Informationsmarktverzerrung durch Fundamentalismus am Beispiel der USA

Kapitel 4: Weg von den öffentlichen Schulen!


von Margarete Payer

mailto: payer@payer.de


Zitierweise / cite as:

Payer, Margarete <1942 - >: Informationsmarktverzerrung durch Fundamentalismus am Beispiel der USA. -- Kapitel 4: Weg von den öffentlichen Schulen! -- Fassung vom 2005-05-27. -- URL: http://www.payer.de/fundamentalismus/fundamentalismus04.htm

Erstmals publiziert: 2005-04-05

Überarbeitungen: 2005-05-27 [Ergänzungen]; 2005-04-19 [Ergänzungen]; 2005-04-18 [Ergänzungen]; 2005-04-14 [Ergänzungen]; 2005-04-11 [Ergänzungen]; 2005-04-07 [Ergänzungen]; 2005-04-06 [Ergänzungen]

Anlass: Lehrveranstaltung an der Hochschule der Medien Stuttgart, Sommersemester 2005

Copyright: Dieser Text steht der Allgemeinheit zur Verfügung. Eine Verwertung in Publikationen, die über übliche Zitate hinausgeht, bedarf der ausdrücklichen Genehmigung des Verfassers.

Creative Commons-Lizenzvertrag
Diese Inhalt ist unter einer Creative Commons-Lizenz lizenziert.

Dieser Text ist Teil der Abteilung  Länder und Kulturen von Tüpfli's Global Village Library


0. Übersicht



1. Mottos


"Steckt Torheit im Herzen des Knaben, / die Rute der Zucht vertreibt sie daraus."

Sprüche Salaomos 22,15, Einheitsübersetzung

"Those who control what young people are taught, and what they experience—what they see, hear, think, and believe—will determine the future course for the nation."

James Dobson

"Our goal is not to make the schools better…The goal is to hamper them, so they cannot grow… Our goal as God-fearing, uncompromised… Christians is to shut down the public school, not in some revolutionary way, but step by step, school by school, district by district."

"I imagine every Christian would agree that we need to remove humanism from the public schools. There is only one way to accomplish this: to abolish the public schools. We need to get the government out of the education business. According to the Bible, education is a parental responsibility. It is not the place of the government to be running a school system."

Robert Thoburne

"The public education movement has also been an anti-Christian movement...We can change education in America if you put Christian principles in and Christian pedagogy in. In three years, you would totally revolutionize education in America."

Pat Robertson,"The 700 Club," September 27, 1993.

Zitate in: The fundamentals of extremism : the Christian right in America / edited by Kimberly Blaker.  -- New Boston, Mich. : New Boston Books, ©2003.  -- 287 S. ; 22 cm.  -- ISBN: 0972549617. -- S. 7, 48, 66, 65. -- {Wenn Sie HIER klicken, können Sie dieses Buch bei amazon.de bestellen}
"I'm not sure there is any way I could document this, but I suspect that the greatest fear that haunts evangelical parents is that their children will not follow in their footsteps, that they will not sustain the same level of piety as their parents—stated baldly, that they are headed for hell rather than heaven. Such themes as waywardness and redemption provide the grist for countless evangelical sermons; the parable of the prodigal son, I am convinced, is one of the most popular texts in the evangelical subculture. Prayer meetings fairly reverberate with petitions for this or that son or daughter who has wandered from the faith. In recent decades, many churches, reflecting the concerns of parents in the congregation, have hired youth pastors, whose job it is to keep children safely within the evangelical fold, to shield them from the perils of worldliness."

Balmer, Randall Herbert <1954 - >: Mine eyes have seen the glory : a journey into the evangelical subculture in America. -- 3rd ed.  -- New York : Oxford University Press, ©2000.  -- xviii, 327 S. ; 21 cm.  -- ISBN: 0195131800. -- S. 93. -- {Wenn Sie HIER klicken, können Sie dieses Buch bei amazon.de bestellen}

"When the last shot is fired, I want to be there, knowing that I did everything that I could do to make a difference. I really do believe that our freedoms are being taken from us one by one. I do not have the right to pray in school, and yet my children are being taught witchcraft in school. I don't have the freedom to express my views as a Bible-believing Christian in the schools, yet at the same time humanists can instruct my children. Here in Iowa, in fact, one parent was insulted because there was a prayer given at a baccalaureate service. There are no more baccalaureate services in Iowa because of this one parent. Now I as a parent wish to have my freedoms respected and maintained, and yet this individual, I feel, has infringed upon my rights as a citizen. Where is the balance in all this? There are times when I would love to find another Plymouth Rock and get in my boat and look for that free country where everyone would be free again and be respected as a human being and given the dignity that each human being is entitled to."

Maxine Sieleman.  -- Zitiert in: Balmer, Randall Herbert <1954 - >: Mine eyes have seen the glory : a journey into the evangelical subculture in America. -- 3rd ed.  -- New York : Oxford University Press, ©2000.  -- xviii, 327 S. ; 21 cm.  -- ISBN: 0195131800. -- S. 157. -- {Wenn Sie HIER klicken, können Sie dieses Buch bei amazon.de bestellen}


Abb.: Zum Vergleich: Württembergische Zustände 1936: Schulaborte, getrennt nach Konfessionen. -- Weil der Stadt (Württemberg). -- 1936. -- In: Flammenzeichen. -- 1936

1. The B-I-B-L-E,
Yes, that's the Book for me;
I stand  alone on the Word of God
--the B-I-B-L-E!

2. The B-L-O-O-D
That Jesus shed for me;
Christ paid the price, our sacrifice
--the B-L-O-O-D!

3. I'm S-A-V-E-D,
By G-R-A-C-E;
I'm saved by grace, the Scripture says
-- the B-I-B-L-E!

Sonntagsschullied

Klicken Sie hier, um "Oh, the B-I-B-L-E..." zu hören

[Quelle der wav-Datei: http://www.ebibleteacher.com/children/songs.htm. -- Zugriff am 2005-04-03]

 

Oh, be careful little ears, what you hear (repeat)
For the Father Up above,
Is looking down in love,
So be careful little ears
what you hear.

Oh, be careful little eyes, what you see, (repeat)
For the Father up above,
is looking down in love,
So be careful little eyes
What you hear.

Oh, be careful little mouth, what you say, (repeat),
For the Father up above,
Is looking down in love,
So be careful little
mouth what you say.

Oh, be careful little hands, what you do (repeat),
For the Father up above,
Is looking down in love,
So be careful little hands
What you do

Oh, be careful little feet where you go (repeat)
For the Father up above,
Is looking down in love,
So be careful little feet,
Where you go.

Oh, be careful little mind what you think (repeat)
For the Father up above,
Is looking down in love,
So be careful little mind,
What you think.

Oh, be careful little heart what you love (repeat)
For the Father up above,
Is looking down in love,
So be careful little heart,
What you love.

Evangelikales Kinderlied

Klicken Sie hier, um "Oh, be careful..." zu hören

[Quelle der midi-Datei: http://www.scriptures.hillbillyhousewife.com/midi_ohbecareful.htm. -- Zugriff am 2005-04-03]

 


2. Einleitung



Abb.: Das Ausbildungssystem der USA in groben Umrissen
[Bildvorlage: http://www.bibl.u-szeged.hu/afik/esyst.gif. -- Zugriff am 2005-04-05]

Die Schulpflicht hat in den USA folgende groben Umrisse:

"Compulsory Education

In the United States, all students must attend mandatory schooling starting with kindergarten and following through 12th grade (first grade is not the same as kindergarten). In practice, parents may send their children to either a public or private institution, though almost all students enter the public schools because they are "free" (tax burdens by school districts vary from area to area). Most children enter kindergarten at the age of 5 or 6, depending upon eligibility requirements in their district, and leave compulsory education at the age of 18 when their senior year (Grade 12) of high school ends.

Elementary school (Kindergarten through Grade 5/6)

In most districts, kindergarten through Grade 6 provides a common daily routine for all students except the most disadvantaged and sometimes gifted students. Students do not choose a course structure and remain in a single classroom throughout the school day, with the exceptions of physical education (more commonly known as P.E.) and music or art classes. Sometimes sixth grade is made part of middle school, a practice which is becoming more and more common.

Education is most thoroughly unstandardized at this level, and teachers receive a book to give to the students for each subject and only a brief overview of what they are expected to teach. In general, a student learns through extremely rudimentary algebra in mathematics, grammar and spelling in English (or language), and a year of state, U.S., and world history. Science varies widely from district to district and is one of the most undertaught subjects; most elementary teachers have a degree in English or education.

Middle school (Grades 6/7 through 8)

"Middle school", "junior high school", and "intermediate school" are all interchangeable names for schools that begin in 6th or 7th grade and end in 8th, though they may sometimes include 9th grade as well. The term "junior high school" and the arrangement beginning with 7th grade is becoming less common.

At this time, students begin to enroll in class schedules where they take classes from several teachers in a given day, unlike in elementary school where all classes are with the same teacher. The classes are usually a strict set of a science, math, English, social science courses, interspersed with a reading and/or technology class. Every year from kindergarten through ninth grade usually also includes a mandatory physical education or P.E. class. Student-chosen courses, known as electives, are generally only one or two classes.

High school (Grades 9 through 12)

High school runs from grades 9 through 12. Some school districts deviate from this formula. The most widely seen difference is to include 9th grade in middle school, though it is a relatively old practice which is disappearing. In high school, students obtain much more control of their education, often choosing even their core classes.

Basic curricular structure

Students in America, unlike their counterparts in other developed nations, do not begin to specialize into a narrow field of study until their sophomore year of college. At the high school level, they mostly take a broad variety of classes, without special emphasis. The curriculum varies widely in quality and rigidity; for example, some states consider 70 (on a 100 point scale) to be a passing grade while others consider it to be 75.

The following are the typical minimum course sequences that one must take in order to obtain a high school diploma; they are not indicative of the necessary minimum courses or course rigor required for attending college in the United States:

  • Science (biology, chemistry, and physics)
  • Mathematics (usually three years minimum, including algebra, geometry, algebra II, and/or pre-calculus/trigonometry)
  • English (four years)
  • Social Science (various history, government, and economics courses, always including American history)
  • Physical education (at least one and a half years)

Many states require a "Health Guidance" course in which students learn anatomy, nutrition, and first aid, as well as the basic concepts of sexuality and birth control, and why to avoid destructive substances like illegal drugs, cigarettes, and alcohol.

