Public Education? We have our heads in the sand

It was Pliny the Elder, a naturalist and good friend to the Roman Emperor Vespasian, who is probably most responsible for the idea that ostriches hide their heads in the sand when they are confronted by an unavoidable danger.  It is all mythical.  Ostriches don't actually do this but people do.  Are the parents who send their children to one of 99,000 American public schools sticking their heads in the sand?  Are they unaware of what is going on in the public schools or are they in denial?  Are Americans getting the best bang from their buck or are they flushing when they pay taxes totaling an average of $10,500 per student?

Here in the state of Georgia the high school graduation rates hovered near 80% until a new formula was introduced that revealed a more accurate assessment.  The new formula divides the number of graduates in a given year by the number of students who enrolled four years earlier.  Georgia's graduation rate dropped to 67.4%.  In Columbus, Georgia's second largest city by population, the graduation rate computed below 50% in two of the cities eight high schools.  Graduation rates in the Atlanta area also plummeted under the new formula.  Gwinnett County dropped from 83.7% to 67.5%.  Fulton County dropped from 85.9% to 70.1% and Atlanta City Schools dropped from 68.2% to 51.9%.  Can you imagine any company operating at a 50% production rate?  Can you imagine the U.S. government investing billions of dollars in a company whose success rate is only 50% to 60%?  If you needed a heart surgeon would you choose one with a 50% success rate?  Do we value our youth?  We need to pull our heads from the sand.  The 67% Georgia graduation rate is unacceptable.  

Academia is only half the problem.  Recent statistics released through the Indicators of School Crime and Safety Report reveal that there were 1,183,700 violent crimes in the 2009-2010 school year.  Some of the violent crimes measured were physical attack with or without weapons, robbery with or without weapons and rape.  74% of public schools were the scene of a violent crime in 2009-2010.  Amazingly, while the school systems reported 1.2 million violent crimes there were only 905,000 violent crimes committed on the streets of America.  Many large city public schools report an arrest daily.  If the parents of public school children would pull their heads from the sand they would be shocked to realize that some public schools are more dangerous than the streets of our nation's cities.  

A University of Michigan study reported that the big issues in school discipline in the 1940's included:  chewing gum, cutting in line, running in the hall, noisy disruption, violations in dress code, and littering.  The study compared the decade of the '40's with the 1990's when school administrators found themselves dealing with: drug abuse, alcohol abuse, pregnancy, suicide, rape, robbery and assault. Many shrug at these alarming facts by saying that schools have always had these problems, they just weren't publicized.  Not true, things are worse, much worse. 

Some parents make an excuse for sending their children into such violent environments by saying, "Well, they need to get out there in the real world.  Better now than later."   How can exposing our children to a little assault, a little rape, or a little molestation be justified?  It is heart-breaking to see parents who want badly to remove their children from such an environment but circumstances prevent them from doing so.  Some have no choice but to send their children where they will be indoctrinated to believe that fathers are unimportant and homosexuality should be accepted as a normal lifestyle and killing the unborn is a legitimate way to avoid the consequences of the sin of fornication?

The 2005 University of Michigan study revealed that 26% of all school children are victims of violent threats, 4% have been threatened with an actual weapon and 24% have been struck with a fist.  It seems we've lost our way, big time, in public education.  We are being told that it is all about the kids.  Are parents too gullible when they believe administrators of their local systems who they say that they are committed to providing our children with the best opportunity to excel academically?  They strongly proclaim that protecting our children and creating an environment conducive to learning is a top priority.  Are we are being sold a bill of goods?  Some prisons, where Bibles have not yet been listed as contraband, are safer than some public schools where Bibles are prohibited. 

