Christian schools that are up against top-flight public schools are likely to lose, because they typically don’t have as many bananas to offer.

Fee-based systems often end up putting the burden on the parent or family, rather than resting the responsibility for education on the whole (Christian) community. The result is that tuition then becomes a kind of screen, and school slowly migrates up the economic ladder, this despite what its founders or leaders desire. Bills must be paid, etc.

When we couple this upward price push with a narrower or more specialized curriculum (e.g. liberal arts, no shop) the result is also a drift to elitism, where the schools reflect more a social class than that of religious commitment.

Having said that, Olasky also goes on to highlight what the best Christian schools do so well, in terms of humanizing the classroom. In some instances one will also find similar attention to the giving and receiving in some charter and specialized schools — our daughter had a wonderful experience in the Montessori program offered by our local PS.

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My atheist dad tried that with diasterous results. After the majority of his adult children made their own decisions and became Christians he wishes he and the school system had done a little more indoctrination.

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They try to turn kids into happy chimpanzees, capable and desirous of following the rules, grinning and gobbling down the bananas offered as rewards.

Any good cultural leftist will agree with this viewing the present education system set up in the late 18thC as a bourgeois invention. Essentially the school’s purpose is to turn everyone into good bourgeois puppets. That being said, many of the actions and routines which create good bourgeois kids are essentially methods of control. And if an individual is not immersed in the bourgeois culture as a child, he/she will have a difficulty time in the larger world later.

#3
Sawgunner, you note a continual gripe of many teachers — too many reasons for principals to go off site. Occasionally I worked at a school where this was seen as beneficial as the staff preferred the principal as far away as possible. Even now, behaviour improves when the students are informed the principal is out of the building and left the gym teacher in charge.

Reg,
The problem with private parent controlled schools is that the confusing of interests. Its hard for the principal to be effective if the behaviourally impaired child is the offspring of the chair of the school board.

Many schools try to keep students moving on conveyor belts to good careers.

In reality, some children can’t get on the conveyor belt and others jump off.

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My first two children were home schooled from ages 4-12. During those early years, their focus was not on classroom distractions, but on books, 200 feet of book shelving we had in our school room and the multitude of outdoor activities that were theirs for the taking. They were free to read and find what interested them as individuals. Music lessons also played a role, even I was studying voice at that time, and arranging music, so there was an adult example as well.

I was not able to give this same focus to my younger two children, so am still looking for ways to connect with them so that they can find their interests. They have been saddled with classroom junk. We work with our lives where God has put us.

In either case, working along side their parent/parents, gives them the experiential link to adulthood, and servanthood, as is being suggested in this article.

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He’s profound, and gives Christians some wonderful challenges in Amusing Ourselves to Death (though he was not a believer himself).

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We had an ongoing issue with 6th grade boys. I finally got on the phone one night with a mom and we couldn’t solve it, so she put her son with me. I find that kids will admit to anything but the words that come out of their own mouths.

This next is after many tears and weeks of frustration.

“Did you say that our family is poor?”
“No.” Did you ever hear ANYONE ever talk like that to my son?”
“No.”
“Did you ever hear anyone talk like that to anyone at school?”
“Yes”
I told him that when someone talks like that to you, it really hurts. Guess what? He grew up a little that night. The two get along now. There is more to it than just saying “you all need to get along with each other.”

In a Quaker school, grades 6 on down, there was a conflict resolution program for all students and the principal only taught music. This worked really well.

I find that the small private school works well for most of my children until about 6th grade. Then they need a bigger environment.

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