All children should enjoy a high-quality education in a secure environment that prepares them for life. Are we willing to provide this for our children even if it means major reform of the educational system? I believe that we desperately need a separation of school and state and the introduction of a free-market based education system that takes power out of the hands of the bureaucrats and puts it back into the hands of the parents and local educators. Public education shouldn’t be about what’s best for the government-controlled system – it should be about what’s best for the kids.
The progressive deterioration of the public education system in America’s history
Few parents are aware of the major moral and intellectual deterioration of the government school system in the past fifty years, and the tremendous waste of taxpayer dollars. Public educators have largely embraced liberal philosophies of education and secular humanism, and our children are suffering intellectually and morally as a result.(1)
Poor educational outcomes are not necessarily associated with poor districts. We have one of the most expensive educational systems in the world, yet rank at the bottom of the list in math and science proficiency compared to other industrialized nations.(2) Some districts that are the most expensive have the worst rates of illiteracy, violence, drug and alcohol abuse, teen sex and teen pregnancy.
Our public education system has changed so gradually that most of us are not even aware of the anti-Christian corruption that is festering in our public school system. Did you know that before 1962, Christian prayers were prayed and the Bible regularly read in public schools? Congress approved the first publishing of Bibles in the U.S. in 1782, “a neat edition of the Holy Scriptures for the use of schools.” McGuffey’s Reader, the mainstay of public education from 1836 to 1920, primarily consisted of prayers to God, Scriptural references, and religious instruction to abstain from sin.
In 1892, the Supreme Court cited a mountain of historical evidence to conclude: “Our laws and our institutions (this would include government schools) must necessarily be based upon the teachings of the Redeemer of Mankind. It is impossible that it should be otherwise; and in this sense and to this extent, our civilization and our institutions are emphatically Christian.”(3)
When the Delaware Indian chiefs approached George Washington desiring that their children be trained in American schools, he told them, “You do well to wish to learn our arts and our ways of life and above all, the religion of Jesus Christ. These will make you a greater and happier people than you are. Congress will do everything they can to assist you in this wise intention.”
It is frequently repeated that teaching religion in schools violates the constitutional wall of separation between church and state. When Thomas Jefferson penned those infamous words “the wall of separation between church and state”, he did so in a letter to the Danbury Baptist Association to assure them that the Federal government would not interfere with the free practice of their religion. The same time that Jefferson wrote those words, however, he was superintendent of the school district of Columbia, and can you guess what the only required textbook was for all classes? The Holy Bible! Thomas Jefferson said, “Religion, morality, and knowledge being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged.” In his endorsement of a separation of church and the federal government, he never intended to imply that the church or religious people should not be actively involved in the state, but that the state would not hinder the free practice of religion.
In spite of this Christian heritage and historical precedent for Christianity’s influence in government, the Federal government has purged the principles of Christianity from the curriculum and teaches the anti-Christian religion of secular humanism to our nation’s children with taxpayer dollars.(3) Christian influences have been purged from the public school system and atheistic secular humanism is embraced and taught instead. Of course, there are Christian students and teachers, but even Christian teachers are bound by judicial decrees.
The transformation of public education into a tool of anti-Christian religious propaganda came about in part through the anti-Christian sentiment of judicial activists on the Supreme Court. In 1962, the Supreme Court banned the saying of this non-denominational prayer in public school: “Almighty God, we acknowledge our dependence upon Thee, and we beg Thy blessings upon us, our parents, our teachers, and our country.” In 1963, the Supreme Court banned Bible teachings in public schools. In 1980, the Supreme Court ordered the public schools to remove the Ten Commandments from public view.
Children and teachers have been expelled for carrying their Bibles to school or for wearing Christian emblems or shirts. This happened in Coshocton in 2006: a student was expelled for a shirt that read “Abortion is murder. Homosexuality is sin. Islam is a lie.” The courts have even come against student-led prayer. Teachers and students who have the courage to live their Christianity in the public schools through witnessing, prayer, Christian T-shirts, or through verbal opposition to the official dogma are bound to face the wrath of the state.
