Posted on 01/01/2005 7:47:36 AM PST by Theodore R.
Religion in the Classroom By DUNCAN MANSFIELD Associated Press
SEVIERVILLE, Tenn. — Frustration with public education seems to be growing among the nation's Southern Baptists, with supporters of Christian schools and home schooling arguing that if God is absent from the classroom then their children should leave, too.
"What has happened is not so much that the Christians are leaving the public schools as that the public schools have left the Christians," advocate Ed Gamble said.
Gamble is executive director of the Southern Baptist Association of Christian Schools, an Orlando, Fla.-based group that supports the more than 600 Southern Baptist schools created in the past eight years.
"As the public schools have become increasingly secular and increasingly intolerant of things Christian, people who are openly Christian have said, 'I guess they are not part of our team anymore,' " Gamble said.
The number of conservative Christian schools grew by nearly 11 percent between 1999-2000 and 2001-2002, to 5,527, according to the U.S. Department of Education's latest statistics.
At that rate, Christian schools are growing faster than private schools as a whole, and they have increased their share to nearly 1 in 5 private schools in the country.
Last year, a resolution proposed at the national meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention — which guides the nation's largest Protestant denomination — urged parents to withdraw their children from "officially Godless" "government schools" in favor of religious education.
While the measure was rejected, interest in faith-based schools has continued to spread among Baptists at the state level, particularly in Tennessee, Missouri, Florida, South Carolina, Illinois, Texas, Virginia, North Carolina, California and New England, according to Exodus Mandate, a Columbia, S.C., group that promotes private, Christian and home-school education.
A recent resolution promoting Christian schooling easily passed the Missouri Baptist Convention but was quashed in committee at the Tennessee Baptist Convention meeting in Sevierville last month.
The Missouri resolution talked about the "inherent dangers of secular educational philosophies that now permeates America's public education system" and affirmed "the importance of systematically training ourselves and our children in the ways of authentic, biblical Christianity."
"What we are saying is that God has given us some very specific commands that we are to train our children in the ways of the Lord, not in the ways of the world," said the Rev. Roger Moran, of Troy, Mo., the resolution's author and a member of the Southern Baptist Convention's executive committee.
That means teaching creationism over evolution, that life begins at conception, and that homosexuality is immoral, as is sex outside of marriage.
But it is more.
Glen Schultz heads the Baptists' LifeWay curriculum program for church-based schools and home schoolers.
"It hits everything, when you realize the reality of life is (that) life was created by God and the entire universe is his creation," Schultz said. "Therefore, everything has meaning and reflection on his nature, whether it is math or history or science. Two plus two equals four because God created them that way."
The Tennessee resolution came one step short of asking Baptist parents to pull their children from public schools.
"I wanted to be positive in promoting Christian education," said the Rev. Larry Reagan of Dresden, who wrote the measure. "I didn't want the resolution to be portrayed as attacking public education."
But the Rev. Mike Boyd of Knoxville, outgoing president of the 1 million-member Tennessee Baptist Convention, worried about the divisiveness of the issue. And the Rev. Grover Westover of Whiteville, chairman of the resolutions committee, said, "It was not wise, is all I am saying."
He said Reagan's resolution would have promoted more "Kingdom education" schools following LifeWay's lead.
Schultz said the program has reached some 150 churches since 1996.
"We encourage our members to pray for this ministry, and we encourage the promotion of an adequate system of Christian schools," Reagan said.
Boyd agreed there were "some serious issues in the public schools" to resolve but said the focus should be on supporting the teachers working in them, including many Baptists, and parents.
"Historically, Baptists have been pretty staunch supporters of the public school system, and they still are," said Gamble, who was not surprised to see the convention resolutions fail.
"But this is a bottom-up movement, as it is a bottom-up denomination. This is not a movement that is being led so much by pastors as it is being led by moms and dads who are frustrated.
"And some day, I don't know how long it will be, most of the kids will be educated in Southern Baptist schools or in their homes."
Good. Let them leave. Give up the public schools to their sin. The only problem is that we have to deal with the products of public schools afterwards if we do this.
My three kids have never set foot in a Government school, and they never will.
It's a wake-up call that public schools should heed if they want to stay in business.
At least children would be getting a better education being homeschooled than the one (or lack thereof) they are getting in government schools.
I don't know why not.
At this rate, poor and middle class Atheists/
Muslims/Buddhists/et al. will receive training
in Public Schools (supported by our taxes)while
all Christian Kiddoes will be posited in costly
parochial schools.
Seems to me the only ones benefitting will be
the wealthy parents who already send their kids
to posh private schools!
The cheaper and more logical stance would be
to make that segment of Science classes dealing
with Creationism a mandatory option for the
fundamental Christian family. As a retired
teacher on both the elementary and secondary
level, I don't recall The Big Bang Theory
ever taking up more than a week of the curriculum.
By the time a child enters College, he should have
sufficient mental acuity to decide for himself
which Beginning he accedes to.
They will "stay in business" because they are funded and we taxpayers have to foot the bill for all those illegal's kids.
It's time to acknowledge that hundreds of families cannot be shoved into a building and expected to agree on how to educate their children. The ONLY ones who can't figure this out are the teachers unions and those paid by them.
It's not like you are saving them by staying. Why go down with the ship? Worse, why let your children go down with the ship? My son knows "free" schools will not be an option for his children. They just do not care about his values.
They will probably have to set foot in public school to take a standardized test eventually. I just meant he college tests, ACT & SAT.
Exactly. And we must fund the corrupting of the minds of those children unlucky enough to be born to liberals (the ones they didn't kill before birth).
Some will stay in business (for the illegals and for those who either don't want or can't afford private schools) and others will close down completely.
Right, good point....so what do we taxpayers do about this?
If that is the case, do not forget to add a mandatory segment of the science class for each of the following; Hinduism, Hopi, Norse, Greek, Roman, Baal, Sumerian, Babylonian, Mithraism, any of the Polynesian origin mythos, Egyptian, Eskimo, Mayan, and any others I didn't think of off the top of my head.
Hmmm… I wonder if they will have time to teach what a molecule is?
Some kids had to go to the theater and watch The Hours as a class assignment. I could go on and on. And it could get FAR more personal -- about members of my own family (so I will refrain).
True. But on on one test, at least for that specific testing day, my son had to take it at the public high school.
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