Where are the menus?

From today's Miami Herald:

Ten years ago Florida enacted the most sweeping school reform measures taken to date by any state. In essence, it rewards schools whose achievement test scores are excelling and punishes schools whose scores are poor and/or not improving. For those who believe government schooling can be reformed, it has been hailed as a huge success. One of the best features is that it has narrowed the achievement gap between minority and majority students. And a signifcant number of really bad schools have been closed down. But not everyone is happy. One complaint is that graduation rates have not improved (maybe that's because you have KNOW SOMETHING in order to graduate now). But a more thoughtful complaint is that teaching to the tests tends to produce a very sterile, unimaginative curriculum which does not engage and stimulate students who easily grasp the basics.

From today's Baltimore Sun:

In the late 1980's and early 90's, one of the panaceas advanced by the reform movement was involving teenagers in community service as a means of getting them outside the sterile walls of the classroom to gain a vision of life beyond their mandatory thirteen years of incarceration in public schools. I'ts not a bad idea, and many good schools in many states have adopted some form of this concept. A few years back, Maryland became the first state to make community service credits mandatory for high school graduation. Now it has come under fire because, in an effort to help students complete the requirement and graduate on time, many schools are creating activities during the school day that fulfill the community service requirement. But complaining parents feel that this takes away academic learning time, and that all community service should be done after regular school hours.

Both of these stories illustrate the foolishness of one-size-fits-all government-controlled school policies. It's like going to a restaurant and being told the legislature is voting on what you will eat for dinner, and as soon as the poll is finished you will be served what they have chosen for you. One can envision a massive complaint department would have to be installed at such an establishment. But complaints are what the public schools have done the best job of generating.

What's wrong with back-to-basics schools that teach to the tests, alongside enrichment schools that teach that which is aesthetically and intellectually stimulating? What's wrong with schools with a high component of built-in community service, alongside schools where all the time is spent on academic learning (and perhaps meet for fewer hours per day)? Or all of those choices, in various combinations, within the same school?

Mandated schooling and legislated curricula have made parents into chronic whiners instead of thoughtful educational consumers. Where are the menus?

Government nannying

The lead editorial in today's Arizona Daily Star bemoans state School Superintendent Tom Horne's initiative to promote new health standards for physical education and health classes in Arizona public schools. The Star's worry, in their own words:

"Horne is churning up a lot of activity - including public hearings next month - that is unlikely to produce anything of substance in Arizona classrooms...(whereas) we believe the state school superintendent should be using his bully pulpit to demand better education for Arizona children...(and) exploring innovative ways to engage students in those crucial STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) areas of study."

Let me see if I have this straight.

1. Arizona kids are developing unhealthy lifestyles, and the schools need to "fix" this by having "teachers instruct their students on the benefits of physical activity" because...the kids don't have parents? Because...students always respond correctly to such lectures (like "Just say no!")?

2. The state school superintendent can magically turn around Arizona public schools' lousy performance in reading and math by "using his bully pulpit." What will he do? Bang on it and shout, "Now, cut it out! I mean it!"?

And while we're on the subject, does the superintendent teach anybody anything? Could his salary buy four or five more teachers to handle first grade reading?

Clearly academic success is a mystery too difficult for Mr. Horne..or the legislature (and bright ideas like mandating certain curricular "additions") can actually accomplish. All I can say is, it's a good thing all those successful (non-certified) homeschooling moms didn't have him (or the legislature) supervising the excellent education they were (somehow?) able to provide their children.

With apologies to Shakespeare...government-guided, government-funded education is like a "tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."

Bumper Sticker Truth

It's always fun when folks say more than they meant to. Such is often the case with bumper stickers. The two pictured at the right are stickers I have seen first hand here in Tucson within the last couple of months.

In both cases, they are meant to be left-wing, pro-socialist, government-school-mandating, and pro-teacher-union. I know this is true, because these images were found on web sites with products all in line with those advocacies.

So let's have some fun contrasting the designers' intended meaning, with what I would call a "more rational" perspective.

Bumper sticker #1:

I would love to add, "but over-schooled." One of the tricks of the left-wing socialist teacher unions is to couch everything they control as "education," as though no education exists in life outside of their control. Hence, they label certain (conservative) politicians as being "anti-education," just because they won't support throwing more money down the Black Holes these people control. The intent of the bumper sticker is to evoke sympathy toward more spending on government schooling. The irony is that it is true BECAUSE of too much spending on government schooling. If there were free competition in educatin, and all schools competed for students equally on the basis of the effectiveness of their educational efforts, failing schools would go out of business. But they are protected from competition now by a socialist hegemony which funnels more and more funds to useless efforts. Under-educated, indeed, but over-schooled!

Bumper Sticker #2:

It is meant to be an ironic contrast to the "war on terrorism, war on drugs, war on poverty" federal initiatives, which the same liberals who support mandatory government schooling would declare to be failed wastes of resources, both financial and human. The intended meaning is that in funding these other initiatives, we have under-funded government education, and thus have, in effect, waged a war on education (government schooling) by not yielding to all of its whiny demands for more cash. A conservative take on the sticker would be that the continued perpetuation of AND increases in government funding for these schools (which can be documented) have only strengthened the grip of mandatory schooling, thus denying TRUE education to a signifcant portion of the American population. If you're keeping score, the percentage of American children NOT in government schools (who are homeschooled or in private schools) has not changed significatly in the last fifty years: it hovers between eleven to thirteen percent of the school-age population. So the proponents of forced government schooling have not lost much, while the nation is losing more and more minds to poor education (schooling) every year. The war on (valid) education is going well, indeed.