Electives

High schools offer a wide variety of elective courses, although the availability of such courses depends upon each particular school's financial situation.

Common types of electives include:

  • Visual Arts (drawing, sculpture, painting, photography, film)
  • Performing Arts (drama, band, orchestra, dance)
  • Shop (woodworking, metalworking, automobile repair)
  • Computers (word processing, programming)
  • Athletics (football, baseball, track and field, swimming, gymnastics, water polo, etc.)
  • Publishing (journalism, yearbook)
Additional options for gifted students

Not all high schools contain the same rigorous coursework as others. Most high and middle schools have classes known as "honors" classes for motivated and gifted students, where the quality of education is usually higher and much tougher.

If funds are available, a high school may provide Advanced Placement or International Baccalaureate courses, which are special forms of honors classes. More information on the specific course topics offered is available in their respective articles. AP courses are usually taken during the third or fourth years of high school, either as a replacement for a typical third-year course (e.g., taking US History AP as a replacement for standard US History), a refresher of an earlier course (e.g., taking Biology AP in the fourth year even though one already took Biology as a freshman), or simply as a way to study something interesting during one's senior year (e.g., AP Economics).

Most postsecondary institutions take AP or IB exam results into consideration in the admissions process. Because AP and IB courses are supposed to be the equivalent of freshman year college courses, postsecondary institutions may grant unit credit which enables students to graduate early. Both public schools and private schools in wealthy neighborhoods are able to provide many more AP and IB course options than impoverished inner-city high schools, and this difference is seen as a major cause of the differing outcomes for their graduates.

Standardized testing

During their high school career, students, usually in their junior year (grade 11), may take one or more standardized tests depending on their postsecondary education preferences and their local graduation requirements (some students choose not to take the tests at all). In theory, these tests evaluate the level of knowledge and learning aptitude they have attained.

The SAT and ACT are the most common standardized tests that students take when applying to college. A students may take the SAT, ACT, or both depending upon the college the student plans to apply to for admission. However, not all students move on to postsecondary education, and may not need to take the tests."

[Quelle: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_the_United_States. -- Zugriff am 2005-04-05]


Abb.: Amerikanische Schulzustände
[Bildquelle: http://www-ucdmag.ucdavis.edu/fall99/Feature_violence.html. -- Zugriff am 2005-04-059

Die öffentlichen Schulen der USA sind an vielen Orten für viele ein Ärgernis (siehe auch ganz unten!):

"Unlike most other industrialized countries, the United States does not have a nationalized educational system. Thus, K-12 [kindergarten to grade 12] students in most areas have a choice between free taxpayer-funded public schools, and private schools, which charge varying rates depending on geographic location and religious status. For example, some churches will partially subsidize a private school for its members. Some people have argued that when their child attends a private school, they should be able to take the funds which the public school no longer needs and apply that money towards private school tuition in the form of vouchers; this is the basis of the school choice movement.

Although they are free to all students, most public K-12 schools are moderately underfunded by their respective governments, and can only afford to employ teachers with bachelor's and associate's degrees. Class sizes vary widely; some states achieve average sizes of less than 20 students, but class sizes can run as high as 40 or 45. It is widely believed that large class sizes contribute to discipline problems and a poor learning environment. Meanwhile, the physical infrastructure tends to be in various states of decay, and wealthier districts are often more advanced and better prepared than students in private schools. In poorer districts, teachers often must buy materials for their students out of their own salaries.

In contrast, private schools usually maintain high quality facilities and a sufficient number of teachers to keep class sizes lower than in public schools, generally around 15 and usually capped at 20. This is possible partly because private schools pay their teachers less (often about 80% of the public school pay scale) and partly because private schools are at liberty to refuse any more students after they have reached their full capacity, whereas public schools are required by law to give education to anyone who signs up. As a result, admission is competitive, often based on university entrance exams like the SAT.

Some private schools charge high tuition, aggressively recruit faculty with advanced degrees, provide a challenging and varied curriculum, and promote themselves as the route to the most prestigious universities (see prep school). Discipline also tends to be stricter in private schools than in public schools, as persistently unruly students may be permanently expelled from their campuses (and forced to return to the public school system)."

[Quelle: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_the_United_States. -- Zugriff am 2005-04-05]


Abb.: How to build a bomb
[Bildquelle: http://www.answersingenesis.org/images/bomb.jpg. -- Zugriff am 2005-04-05]

Für die christliche Rechte sind öffentliche Schulen, selbst wenn sie gut dotiert sind, gute Lehrer haben und gute Erfolge vorweisen können, aus anderen Gründen neben Abtreibung das Hauptärgernis:

"Moreover, many Christian denominations are failing to obey God's commands regarding the education of children. It is true that we take them to Sunday School and then to church. They may be involved in youth groups or other such programs. They may even study the Bible at home with their parents or with their peers.

But the few hours represented here are hardly enough to overcome the 30 or so hours each week during which they are exposed to latent anti-Christian messages and content, not to mention the constant pagan media bombardment coming into their living rooms and sometimes bedrooms through their television sets. This may add up to ten, 20 or even more hours per week. Taken together, all this must be a great affront to a holy God!

Now of course, there are schoolteachers who are Christians. Many are doing everything they can, attempting to be the salt of the earth, and with God's blessings.

But they are limited by school policy, compelled to use secular humanist textbooks, involved in programs implying the relativism inherent in tolerance of, for example, homosexuality, 'safe sex instruction' including condom availability from school nurses, and so on.

Christian teachers are simply in no position, organizationally or career-wise, to thwart an influence as large and pervasive as secular humanism.

Some Christian teachers are being forced into compromises that will make if difficult if not impossible to continue teaching in public schools in the future.

Why have we failed our God in the critically important responsibility of educating our children? For several reasons:
  1. First, we have failed because we have been willfully, blissfully disobedient and satisfied in our ignorance. We have compartmentalized, following Scripture closely in some areas of our lives but ignoring it in others.

    Thus we allow ourselves a comfort zone in which we can feel secure that the education of our children is someone else's responsibility.
     
  2. Second, we have failed for the closely related reason that the great majority of us have not made the effort to inform ourselves of the facts—even though articles and books on the problems of state-sponsored schooling are readily available.

    When we have informed ourselves, we have tried to rationalize away the problem, and have tried to implement 'reforms.' The reforms have been systematically blocked or have failed.

    We have tried to pretend that if we tinkered with the system we could make it work; but if the system is broken at the foundations, no amount of tinkering will make it work. Secular humanist schools, by their very nature, can't be reformed by Christians. They must be abandoned completely.
     
  3. Third, we have failed because even when we have known this, we have generally not had the moral courage to point it out to people. We have been unwilling to go so far as to say that the secular humanist system is broken, whether out of fear of being labeled extremists or against education or whatever. It generally takes an event such as the Columbine killings to awaken Christians to what is going on in the schools.

     
  4. Fourth, we have failed because we have been afraid to offend people. So we have chosen to offend God instead.

What do we have to do? What does God command us to do?

The ideal, most Biblical solution, is for parents to home school their children, and also teach their children to become home schooling parents themselves when the time comes. All Christians should welcome and openly encourage home schoolers."

[Quelle: T.C. Pinckney, Second Vice President of the Southern Baptist Convention. -- Zitiert in: Moore, E. Ray <Jr.>: Let my children go : why parents must remove their children from public schools NOW. -- Columbia, SC : Gilead Media, ©2002. -- 352 S. -- ISBN 1931600163. -- S. 112ff. -- {Wenn Sie HIER klicken, können Sie dieses Buch bei amazon.de bestellen}]

"Most often, however, even the most resolute convert from Bible camp caves in to peer pressure. "It's not easy being a Christian in my high school," is a familiar refrain.

Indeed not. If being a Christian as the people here define it means abstaining from drinking, smoking, dancing, movies, and perhaps even bowling and roller-skating (because of their "worldly" connotations), it doesn't take long for an evangelical high school student to become a pariah among his or her peers—or, more frequently, a kind of cipher on the social scene. The options then become either finding a new support network—a church youth group, perhaps— or compromising your fundamentalist scruples in order to fit in with your peers. If your parents are evangelical Christians, they want you to do the former, of course, but doing so exacts a price. It's not easy turning your back on your peers, rejecting the companionship and approval of friends at school for the comparatively unfulfilling friendships of people your own age at church.

No, it's not easy being an evangelical in high school. Carl Watkins, I think, understands that. For some time now I had been watching him shift uneasily on the stony ground; he seemed to be summoning the courage to get up and speak. Now, finally, Carl unfolds his tall, gangly frame, shuffles his feet uneasily, and clears his throat.

"My father is a preacher," Carl begins, "so I was raised in a Christian home. But I haven't always lived a good Christian witness. 1 I'm not even sure that the kids at school know I'm a Christian." Carl stares at his shoetops. "I mean, sometimes I go out drinking with my friends. I know that's not right. I know that's not what the Lord wants me to do, but, I don't know, I just do it."

As he continues his halting confession, I begin to see myself in Carl Watkins. I see a Little Leaguer who had to miss all his Wednesday games, even the all-star game, because Wednesday was prayer-meeting night. I see in Carl Watkins an eighth-grader forced to sit on the sidelines during square dances in gym class and a teenager who couldn't wear bluejeans to school because his parents thought they would damage his Christian testimony. I see a high school graduate who never overcame his sense of alienation from his peers.

"I don't mean to hurt my parents," Carl continues, his voice cracking now, "but I guess, I don't know, that I always feel like I'm supposed to be perfect, to be this super-Christian at church and at school. But I'm not." Carl thrusts his hands deep into his pockets and shrugs his shoulders. "I really love my mom and dad. And I'm so grateful to the Lord for allowing me to grow up in a Christian home."

I also see in Carl Watkins a teenager contemplating the consequences of his rebellion, recounting sermon illustrations about eternity—time utterly without end, going on and on and on. If a tiny sparrow flew around the world and took a sip from the ocean at each pass, so the sermon illustration goes, by the time the ocean was dry, eternity would only have begun. Eternity was an awfully long time to be burning in hell, that lake of fire and brimstone.

