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EDUCATION
(Continued from page 14)
tionnaires that deal with "politi–
cal alt itudes, sexual alti tudes and
intra-family relationships."
How Then Shall We Learn?
Not all public schools- by any
means- are gui lty of the il ls
detailed in this article. Enough
are, however, that your child may
be hurt- edueationally and even
physically- by them.
What to do? Sorne arcas of the
country offer public sehools that,
while they don 't teach about God
or the Bible, do at least offer firm
discipline, an orderly atmosphere,
and stress on basic ed ucational
skills.
lf such an opportunity avails
itself, that may be the best you
can do until Christ returns.
What about a prívate school?
Private schools come in many vari–
eties, not all good. Sorne "alterna–
tive" prívate schools have been in
the vanguard of the "touchie–
feelie" educat ional philosophy
where s tudents only learn if they
feel the "i nner" need to, mcaning,
in practice, they dcgenerate 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
News–
week
magazine in which she con–
fessed 'to being hardly literate her–
self!
Yet the "touchic- feelic" avant–
garde prívate sc hoo ls are the
exception. In the 1970s, prívate
school enrollment cl imbed dra–
matically in the United States,
from about 1.1 million students to
1.8 million- whi le the number of
children com ing into public
schools actually declined. Clearly,
the public is beginning to vote with
its feet no-confidence in the public
school system. The frus tration is
summed up in the 1979 statement
by New Jersey s tate senator Brian
Kennedy, whose four chi ldren
attended both public and prívate
schools. " 1f
1
had todo it all over
again,
1
would have sent them all to
parochial schools," he said, "be–
cause then they would have
learned something!"
36
Along the same lines,
Phi Del–
ta ·Kappan,
a journal for profes–
sional educators , reports that
" Protestan t fundam e nt a l is t
schools" are growing faster than
any other kind of elementary and
secondary schools in the United
S tates.
Prívate schools are not the
exclusive province of the wealthy
or well-to-do. The g reat majority
of prívate school students come
from low and middle income fami–
lies who are willing to make sacri–
fices for their chi ld ren 's educa–
tion.
Evidently, suc h parents are
gaining a reasonable return on
their inves tment. The contrast is
most striking in the prívate and
parochial schools of Washington,
D.C. In Anacostia,oneofthepoor–
est neighborhoods in the city,
thc
sevent h graders in the public
schools are 26 percent below the
national norm; but they rank only
1
O
percent below at the local Cath–
olic elementary school.
The public schools of Washing–
ton, D.C., are a shambles; in the
words of Yincent Reed , D.C.
school super intendent, "at the
merey 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 Resea r ch Associates
standardized achievement tests.
1
n public schools, notes Joseph
Locke, principal of the World–
wide Church of God's Imperial
Schools, a student "can slide by"
and become " lost in the crowd."
Prívate schools, he notes, are able
to give individualized instruction,
and generally have higher disci–
plinary standards. As a result
they are able to comrnand the stu–
dent 's attention.
However, there are two prob–
lems with sending a child to prí–
vate school. The first is money . lf
you can ' t afford it, you can't
afford it-only the more exclu–
sive prep schools offer scholar–
ships. Prívate schools, of course,
are rnarvelously efficient- usual–
ly offeri ng superior education at
cost that can be as low as $2 per
pupil per day. As Mr. Locke
points out, prívate school educa–
tors usually are not "in it for the
money." What sets them apart
frorn many of their public school
counterparts is "dedication."
Nevertheless, prívate schools
do cost money, which you may
simply not have.
The other problem is that many
prívate schools- justly moving
away from the secularism of the
public schools- have a religious
currículum 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
ot her
churches-superior. as
most are. ro the public schools.)
1
f you can
fi
nd a good nonde–
nominational prívate school–
which you can afrord- so much
the better.
Home Education?
1
f for whatever reason private
schools do not seem a good
answer to the public ones, there is
the possibility of home educa–
tion.
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 chil–
dren were educated at home.
Raymond Moore, a uthor of
Schoo/ Can Wait,
contends that
home-educated students general–
ly score better on standardized
tests than school educated ones.
Conn ie Marshner, an educa–
tion expert and researcher at the
prestigious American Enterprise
l nstitute in Washington is like–
wise not swayed by the mytholo–
gy 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 fou r years of col–
lege and umpteen hours of in-ser–
v ice training and graduate
courscs every summer in order to
teach five-year-olds the alphabet.
Teachers feel that they've gol
hold of sorne arcane techniques or
The
PLAIN TRUTH