When the public schools abandoned a distinctly Christian education for an atheistic and humanistic model at the behest of humanists like John Dewey, it didn’t become “neutral” with regard to the Christian religion, it declared war against it.
The devastating intellectual effects of a godless education on our nation’s youth
This godless moral philosophy manifests in the curriculum as what has become known as “outcome-based education” (OBE). It is a corrupt socialistic ideology that minimizes the potential of our nations’ youth. Under OBE directives, poor math and grammar skills may not even be corrected and failing children are given passing grades. Teaching reading by way of teaching phonics, the basic building blocks of the language, is out of vogue. “Whole language theory” has taken root, with children often not even being corrected for misspelled words. Classes that were graded A through F in the past are now being taught as Pass/Fail courses. Maximizing self-esteem has taken priority over maximizing character and intellectual achievement.
A study came out recently by the Higher Education Research Institute of UCLA that showed that more and more American students in government schools are acing school, even as they spend less time studying and learn less. Only 33% of incoming college freshmen spent at least six hours per week studying as high school seniors. That’s the lowest percentage since researchers began posing the question in 1987. Still, 45% of students report graduating with an “A” average, up from last year. The reason? Grade inflation. Alexander Astin, who founded the survey in 1966, said, “Each year we think it can’t inflate any more, and then it does again. The C-grade is almost a thing of the past.”
A teacher from the Tri-Valley district told me in September of 2007 that he knew of several teachers who quit teaching as a result of the policies that forced them to teach standardized tests to children instead of readin’, writin’, and ‘rithmatic. He told me he also was aware of several straight-F students who were passed to the next grade anyway, for fear of affecting their self-esteem negatively if they were withheld. Tell me, if a student fails sixth grade math, science, and English, how can we expect them to learn and pass seventh grade math, science, and English? With this kind of educational policies, how can we realistically expect graduates to get admission to college or get a good job?
A Zanesville native who is employed at the Muskingum County Port Authority admitted to me that the “skill gap” in available workers is a major impediment to bringing new jobs into the area. He said, “Students are graduating from high school and can’t spell, can’t work with simple fractions, and can’t read a tape measure.” Remedial courses for college freshmen are becoming more and more necessary, even for students who take advanced classes in high school.(5) Twelve years of public school apparently is not enough to get a student ready to work for a living.
Just twenty years after the Republican President Ronald Reagan proposed abolishment of the taxpayer-funded Department of Education, Republican Presidents are now giving them more money than ever. The past eight years, the federal government has put more money in the government-school monopoly than ever before, all campaign lip-service to vouchers notwithstanding. We have increased funding for the National Education Association (NEA), which is nothing but a taxpayer-subsidized teacher labor union.
We must return to the traditionally Republican policy of opposing the expansion of government bureaucracy into every area of our lives, including education. The self-serving bureaucracy hasn’t improved education, but has worsened the intellectual and moral quality and dramatically increased the cost. With the popular philosophies that have invaded the curriculum of public schools, the highest cost may be the undeveloped intellects of our children. It’s time for parents to take the reins back from the socialists, the sodomites, the liberals, and the statists who have been indoctrinating their children for the past forty years.
The devastating moral effects of a godless education on our nation’s youth
We should not be surprised at the moral decline of public school students under the tutelage of the priests of the state-sanctioned dogma. The godless code of morality almost guarantees it! Teen suicide rates are up 450% among 15-19 year olds since 1962 (National Center for Health Statistics). Illegal drug abuse among youth has increased 6000% since 1962 (National Institute on Drug Abuse). The criminal arrest of teenagers is up 150% among 14-17 year olds since 1962 (U.S. Dept. Bureau of the Census). We are reaping what we have sown.
According to the state-sanctioned religious propaganda, homosexuality is an acceptable alternative lifestyle. The family has been redefined to normalize sexual perversion. The libraries are stocked with books such as “Heather Has Two Mommies” by Leslea Newman and “Daddy’s Roommate” by Michael Willhoite, and elementary-aged children are having their parents’ family values undermined by the propaganda on the school’s preferred reading lists. Many high schools have “Gay-Straight Alliance Clubs”, which provide cooperation with gay advocacy groups. “Homophobia” is blamed for the negative consequences of homosexuality, such as the high suicide rates of homosexuals. Factual opposition to this sacred tenet is labeled hate, bigotry, and prejudice.
