This might be interesting to Catholic Light readers, especially since the previous discussion of universities veered off into a discussion about Catholic primary schools:
Jeff Jacoby, a Boston Globe columnist, reports that the Southern Baptists may consider a resolution at their convention “urging the denomination’s 16 million members to take their children out of public schools and either home school them or send them to parochial schools.”
If this becomes a trend, it’s a huge shift for Protestant churches. It used to be that “secular” schools taught an essentially Protestant worldview, complete with Bible readings in many school districts. Therefore, Protestants — including “good guys” like the Southern Baptists — have been reluctant to give up on public schools.
This is an entirely good thing. We need more fellow citizens to stand up for the principle that it is parents who raise children with the assistance of the schools, not the other way around. Evangelicals are roughly a third of the electorate, as are Catholics. If we join forces, maybe we can enact the best school reform of all, which is getting the state out of directly running schools altogether.
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It is rather ironic since public schools and the various Blaine Amendments were instituted to force Catholic children to be educated in public schools where a Protestant world view was taught.
The problem gets even more complicated for Catholic parents in very liberal dioceses, where parochial schools can fufill Pope Leo XIII’s warning about public schools, that they can be a danger to children’s faith. Especially since dioceses typically mandate that parents put children through diocesan sacramental-education programs.
Whether parents home school, use church schools, or public schools, Jacoby drives home the key point: the parents are to be the key formators of their children’s world view. They need to tell their children, as my parents told me, you will hear things at school that are false, and that’s part of life in a fallen, sinful world. My parents ensured that I learned that Christians believe the revealed truth of Jesus Christ, and in the natural moral law available to reason.
Unfortunately, until parents who do not use public schools are allowed a break on their school taxes to help with tuition, we won’t see as many as would like use church schools.
You know, liberals always like to point to our moral betters in Europe for everything, yet we’re the only Western country that doesn’t allow parents some form of school choice. In Germany, parents can send their kids to any school for free — religious or secular.
What’s also interesting is that Germany allows parents to send their children to different types of schools–the “gymnasium” for college preparation, a less rigorous academic school, or a trade school. There isn’t the “everyone has to go to (high-priced) college in order to be a fulfilled adult” mindset we have in the US.
One argument that’s brought up against school choice is that some Muslim parents will use their funds to set up Afghan-like “madrassas” to teach their kids to subjugate the infidels. The Washington Post found, for example, that some DC area Muslim schools use maps without Israel or with “Israel” crossed out and “Palestine” written in.
Any state that goes to a school choice system would need to grapple with the question of how to ensure that schools do not teach children that only Allah’s submissive ones are citizens in good standing. This belief is a national security threat, so it seems to me that schools may be required not to teach it, without running afoul of the First Amendment or of parents’ actual natural law right to form their children.
uhm, sorry, but you’re going to have to convince a heckuva lot of PARENTS just as much as the “public school system” that it is the PARENT’S job to educate and form their children.
Sadly, that seems to be true. The impression I get is that a large percentage of US parents expect their childrens’ schools to do a certain amount of the work of raising the kids–especially in homes where both parents have out-of-house careers.
Parents should not expect teachers, who have enough to do during a six-hour school day, to raise their kids. Nor is it fair to children for parents not to exercise that primary formative role.
But those parents who do shoulder their proper responsibility to raise their children, should be able to choose with their money to which school they entrust their child’s education, or if they want to homeschool.
I only wish that I had read GK CHesterton’s comments on schooling and education before I had children.
We ended up using the public schools because the 3 different Catholic schools we tried (in the Los Angeles archdiocese) were CINO in so many ways, plus the teachers did not have the patience to deal with our children (the student:teacher ratio was typically 40:1 in the parochial schools, vs 27:1 in the public schools). There was less prayer in the schools than I expected, and there was no requirement to attend Mass except at the once a month school Masses. I put my kids in Catholic school expecting them to have religion infused throughout the day (much as I had experienced in my Episcopal day schools in grades 2 – 5 in the 1960s) – I was sorely disappointed. And when I learned that there was not even a requirement that the teachers be Catholic that was the last straw.
I know that there are a few good parent run and order-run Catholic schools – but the diocesan ones in many places are not the solution that they should be, rather they become part of the problem.
With 60% of the vote, together we could do a tremendous amount of good – if only the laity were with the program. I’m afraid that they aren’t, in many cases.
Blacks are 12 or 13% of the electorate, yet they make a tremendous difference, especially in the South where they are as much as 20-30% of the total vote. So even if 20% of the electorate voted for pro-school-choice politicians, that might be enough to sway the course of the nation.
Cant remember who said it but…
Public education is the state’s method of reproducing itself.