Statism in Sheep's Clothing

A friend who knows my passion for classical education recently asked what I think of the Great Hearts Academies in the Phoenix area. To paraphrase Gollum, "We hates 'em!"

This is a network of six charter schools (they threaten to add five more), that have provided interested families in the Phoenix area a prep school education (and an authentically rigorous one, as their test scores attest) as tuition-free charter schools. Their rhetoric mixes traditional prep school academic values with the heritage of the Great Books schools like St. John's College and the American idealism of places like the Gilder Lehrman Institute and the Free Enterprise Institute. They also incorporate phraseology (truth, beauty, goodness) and reading lists (the Omnibus) that were popularized in the past twenty years by the classical Christian school movement with which I have been associated.

So why shouldn't I welcome them as comrades-in-arms in the quest to halt the academic decline and fall of American education? Well, in a very narrow sense, I do. As a proponent of school choice, I welcome any diversion that forces American parents to make some kind of thoughtful choice for their children's education, as opposed to aimlessly wandering down the street in search of a yellow bus.

But I sincerely hope that as increased choices are forced into the awareness of parents, they will begin to ask more quality questions. I hope they will move from "How much does it cost?" or "Is transportation provided?" or "Are the teachers certified? (whatever that means)?" to "Will my child be taught the fear of the Lord?" or "What is your philosophy of the nature of the child?" or "What do you believe the end goal of education to be?"

It is precisely because of the different possible answers to these questions (which really matter), that I hope sincere Muslims will choose consistent Muslim education; sincere Jews will choose quality Jewish education; sincere Christians will choose authentic Christian education; and naturalistic humanists will choose...oh, maybe the Great Hearts Academies.

All attempts at education must have a means of dealing with fundamental philosophical questions. How those questions are dealt with is more impactful than how the schools actually label themselves. A school labelled "Christian," for example, which provides naturalistic answers to the basic questions above (and there have been some, I'm afraid), is not worth its salt and should be brought down.

In other words, how a school treats learners is more impactful than what is says it believes about the nature of a learner. The logical outcomes toward which the method of education propels the students is more important than what the school says its goals are. What the intructors demonstrate daily about their fear of God (or lack thereof) is more formative than what the school literature says about what it teaches or doesn't teach about fear of God.

However - and this is the real problem - this is not a two-way street. While a Muslim, Jewish, or Christian school may fail at effectively inculcating the worldview espoused by its founders, a state school (public or charter) can never "accidentally" espouse Muslim presuppositions, or inculcate Jewish outlooks, or replicate Christian behavior. All charter school charters incessantly cry out, "Non-sectarian!" But at their roots, those three worldviews have non-negotiable identities grounded in propositional assertions which can be debated, analyzed, or replicated; whole civilizations and cultures have been built on these presuppositions!

When Christian schools fail to faithfully inculcate Christian worldview and practice in our schools, it is usually because our teachers were educated in and by the same presuppositions of naturalistic humanism that most eveyone else in this nation was nurtured in. But students coming out of state-controlled schools don't just "happen" to come out thinking and acting with Christian presuppositions. They may achieve such integration in spite of having been subjected to statist education, but according to pollsters like George Barna, it is an exceedingly rare phenomenon, and according the research of the Nehemiah Institute, it is becoming rarer by the day. But because God is sovereign and Aslan is not a tame lion, when such graduates do exist, the first thing they will do is put their own children in a Christian school or homeschool them.

Ironically, the Great Hearts Academies tout the outstanding "moral formation" of their approach (which means "we can be good without God") and one of them is actually named Veritas (Latin for truth - but which truth?). As for the type of truth taught at Veritas, I can tell you all about it, even though I have never been there. I can guarantee it is a multi-cultural, relativistic, negotiable truth - certainly not the truth revealed in John 14:6. How can I be so sure? Because I know where their money comes from.

Unfortunately many who believe themselves to be Christians will not be so discerning, and will embrace the Great Hearts Academies as their child's educational "savior."

And that's why "we hates 'em."

Charmed Evening # 3

Over a hundred Casa Grandeans gathered on Friday evening, June 5, in the ballroom of The Property Conference Center to celebrate the opening of a new educational alternative in Casa Grande this fall, Logos Academy. The theme for the evening was "A Classic Evening," in recognition of the ambitious classical Christian curriculum which the new school will offer.

Guests enjoyed a delicious Italian buffet while enjoying the strains of live harp music. After-dinner entertainment began with a scene from Shakespeare's "The Tempest," delightfully performed by sixth grade students from Cornerstone Christian Academy of Tucson, a sister classical school. Special speaker for the evening was the Honorable William O'Neil, Pinal County Superior Court Judge. Judge O'Neil challenged those present to support Logos Academy as a local Christian educational resource. Judge O'Neil and his wife, Tammy, spent many years homeschooling their four children, as well as transporting them to a Christian high school in Chandler.

Although those present were from several different churches and businesses in Casa Grande, there was a clear spirit of camaraderie evidenced by how long everyone lingered to visit after the program had ended.

Logos Academy is co-sponsored by a group of Casa Grande churches through an independent school board presided over by Dave Landry, pastor of Calvary Chapel. Offering grades kindergarten through fifth under the direction of head teacher, Mrs. Dorinda Manning, the academy will be located at Cornerstone Community Church, where Harley Faber is pastor.