When the Public Schools Were 'Good'
If we believe that the most important aspect of anyone's life is his relationship with God, then we should agree that sending children to Godless public schools is not the best thing for them.
But what about "good" public schools, in good Christian communities, with good Christian teachers?
When I went to public school, every school day started with the Lord's Prayer and a Bible reading, usually a Psalm. We had many Jewish people in our town; but if there was ever any contention over the religious content of the school day, I never heard of it. We all got the Jewish holidays off, and the carols sung in class at Christmastime mentioned Christ. No one ever claimed to be hurt by any of it.
It all came to an end by the time I was in high school, when the Supreme Court abolished school prayer. But of course it did continue at religious schools.
In college I lost my way as a Christian. How could that have happened? I was brought up in a Christian family (one uncle became a Protestant minister, one aunt a Roman Catholic nun), I went to church and Sunday school, and my full-time schooling started every day with a prayer. Why was my foundation so weak?
Teaching at a Catholic school gave me some insight into the problem. At this school, the children prayed several times a day; they had daily religious instruction, along with their academic subjects; the school was attached physically to a church: in short, this school really tried to provide a godly education--at least by comparison to the public schools.
But even here there was a problem. Unless they were constantly reminded otherwise, the children tended to take their prayers for granted--sometimes I caught them talking or playing tricks during prayer--and to dismiss their Bible lessons from their minds the moment the lesson was over.
This was not because they were bad children--in fact, they were very good children--or because their teachers were short on commitment: I never saw teachers who tried harder. But it's human nature to resist God. We naturally reduce prayers to "vain repetitions," and allow ourselves to be distracted by television, sports, and classroom politics, among other things.
In public school in 1959, the prayers were over early and forgotten for the rest of the school day. We learned history without God, science without God, and everything else, from penmanship to long division, without God. History "just happened." The natural world is "just the way it is." Whole realms of knowledge traversed, without any acknowledgment of reality's creator and sovereign lord, six hours a day, 180 days a year, year after year--it all added up to a lesson that God has nothing much to do with anything, outside of church.
But that was 1959. No one who is old enough to remember can deny that our culture has gotten monumentally filthier since then. If the public schools of 1959--with prayer and Bible reading, without homosexual storybooks like King and King on the shelves, without "sex educators" preaching teenagers' "rights" to sample an assortment of erotic lifestyles, without Kwanzaa, the Day of Silence, and the round-the-clock teaching of naturalistic evolution--if those schools couldn't foster a godly worldview, what chance that today's schools can?
We had "good" public schools, once upon a time, but they weren't good enough; and they are infinitely worse now. Christian teachers have nothing to do with it. They either teach the curriculum as given, or they'll lose their jobs. Children are taught that there are laws of physics, but not that God ordained those laws. They are taught "social studies," but never taught that God created the human race for His own transcendant purpose that has nothing to do with the grandiose ambitions of socialists and statists. Public education teaches children to separate God from His creation. So it taught in 1959, and so it continues to teach today.
There was no homeschooling movement when I was a boy, and no Protestant Christian school in our town--although there is now, plus several homeschooling co-ops.
For Christian parents today there are far better alternatives to public education, growing by leaps and bounds in their availability and effectiveness.
What are you waiting for? The sequel to King and King?
But what about "good" public schools, in good Christian communities, with good Christian teachers?
When I went to public school, every school day started with the Lord's Prayer and a Bible reading, usually a Psalm. We had many Jewish people in our town; but if there was ever any contention over the religious content of the school day, I never heard of it. We all got the Jewish holidays off, and the carols sung in class at Christmastime mentioned Christ. No one ever claimed to be hurt by any of it.
It all came to an end by the time I was in high school, when the Supreme Court abolished school prayer. But of course it did continue at religious schools.
In college I lost my way as a Christian. How could that have happened? I was brought up in a Christian family (one uncle became a Protestant minister, one aunt a Roman Catholic nun), I went to church and Sunday school, and my full-time schooling started every day with a prayer. Why was my foundation so weak?
Teaching at a Catholic school gave me some insight into the problem. At this school, the children prayed several times a day; they had daily religious instruction, along with their academic subjects; the school was attached physically to a church: in short, this school really tried to provide a godly education--at least by comparison to the public schools.
But even here there was a problem. Unless they were constantly reminded otherwise, the children tended to take their prayers for granted--sometimes I caught them talking or playing tricks during prayer--and to dismiss their Bible lessons from their minds the moment the lesson was over.
This was not because they were bad children--in fact, they were very good children--or because their teachers were short on commitment: I never saw teachers who tried harder. But it's human nature to resist God. We naturally reduce prayers to "vain repetitions," and allow ourselves to be distracted by television, sports, and classroom politics, among other things.
In public school in 1959, the prayers were over early and forgotten for the rest of the school day. We learned history without God, science without God, and everything else, from penmanship to long division, without God. History "just happened." The natural world is "just the way it is." Whole realms of knowledge traversed, without any acknowledgment of reality's creator and sovereign lord, six hours a day, 180 days a year, year after year--it all added up to a lesson that God has nothing much to do with anything, outside of church.
But that was 1959. No one who is old enough to remember can deny that our culture has gotten monumentally filthier since then. If the public schools of 1959--with prayer and Bible reading, without homosexual storybooks like King and King on the shelves, without "sex educators" preaching teenagers' "rights" to sample an assortment of erotic lifestyles, without Kwanzaa, the Day of Silence, and the round-the-clock teaching of naturalistic evolution--if those schools couldn't foster a godly worldview, what chance that today's schools can?
We had "good" public schools, once upon a time, but they weren't good enough; and they are infinitely worse now. Christian teachers have nothing to do with it. They either teach the curriculum as given, or they'll lose their jobs. Children are taught that there are laws of physics, but not that God ordained those laws. They are taught "social studies," but never taught that God created the human race for His own transcendant purpose that has nothing to do with the grandiose ambitions of socialists and statists. Public education teaches children to separate God from His creation. So it taught in 1959, and so it continues to teach today.
There was no homeschooling movement when I was a boy, and no Protestant Christian school in our town--although there is now, plus several homeschooling co-ops.
For Christian parents today there are far better alternatives to public education, growing by leaps and bounds in their availability and effectiveness.
What are you waiting for? The sequel to King and King?