"I ask you to pray for me this year," Carl concludes, "as I try to live a good Christian life." His gaze rests on the flames for a brief moment, and then he sits down. The fire crackles and spits sparks into the air. Carl Watkins reaches back and turns up the collar of his jacket against the sudden autumn chill that whips across the lake. Off to the east, a new moon hangs in the late-August darkness. Carl shifts once more and squeezes the hand of the girl with the cornflower-blue eyes seated next to him."

[Quelle: Balmer, Randall Herbert <1954 - >: Mine eyes have seen the glory : a journey into the evangelical subculture in America. -- 3rd ed.  -- New York : Oxford University Press, ©2000.  -- xviii, 327 S. ; 21 cm.  -- ISBN: 0195131800. -- S. 104f. -- {Wenn Sie HIER klicken, können Sie dieses Buch bei amazon.de bestellen}]


Abb.: First day of school ... last day of school

[Bildquelle: Klicka, Christopher J. <1961 - >: Home schooling : the right choice : an academic, historical, practical, and legal perspective. -- Rev. ed. -- Nashville, Tennessee : Broadman & Holmes, 2002.  -- 480 S. : Ill. ; 23 cm.  -- ISBN 0805425853. -- S. 46. -- {Wenn Sie HIER klicken, können Sie dieses Buch bei amazon.de bestellen}]

The Difference Between Christian Education and Humanistic Education

This simple chart summarizes the basic differences between a biblically based education and humanistic education. Christians should check their public schools, private schools, and even home school curricula to determine on which side of the chart below it best fits. God honors those who honor Him. Let us give our children the best biblical education possible.

Christianity

Humanism

1. The sovereignty of the triune God is the starting point, and this God speaks through His infallible word. 1. The sovereignty of man and the state is the starting point, and it is the word of scientific, elite man which we must heed.
2. We must accept God as God. He is alone Lord. 2. Man is his own god, choosing or determining for himself what constitutes good and evil (Genesis 3:5).
3. God's Word and Person is the Truth. 3. Truth is pragmatic and existential: it is what we find works and is helpful to us.
4. Education is into God's truth in every realm. 4. Education is the self-realization and self-development of the child.
5. Education is discipline under a body of truth. This body of truth grows with research and study, but truth is objective and God-given. We begin by presupposing God and His Word. 5. Education is freedom from restraint and from any idea of truth outside us. We are the standard, not something outside us.
6. Godly standards grade us. We must measure up to them. The teacher grades the pupil. 6. The school and the world must measure up to the pupil's needs. The pupil grades the teacher.
7. Man's will, and the child's will, must be broken to God's purpose. Man must be remade, reborn by God's grace. 7. Society must be broken and remade to man's will, and the child's will is sacred.
8. Man's problem is sin. Man must be recreated by God. 8. Man's problem is society. Society must be recreated by man.
9. The family is God's basic institution. 9. The family is obsolete. The individual or the state is basic.
The comparison above was written by R. J. (Rousas John) Rushdoony [1916 - 2001] in his book The Philosophy of the Christian Curriculum (Vallecito, Calif.: Ross House Books, 1981), 172-73. Chalcedon, P.O. Box 158, Vallecito, California 95251.
[Zitiert in: Klicka, Christopher J. <1961 - >: Home schooling : the right choice : an academic, historical, practical, and legal perspective. -- Rev. ed. -- Nashville, Tennessee : Broadman & Holmes, 2002.  -- 480 S. : Ill. ; 23 cm.  -- ISBN 0805425853. -- S. 441f.. -- {Wenn Sie HIER klicken, können Sie dieses Buch bei amazon.de bestellen}]

Zur Beseitigung dieses Ärgernisses (humanistic education) gibt es im Prinzip zwei Optionen, die beide von unterschiedlichen Anhängern der christlichen Rechten gewählt werden:

  1. Umformung der öffentlichen Schulen durch Gesetzgebung, Arbeit in den School Boards, demokratische Graswurzelaktionen und dgl.
  2. Auszug aus den öffentlichen Schulen entweder in christliche Privatschulen oder in Homeschooling, Schulunterricht durch die Familie (Eltern)

3. Biblische Grundlagen


E. Ray Moore

Moore, E. Ray <Jr.>: Let my children go : why parents must remove their children from public schools NOW. -- Columbia, SC : Gilead Media, ©2002. -- 352 S. -- ISBN 1931600163. -- S. 112ff. -- {Wenn Sie HIER klicken, können Sie dieses Buch bei amazon.de bestellen}

nennt folgende Bibelstellen als Grundlagen der Kindererziehung:

Deuteronomium (5. Buch Mose) 6

1Dies sind aber die Gesetze und Gebote und Rechte, die euch der HERR, euer Gott, geboten hat, dass ihr sie lernen und tun sollt in dem Lande, dahin ihr ziehet, es einzunehmen,
2daß du den HERRN, deinen Gott, fürchtest und haltest alle seine Rechte und Gebote, die ich dir gebiete, du und deine Kinder und deine Kindeskinder, alle eure Lebtage, auf dass ihr lange lebt.
3Israel, du sollst hören und behalten, dass du es tust, dass dir's wohl gehe und du sehr vermehrt werdest, wie der HERR, deiner Väter Gott, dir verheißen hat ein Land, darin Milch und Honig fließt.
4Höre, Israel, der HERR, unser Gott, ist ein einiger HERR.
5Und du sollst den HERRN, deinen Gott, liebhaben von ganzem Herzen, von ganzer Seele, von allem Vermögen.
6Und diese Worte, die ich dir heute gebiete, sollst du zu Herzen nehmen
7und sollst sie deinen Kindern einschärfen und davon reden, wenn du in deinem Hause sitzest oder auf dem Wege gehst, wenn du dich niederlegst oder aufstehst,
8und sollst sie binden zum Zeichen auf deine Hand, und sollen dir ein Denkmal vor deinen Augen sein,
9und sollst sie über deines Hauses Pfosten schreiben und an die Tore.

Psalm 78

5Er richtete ein Zeugnis auf in Jakob und gab ein Gesetz in Israel, das er unsern Vätern gebot zu lehren ihre Kinder,
6auf dass es die Nachkommen lernten und die Kinder, die noch sollten geboren werden;

Sprüche Salomos 22

6Wie man einen Knaben gewöhnt, so läßt er nicht davon, wenn er alt wird.

Joel 1

1Dies ist das Wort des HERRN, das geschehen ist zu Joel, dem Sohn Pethuels.
2Höret dies, ihr Ältesten, und merket auf alle Einwohner im Lande, ob solches geschehen sei zu euren Zeiten oder zu eurer Väter Zeiten!
3Saget euren Kindern davon und lasset's eure Kinder ihren Kindern sagen und diese Kinder ihren Nachkommen!

Brief des Paulus an die Epheser 6

 4Und ihr Väter, reizet eure Kinder nicht zum Zorn, sondern zieht sie auf in der Vermahnung zum HERRN.


Abb.: Jesus und die Kinder (katholisch!)
[Bildquelle: http://www.twoheartsdesign.com/images/clipart/catholic/children/childrenspages3.html. -- Zugriff am 2005-04-04]

Matthäusevangelium 19

13Da wurden Kindlein zu ihm gebracht, dass er die Hände auf sie legte und betete. Die Jünger aber fuhren sie an.
14Aber Jesus sprach: Lasset die Kindlein zu mir kommen und wehret ihnen nicht, denn solcher ist das Reich Gottes.

Markusevangelium 10

14Da es aber Jesus sah, ward er unwillig und sprach zu ihnen: Lasset die Kindlein zu mir kommen und wehret ihnen nicht; denn solcher ist das Reich Gottes.
15Wahrlich ich sage euch: Wer das Reich Gottes nicht empfängt wie ein Kindlein, der wird nicht hineinkommen.

[Alle Texte: Lutherbibel 1912]

"Education in Bible Times. Education is essential to the survival of any social group, since a community secures its continued existence and development only through the transmission of its accumulated knowledge, derived power, and ideological aims to the next generation. Education may be simply (and narrowly) defined as the process of teaching and learning, the imparting and acquisition of knowledge and skill(s).

The need for education was no less true for the Israelites than for any of the peoples of the ancient world. In fact, the Old Testament record indicates repeatedly that the success of the Hebrew community and the continuity of its culture were conditioned by the knowledge of and obedience to God's revealed law (Josh. 1:6-8). Thus, to ensure their prosperity, growth, and longevity as the people of Yahweh, Israel's mandate was one of education—diligently teaching their children to love God, and to know and obey his statues and ordinances (Deut. 6:1-9). Likewise, the New Testament record links the success of the church of Jesus Christ, as a worshiping community of "salt and light" reaching out to a dark world, to the teaching of sound doctrine (John 13:34-35; Eph. 4:14; 1 Tim. 1:10; Titus 2:1).

Education in the Ancient Near East. Since education is basic to the existence of any community or society it is only natural that certain foundational ideals, methods, and principles of education are shared properties among diverse people groups. The case is no different when we study the educational practices of the Israelites within the context of education in world of the ancient Near East.

Education in the ancient world was rooted in religious tradition and theological ideals. The goal of education was the transmission of that religious tradition, along with community mores and values, and vocational and technical skills. The by-product of this kind of education was a model citizen, loyal to family, gods, and king, upright in character, and productive in community life. More than liberally educated "free-thinkers," the important outcome of the educational system for the ancients was utilitarian—equipping people to be functional members of family and society.

For the most part the teaching method was based upon rote learning. This memorization of the curricular materials was accomplished by both oral and written recitation. Disciplined learning characterized educational instruction, with lessons taught at fixed times during the day and often for a set number of days in a month. In addition to being teachers and drill masters, parents (in the home) and tutors (in the formal schools) also functioned as mentors and role-models, teaching by example and lifestyle.

The primary agency of education in both ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia was the home. Parents and elders of the clan or extended family were responsible for the education of children. The invention of writing systems and the increasing shift toward urbanization gave rise to specialized schools associated with the major institutions of the ancient world—the temple and the palace. Whereas education in the home focused on vocational training and moral development, the temple and palace schools were designed to produce literate, informed, and capable religious and sociopolitical leaders and administrators.