Abortion is presented in public schools as a viable, legal alternative to an unintended pregnancy. Public school health clinics can refer kids to abortion clinics or prescribe abortifacents such as the “morning-after pill” without parental consent. With the taxpayer funding of Planned Parenthood, the largest abortion organization in the world, you and I are paying for these abortions.
Public schools are also the primary peddlers of the government-sanctioned “safe sex” dogma to children. The Sexuality Information and Education Council of the U.S. (SIECUS) is the driving force behind condom distribution programs to our nation’s youth in the public schools and elsewhere. They operate many teen health clinics that dispense birth control and discuss abortion alternatives. They actively promote teen homosexuality and endorse exploring one’s sexual orientation.(6)
According to SIECUS’ “safe sex” curriculum, children ages 5-8 years are to be taught about masturbation. Children ages 9-12 should be taught that there are different ways to share sexual pleasure with each other. Children ages 12-15 should be taught where to buy contraceptives. Children 16-18 can be instructed to use erotic photos, movies, or literature to enhance sexual fantasies. SIECUS’ sex ed guidelines focus on sexual roles and “rights”, encourage giving and receiving pleasure, and describe oral sex, mutual masturbation, and “outercourse” as “low risk” behaviors and alternatives to intercourse. Their curriculum encourages youth to be sexually literate and comfortable and seeks to dissolve guilty feelings for sexual pleasures. “Mature teen sex” is described as “responsible sex”, and of course, they make no reference to marriage.
Here is an excerpt from a sex education curriculum from the Centers of Disease Control, labeled “Programs that 
Work”. Again, this is the taxpayer-subsidized government agency, the CDC, and they are teaching this junk to public school students often without parental knowledge or consent.
“Activity C: Once you and your partner agree to use condoms, do something positive and fun. Go to the store together. Buy lots of different brands and colors. Plan a special day when you can experiment. Just talking about how you’ll use all of those condoms can be a turn-on.” (From “Reducing the Risk: Building Skills to Reduce Pregnancy, STDs & HIV”)
In another section entitled, Class Activity, Session 3: Participants are divided into teams, given condoms, a penile model, lubricant, spermicide and paper towels. The script suggests the teacher say, “One at a time, I want each of you to practice the condom application and removal 
steps (demonstrated by the teacher earlier)... Your teammates… are going to act like personal trainers. First they are going to give you a round of applause and praise what you did right. Then they’re going to offer some constructive criticism and make suggestions about what you could do differently to improve your condom skills.” (From “Becoming a Responsible Teen: An HIV Risk Reduction Program for Adolescents”)
The Federal government has spent three billion dollars to promote contraception and “safe sex” since 1970, and these efforts have arguably done more to encourage illicit behavior and aggravate the devastating consequences than prevent them. There is what I call a “Condom Cover-Up” in the propaganda. The condom failure rate is 10-15% according to an article in 1988 in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Other studies have revealed failure rates of 15%, 14%, 5-15%, and 31% (respectively, Dr. Dean Edell, NBC, 1992; Esquire magazine, 1990; Consumer Reports, 1989; and Univ. of Texas researcher Dr. Susan Weller, 1993). And this condom failure rate is for pregnancy: a woman can only get pregnant a few days out of a month, 
and only condom failures during those days will result in a pregnancy. But one can acquire AIDS any day, and the size of an HIV particle is thousands of times smaller than a sperm.
“Four of the nation’s most popular condom brands permitted the AIDS virus to escape in laboratory tests conducted at UCLA…” (LA Times, Sept.12, 1989) Condoms have been peddled with the notion that they prevent teen pregnancy and HIV, but with these rates, condoms are a complete and utter failure to do this. Furthermore, it is freely admitted that condoms offer no protection from the human papilloma virus, which causes 95% of all cervical cancer and kills more women annually than the AIDS virus!
