United States, from about 1.1 million students to 1.8 million — while the number of children coming into public schools actually declined. Clearly, the public is beginning to vote with its feet no-confidence in the public school system. The frustration is summed up in the 1979 statement by New Jersey state senator Brian Kennedy, whose four children attended both public and private schools. "If I had to do it all over again, I would have sent them all to parochial schools," he said, "because then they would have learned something!"
Along the same lines, Phi Delta Kappan, a journal for professional educators, reports that "Protestant fundamentalist schools" are growing faster than any other kind of elementary and secondary schools in the United States.
Private schools are not the exclusive province of the wealthy or well-to-do. The great majority of private school students come from low and middle income families who are willing to make sacrifices for their children's education.
Evidently, such parents are gaining a reasonable return on their investment. The contrast is most striking in the private and parochial schools of Washington, D.C. In Anacostia, one of the poorest neighborhoods in the city, the seventh graders in the public schools are 26 percent below the national norm; but they rank only 10 percent below at the local Catholic elementary school.
The public schools of Washington, D.C., are a shambles; in the words of Vincent Reed, D.C. school superintendent, "at the mercy of the thugs and hoodlums in this city . . . [with] kids and teachers shot and mauled."
By contrast, the Catholic schools of Washington, D.C., dealing with students from the same background, have done an exemplary job of teaching basic educational skills. Students score at least at the national norm on Science Research Associates standardized achievement tests.
In public schools, notes Joseph Locke, principal of the Worldwide Church of God's Imperial Schools, a student "can slide by" and become "lost in the crowd." Private schools, he notes, are able to give individualized instruction, and generally have higher disciplinary standards. As a result they are able to command the student's attention.
However, there are two problems with sending a child to private school. The first is money. If you can't afford it, you can't afford it — only the more exclusive prep schools offer scholarships. Private schools, of course, are marvelously efficient — usually offering superior education at cost that can be as low as $2 per pupil per day. As Mr. Locke points out, private school educators usually are not "in it for the money." What sets them apart from many of their public school counterparts is "dedication."
Nevertheless, private schools do cost money, which you may simply not have.
The other problem is that many private schools — justly moving away from the secularism of the public schools — have a religious curriculum often at odds with the tenets of the Bible. The emphasis on religious holidays, ultimately pagan in origin, is the clearest example. (We therefore cannot recommend parochial schools of other churches — superior, as most are, to the public schools)
If you can find a good nondenominational private school — which you can afford — so much the better.
Home Education?
If for whatever reason private schools do not seem a good answer to the public ones, there is the possibility of home education.
Obviously, home schooling is not for everybody. Yet it is not such a radical idea as you might imagine: in the 17th and 18th centuries, most upper-class children were educated at home. Raymond Moore, author of School Can Wait, contends that home-educated students generally score better on standardized tests than school educated ones.
Connie Marshner, an education expert and researcher at the prestigious American Enterprise Institute in Washington is likewise not swayed by the mythology of the "professional" educator. In a recent interview she asked:
"What do elementary school teachers do that parents can't do? You don't need four years of college and umpteen hours of in-service training and graduate courses every summer in order to teach five-year-olds the alphabet. Teachers feel that they've got hold of some arcane techniques or wisdom or procedure that can get results from kids that nobody else can get. If you're talking about advanced sciences and math, those are indeed subject matters that are beyond most people's comprehension, and most people wouldn't know how to teach those subjects. Remember, though, that most students don't get up to those areas."
Home education should probably not be attempted by parents who are not sufficiently educated themselves. Unless parents do have a reasonably high level of education themselves, they probably will not be able to do any better than the local public schools, and could do much worse.
As a social trend, home education is certainly in the avant garde. Ed Nagel, head of the National Association for the Support of Alternative Schools in Sante Fe, New Mexico, says home education is "happening all over the country."
John Holt, a former public school teacher himself and a leading spokesman for the home education movement, believes that more than 10,000 families across the United States have taken up home education. Mr. Holt believes the education that children receive from their parents is superior to that received in the public schools. The former public school teacher says, "I know from my own schooling that I rarely got 15 minutes of real teaching a day."
While there are possible legal problems involving home education, depending on where you live, the series of legal victories already won by parents who have set up home education programs is impressive.