However, more striking than these similarities are the difference between the educational ideals and practices of the Hebrews and those of their ancient counterparts. It is important to note that these educational distinctives of the Israelites are directly related to singular aspects of Hebrew religion. Five specific characteristics were not common to the religions of the ancient Near East.
  1. First, the emphasis upon individual personality in Hebrew faith meant that education must respect the individual and seek to develop the whole person.
     
  2. Second, the emphasis on the fatherhood of God in Israelite religion brought a sense of intimacy to the Creator-creature relationship and a sense of purpose and urgency to human history. Thus Hebrew education stressed the importance of recognizing and remembering acts and events of divine providence in history.
     
  3. Third, the idea of indeterminism or personal freedom in Hebrew religion gave man and woman dignity as free moral agents in creation; likewise Hebrew education stressed the responsibility individuals have toward God and others, accountability of human behavior, and the need for disciplined training in making "right" choices.
     
  4. Fourth, the notion of the Israelites as a divinely chosen people encouraged fierce nationalistic overtones in Hebrew religion and education; religiously the Israelites were obligated to the demands of God's holiness in order to remain his special possession, while educationally they were obligated to instruct all nations in divine holiness and redemption as Yahweh's instrument of light to the nations.
     
  5. Fifth, the doctrine of human sin and sinfulness stamps both Hebrew religion and education; this introduced the concept of mediation in Israelite religion—a requirement for bridging the gap between a righteous God and his fallen creation; educationally this meant human knowledge and wisdom were flawed and limited and that divine illumination was necessary for grasping certain truths and divine enablement was necessary for doing right.

Education in Old Testament Times. Hebrew education was both objective (external and content oriented) and subjective (internal and personally oriented), cognitive (emphasis on the intellect) and affective (emphasis on the will and emotions), and both active (investigative and participatory) and passive (rote and reflective). Specifically the teaching-learning process involved disciplined repetition in observation, experiential learning (doing), listening, reciting, and imitating. On occasion special guidance (directed study) as well as correction and warning were a part of the educational experience. And finally, critical thinking skills were an important educational outcome because learning had application to daily living.

Aims. The aim or purpose of Old Testament education is encapsulated within the revelation given to Abraham concerning the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. Here God bids Abraham to direct his children in "the way of the Lord." This divine directive embodies the very essence of Hebrew education in the Old Testament, affirming the primacy of parental instruction. In addition, the verse identifies the desired goal or outcome of education: a lifestyle of doing justice and righteousness. There was also an attendant benefit attached to this "behavior modification in Yahwistic moral values"—the possession of the land of covenant promise for those Israelites who followed through on the charge to educate their children in the way of the Lord.

Content. Genesis 18:19 cryptically describes the content of Hebrew education as "the way of the Lord." What is meant by this phrase and how does it relate to the religious content of education in the Old Testament?

Generally speaking, "the way of the Lord" refers to knowledge of and obedience to the will of God as revealed through act and word in Old Testament history. The way or will of God for humanity reflects his personal character and attributes. As human beings love their neighbors as themselves (Lev. 19:18), practice righteousness and justice (Gen. 18:19), and pursue holiness (Lev. 11:44) they walk in the way of the Lord in that they mirror God's character.

More specifically, "the way of the Lord" denotes the particular content of the series of covenant agreements or treaties Yahweh made with his people Israel. These covenants formed the basis of Israel's relationship to Yahweh and were characterized by a stylized literary pattern that included legislation or stipulations necessary for maintaining that relationship. Often the covenant or treaty-concluded with the promise of blessings or curses conditioned by Israel's obedience (or lack thereof) to the specific covenant stipulations.

Thus, Hebrew education was essentially instruction in covenant obedience or "keeping the way of the Lord" (Gen. 18:19). Moses summarized the basic components of this covenant obedience in his farewell address to the Israelites as loving God, walking in his ways, and keeping his commandments, statutes, and ordinances (Deut. 30:16). Later, the psalmist condensed this covenant content of Old Testament education into the phrase "the law of the Lord" (Ps. 119:1).

Naturally, the content of Hebrew education expanded as God continued to reveal himself and his redemptive plan to the Israelites through the centuries of Old Testament history. For example, the details of Yahweh's covenant with Abraham fills but three chapters in Genesis (12, 15, 17). By contrast, the details of the Mosaic covenant dominate the greater portions of the biblical literature found in Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy.

Since the Israelites recognized Yahweh as the God of history, providentially active in the course of human events, history too became part of the content or curriculum of Hebrew education. The recitation and festal remembrance of divine acts in human history were instructive as to the nature of God and his purposes in creation. Of course, the primary example of this historical trajectory in Hebrew education is the Passover feast and exodus from Egypt (Exod. 12:24-27; 13:11-16).

In time, the Hebrew poetic and wisdom traditions and the prophetic tradition were included in the covenant content of Old Testament education. The wisdom tradition served as a practical commentary on the law or covenant legislation, while the prophetic tradition functioned as a theological commentary on Old Testament law. Like the legal tradition associated with the covenants, both wisdom and prophecy were rooted in the behavioral outcomes of loving God and doing righteousness and justice (Prov. 1:3, 2:9; Hos. 6:6; Mic. 6:8).

The Practice of Education. Until a child was about five years old informal education in the home was largely the responsibility of the mother, a nurse, or a male guardian. A youth between the ages of five and twenty usually worked with his father as an apprentice learning a vocation. No doubt parental instruction in the ways of the Lord continued through these years, reinforced by association with the extended family and involvement in the ritual of community worship. In later Judaism, male children between the ages of five and twenty usually attended synagogue schools and were trained in the Torah, the Mishnah, and the Talmud. At age twenty a young man was ready for marriage and independent full-time employment, and at age thirty he might assume an official position of responsibility.

Young women were educated in the way of the Lord and culturally acceptable domestic skills by their mothers or other women of some standing. Several professions were open to women, including those of nurse and midwife, cook, weaver, perfumer, singer, mourner, and servant. In certain cases women assumed prominent positions of leadership, like the prophet-judge Deborah (Judg. 4:4-5) and the prophetess-sage Huldah (2 Kings 22:14-15). It seems likely that women of royal standing in Jerusalem received some kind of formal schooling similar to that of their male counterparts since they were part of the official political system and queen rule was a possibility in the ancient Near Eastern world. Of course, common and cultic prostitution remained a source of employment for women in ancient society.

Outcomes. Theologically, the practice of education as outlined in Old Testament revelation resulted in God's covenant blessing for the Hebrew people. These divine blessings included political autonomy and security, and agricultural and economic prosperity (Lev. 26:1-8). Sociologically, the practice of education facilitated assimilation into the community of faith and ensured the stabilization of that community because the principle of "doing justice" permeated society (Lev. 19:15, 18). Religiously, the practice of education sustained covenant relationship with God through obedience and proper ritual, which prompted God's favor and presence with Israel (Lev. 26:9-12).

The Agencies of Education. There were basically three agencies or institutions responsible for the education of youth in Old Testament times: the home or family, the community, and formal centers of learning. Here it is important to remember that the process of education described in Scripture was predominantly informal (home and community), not the formal education of learned institutions.

The home was the primary agency for instruction in Hebrew society. While the Old Testament emphasizes the role of the father as teacher, both parents are given charge to train their children (Prov. 1:8, 6:20; 31:26). Since ancient Israel was largely a clan society, extended family members like grandparents, aunts and uncles, and even cousins might also participate in the educational process within the home. The "home school" curriculum was both religious and vocational, as parents and other family members tutored children in "the fear of the Lord" (Prov. 2:5) and a trade or professional skill—most often that of the father.

Since all Israelites were bonded together in covenant relationship as the people of God before Yahweh, the religious community also played an important role in the education of the Hebrew youth. Again, community instruction was essentially religious in nature and purpose and took the form of didactic and historical meditation, moral training, sign and symbol, memorization and catechism, festival and sacrificial liturgy, ritual enactment, and priestly role modeling. Specific examples of community education include: the three great pilgrimage festivals (Unleavened Bread, Weeks, and Tabernacles; Deut. 16:16; cf. Exod. 12:14-28), the public reading of the Mosaic law every seventh year (Deut. 31:12-13), the covenant renewal enactments (Deut. 29-30; Josh. 23-24), the annual national festivals/fasts, sabbath worship, historical teaching memorials, tabernacle/temple architecture and furnishings, the sacrificial system, and priestly dress and liturgical function.

Although the Old Testament lacks specific documentation, it is assumed by analogy to known practices in the rest of the ancient Near East that formal learning centers or schools existed in ancient Israel. Hints of these organized schools for particular training are scattered throughout the Old Testament, especially in the company of the prophets associated with Elisha (2 Kings 2:3, 5; 6:1-2; cf. 1 Sam. 19:20), the wisdom tradition of the Book of Proverbs, the Jerusalem temple conservatory of music (cf. 1 Chron. 25:8), and the office of sage or counselor associated with Israelite kingship (cf. 1 Kings 4:5-6; 12:6, 10; Jer. 18:18).

In addition to formal learning centers, the Old Testament indicates specialized training took place in organized labor guilds of various sorts. This instruction for vocational, technical, and professional service to society (and especially palace and temple) included military training, arts and crafts (smiths, artisans, weavers, potters), music, royal officials (scribes, historians, overseers), temple personnel (priests, levites, gatekeepers, treasurers, judges), and domestic servants (midwives, cooks, bakers, perfumers).

Education in Later Judaism. Important developments in education during this period included the rise of the synagogue as both a religious and educational institution; the emergence of scribal schools for copying, studying, and interpreting the Hebrew Scriptures; and the establishment of "schools" or academies for the study of the Torah under the tutelage of well-known rabbis or teachers. However, three items deserve mention in the development of the educational process in Judaism because of their theological significance for the New Testament and Christianity.

  1. First, the formative period of Judaism (roughly from the reforms of Ezra to the time of Maccabees) witnessed the expansion of the religious content or curriculum of Jewish education. This new material, known as the Mishnah, was accumulated oral tradition supplementing the Mosaic law. The Mishnah, along with analysis and commentary, was eventually codified in the Talmud, the final written form of this earlier oral tradition. The Talmud was accorded equal standing with the Old Testament Scriptures in the Jewish rabbinic schools. In part, this led to the rift between Jesus and his religious Jewish counterparts because he rejected the authority of the oral tradition, decrying a religion that neglected the law of God to cling to the traditions of men (Mark 7:1-9).
     
