Posted on 11/27/2004 4:56:35 PM PST by -=[_Super_Secret_Agent_]=-
(AgapePress) - A popular Christian author and pastor says the overwhelming majority of Christians need a change of attitude regarding public schools. Meanwhile, leading education experts are trying to dispel some common myths about home schooling and let parents know why it may be a better choice for their families.
Dr. Tim LaHaye, co-author of the Left Behind novel series, says evangelical pastors who advocate sending their Christian youth to public schools are "philosophically out to lunch." He says those pastors and other Christian leaders who look favorably on public education "don't understand the worldview of the secular humanists that's being taught" in U.S. public schools, and they have a tendency to think that we just preach and pray and plug away, and we'll get our kids saved."
However, the author believes this attitude is a naïve and outdated one, inappropriate for life in postmodern and, as some have termed it, post-Christian America. He says Christian parents who want their children to grow up to know God as he reveals himself in scripture should not think for a moment that they can compensate for the philosophical and mental damage being done in public schools by sending their kids to Sunday school, youth group, or Bible study once a week.
"That used to be okay maybe a hundred years ago, maybe even 50 years ago," LaHaye says, "but there has surreptitiously been an over-exaggeration of secularism" in public education, and he contends that this is the prevailing philosophy and worldview being taught in today's public schools.
Kevin Cullinane, a longtime home school educator and the founder of Freedom Mountain Academy in Northeastern Tennessee, tends to agree with LaHaye's assessment and claims the advent of the U.S. public education system created a "nightmare situation." In his remarks earlier this week at the Alliance for the Separation of School and State Conference in Washington, D.C., the Christian education advocate said past champions of government schools have much in common with some of history's most infamous oppressors.
During his conference address, Cullinane quoted Aristotle's Politics, which says "education should be compulsory, free, and the same for everyone, because the purpose of schooling is to mold a child to be a good citizen of whatever state in which he lives." But the speaker went on to say that Hitler and Stalin would have agreed with that, and so did those who led America into state-run schooling in the 1840s.
The founder of Freedom Mountain Academy suggests that the proponents of government schooling are interested in uniformity and control in education because their objective is to indoctrinate students rather than to develop their character and ability to discern. His own educational philosophy is reflected in a quote from Mae Carden, which can be found on the academy's website. It says, "The purpose of education is to teach students how to think reflectively about what they read and hear, and to develop good judgment."
The Myth of the Essential Same-Age Peer Group
"I'm sure that you've run into this myth that children have to learn to get along with others their own age," Cullinane told the Alliance audience this week. Then he asked, "Why? When they go out in the world, are they going to live on 20th Street and move to 21st Street when they turn 21? Are they going to work in a corporation in a room with people their own age?"
In everyday life, the educator points out, most individuals are surrounded by and associated with people who are older and younger than themselves unless they are in the military or some other regimented institution. People need to realize what home schoolers already know about their students," he says, "that what they have to learn is how to get along with people who aren't their own age."
Cullinane once ran a one-room school house in Idaho that consisted of 21 students in a converted two-car garage. He says although it is the common practice in government schools to organize and separate students into grades according to how old they are, children actually learn much better when they are not segregated by age at school.
In fact, the education expert feels age-diversity is good for kids in general and should, whenever possible, begin at home. "The ideal family is not just a mother and a father and children," he says. "The ideal family is a three-generation family, where the grandparents are there and are able to be the day-care center when mom and dad are out having to work."
In any case, Cullinane assures home school parents and other non-traditional educators that school children do not need to be in a classroom with children their own age. In fact, he says there is evidence to indicate that children benefit academically from an age-diverse setting.
Such information may come as a surprise to the general public, which has often been exposed to myths about the social disadvantages of home education. However, the president of the National Home Education Research Institute (NHERI), Dr. Brian Ray, says studies have been conducted which disprove many of the common misconceptions about home schooling outcomes.
The Myth of Socialization Problems
Dr. Ray notes that home schoolers consistently score 15 to 30 percentile points above the national average on academic achievement tests. Also, he says, they generally score better than their public school peers in the area of socialization. "development," he notes.
