On the 'sin' of sending kids to public school

On the 'sin' of sending kids to public school Author shares harsh campus realities, urges parents to pull children Posted: February 7, 2005 1:00 a.m. Eastern

The man who helped push the issue of public education onto the national agenda of the Southern Baptist Convention has written a new book that blows the lid off government schools, showing parents the kind of worldview and values their children are influenced by 180 days a year.

Bruce Shortt, author of "The Harsh Truth About Public Schools," presents myriad reasons why government institutions are failing America's children and thumbing their noses at parents with a religious worldview.

As WorldNetDaily reported, last year Shortt helped spearhead an unsuccessful effort to have the Southern Baptist Convention pass a resolution urging its members to remove their children from public school.

In "The Harsh Truth About Public Schools," Shortt, writing from a biblical perspective, presents rigorous research about the agenda and effect of government schooling on the nation's young people.

Shortt especially wants to educate Christian parents, millions of whom send their kids off to public school every day.

"Contrary to what many Christians have been led to believe, there is no such thing as a 'neutral' education," Shortt writes. "All education is religious and conveys a worldview, and there is no more important decision that we make as parents than how we educate our children."

Continues Shortt: "Unfortunately, Christian parents allow an aggressively anti-Christian institution to form the minds of their children, and the fruit of that choice is bitter. The overwhelming majority of children from evangelical families leave the church within two years after they graduate from high school; only 9 percent of evangelical teens believe that there is any such thing as absolute moral truth; and, our children are being forcibly indoctrinated to believe that homosexual behavior is acceptable."

While Shortt wants Christian parents who use the government schools to read the book, he also encourages homeschooling parents to read it.

"Homeschool parents must have this book to minister to their Christian friends and neighbors, pastors and skeptical relatives. Our government-school habit is sowing the wind, and unless Christians turn from this gross sin we will reap a whirlwind that is unimaginable," Shortt says.

In the book, Shortt documents the pitfalls of public schools, saying the anti-Christian thrust of the governmental school system produces inevitable results: "moral relativism (no fixed standards), academic dumbing down, far-left programs, near absence of discipline and the persistent but pitiable rationalizations offered by government education professionals."

Shortt also urges pastors to read the book so they might "understand why the church can no longer abdicate its historic role in the education of our children."

Says Short: "'The Harsh Truth About Public Schools' makes it clear why no Christian child should be left behind in government schools. Our Christian children are perishing because parents and pastors lack knowledge. The information in this book exposes the 'salt and light' and the 'our schools are different' rationalizations for educating Christian children in pagan schools for the contemptible falsehoods they are.

"Any parent or pastor who genuinely desires to be faithful in the education of Christian children needs to find out what the public schools are actually doing, rather than relying on what they are saying they are doing or on memories of the public schools as they may have existed 10, 20 or 30 years ago."

"There is no public school district in the country that has more Christians in the community or in the schools than that of Plano, Texas," he said. "In fact, the largest and most powerful church in the state of Texas, Prestonwood Baptist, is located in Plano. Yet, it took a court order to force the Plano schools to allow Christian school children to privately give classmates Christmas gifts that had a Christian message. Moreover, the school district had even prohibited schoolchildren from bringing red and green napkins to the school 'holiday' parties for fear the colors might remind someone of Christmas.

"The truth is that the public school policy and curriculum decisions that matter to Christians are not made locally. They are largely dictated by federal and state court decisions, federal and state legislation and regulations, and the teachers' union and other professional associations connected with the public schools."

Responds Shortt: "Public schools cannot be reformed to provide a Christian education, and the evidence is overwhelming that even conventional secular reforms to reinstate traditional academic and moral standards will continue to fail. But even if you think that we should nevertheless try to reinstate traditional academic and moral standards in the schools, taking your children out is the most effective thing you can do to help the children whose parents have left them behind in the public schools. Only the threat of a collapse of the entire public school system offers even the remotest prospect of positive change. Traditional reform efforts are a waste of time.

"Even if you believe that there is nothing wrong with institutionalizing Christian children in public schools, you need to read this book because you may be wrong. Remember, you only get one chance to educate your children. There are no do-overs."

I have never disputed that. Or even implied that I do.

I didn't mean to imply you did........if I came across that way, please accept my apology.

BTW, the correct description is government school. Any school which is open to the general public is a public school.

I'll go along with your terminology of government school. But we get into a problem with other definitions of "public." There are many "private" schools that will accept anyone from the general public, providing they are willing to pay the tuition for attendance. (You know where I'm coming from with that, I'm sure)

I'm not, and have never been a huge proponent of "government" schools, I am fortunate in having been able to find a system with which I am happy. Finding it was not an easy task, but one I felt to be necessary.

I spent 12 years in Catholic schools and we did not spend 6 hours a day God-focused, nor did we pray constantly.

And? What do you conclude from this?

This is one reason why we are homeschooling and not sending our children to parochial schools. The curriculum that we use is suffused with Catholic doctrine. We don't teach our children to compartamentalize religious life by relegating God to "religion class."

Why do you choose to ignore the fact that God is mentioned in my child's school?

Because I figured you wouldn't "get" my answer. You sound like a Catholic who's comfortable with the compartamentalization of religion. In other words, your schooling "worked."