  2. Second, the emphasis on law keeping or obedience to God's commands eventually led to a pharisaical legalism that tithed spice seeds with ruthless calculation (Matt. 23:23). Regrettably, devotion to the law of God displaced devotion to God himself so that certain circles of Judaism now ignored the very essence of Torah—faith, justice, and mercy. Ironically, this was the intended educational outcome of that original mandate for instruction in the way of the Lord given to Abraham (Gen. 18:19).
     
  3. Third, the idea of biblical study (and study in general) as worship emerges during this time period. The precedent for understanding study as an act of worship stems from the Old Testament, where the psalmist remarked that all those who delight in the works of God study (or "worship-fully investigate") them (Ps. 111:2).

Education in New Testament Times. Much of the New Testament understanding of education is simply assumed from the practice of the Old Testament and Judaism. For example, the family remains the primary context for education, with prominence also given to the church as the extended family or community of faith. Likewise, the goal of educating the whole person, mind and character, carries over from Hebrew practice in the Old Testament. Even the methodology of both instilling information and drawing out or developing the innate talents and abilities of the student finds its antecedent in the Old Testament.

The New Testament focuses its attention on educating the whole person (intellect, emotions, and will), educating through personal relationship (i.e., the mentoring relationship of teacher and disciple), the process of both instilling knowledge and encouraging learning through discovery, and educating through experiential learning. Especially important theologically are the truths of educating the whole person (so that intellectual knowledge is applied to personal behavior; James 1:25; 1 John 2:2-6); and the work of God's Spirit in illuminating the learner as he or she is instructed in the faith (John 16:5-15; 1 John 2:26-27).

The Teacher Come from God. According to the Gospel records, much of Jesus' public ministry was spent teaching his disciples, as well as the crowds. Jesus was recognized and acknowledged as a teacher (or rabbi) by his disciples, the general public, and contemporary Jewish religious leaders, including Nicodemus who identified Jesus as "a teacher who has come from God" (John 3:2). Indeed, Jesus even referred to himself as teacher on several occasions (Mark 14:14; John 13:13).

The Gospels consistently report that people were astonished or amazed at the teaching of Jesus (Mark 1:22; 11:18; Luke 4:32). What made Jesus a "master teacher"? Granted he was God incarnate—a unique human being as the Son of Man. And yet, the approach, method, and content utilized by Jesus in his teaching continue to be paradigmatic for Christian education.

By way of approach, for instance, Jesus sometimes initiated the teaching moment (e.g., the Samaritan woman in John 4), but many times the learner(s) actually engaged Jesus in a teaching moment (Nicodemus in John 3). Jesus also had the ability to teach effectively informal educational settings (Mark 12:35), or more spontaneously as the need arose or circumstance dictated (Mark 9:33-37). Jesus was not afraid to hide the truth from some (those who were not seeking the truth or those who in their pride thought they already possessed it) so others find the truth (Matt. 13:10-17).

Perhaps the best word for describing the method of Jesus' teaching is "varied." Whether by object lesson or alternative speech forms (parable, rhetorical question, personal conversation, or public discourse), Jesus arrested and held the attention of the learner. His knowledge of human personality and behavior and his sensitivity to human need enabled him to meet the learner on his or her terms and turf.

Finally, Jesus amazed his audiences because he taught with authority. Not only was he forceful, persuasive, and dynamic in his presentation, but the content of his teaching was rooted in the message of the Old Testament Scriptures—the word of God. More important, he knew well the curriculum he taught and owned it personally—his life mirrored his teaching—much to the chagrin of the hypocrites who challenged him.

The Apostles' Teaching. Religious education or instruction in the Christian faith served another important purpose in the New Testament: exposing false teachers and their subversive doctrines. The teaching of sound biblical doctrine prevented the individual Christian and the Christian church(es) from being duped by "strange teachings" (Eph. 4:14; 2 Thess. 2:15; Heb. 13:9). Also, the teaching of apostolic doctrine both fostered Christian discernment of false teachers and their lies (1 Tim. 1:3-7) and authenticated the veracity of the Christian message (1 Tim. 6:1-5; 1 Peter 5:12). So much so that Paul reminded Titus that sound teaching shames the critics of Christianity because the doctrine of God is adorned by the lifestyle of "model citizens"—believers in Christ trained in godliness (2:6-10).

Catechism. Teaching, along with prophecy and revelation, are identified as those activities that will prove most beneficial for the building up of the church (1 Cor. 14:6, 12). Teaching was integral to the apostolic mission as Jesus charged his disciples to take the gospel of the kingdom of God to the nations (Matt. 28:20). Early on this teaching consisted of systematic instruction in the apostles' doctrine (informally?; cf. Acts 2:42), and the public reading and teaching of Scripture in corporate worship (1 Tim. 4:13). Later, catechism or oral instruction in Christian doctrine became a necessary prelude to baptism in early church practice. Only through sound teaching could people come to know the truth and escape the snare of the evil one (2 Tim. 2:24—26).

Since teaching was vital to Christian faith, life, and growth, Christ endowed his church with spiritual gifts including the office of pastor-teacher (Eph. 4:11) and the gift of teaching (Rom. 12:7; 1 Cor. 14:6, 26). Teachers were distinguished as leaders in the church, along with apostles and prophets, from the earliest days of church history (cf. Acts 13:1). In addition, one of the requirements for the office of bishop or elder in the church was the ability to teach (1 Tim. 3:2; 2 Tim. 2:24; Titus 2:9). The basic purpose of Christian teaching according to Paul was godliness—instruction leading to maturity in Christ (Col. 1:28).

The New Testament teaches us several important pedagogical and theological lessons appropriate for application in contemporary Christian education. First, education attends to the whole person—mind and body, emotions and will. Second, the New Testament understands education as a process of both instilling (imparting information to the pupil) and extracting (drawing out learning from the pupil or self-discovery). Third, effective education is rooted in a mentoring relationship (note Jesus with his disciples or the apostles training others to follow their lead). Fourth, the content of Jesus' and the apostles' teaching was essentially ethical; being or character and doing or practice are vitally connected with knowing.

Ultimately, biblical education is instruction in a lifestyle. For this reason, the apostle Paul reminded his pupil Timothy, "you . . . know all about my teaching, my way of life continue in what you learned" (2 Tim. 3:10, 14). Not only is biblical education a lifestyle—it is a lifetime!"

[Quelle: Andrew E. Hill. -- In: Evangelical dictionary of biblical theology / edited by Walter A. Elwell.  -- Grand Rapids, Mich. : Baker Books ; Carlisle, Cumbria : Paternoster Press, ©1996.  -- x, 933 S. ; 26 cm.  -- ISBN: 0801020492. -- s.v. -- {Wenn Sie HIER klicken, können Sie dieses Buch bei amazon.de bestellen}]


4. Erste Option: Beherrschung der öffentlichen Schulen


Hauptansatzpunkt für die Beherrschung der öffentlichen Schulen sind - neben der Gesetzgebung auf State-Ebene - vor allem die Boards of Education (bzw. School Boards, Board of Trustees oder School Committees).

"Board of education is the typical styling of the title in the United States of the board of directors of a local school district and generally the statewide organization responsible for the oversight of such local boards as well.

Boards of education are usually elected by residents of the school district but may also be appointed by mayors or other executives of jurisidictions such as cities or counties whose jurisdictions may be coextensive with that of the school district. There may also be circumstances where nonresident property owners whose property taxes can be affected by a levy enacted by the school board may have a right to vote in school board elections as well. State boards of education are generally appointed by the governor but are elected by popular vote in a few states.

The size and authority of boards of education varies widely. In some districts they have the authority to set and levy tax rates; in others they may have only the authority to recommend such to a legislative body or executive. Most boards have between five and fifteen members. In some districts, especially small rural ones, they may approve the hiring and dismissal of every teacher; more typically they are responsible only for overall policies and proceedures and leave the day-to-day operation of the district to a professional educator, who is generally referred to by the title of superintendent of schools or director of schools. In rural and suburban districts in particular, there are often discussions about the abilities and powers of individual board members and what rights that they have (if any) to observe and comment on individual schools or classes. A consensus has been reached in many districts in recent years that board members have only "collective" authority when meeting and acting as a board and should generally not be involved as individuals in attempting to run schools directly.

Particularly in rural areas, the board of education of a county-wide school district may be the area's largest employer and thus the board may be subject to political considerations that may be lessened or lacking in other circumstances. Compensation for board members varies from none at all in districts where members serve on a volunteer basis to jurisdictions where the position is considered to be a major part-time job and may pay thousands of dollars per annum. State Board of Education members in most states are reimbursed for their travel expenses in conjunction with meetings, although this also varies on a state-by-state basis."

[Quelle: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Board_of_education. -- Zugriff am 2005-04-05]

Politische Einheiten sind die School Districts:

"School Districts are a form of Special-purpose district in the United States which serves to operate the local public primary, middle, and secondary schools. Public education in many communities in the USA has been made the function of a school district serving one or more towns. A school district is a unique body corporate and politic, usually with Districts being coequal to that of a city or a county, and has similar powers including taxation and eminent domain. Its legislative body, elected by direct popular vote, is called a school board, board of trustees, or school committee, and this body appoints a superintendent, usually a highly qualified teacher, to function as the district's chief executive for carrying out day-to-day decisions and policy implementations. The school board on occasion may also exercise a token judiciary function in serious employee or student discipline matters.

The functioning of a school district can be a key influence and concern in local politics. A well run district with safe and clean schools, graduating enough students to good colleges, can enhance the value of housing in its area, and thus increase the amount of tax revenue available to carry out its operations.

In addition to the various schools it operates and the various support facilities they require for their operation, such as bus yards, laundries, warehouses, and kitchens, some very large school districts operate medical clinics, television stations (many of which are official PBS affiliates for their respective markets), and fully functioning campus police departments. Additionally it is not unusual to find public libraries or recreation programs operated by a school system."