In Florida, Worldwide Church of God member Helen J. Voshell went to home education when she concluded that the school system would "clash too much" with her family's religion. "There is too much they would have to participate in and go along with that we do not believe in," she declares.
When Mrs. Voshell did not enroll her son Joshua in the local public schools, she was initially charged with violating the state compulsory attendance laws. The charges were dropped when standardized tests revealed that Joshua was doing better in reading and math than the national average for his grade level.
In Michigan, Mr. and Mrs. Peter Nobel, a devout Calvinist family, were also charged with violations of the state truancy laws. They were acquitted by a state judge, who found that the Nobel's religious beliefs were sufficient grounds for exempting them from the compulsory attendance at the public school.
In Massachusetts Mr. and Mrs. Frank Turano won their battle for home education because of similar constitutional rights, including the right to privacy and the protection against involuntary servitude (slavery).
Occasionally, the local authorities are even favorable to home education. In Alaska, the state runs its own correspondence course for youngsters in small villages. In Vermont, as one mother wrote in John Holt's home education newsletter:
"The local authorities have been friendly, supportive and even enthusiastic. The local school board has bought all our books and materials, to be returned to them when we are finished with them."
Not every school board, of course, is so enlightened. Even so, families have avoided legal hassles by getting prior approval of their home-study program. Holt, for example, counsels a low profile. "The way not to do it is to go down to the school screaming."
Any family thinking of home education must realize it poses serious hazards, even if legal problems can be avoided. Home education requires self-discipline and character. Parents must be prepared to work hard enough to insure that their children can do well on standardized tests. Home education, says Imperial School's Joseph Locke, is definitely only "for self-starters."
The problem with home education that won't go away is something educators, in their awful jargon, call "social interaction." To a great extent, the dangers of your child's lack of "peer experience" (more awful jargon!) have been exaggerated. School is really an artificial social environment. During few other times in your life do you mix on a regular basis with so many different people. Nevertheless, most parents do want their children to be able to reasonably get along with other beings. As Romans 12:18 says, "as much as lieth in you, live peaceably with all men."
Obviously a good home education should allow students opportunities to meet with others their own age.
The Coming Revolution in Public Education
As a general rule, most of those involved in public schools, in particular the teachers' unions, are vehemently opposed to children escaping the meat-grinder-like approach of the public schools.
Writing in Phi Delta Kappan, Virginia Davis Nordin and William Lloyd Turner, two scholars analyzed or described the growing number of "fundamentalist" schools, and describe them as "locked into rigid, theologically based positions on many issues while American society moves forward."
Of course, what Ms. Nordin and Mr. Turner say is "forward" may be what the Bible says is degenerate and sinful.
Grace Baisinger, "chairperson" of the National Coalition to Save Public Education, told a U.S. News & World Report interview, "We are concerned about the quality of the education program children will receive when they are enrolled in some of these fringe schools."
Physician, heal thyself! Given the declining test scores, grade inflation, and abysmally low academic standards rampant in public schools, you wonder how anyone can say that "quality" of education is any kind of argument in favor of public schools!
Yet in this world, none of the educational alternatives are really satisfactory. Public schools can be dens of violence and illiteracy, and, at best, still leave God out of the curriculum. Secular private schools will probably do a much better job of educating your child in secular knowledge, but still leave God out of the picture. Religious private schools may simply have the wrong religion. Home education requires special effort, and risks legal hassles and a smaller opportunity for your child to be with others his own age.
Christ, when He returns to straighten out this world, will set things right. During His reign on earth, none of these drawbacks will exist. Until then, the choice depends on your own unique circumstances: where you live, the age of your children, your income, your ability to teach.
The public schools remain, however, with serious problems. A concerned parent should feel at least morally entitled to take greater supervision over the education of his own children, whether they are in private school or home educated.
There is a great struggle for the hearts of the children in Western society, between parents and an often secular, humanistic oriented public school system.
And every parent whose child reaches school age must eventually deal with the system's claim on his child's life. In the United States, at least, the right to a non-government school education is constitutionally guaranteed. In upholding that right, the U.S. Supreme Court wrote some of the greatest words in the history of jurisprudence:
"The child is not the mere creature of the state."