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PRIVATE SCHOOLS general/y offer more individualizad teaching than public ones. Left, teacher at Worldwide Church of God's
Imperial School helps student with lesson; right, lmperial's principal, Joseph Locke, chats with students.
can'l read well enough lo handle a
clerk's job!
While, of course, lhe majority
of hig h school g rad uales are not
fu nct ionally illiterate, the s igns of
the failure of the public schools is
widespread. Three q uar ters of
ninlh- and tenth-grade students
in the Oakland, California, arca
have failed basic tests in reading,
writing and arithmetic. Half the
freshmen at City University of
New York, once the "Harvard of
the working class," can barely
read, write or calculate. The
American armed forces newspa–
per
Stars and Stripes
quotes an
education officer in Europe ·as
saying " many secondary school
graduates at army posts in Ger–
many cannot re ad o r wri te
bcyond fifth- or sixth-grade lev–
els."
The new ignorance reveals
itself most st rikingly among col–
lege freshmen. David D. Van Tas–
sel of Case Western Reserve Uni–
versity notes that 60 percent of
the freshmen in a hislory course
he laughl in 1979 "couldn't tell
World War 1 from World War
11. "
T he " Fe el Goo d " Cu r ríc ulum
"Can't we see lhat none glorifies
God by ignorancc, by neglecting
this most precious heritage God
ha s en tr u sted to man- t he
mind?" wrote Herbcrt W. Arm–
strong in his journal over a quar–
ter century ago. Yct it seems as if
much of modern education is
determined to do precisely that–
to neglect the mind, to Jet stan–
dards fall, to degenerate!
According to Los Angeles
school board member Kathleen
June
1
July 1981
Brown Rice, "We've golten away
from basics. l n the '60s, educa–
tors were shaping curr ículum
a round ideas like 'what feels
good' and 'go with the Aow' in
response to student demands for
relevant courses. " The chicks
born from 'go with lhe Aow' have
now come home to roost. Stan–
dards have been disparaged as so
much "elitism."
E
ven t he very
idea of standards has come under
attack!
On the olher hand, "The
beginning of wisdom," declares
the Bible, " is the fear of the
Lord" (Psalm 111 : 10) . Educat ion
thus requires a measure of humil–
ily: a willingness to admit you
don't know everylhing and
need
lo learn something. But the domi–
nanl philosophy in modern public
cducation is just the opposi te.
Thomas Dewey, lhe educational
philosopher who is the "father"
of much of modern public educa–
lion, believed lhat educat io n
should begin
with the student,
not the teacher . He believed that
it was evil for thc teacher to be in
control, or that initialion should
come from outside himself–
from books, lrad ition , or the
t eacher. (See
M odern Age.
Spring, 1977, " Theology a nd
Liberal Educat ion in Dewey," by
Paul Gottfried.)
Dewey's philosophy pervades
much of public education . Teach–
ers have come to believe that the
purpose of education is not to
put
somet hing in.
but rather
l et
something out.
The emphasis is
on "self- fulfillment" and "self–
expression,"
not
on the simple,
humble need to learn certain
basic skills .
To sorne degrec, this attitude is
lhe direct result of lhe rejection
of God and H is law.
If
you
believe God is nol an
absolute,
your attitude loward math and
English grammar may be similar–
ly affected. In order to teach, you
must believe that what you have
to teach
has value.
a belief that is
always undercut when you disre–
gard a firm belief in a bsolutes.
Much of the rest of the decline
in educational standards results
from the tendency to give in to
human nature and take the easy
way. This tendency is deplored by
author Ken Kesey. His best-sell–
ing novel
One Flew Over the
Cuckoo's Nest
is being used in
high school Englis h classes–
somethin g of wh ich he disap–
proves.
"They're teaching
Cuckoo
be–
cause it's easy," he laments. " You
have to teach what is hard. But
teachers don 't want to. They want
to be popular, to be called by
their first names and jostled like
in
Welcome Back, Kotter."
A simil ar letting d own is
observed by Neil Postman, wr it–
ing in
The Atlantic Mon.thly:
"Sorne teache rs have made d es–
perate attempts to keep their stu–
dents ' tuned in ' by fashion ing
their classes along the lines of
[such television programs as]
Sesame Street
or the
Tonight
show. They tell jokes. Thcy
change the pace. They s how
films, play records and avoid
any–
thin.g
that would take more than
eight minutes." When teachers
cater to their st udents' impa–
t ience or laziness, or when stu–
dents can pass l heir high school
English requirements with classes
13