[Quelle: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_district. -- Zugriff am 2005-04-05]

Melissa M. Deckman untersucht in ihrer empirischen Studie


Abb.: Einbandtitel

Deckman, Melissa M. (Melissa Marie) <1971 - >: School board battles : the Christian right in local politics. -- Washington, D.C. : Georgetown University Press, ©2004. -- xvi, 224 S. : Ill. ; 22 cm.  -- ISBN: 1589010019. -- {Wenn Sie HIER klicken, können Sie dieses Buch bei amazon.de bestellen}

wie der Kampf um die öffentlichen Schulen tatsächlich (nicht nur in den Deklarationen) geführt wird. Sie fasst die Ergebnisse ihres sehr lesenswerten Buches so zusammen:

"The debate about the curriculum in public schools, according to Arthur Scheslinger, is "a debate about what it means to be an American" (1992,17). In the opinion of Christian Right activists, that curriculum should respect and promote virtues and beliefs consistent with their worldview. A good American, they would argue, is one who leads a life steeped in traditional morality, in which prayer in school is preferred, creationism is the only explanation for the origin of humans, and patriotism is rooted in a belief in America's superiority to other cultures. The problem, however, is that this worldview is not necessarily shared by most Americans, particularly leading educators. The result of this clash in values has been that Christian Right leaders and organizations have been among the most preeminent critics of the public schools in the past two decades. In the 1990s, several of these groups made very public attempts to recruit like-minded activists to run for school board, turning school districts into local battlefields.

The Christian Right and School Board Elections

This book has analyzed the impact of the Christian Right on school board elections on a national scale. More specifically, it has studied the motivation, strategies, and electoral success of Christian Right school board candidates. In many ways, Christian Right and non-Christian Right candidates share common sources of motivation in their quest to seek school board office. First, there are relatively few socioeconomic differences between the two types of candidates, most of whom have income and education levels well above the national average. Candidates decide to run because serving on the school board is a good way to give something back to the community. Very few candidates indicate that their decision to run was completely self-motivated. Most were encouraged to run by friends, family members, community leaders, or— perhaps most important—current or past school board members. Finally, relatively few candidates, Christian Right or non-Christian Right, were actively mobilized by political elites such as interest group representatives or party leaders to run for school board.

Nonetheless, there are still some important differences in motivation that set Christian Right candidates apart from other candidates. Christian Right candidates are significantly more likely to indicate that returning schools to traditional values was a very important reason for running for school board. Conservative Christian candidates were also significantly more likely than non-Christian Right candidates to say that applying their religious or moral beliefs to school policy was important to their decision to run for office. This desire is further illustrated by the remarks of one conservative Christian candidates from Garrett County, who said that Christians "are instructed to be involved" in politics. Yet the case study research revealed that religion also matters to non-Christian Right candidates in some cases. Recall the moderate Episcopal candidate from Fairfax County who claimed that running and serving on the school board is akin to Jesus' commandment to "Feed my sheep" (or, as she claims, "teach my sheep"). Moreover, some other effects of religion are not isolated to Christian Right candidates. This study finds that regular church attendance—regardless of Christian Right status—is significantly related to whether candidates are encouraged by church members or ministers to run for school board.

By and large, and somewhat unexpectedly, Christian Right and non-Christian Right candidates run remarkably similar campaigns. Unlike campaigns for higher political offices, school board campaigns for both types of candidate are low key. Candidates running for school board spend little money on their races, have few volunteers working with their campaigns, and are most likely to campaign door-to-door. Perhaps most remarkably, very few Christian Right candidates report campaigning in churches and are no more likely to do so than non-Christian Right candidates. This finding calls into question the charge by critics of the Christian Right that their candidates engage in "stealth" techniques, meaning they avoid public events in favor of campaigning and mobilizing voters in conservative churches instead.

Another surprising finding was that the involvement of Christian Right organizations, most notably the Christian Coalition and Citizens for Excellence in Education, appears to be very limited on a national level. Although much attention has been given to the Christian Right's efforts to train and mobilize conservative Christian school board candidates, the involvement of these groups is not extensive. In fact, few school board candidates, regardless of whether they are a part of the Christian Right, receive direct assistance from interest groups or political parties, as both the survey and case study in Garrett County demonstrate. The election in Fairfax County is a notable exception, in which both interest groups and political parties were active in the campaigns, perhaps reflecting the large size of the school district and the very high socio-economic status of its residents.

Although there were many similarities between Christian Right and non-Christian Right campaigns in terms of their campaign strategies, differences still emerge. Though Christian Right candidates tended to avoid the hot-button issues endorsed by the movement such as sex education and outcomes-based education in their campaign platforms, they were significantly more likely than non-Christian Right candidates to run on more mainstream conservative issues also endorsed by the Christian Right such as increasing test scores and enforcing more discipline in the schools. Christian Right candidates refrained from making prophetic, overtly religious themes the center of their campaigns. Instead, for example, Christian Right candidates in Fairfax County ran on a united "back-to-basics" campaign theme emphasizing traditional teaching methods such as phonics. Christian Right candidates in Garrett County also emphasized academic concerns yet, at the same time, were the most likely to incorporate overtly religious themes in their campaigns, including the use of biblical scripture in their campaign ads, an appeal that worked in their conservative community.

The results of the survey demonstrate that, under most circumstances, Christian Right candidates are no more likely to win their elections than non-Christian Right candidates, even after controlling for various factors that could influence a candidate's electability. Similar to other elections in American politics, the advantage of incumbency is strong at the school board level. Even controlling for the religious context in which candidates live—in this case, looking at the percentage of evangelical adherents living in the county of residence of the respondents—has no impact on whether a Christian Right candidate is successful at the polls. Although it is impossible to gauge in the survey, the case studies reveal how Christian Right groups and ministerial organizations distributed voter guides and mobilized voters in sympathetic churches. Though this approach most likely helped the conservative Christian candidates to win in Garrett County, Christian Right candidates in Fairfax County also faced much greater countermobilization by groups and religious associations opposed to their agenda.

In terms of Christian Right activism, this study finds that the impact of Christian Right organizations is somewhat limited at the school board level. To paraphrase Mark Twain, once Commentating about his death, fears of a Christian Right "takeover" of school boards are greatly exaggerated. There is simply little evidence to suggest that Christian Right candidates are trained by or receive consultation from Christian Right groups. For that matter, few candidates appear to receive much assistance, whether in the form of endorsements, campaign contributions, or training, from any type of interest group. Nor is there any indication that stealth campaigns are widespread among Christian Right candidates. Although such campaigns are admittedly difficult to uncover, particularly in survey research, it appears that Christian Right candidates campaign largely in the same ways as non-Christian Right candidates. In the case studies, particularly in Garrett County, Christian Right candidates were very open about their religious beliefs and ideas, to the point of including scripture in their campaign literature. The evidence here tells a more balanced story about elections involving Christian Right candidates.

The Christian Right as School Board Members

The two case studies profiled in this book give us a chance to look at the impact Christian Right school board candidates make once they are elected to school board. More generally, it affords the opportunity to examine the challenges that religious adherents face when elected to political office. As most Christian Right candidates discovered in these two counties, governing is very different from running a campaign. The Christian Right majority on the five-member board in Garrett County made some controversial decisions early in their term but avoided any widespread, ideological changes in the curriculum that their more progressive critics feared would happen. In many situations, conservative Christians on the board showed a willingness to listen to and respect the wishes of both parents and administrators. And several Christian Right board members sometimes sided with the board's moderate member, demonstrating that the Christian Right majority was not monolithic. This picture contrasts sharply with the Christian Right majority boards in places such as Merrimack,  New Hampshire, and Vista, California, which left the impression that such majorities are bent on a complete overhaul of school curriculum.

By contrast, the Christian Right minority on the twelve-member board in Fairfax County was free to stick to its conservative principles and to criticize repeatedly the more progressive majority on the board, because they had little hope of enacting widespread changes. Although they lost many battles, their unity with the two moderate Republicans on the board and their steady criticism of board Democrats often garnered enough attention to sway some components of public opinion in the county. The board conservatives even achieved some success on budget issues and grading policies, although they met with less success on issues that involved religion directly. Majority board members in Fairfax County also grew frustrated with the obstructionist tactics of the Christian Right members, which effectively kept some progressive policy ideas touted by the Democrats from coming to light.

Although these two cases may not be representative of most school boards that have Christian Right board members, they do offer some interesting lessons. First, the actions of a Christian Right board majority can be tempered by the attitudes of administrators and parents, if Christian Right board members are willing to have a dialogue with the community. Second, Christian Right board members are not necessarily monolithic, and divisions among the group over some issues can stop them from making substantial ideological changes to school curriculum and policy. In the case of Fairfax County, the lesson here is that the Christian Right as a minority faction on a school board can sway the board more to the right. Though they had little success with the more controversial platform issues of the Christian Right such as sex education and creationism, their criticism of the board's majority swayed public opinion enough on more traditional conservative issues that the board majority was forced to enact some of their initiatives.

The experiences of Christian Right board members both as a governing majority and as a minority coalition also illuminate the situations in which religious adherents are either effective or ineffective in the public arena. As noted in chapter 1, organized religion can serve as either a priestly or a prophetic voice in politics. Viewed in the light of priestly religious politics, the Christian Right majority learned early in their experience that attempts to make wholesale changes to board policy, in a sense to legitimate their brand of social policy, would be met with much resistance from the community. Had such members made many of the strong policy changes they initially proposed, the end result, most likely, would have been effectiveness in the short term only. Not only would they have jeopardized their relationship with many parents, teachers, and administrators, but they also would have likely jeopardized their chances

for reelection. Instead, these members worked closely with the community at the expense perhaps of pursuing a more radical agenda. The case in Garrett County illustrates the difficulty of any community accepting the legitimacy of one "true" moral or religious vision, which is ultimately why the founders, in writing the establishment clause of the First Amendment, strove to guard against the dominance of any one religious voice in the public square.

Yet to say that religion should not have any voice in policy is also misleading. By guaranteeing the right of religious expression, the founders also seemed to be encouraging the influence of religion in society. Alexis de Tocqueville ([1835] 1956) wrote about the importance of religion, and churches especially, as mediating institutions in America that fostered democracy and protected citizens from an omnipotent government. There is a strong prophetic form of religious politics that has characterized America throughout its history—one whose criticism of the status quo is rooted in the search for truth and justice. The modest success of the Christian Right school board members in Fairfax County, in terms of steering the political agenda and obstructing the more liberal majority from enacting many of its policy goals, shows the sorts of situations in which this prophetic voice can be effective at the local level of government. Largely free from accountability by virtue of their minority status, conservative Christians on the board maintained their prophetic voice, constantly criticizing the decisions of the more liberal majority. At times, when their criticism found resonance with larger segments of the population, they were able to influence policy directly. This finding demonstrates that, when Christian Right activists work together with other factions within the community, they become more accomplished in local politics.

