| In recognition of the belief
that students become like their teachers, the Southern Baptist
Convention will be proposing a resolution this summer at their
annual convention that will call for their members to remove
their children from public schools and to either place them
in Christian schools or to home school them.
Last year, Dr. James Dobson of Focus on the
Family called for Christian parents in California to remove
their children from public schools. Dr. Laura Schlessinger reiterated
the call, but suggested that all parents should remove their
children from public schools.
This is not a surprising outcome after a forty-year
gradual transformation that began with removal of prayer for
schools.
Christian parents are now concerned about a
number of things that have become a part the public school systems.
They don’t want their children to be taught values that are
unlike their own, that are un-Christian or even anti-Christian.
They don’t wish to over-protect their children, but they also
don’t want their children’s education to be diluted with things
that smack of liberal philosophies. In short, they simply want
their children to have a great education without being distracted
by issues that have no place in education.
Homeschooling, an option that many Christian
parents have already adopted (including for my own children),
has proved that public schools are not always the best place
to get an education. Statistics consistently show that homeschooled
students achieve higher SAT and ACT scores than do their public
school counterparts. In fact, universities are now taking homeschooled
children more seriously, because they are looking for the most
academically inclined students. Those are the ones that will
bolster their school’s image as a quality institution of higher
learning.
This is not to say that public schools cannot
produce highly educated students, because they can, but their
ability to do so largely depends upon the individual schools
and the commitment of the faculty and board to stick to education
rather than political correctness.
Unfortunately for the public school system,
the pressure to adopt liberal philosophies will most likely
lead to the eventual failure of all public schools, and for
one very simple reason. You can’t be a successful school without
teaching excellence. And you can’t have excellence by focusing
on (or even giving passing notice to) issues such as abortion,
homosexuality, revisionist history, or the newest arrival on
the scene – how to be a Muslim. (Yes, it is happening already.)
You also can’t be a successful school if the
school facility is not a safe environment. Metal detectors at
the doorways and uniformed police officers are not a sign of
a safe environment, they are a product of an unsafe environment.
Christian schools, by maintaining a high level
of ethics, moral behavior, and focus upon learning, are going
to become very attractive to all kinds of parents, not just
those who are Christian. Those who recognize the critical importance
of a quality education are going to among the first to move
their children from the public school system to a private one.
That has always been a trend among the wealthy, but soon that
trend will extend to the lower and middle class as well.
One of the biggest challenges that Christian
schools will face, at least for a while, will be to provide
enough teachers and classroom space, and to decide which children
will be allowed to attend.
If the resolution to remove children from public
schools is approved by the Southern Baptist Convention, massive
numbers of children will not be removed immediately for the
simple fact that there simply are not enough schools available.
And you can bet that there will be plenty of opposition by the
ACLU and the NEA. There may even be some attempt by state governments
to make Christian schools and/or homeschooling illegal in an
attempt to save public schools from losing federal funding.
Funding will also be a challenge for churches
that want to build schools, especially since parents will be
paying for their children’s education twice – once through their
property taxes and once through tuition. But it is a price that
many parents will make, even at great personal sacrifice.
Even if the Baptists don’t vote to approve the
resolution this year, I believe that this is a trend that is
unstoppable. The stakes to our children’s education are simply
too high.
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