And the president of the NHERI says myths about the lack of academic and social skills of home schoolers are not the only inaccurate and unfair stereotypes being connected with the movement.
Ray and his wife have successfully home schooled eight children, and he has also authored a book on the practice, his Worldwide Guide to Homeschooling (Broadman and Holman, 2004). The author says research shows that the demographic stereotype of home schooling as simply involving white, middle class Christian families is not completely accurate.
"It has not always been that -- in fact, some of the first people promoting something we now call home schooling were not Christians," the home education expert says. Today, he notes, the movement in America is made up of "probably about 75 percent people who would call themselves Bible-believing Christians."
As for the other 25 percent, Ray says they can be described as "everything," including "move to the country, blow up the TV, goat-farming, atheists." In fact, he says, most of that surprising string of characteristics -- except for the "atheists" part -- describes his own family. Also, he notes, home education is expanding at a particularly pace among the African American and Hispanic American communities in the U.S.
According to Ray, all those who argue that home schoolers are not ready for the "real world" need to realize that home education is the real world. And within it, he says, home school students thrive and achieve as they interact with people of all ages and backgrounds in their community.
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I've yet to meet a homeschooled kid I thought was weird or abnormal for his age. Unless one considers that ability for a child to actually converse with adults to be abnormal.
A big fan of government schools, eh?
They might be barking up the wrong tree: public education in the US is bad not because it is secularist, but because it is PC and dumbed down to low quality. Occasionally one reads about the exams which were administered in public schools of this country 100 years ago - and the contrast is glaring. If it were possible (by some sort of a magic wand) to turn the clock back to pre -1960s era or to transplant to the United States (and translate where necessary) contemporary public education curricula and mores from, say, Singapore or Switzerland, together with their teachers - the quality would jump head and shoulders, while it would still remain pretty secularist.
Do wish homeschooling or private schooling were not the necessity they are made to be by the Public School System
post Federal Cabinet level position.My children were all
educated in public school because I could not afford to
pay for private education plus fund the public school via
taxes. My work as parent was increased 100 fold by the
environment and purported national public school policies
and by educators trained to beleive the home and the parent
are the educators greates enemies.The secular humanism and
darwinian atheism taught in our public schools system is our Countries greatest threat.
Singapore or Switzerland
Please expand on that.
BTTT.
There is such a thing as negative socialization. The public schooled teens around here seem to be into a lot of drug use and other negative things. No thanks. Oh....and these are the "Christian" public schooled kids. They're kids my son met at church.
What have you written?
Let me guess, you must be the product of the good ole California Public School System!
Was it 1962 or 1963 that the Bible was removed from public education?
It doesn't take a zillion dollar scientific study to see the social benefits of home-schooling.
Put me in a room with two students - one from the gov't. school, and one home-schooled - and I'll be able to tell you which is which in thirty seconds.
One will look me in the eye and hold an intelligent conversation, and the other will stare at his shoes, and manage to convey rebellion even through a mumble.
Just to be certain, I could ask them a difficult question, like "How many eighths in an inch?". The one that stands there stupified is not home-schooled.
There are some things that were NOT very good 50 years ago (when I was in elementary school). Namely, no one knew anything about learning disabilities and no doubt some kids who were just plain dyslexic (sp?) were treated as mentally slow. Likewise, there were no doubt cases of child abuse right under the teachers' noses but they weren't trained to recognize, or take action, regarding such things. The biggest problem with our so-called public schools today is that the teachers believe they have a free reign to indoctinate their students on political "correct thinking". When I was a youngster, it was clearly understood by everyone that religion and politics was NOT talked about by teachers because a single classroom held children from different religious backgrounds and political leanings at home. Today, the teachers, spurred on by the school administrators and the unions, believe it is their DUTY to indoctinate our children. This is the danger and is why our schools are damaging our country.
Newp, private academy, wherein one was taught to differentiate between literature, comic books and chicken-scratch that keeps the rubes coming in the tents.
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