The Future of the Christian Right and School Boards

What does the future hold for school boards with respect to the Christian Right? In the past few years, the Christian Coalition and Citizens for Excellence in Education, arguably the two Christian Right organizations most active in trying to influence school board politics in the 1990s, have fallen on hard times. Funding for both groups has fallen, and the Christian Coalition has had to contend with not only the departure of most of their experienced, top-level employees, but also an embarrassing lawsuit from former African American employees charging the organization with racism. Meanwhile, Citizens for Excellence in Education and other Christian Right leaders and organizations have begun to promote homeschooling as the preferred alternative for children of conservative Christians. Indeed, homeschooling has become an education phenomenon in the last decade, involving more than a million children and spawning a new industry and counterculture geared at conservative Christian parents (Stevens 2001; Talbot 2001). Further, critics of the movement argue that, once elected, the strong convictions of Christian Right board members leave them without the sort of political skills necessary to succeed in politics. According to David Berliner, Christian Right board members "may be unable to compromise and to live with educational decisions reflecting a pluralistic democracy keeping separate church and state" (1997, 381). To that end, many argue that once Christian Right candidates are faced with such disappointment, they will retreat back to their private lives and leave the political arena.

This argument is similar to one made by pundits and scholars in the late 1980s, who argued that the Christian Right as a political movement was dead, in light of its apparent lack of success in national politics. Instead, the movement transformed itself by the early 1990s, focusing more energy at cultivating activism at the state and local level of government. Sara Diamond (1998) argues that the movement's adaptability and vast resources, including the use of multiple strategies by multiple groups, have helped make it one of the most salient social movements in the United States.

There is no reason to suspect that Christian Right activism will slow down at the grassroots level. While homeschooling appears to be growing, even promoted by Bob Simonds and other Christian Right leaders, most conservative Christian parents will not be able to afford this option, so they will likely remain concerned about the public schools. New cases involving church and state and the public schools routinely appear in newspaper headlines. Among other issues to arise since the beginning of the new century, debate rages about the teaching of Bible history courses in public schools. The battle regarding evolution is still present as well. In its most recent incarnation, Christian Right activists are pushing for the inclusion of intelligent design theory in science courses, which argues that the creation of life on Earth was not a random event but rather the product of some greater power. In the wake of the Columbine tragedy, Christian Right groups have promoted a new policy called "Hang Ten," to try and place the Ten Commandments or similar documents in public schools. And in the summer of 2002, fierce debates about the role of religion in the public schools emerged throughout the nation after two controversial and seemingly contradictory federal court decisions were handed down. In the Ninth Circuit, appellate judges voted that the recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance in public schools was unconstitutional because it contains the words "under God." Yet, one week later, the Supreme Court upheld the
constitutionality of an Ohio voucher program, which gives government grants to low-income parents to spend at private, parochial schools.

While such cases highlight an inherent tension between church and state in a very religious, yet diverse nation, they also tend to motivate and spur political activism among individuals who both support and oppose such policies. One approach, as this book has examined, is to seek election to school board. The Christian Right has had mixed success in terms of school board elections, just as it has had mixed success with respect to education policy at the state and national levels. But for movement activists, whose strong religious convictions draw them into the political battlefield, their successes and failures may be overridden by the theological beliefs that propel them to take political action in the first place."

[Quelle: Deckman, Melissa M. (Melissa Marie) <1971 - >: School board battles : the Christian right in local politics. -- Washington, D.C. : Georgetown University Press, ©2004. -- xvi, 224 S. : Ill. ; 22 cm.  -- ISBN: 1589010019. -- S. 167 - 174. -- {Wenn Sie HIER klicken, können Sie dieses Buch bei amazon.de bestellen}]

"Christian Right school board candidates

The Christian Right has been involved in education policy debates throughout the 20th century. Unique to Christian Right activism in the 1990s, though, has been the effort by some Christian Right organizations to encourage, recruit, and train conservative Christian candidates to run for school board seats. For example, Citizens for Excellence in Education—a Christian Right group that has focused extensively on local school board elections—claims to have helped elect more than 25,000 candidates to school boards across the nation in the past decade. Critics often accuse the Christian Right of running "stealth campaigns," in which conservative Christian candidates with ties to Christian Right interest groups are coached to hide or downplay such connections before the general public while campaigning on more moderate education platforms. Meanwhile, critics claim that these stealth candidates quietly organize sympathetic voters in conservative churches. Since school board elections are often marked by-low voter turnout, carefully targeted campaigning in local churches can lead to success in such races.

Evidence regarding the frequency and success of such stealth campaigns, however, is mixed. Several cases in Florida, California, Texas, and New Hampshire made national headlines when slates of fundamentalist Christians won school board elections using stealth techniques in 1993 and 1994. Once in office, these newly elected board members voted to make controversial curriculum changes, which led to abstinence-only sex education, prayer in public schools, and the teaching of creationism in biology classes. However, such drastic changes brought considerable media attention to these school districts, and most of these candidates were either recalled or defeated in subsequent elections.

One national study found few if any significant differences between the campaign techniques of Christian Right and non-Christian Right candidates. Although they significantly campaign on more conservative issues than do their non-Christian Right counterparts (such as increasing discipline or raising academic scores), Christian Right candidates shy away from controversial topics such as sex education in their campaigns. Christian Right candidates are no more likely dian non-Christian Right candidates to campaign in churches. Instead, the study found that Christian Right candidates and their non-Christian Right counterparts generally use similar campaign techniques and strategies. The study also found few ties between Christian Right school board candidates and Christian Right groups such as the Christian coalition, despite national media coverage to the contrary. Only 1 percent of Christian Right candidates in the study reported receiving any sort of candidate training from the Christian Coalition or Citizens for Excellence in Education.

One area where Christian Right candidates differ significantly from non-Christian Right candidates, however, is their motivation in running for office. Christian Right candidates are significantly more likely than non-Christian Right candidates to run for religious reasons.

While Christian Right organizations do not have a widespread impact on most school districts, they do have influence in select school districts, particularly those where voters are conservative and tend to share the same values as Christian Right candidates. Further, Christian Right candidates appear to have similar rates of success in their election campaigns: 58 percent of Christian Right candidates in Deckman s study won their elections, compared with 64 percent of non—Christian Right candidates (a difference that is not statistically significant). In addition to candidate training and recruitment, some Christian Right organizations, such as the Christian Coalition and the EAGLE FORUM, assist school board candidates by distributing voter GUIDES that contain candidates' responses to hot-button education issues such as VOUCHERS, creation science, and sex education. In addition, the Christian Right has tried to influence the membership of state boards of education. The Christian Right has had initial success electing or getting members appointed to state boards in Virginia, Texas, and, perhaps most notably, in Kansas, which voted in 1999 to pass new science standards that would reduce the likelihood that evolution would be taught in public high schools. Yet, the actions by the Christian Right-led board drew national headlines and subsequently led to the defeat of three candidates who voted to exclude evolution from the Kansas state science test guidelines in their reelection bids in August 2000.

[Quelle: Melissa M. Deckman (Melissa Marie) <1971 - >. -- In: Encyclopedia of American religion and politics / Paul A. Djupe and Laura R. Olson [eds.].  -- New York : Facts On File, ©2003.  -- xi, 512 S. : Ill. ; 29 cm. -- ISBN 0-8160-4582-8. -- s.v. -- {Wenn Sie HIER klicken, können Sie dieses Buch bei amazon.de bestellen}]

4.1. Schlachtfeld Schulbücher


Ein wichtiges Schlachtfeld ist, welche Schulbücher für den Unterricht zugelassen werden:

"Textbook controversies

School textbooks often touch upon sensitive issues with religious and moral dimensions, a fact that has resulted in controversies about the content of history, language arts, science, and health textbooks throughout the past century. In the 1920s, Christian fundamentalists opposed the teaching of evolution, as espoused in Charles Darwin's Origin of Species, in public schools. Although history best remembers the scopes "monkey" trial in Dayton, Tennessee, as the most important defeat of the fundamentalist crusade against evolution (at least in the court of public opinion), fundamentalists succeeded in influencing the content of many science textbooks. Published by companies that were afraid of the controversy that might ensue and harm their sales, many science textbooks over the next few decades omitted references to evolution.

The "space race" with the Soviet Union in the 1960s led scientists to press for more updated science textbooks, ensuring that evolution was brought back into most science classrooms. Societal pressures in that decade, however, brought other controversial textbook changes. Conservative Christians across the nation protested against health textbooks that adopted a more liberal approach to sex education. The civil rights movement and the women's movement pressured educators to eliminate racial and gender stereotypes from textbooks, which also aggravated conservative Christian activists in school districts around the country. In the best-known textbook controversy of the 1970s, fundamentalist Christians in Kanawha County, West Virginia, objected to new titles proposed for their language arts curriculum in 1974, many of which stressed multicultural themes. One conservative Christian board member in Kanawha charged that many of the proposed books were morbid and depressing, especially those written by black authors. Moreover, fundamentalist parents believed that these new books promoted moral relativism and situation ethics that challenged their religious beliefs. The controversy led to school boycotts and widespread violence, with the result that many fundamentalist parents removed their children from the public schools. Instead, parents opted to homeschool or send their children to newly developed Christian academies, a trend that increased dramatically over the next two decades in other school districts.

Since the 1980s, conservative Christians have fought against the encroachment of "secular humanism" in textbooks. One prominent Christian Right group, Educational Research Analysts (founded by Mel Gabler and Norma Gabler), review thousands of textbooks for secular humanism and other themes offensive to them. The Gablers insist that secular humanism is a religion "with an anti-biblical, anti-God bent" that "worships the creature instead of the Creator." Christian Right leaders believe that liberal educators have deliberately brought secular humanism into the classroom to undermine the beliefs and values that they hold sacred. In two separate federal lawsuits, fundamentalist parents unsuccessfully sued their school districts over the content of school textbooks. The courts ruled that exposure to textbooks that offended the religious beliefs of some families (Mozert v. Hawkins County Board of Education 1987) and the use of textbooks that purportedly advanced "secular humanism" (Smith v. Mobile County Board of School Commissioners 1987) did not violate any First Amendment rights.

