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The "brokenness" of the education system in America seems to be
manifest in the core of large cities across our land. Students
entering high school are dropping out at the rate of more than 30 percent, and some schools are graduating only a little above
half of those who start. Racial and ethnic gaps persist, according
to the Christian Science Monitor. "Forty-six percent of black
students, 44 percent of Latinos and 49 percent of native Americans
did not earn a diploma in four years." Even with those who graduate, there is a certain percent who
continue to be illiterate in reading, writing, science and math.
History, humanities, geography, literature and other fine arts have
virtually fallen by the wayside. Teachers across our land, even in
moderately rural areas, speak of their classrooms being a "war zone"
or a place where students are so disrespectful the teachers are
sometimes in fear of their own personal safety. There are countless accounts from
teachers who tell of their
classrooms where students have taken complete control, and the teacher spends most of the time just trying to protect the weaker
ones in the class. As far as the environment being an environment
conducive to learning, some have reported that threats,
intimidation, fear and overt hostility prevent all but limited,
incidental positive learning of the subject. I wonder what has
happened to create the situations in these classrooms across our
nation. Where did we turn the corner from the past one-room,
multiple-grade groups of students being taught by the teacher with
very little resources, to the modern-day multimillion-dollar
buildings with certified, educated teachers and teacher's aides
being supported by multiple layers of supervision and administration?
I seem to remember countless presidential State of the Union
addresses and other speeches when presidents past have said
essentially the same thing. President Eisenhower initiated a
post-war "Atoms for Peace" program that turned the educational
attention toward converting the use of atomic power to peacetime
uses. President Kennedy delivered a post-Sputnik-era speech, followed
by actions that led to the sweeping proposal of putting a man on the
moon within a decade. President Johnson declared that America was
big enough to support the reality of guns (war) and butter with his
declaration of "War on Poverty." President Nixon supported education
with his call for more involvement on energy independence and
domestic tranquility. President Ford followed suit with the signing
of the Education for All Handicapped Children Act in 1975. President
Carter created the Department of Education. President Reagan cut the
Department of Education's budget by 18 percent, but at the
same time talked about providing educational tax credits and
enhanced the state governments' power over the local school
districts to steer the educational process. President Clinton wanted
more "accountability" for the $15 billion being given to
the public schools. President Bush signed into law the "No Child
Left Behind" Act in 2002. And now President Obama wants to "invest"
in America's education to increase the quality of education for the
students across the land.
If the past is any predictor of the
future, it may be that more money being spent on education is not
the only answer. At the same time money has been allocated to the
education process from the federal government, state governments
and the local municipalities, there has been a drain on moral
teaching, school accountability and parental responsibility. When
President Eisenhower began his first term in office in January 1953,
students around the nation stood each day and said the Pledge of
Allegiance to the flag of the United States. In most instances, after
the pledge, the teacher or a student stood in front of the class
and read verses from the Bible. In many schools across the nation,
after the Bible reading was completed, someone might voice a prayer,
or each student was given an opportunity to say a prayer silently.
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The general belief during that era was belief in God, patriotism
of the nation, a belief in a common morality, built on a foundation
found in the Bible, that taught the Ten Commandments and the
Christian faith. Schools taught a perspective of history that
America was founded on Christian principles and ideas. From those
ideas came common rules of moral behavior based on love,
joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness
and self-control. For sure, many in the population may not have
subscribed to the Christian moral standard, but conventional
behaviors in the family and in the schools reflected those ideas and
beliefs. During the ensuing decades, as the so-called "political
correctness" groups grew from the atheist groups that wanted to omit
any vestiges of Christianity from America's history, an unintended
consequence was a void of morality, with a replacement by natural,
hedonistic tendencies that stripped God from the "public" culture,
forcing Him behind the walls of various church buildings, and
resulting in predominant national lifestyles manifested with sexual immorality, impurity, depravity, idolatry, sorcery,
hostilities, strife, jealousy, outbursts of anger, selfish
rivalries, dissensions, factions, envying, murder, drunkenness,
carousing and similar things. Thus, the condition of America in the
21st century is reflective of the new morality that is lived in a
society that operationally has rejected God. Lest we lay all the
blame on teachers, we need to remember the primary responsibility
for providing moral teaching is parents. I have said it before and
still believe it: "In the Christian living experience, the education
of the children first begins with the parents, continues with the
parents and ends with the parents. The so-called mandated, public
education is only supplemental to parental guidance to learning
life."
Teachers have some emotional connection to their students during the
course of the school year, but practically no emotional background
and history with the children who pass through their classrooms each
year. It is a brief encounter to say the least. Additionally, with
the laws the way they are regarding morality, especially related to
spiritual morality, the teachers are working with one hand tied behind
their backs anyway. In the area of morality, they are likely using
texts that slant toward the evolutionary or humanistic perspective,
which is oftentimes counterproductive with Christian morals that
some parents might be trying to teach. It may not be a good idea to
push a "full-force" teaching curriculum on faith-based morality,
since choosing the "right" faith would be impossible. But morality
based in good citizenship behaviors and beliefs might be generic
enough to help build foundations of civil obedience to state and
national laws. At the very least, the teachers ought to be required
to teach the rudiments of manners and respect for others. They
should reinforce the efforts of their students to learn and do it
within a civil environment without disruption. Students should be
taught respect for authority, but still within the context of
questioning concerns. Students who are unable to conform to a civil
learning environment by continuing to be disruptive should be
removed and provided remediation until they can learn to participate
in a productive learning environment. That is only fair to those
who want to learn. We can "invest" more and more money into our education process, but
I believe that our own history has shown that it is not enough to
turn the heads of students to find within themselves the motivation
and desire to refocus, buckle down, work hard to learn the
fundamentals and persevere in an educational environment where
respect, manners, dignity, morality and self-control have been
given away for the 30 pieces of silver.
[By JIM KILLEBREW]
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