As would be expected, since the commencement of the government’s “safe sex” campaign, the rate of unwed teenage pregnancies has risen astronomically. Unwed pregnancy increased 87% among 15-19 year olds and abortions among teens rose 67% since the government embarked on its “safe sex” campaign in public schools in 1970. The US Department of Commerce documents a 500% increase in births to unmarried girls aged 15-19 since 1962. There are presently one million unwed teenage pregnancies annually, with approximately 1/3 of those ending in abortion. Sexually transmitted diseases are an epidemic among our nation’s youth, with adolescents and young women aged 15-24 comprising 72% of all reported cases of the sexually-transmitted disease chlamydia, which is a common cause of infertility. According to an article in the New England Journal of Medicine, it is estimated that 20 percent of all Americans over the age of 11 are infected with genital herpes. Fifteen percent of Americans have the cervical-cancer-causing human papilloma virus, with the highest population being young adults 18-28. Every year, three million teens get a sexually-transmitted disease.
The bodies and souls of our children are too valuable to sacrifice on the altar of preserving a government bureaucracy.
The high cost of the government-controlled system is not only moral and intellectual, but financial
A public school superintendent once asked to meet with me for dinner, where he tried to talk me out of opposing a public school levy in his district. I knew that this man was a Bible-believing Christian, and I asked him if he were free to spend his own money on his own children’s education, would he spend over eight thousand dollars per child per year to send his children to a public school in his district, or would he spend half that much to send them to the best private school in the county? He refused to answer. “Neither would any other teacher,” I responded.
Who do you think can spend money better and more efficiently for a child’s education, the parents or the bureaucrats? Historically, the more tax money our nation’s public school systems received, the worse the students have performed. The United States spends more money per capita on public education than any other developed country, and, as stated earlier, our children still rank near the bottom of the list in science and math.
The free market can handle our public education problem much better than bureaucrats with a monopoly on the public treasury. If parents were free – underline, italicize, and embolden that word free – to spend their own money on their own children, would they spend $9,243 per child annually to send them to Zanesville’s public schools or $4689 per child annually to send them to a private school? (That’s the actual cost of Zanesville schools compared to the average price of private education in Ohio.) One year in a Zanesville public school costs more than one year of undergraduate study at the Ohio State University! The public education bureaucrats object to competition because they profit from their monopoly. The bureaucrats object to a separation of school and state for one reason: they’d get paid only what the parents thought they were worth.
Moreover, if the average Zanesville parent were free to spend their own money on their own child’s education, would they pay for an education that taught their child that they evolved from monkeys, that condoms can make fornication “safe sex,” that homosexuality is normal and to be celebrated, and that morality is relative? Even if public schools were as effective and cost-efficient as their private school counterparts, would Zanesville parents pay to have their children taught this folly?
The only way the public education bureaucrats could be so successful at funding their godless education system is by coercive taxation that fines, imprisons, or confiscates the land of those who refuse to cough up their hard-earned wealth for something to which they would not give freely. Our parents have more love for their children than to willingly subject their children to this un-Christian dogma, and more sense than to willingly pay for the bloated educational system that is twice as expensive as morally and intellectually superior private schools.
The right remedy for education for our nation’s youth
What is the remedy for this crisis in the education of our nation’s youth? First and foremost, parents must be more involved in the education of their children. Due to the failing public school system, more and more parents are teaching their children at home. There are over two million home-educated children in the United States. There are fantastic curricula available for home schooling parents. Many churches and communities have vibrant, active home-school groups who come together for lectures and activities to maximize their educational benefit.
On a purely pragmatic basis, home-schooling provides a better education for children. One peer-reviewed scholarly study performed at the University of Maryland in 1998 on 20,760 home-school students revealed striking differences in achievement between home-school-educated and public-school-educated children. Home-schooled children tend to perform exceptionally superior in standardized tests compared to their government-educated peers. The median scores for every subtest at every grade are typically in the 70th to 80th percentile, well above those of public and private school students. 25% of home-school students are enrolled one or more grades above their age level public and private school peers. (This study can be read in its entirety at http://epaa.asu.edu/epaa/v7n8/.)