School systems affectively teach us the failure of socialism.  Competition has been removed.  Compulsory attendance laws give the teachers a captive audience and help to destroy incentive to be the best at what they do.  What if teachers had to compete for students?  What if parents could choose their schools and their children's teachers based on past performance?  Unions make it impossible to fire an incompetent teacher and child predators prey on our children, like picking ripe fruit in an orchard.  Charol Shakeshaft, a researcher and author of a 2004 study that was prepared for the U.S. Department of Education revealed the astonishing prevalence of child abuse in public schools.  She said, "…the physical sexual abuse of students in schools is likely more than 100 times the abuse by priests."  The report stated that nearly 10% of all students were victims of sexual misconduct.  It's time to pull our heads out of the sand.  Would parents send their children off to a summer camp if they were told there was a 10% chance their child would suffer sexual abuse? 

It may be unfair to blame public education for all the ills of our society.  Our slide toward Gomorrah is due to many factors.  Motivational speaker, Zig Ziglar addressed the problem of protecting our children from a depraved culture:  "If I were to stand in front of an audience of virtually any kind in America and advocate drunken orgies, getting high on cocaine, pot or any other drug, they would look at me in stunned astonishment.  If I gave a sales talk on incest, adultery, homosexuality, necrophilia, bestiality, and even suicide, while generously sprinkling four-letter words throughout the presentation, there isn't one group in a thousand that would sit still and listen.  But the very group(s) that would assail such topics are the very ones who do it every day when they allow their children to listen to "popular" music." 

Parents must also share much of the blame for failing to build a hedge around their own children.  Our children are not just being exposed to pornography, violence, and immoral behavior, they are overdosing on it.  Fathers are commanded in Ephesians 6:4 not to "exasperate our children; instead, bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord."   Parents dare not send their kids into public schools without providing them an interpretation of morality based on a Christian worldview.  We cannot isolate our children in a monastic lifestyle, but we can prepare them to live clean lives in a filthy culture.

Kevin Probst - Teaches History, Government and Apologetics at the high school level in Columbus Georgia.

Why Not Abolish The Department Of Education?

Article 1 Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution lists the Powers of the Congress.  There is no mention of education on the list.  Because education is not on the list it seems the 10^th amendment applies:  "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people."  The law of our Creator assigns the responsibility of educating our children to their parents and families.  Deuteronomy 6:5-9  " Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates."

            Notice the first command is for parents to love God with all their heart, soul and strength.  That is the preparation phase for instructing your own children.  Then, parents are to teach children a biblical worldview.  The Department of Education has no constitutional or biblical grounds for mandating what our children should learn or by what methods they should be educated.   Government has trespassed into the family domain when it attempts to supersede our rights to educate, train and discipline our own children.

            The Catholics have a law called the Law of Subsidiarity.  This law declares that nothing should be done by a larger and more complex organization that could be done by a smaller and simpler organization.  In other words, the local government should do only those things individuals cannot do for themselves.  The state government should only do those things local governments cannot do and the federal government should only do those things the state governments cannot do.  When it comes to educating our children, the family should be the first option and the government should be the last resort.

            The intrusion of Big Brother in the area of education was spawned by the Soviet launch of Sputnik in 1957.  A paranoid fear of falling behind the Soviet Union in science and technology gripped the nation and the government jumped in.  The National Defense Education Act of 1958 was a reaction to the Soviet advances.

            A greater tool for intrusion was the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960's.  Brown vs. Board of Educational declares segregation in our schools to be unconstitutional.  There was very little disagreement that it was necessary for the government to intervene especially due to the southern resistance to desegregation.  A one time forceful attempt by the government to right a leaning ship was entirely justified but after constitutional law had been declared and enforced, the government refused to go away.

            Even more government intervention was forthcoming.  President Johnson declared his War on Poverty and he directed government to address black-white economic disparities in public schools.  The Elementary and Secondary Education Act and the Higher Education Act were formed to level the playing field.

            The ugly duckling floating on this pond of government intrusion is the fact that test scores and academic achievement have decreased since Big Government rode into town.  Government may not necessarily be the cause of the decline but more government spending hasn't done one iota toward improving test scores.  The decline began in earnest after the decade of the '60's and it may have more to do with the new worldview embraced by that generation.  The passivity, 'do your own thing', Bart Simpson response to existing authority may have contributed greatly to the decline.