Your argument is a very weak argument. Some prayer is better than no prayer, but an opening prayer to God doesn't compare to a curriculum that is suffused with Catholic doctrine. All subjects are ordered to God as their final end.

It also seems to me that you know little about the origins of public schooling in the United States, which was explicitly anti-Catholic.

Why do you suppose we have a parochial school system in America? This image may provide a clue.

The school system that Horace Mann brought to America was inspired by the totalitarian Prussian system (where we get "kindergarten"). Horace Mann was a Unitarian and a utopian, who sought to wrest control of education from parents. His plan for compulsory schooling was picked up on by American Protestants, who saw in it a way to force the children of the new Irish Catholic immigrants into non-denominational Protestant schools.

The American bishops reacted by creating their own system of schools (sadly patterned after Mann's Prussian schools) in order to thwart this attack on Catholic families.

In reaction, many states passed laws (Blaine Amendments) forbidding aid to "private" (i.e., Catholic) schools, thus making it more difficult for poor Catholic immigrants to provide a Catholic education for their children.

The American Nativist movement and its hostility to Catholic immigrants at this time can't be overstated. It continued into the '20s, which saw the landmark case of Pierce vs. Society of Sisters.

The fundamental case came in the 1920s, Pierce vs. the Society of Sisters. An initiative backed by the Ku Klux Klan and approved by Oregon voters on November 7, 1922 would have required all schoolchildren in that state to attend public schools beginning in 1926. The issue was promptly taken to court by the Society of Sisters and the Hill Military Academy. In 1925, a unanimous U.S. Supreme Court struck down the law.
“The fundamental theory of liberty upon which all governments in this Union repose excludes any general power of the state to standardize its children by forcing them to accept instruction from public teachers only,” ruled the Court. “The child is not the mere creature of the state; those who nurture him and direct his destiny have the right, coupled with the high duty, to recognize and prepare him for additional obligations.”
The Court thus made it clear the government has no right to compel children to attend a public school as long as they are otherwise being educated, whether in a religious or secular nonpublic school, by tutors, through home schooling, or by some other means. For those who are concerned about schools being started by witches or fanatics, the Court also said the government had the right to reasonably regulate nonpublic schools and limit anything inimical to the public interest.

Of course, anti-Catholicism persists to this day. And Mann's system has worked probably beyond his own wild imaginings. Few people can imagine a different system.

As a Catholic homeschooling parent, I can tell you that the difference is enormous. My children tell me stories from their First Eucharist classes that are pretty sad.

I don't doubt it, but I think that those parents are simply abdicating their own responsibility to teach their children their faith at all. I just don't believe you have to homeschool to teach your children your faith. As you point out, homeschooling certainly creates different opportunities to teach faith, but I can't accept that non-homeschooling parents can't effectively teach their faith, and it seems that we agree on that point.

Children are missing out on a God-focused education for 6 hours per day, 30 hours per week.

I guess in my mind, teaching a child history or geography or calculus isn't part of a God-focused education. I see a distinction between the academic and spiritual aspects, and I see it as my role as parent (homeschooling or not) to teach my child how to fuse those two and include God in his life every day. I see the role of the school as educating my child in the academic sense (with my assistance, of course), not raising him.

How can parents form children when they have little control over their education?

I don't believe sending my children to a public school (or private school, or Catholic school, or any school) means I have "little control over their education."

Thirdly, because God is never mentioned in school, children learn either that: 1) questions regarding God are not worth studying 2) we don't study God because we can't know anything about God with any certainty 3) God is not related to important things like academics and career prep 4) people are hopelessly at odds regarding God so it's best that we don't even try to talk about Him 5) God doesn't exist 6) important stuff happens at school/ practice your personal religious preferences at home 7) important stuff happens at school/ home is just a place to hang your hat 8) society has determined that God is not worth discussing at school/ keep your personal religious preferences at home.

I think this is the real heart of our disagreement. Even if my children attend public school, my husband and I will be working to ensure that they do not learn any such ideas. I don't want them learning them from public school (or anywhere else... it is not as though public school is the only influence on a child). To the extent that school instills or even suggests them, they will be countermanded at home, and I intend for my husband and I to remain the pre-eminent influence in our children's lives. And I have a lot more than six hours per day with my children to exercise that influence. My goal is to build a strong faith in my children so that they can meet the challenges to it that they will face in the outside world, including the sort of attitudes you describe. I just don't see children absorbing the ideas you describe from attending public school, however.

Parents have the natural, God-given duty to instruct their children, not teachers.

I could not agree more. I just don't agree that sending your children to public school is an abdication of that duty on the part of the parent.

As usual, I'm getting to this thread too late but just wanted to respond to your post.

We're going to have to agree to disagree, but I want to respond to this point:

I guess in my mind, teaching a child history or geography or calculus isn't part of a God-focused education.

It certainly can be and should be. Just about every page in my children's science books begin with, "see how God made this..." Similarly with geography. This is less so with elementary mathematics, but in later years children should see the connection between eternal ideas (i.e., mathematics) and their eternal existence in the divine Mind. History, at the most abstract level, is the playing out of ideas in time. History demonstrates the consequences of bad philosophy. For younger children (and also for older children), history should include exemplary stories of heroic virtue.

I see a distinction between the academic and spiritual aspects,

This is a false distinction, and a very serious mistake. All academic studies point ultimately to God.

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