Home-schooling provides the ideal environment to minimize distraction and maximize our child’s educational development. No one loves a child more than his or her parents. No one is better equipped by God to train up a child than the parents. Taking five-year-olds away from their home and family and putting them into a room with a strange adult with whom they are not familiar and twenty other five-year-olds is the absolute worst environment in which to teach a young child. No wonder so many children require medical treatment with controlled substances to treat their inattentiveness and hyperactivity symptoms! The most natural, loving environment in which to teach children is at home under the tutelage of their parents, the ones who love them most.
If home-schooling is not an option, private schools are an option. If you think that you could not afford a private education for your children, think again. If you were allowed to keep the money that you’re presently giving the state for the government-controlled education system, you’d be surprised the private education you could provide for your children! As stated earlier, the average cost of private education in Ohio for one child for one year is half the cost of a Zanesville public school for one child for one year. A complete separation of school and state would make education much more affordable. We should return to a market-based free-enterprise system of education, where parents can choose which school they want their children to go to, whether the local public school, a church school, a private school, or a home-education. Competition forces competitors to be cost-efficient and increase quality. Let schools compete for the opportunity to educate children, and let parents choose where they want to 
send their money and their children, without state interference and without state coercion to pay for an educational system to which they would not give willingly if they had the choice. Competition makes for better burgers, buildings, and beauticians – it will make for better education, too. Aren’t our children worth it?
If parents prefer their children to receive an education where they can learn “safer sex” practices, get condoms in the school clinic, get “dumbed down” lessons, have Christian prayers forbidden, and hear only atheistic theories for the origin of life, then they are free to enroll their children into such a school. However, they alone should pay for it, and the rest of society should not be forced, upon pain of fine or imprisonment, to pay for a wasteful, un-Christian education for another’s children. Thomas Jefferson said, “To compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves and abhors, is sinful and tyrannical.” It is sinful and tyrannical to force families who disapprove of the atheistic humanism and the immorality within the public education system to pay for it.
What about the poor among us who truly receive more in educational benefit than they pay into the system? One option is to have all the property taxes that businesses presently pay into the educational system go to paying for vouchers for the poor to spend at the educational facility of their choice or the business’ choice. At least individuals would be free of the oppressive property tax scheme that practically eliminates private ownership of property. (If you think you own your property, quit paying property taxes and you’ll see who really owns it.)
Another option is to just leave it to charity to provide for the education of the poor. Let churches and private organizations cooperate freely to provide vouchers for the poor. Let businesses commit to pay for the education of the poor in exchange for that person’s commitment to work for them for a given number of years after graduation. Businesses would benefit tremendously from a workforce that didn’t have a “skill gap” that too many in our workforce have now. Businesses would also be unlikely to pay for schools that would pass students who are getting straight F’s – only bureaucrats insulated from competition could be so impervious to common sense.
The status quo of public education cannot be considered a reasonable option anymore. The souls of our children are too valuable to continue to sacrifice them on the altar of a bloated, self-serving bureaucracy with a monopoly on public funds for their morally and intellectually bankrupt educational system. Of course, there are many excellent, morally upright teachers, parents, and administrators within that system. Can’t we trust them to manage our local schools much better and with much more efficiency than the government educational bureaucracy? Can’t we trust parents to manage the education of their own children?
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1. For a plethora of evidence demonstrating this, see The Harsh Truth About Public Schools by Bruce Shortt.
2. Trends in International Science and Mathematics Study, and the Program for International Students Assessment
3. Supreme Court case, Holy Trinity Church vs. U.S., 1892
4. “Is Secular Humanism a Religion?” http://home.aol.com/Patriarchy/definitions/humanism_religion.htm
5. “College Remedial Math Increasing” http://curriculum-issues.suite101.com/article.cfm/college_remedial_math_increasing
6. See SEICUS website http://www.familiesaretalking.org/teen/teen0000.html