            Title 1 was a part of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act.  $1 billion ($7 billion in today's money) was provided to upgrade schools in poor neighborhoods.  Years later, George Bush sold out to big government advocates like Senator Edward Kennedy when he signed the No Child Left Behind Act which is a part of Title 1.  There is no evidence that this act has improved education performance among American children.  Try to find a politician who will even talk about the No Child Left Behind Act.  They blush at the very mention of it.  The stated goal of achieving reading and mathematical efficiency among all school children by 2014 is now only a foggy fantasy.  This mandate has failed in its objectives and, once again, our government is left unaccountable for flushing billions of dollars down a dark, mysterious hole.

            Parents should evaluate the benefit for investing so much money in their children's college education.  Because of the availability of easy, wimpy courses and the trivial academic requirements prevalent at nearly all institutions of higher learning a Bachelor's degree is now the equivalent of what a high school diploma used to be.  It's hard to get a good job without a BA.  The average cost of sending a student to a public college is $7,000/year not including the cost of meals, textbooks, and boarding. 

            The federal government submitted $125 billion in new loans in 2010.  35% of college students drop out before graduation.  There doesn't appear to be any correlation whatsoever between increased spending and student retention or academic achievement.  The U.S. government invests $200 million yearly to improve education.  That improvement is non-existent or too miniscule for detection. 

            Ending on a high note, there are some good things happening in education.  The homeschool and charter school movement is experiencing great growth and much success.  Government educators continue to be mystified by the high test scores of homeschooled children.

            We should credit government for addressing racial and economic disparities.  Once that mission was accomplished the government should have retreated but like the local drunk, once the government draws a draft from the keg of intrusion it never stops.  It becomes intoxicated with power and blinded to its own ineffectiveness.

Kevin Probst - Teaches History, Government and Apologetics at the high school level in Columbus Georgia.

Failing Schools: Focus On Symptoms Or Find A Cure

Grading our government schools.

There are people all over the country who are enraged by the fact that our country has recently been leaning more and more toward socialism, or perhaps more accurately, toward fascism. These same people who rave against the socialist policies enacted in government and business seem to be just fine and dandy when these same methods are being used in the behemoth American educational system.

Public schools are often referred to as government schools.  The government has a monopoly on the establishment and enforcement of laws in this country.  Government schools enjoy a monopoly when it comes to educating our youth.  The system is supported by public taxation.  There is always a large pool of money available.  If parents choose to withdraw their children and enroll them in a private school or educate them at home they are still required shell out money in support of their local public school.  Parents who make this choice end up paying twice.  Public education’s dependence on compulsory taxation explains a lot about what is wrong with government schools.  The quality of the product is always improved with competition and quality always declines in its absence.

The methods of educating public school children are similar to the assembly line of an early 20^th century factory.  They are to report to the same place at the same time with the same teacher every day.  They all sit in identical seats and each one must remain in the same seat day after day.  The teacher unpacks a prepared standardized curriculum which rarely changes from year to year.  All the students are evaluated in the same way at the same time on the same day.  This method of factory produced pupils will frustrate the gifted child and discourage the struggling child.

The most important element in the politically correct philosophy of the government educational system is the self-esteem of each child.  Some schools prohibit teachers from using red ink to grade papers because a paper with many red marks on it could prove devastating to the self-esteem of the child.  Children can no longer measure their athletic skills against their opponents because competition has been eliminated on the playground.  Everyone is a winner, everyone gets a trophy and everyone leaves feeling good about themselves.  Do you wonder why the Occupy Movement is inundated with millions of 25 year olds who think very highly of themselves and wonder why the government hasn’t already paid off their educational loans and provided them with a house to live in?

Real achievement is attained when students grasp the intrinsic values of striving for excellence, when they understand that competition will be a permanent part of their adult life and hard work and a healthy dose of innovation will be the path to success.  Are educators doing our students an injustice when they dump truck loads of praise on middle school students who still use their fingers to add and subtract and on high school students who think Chicago is the third largest state in the union? 

One of the more disturbing things I experienced having worked fifteen years in public education was watching certain students march across the stage and receive their diploma even though I knew and all the other teachers and administrators knew they could not read.  They gripped their diploma with smiles on their faces, the principle shook their hands, their parents hooted like owls and they experienced the euphoric feeling of having finally finished a twelve year educational marathon.  They were done a disservice, they were socially promoted and they were lied to and many of them became very disillusioned and distressed when they discovered they couldn’t fill out a job application.  Most of them lacked the simple math and language skills to work at McDonalds.

Tax payers have shelled out trillions of dollars to educate American youth.  You would expect some outstanding results after making such an investment but the truth is that poor academic achievement and the high school drop-out rate remains a huge problem.   Drop-out rates are measured in different ways.  Some districts don’t count those who dropped out during the summer or those who dropped out to get married.  But rates have consistently been between 10% and 20%.  Anywhere from 40% to 80% of our students fail the standardized tests first time around.  U.S. students are not being prepared for the global economy as evidenced by the fact that they scored 25^th in math skills among 34 countries tested while China ranked first.  Obviously there is little correlation between the amount of money spent and academic achievement.

 

This is a common argument used against public education along with the accusation that government schools are breeding grounds for promiscuous sex, venues for excessive violence and they are used as vehicles to indoctrinate our children with theories of evolution and socialism.  Perhaps when we observe these things we are really only viewing the symptoms rather than the actual disease itself.   Perhaps the real problem is that we as Christians cry out vehemently against socialism in any other area of our society but we incomprehensibly continue to tolerate socialism in our educational system. Perhaps the real problem is that we have abdicated our God-given responsibility to educate our children to an anti-Christian government.

Christians are against murder.  We don’t oppose murder by fighting against certain methods of murder.  We protest murder in all its forms in every situation.  Perhaps we are failing when we disapprove of the methods of public education rather than the institution itself.  We combat the symptoms instead of the disease. 

The Bible clearly grants the state very limited power (Romans 13)  The government’s responsibility to its citizens is to protect them and punish those who would do them harm.  That’s it.  That’s all the Bible says about the obligations of government to its people.  There is nothing in the Bible that states that it is the government’s responsibility to educate our children.  The responsibility to educate children belongs exclusively to the parents. (Deuteronomy 6)  Government schools are often governed by the greed of those who can’t wait to get their grubby hands on the public coffers and by parents who love the idea of educating their children at their neighbor’s expense.  Would it be too extreme to say that government schools are not scriptural?

The government has successfully removed all evidence of the existence of God from public schools.  Teachers will be arrested for uttering the name of Christ.  R.C. Sproul, Jr. said, “All of reality exists so that God’s name would be known and the government school says you can’t name his name.”  The government sets schools up to be anti-Christian.  If the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom (Proverbs 1:7) how can our children learn wisdom and knowledge if the foundations for such learning have been removed? 

A civilization finds itself in great peril when its institutions blatantly ignore God and wink at evil.  “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness…” (Isaiah 5:20)  Parents must counteract what their children are learning in government schools.  God loves life and it is immoral to kill a baby still in the womb.  God meant for men and women to enjoy sexual relations and to use it as a means of procreation, he is angered when we use his gifts for our own perversions.  God created the earth and we must never be so blatantly bold as to take that glory away from him and give it to another.

The state schools have crossed the line into territory where they have no business being.  Parents,  don’t let the government teach their values to your children. 

 “We will not hide them from their descendants; we will tell the next generation the praiseworthy deeds of the LORD, his power, and the wonders he has done…which he commanded our ancestors to teach their children, so the next generation would know them, even the children yet to be born, and they in turn would tell their children.”  (Psalm 78:4-6) Government schools have no commitment to the truth in these verses.  This responsibility belongs to parents and the body of believers who call themselves Christians.

Kevin Probst - Teaches History, Government and Apologetics at the high school level in Columbus Georgia.