In more recent years, religious conservatives have complained that textbooks discriminate against them by deleting many references to religion from history and social studies, denying children the opportunity to learn how religion has affected our nation's development. Calls for book censorship or banning by parents for religious reasons are still heard. Between 1990 and 1999, the American Library Association (ALA) recorded more than 5,000 challenges to materials in schools, school libraries, and public libraries for reasons including sexually explicit material, offensive language, and occult themes. The ALA estimates, however, that for each challenge reported, as many as four or five remain unreported."

[Quelle: Melissa M. Deckman (Melissa Marie) <1971 - >. -- In: Encyclopedia of American religion and politics / Paul A. Djupe and Laura R. Olson [eds.].  -- New York : Facts On File, ©2003.  -- xi, 512 S. : Ill. ; 29 cm. -- ISBN 0-8160-4582-8. -- s.v. -- {Wenn Sie HIER klicken, können Sie dieses Buch bei amazon.de bestellen}]

Der Schulbuchkrieg in Kanawha County 1974:


Abb.: Lage von Kanawha County (nicht maßstabgetreu!)
[Bildquelle: http://www.charleston-wv.com/pdf/bidcomap.pdf. -- Zugriff am 2005-04-19]

"1974: A year of debate : County still feeling impact of textbook controversy

Rebecca Catalanello

Daily Mail staff

Tuesday September 07, 1999; 07:57 PM

School buses are riddled with sniper bullets, gas lines are cut, windshields broken, and bomb threats disrupt schools daily. Students, parents, custodians, secretaries, bus drivers, teachers, board members, judges, and law enforcement officers continue to receive personal threats of all kinds. Teachers and custodians must remove nails and broken glass from their school parking lots each morning, and several school buildings have been damaged by early morning firebombs and dynamite.

One minister has prayed publicly for the deaths of three board members.

Workers have been shot and their cars destroyed when crossing picket lines. Coal mines, city transportation, major industrial plants and businesses have been shut down for varying periods of time. Court injunctions have been issued, violators jailed, fined and released, then jailed, fined, and released again. The state treasurer has estimated a revenue loss to date of $50,000,000.

Ken Young, Kanawha County associate superintendent, writing for the Phi Delta Kappan, December 1974

 

Some say 1974 was the year that changed Kanawha County forever.

Schools closed. More than 10,000 miners went on strike. Hundreds of pickets with signs and children in tow stormed school property and school board meetings.National media swarmed the valley, writing about how a peaceful river community could suddenly turn as paranoid and unsure as a third-world country in uprise. Textbooks were the battlefield.

Language arts textbooks had been recommended for adoption by a committee of five educators and another of 25 lay people. But when board member Alice Moore got a look at some of the books, she raised the issue that sparked a war Kanawha County hasn't forgotten. She described the proposed new textbooks as "trashy, filthy, one- sided."

Moore's belief system was contrary to the aim of the textbook committee to comply with state requirements that the titles reflect a multiethnic society. So she raised objections and, eventually, others raised their fists, their guns, their signs and their voices to object to what they considered a threat to the minds of school children.

"I'm not asking for something anti-black, but we have got to have something from both sides," Moore was quoted saying in a May 24 Daily Mail story. "I want to see something patriotic in those books."

Moore became perhaps the dominant personality to come out of the Textbook Controversy. The articulate, dark-haired preacher's wife was elected to the school board on a strong conservative platform.

"She was very bright," recalled fellow board member Russ Isaacs. "For a woman with very little formal education, she was bright and articulate . . . she had followers who were almost fanatic."

She served on the school board through 1980, when she was practically forced to resign her seat because others objected to her maintaining the position after she had already moved with her husband to Columbus. For months she kept the seat, arguing that though she lived elsewhere, the property she owned in the county qualified her to continue serving on the board.

Other leaders emerged from the battle as well.

The local Revs. Avis Hill, Marvin Horan, Charles Quigley and Ezra Graley of Nitro emerged as outspoken leaders against the textbooks -- leading rallies, prayer meetings and protests. Hill and Graley served time in jail for defying a court order. Horan was sentenced to three years for conspiracy to blow up two elementary schools, a crime for which many say he was framed and for which he still claims his innocence.

"This protest was not a preplanned thing," Horan said from his North Carolina home. "It happened overnight."

After a few months of controversy, Horan said he had to bow out of helping lead the protest due to exhaustion. "It just erupted and, unless you were there, it's hard to imagine how volatile it was," said Kemp Melton, Kanawha County sheriff at the time and later Charleston mayor. He recalled the number of "prominent people from what you might even call . . . liberal families," who actually begged to be arrested, hoping to have their names connected with the anti-textbook cause.

The event provided a platform for others who would become national leaders in today's strong religiously oriented right-wing conservatism, but what it did to a local community and leaders has not gone away.

Elk resident Doug Stump was elected to the board just before the controversy broke. Though not able to vote and officially take office until board President Albert Anson Jr. resigned that October, Stump attended the meetings and quickly gained a reputation for vacillating from one side to the next. When the vote came, though, he voted to keep the books in the schools. "I would listen to both sides and both side thought I was favoring them," Stump recalled. At one board meeting, Stump was physically attacked by protesters. His family received threats. His home was under police protection. And even as adults, Stump said, his five children are still affected by the things that were said and done during the controversy.

As sheriff, Melton walked the line between enforcing the law and allowing people to express their beliefs without being harassed. Charleston police officers drove buses out of bus garages where the pickets were thick and in force. A janitor at Smith Transfer Corp. in Belle shot at a group of protesters as he tried to break through the picket line to get to work. One person was injured and the janitor was badly beaten. A day later, a leader of "Concerned Citizens For Education" turned himself in after shooting and injuring a United Parcel Service truck driver who was turned away from his depot by textbook protesters. About 45,000 students stayed home from school the first week of class while up to 1,000 people picketed mines, schools, bus garages, some even setting up barricades. Cabin Creek Elementary was dynamited and Campbells Creek Elementary was fire-bombed. Seventeen people were arrested for blocking a bus garage. Sticks of dynamite were discovered under bridges, near houses and in schools. Fifteen sticks of dynamite were set off under the gas meter at the school board office after most people had left. One person was injured.

Charlie Loeb, now a Charleston lawyer, was a senior at George Washington High School during the controversy. Loeb was asked to serve as a student representative on the 18-member Textbook Review Committee, a committee composed of people from all sides of the debate and the community. He said that while in school, he felt rather safe. It was the committee meetings that instilled fear. For several weeks, the committee members would weave their way through thick crowds of angry pickets who gathered outside the Board of Education building at 200 Elizabeth St. Once inside it was a different world. Loeb recalls a calm dialogue among committee members. "I remember it was a fabulous experience sitting there -- people were very polite and let others speak their piece," Loeb said.

The textbook committee ended with a compromise. Parents objecting to the textbooks could respond in letters sent home that they did not want their children to be instructed using the material. Today, Horan said he would change one thing.

"The regret I have -- the biggest regret I have -- is that we the people, the parents, could have won this. We compromised with the system," he said. "If I had it to do over again, I never would have given an inch. You can never compromise with the enemy."

Horan believes recent school violence and other youth problems stem back to the very thing he and his supporters were fighting -- changes in curriculum that he believes did away with morals in schools.

"Curriculum changed and that changed our society," he said.

Many agree the controversy forever changed the way Kanawha County school board meetings are conducted and attended. "I think people are more watchful than they were," said current school board member Betty Jarvis, a teacher at Charleston High School during the controversy.

"Before, they just thought the board was out there representing them, taking care of their business. Now, people are more alert. A minority is not afraid of coming and challenging things that they think are wrong for their children."

Isaacs said people who at one time might have considered running for the school board no longer consider it as a result of the controversy.

The school board has been the center of intense public and media scrutiny. Waves of board members like Jarvis, who are often suspicious of the intentions and actions of school administration, come and go. The struggle for the "people" to have a say in how the schools are run is a common rallying cry for school board candidates.

"Now . . . wherever I go, I can't even go out on the street without people asking, ‘Why are they really doing this?' . . . They dig in now and have thoughts that they didn't have before -- thoughts of a possible hidden agenda."

The memories still haunt the people who were there. And not many want to think about it now, 25 years later. "It's just something I want to erase from my mind," a family member of one of the former school board members said, not wanting to be named.

One thing people like Loeb and Melton remark about again and again is that the Textbook Controversy brought about the realization that even the most solid communities, things can change in an instant. Friends can become adversaries. Neighbors become strangers. Things unravel. But in the midst of threats and passion and seething anger, Kanawha County held together. Local citizens drew up a compromise and local schools came together during a difficult period and continued to teach their students. No one was killed. And some say good things resulted.

After the controversy, teachers like Andrew Jackson Junior High teacher Margaret Calwell said teachers felt stripped of their power -- uncertain whether anything they did in the classroom might open them up to unfair or harsh scrutiny. Capital High School was designed with the specific intention of changing that, empowering its teachers within the classroom.

And the only journalist in the state to win a Pulitzer Prize , J.D. Maurice of the Daily Mail, did so as a result of his editorials on the controversy. He wrote:

"In good and bad cause, this confrontation is becoming more and more common. And when it degenerates into a power struggle it is also more and more common just to suspend the educational program while the issues are kicked around.

"As school patrons and taxpayers hope to retain any control over education of their children and the expenditure of public funds, they cannot consent to this erosion of their authority. Once they do, the character and quality of public education pass to other interests who, whatever their cause and program, need not respond at all to the public interest."

Controversial textbooks

The list of language arts textbooks that were considered for adoption in 1974 was large and expansive, including 325 books altogether.

The basic textbooks series were:

  • Communicating," D.C. Heath Publishing Co. -- for use in all elementary schools
  • "Dynamics of Language," D.C. Heath Publishing Co. -- for use by about 80 percent of students grades 7- 12
  • "Contemporary English," Silver Burdett Publishing Co. -- for use by about 20 percent of students grades 7-12

The supplemental titles were:

  • "Language of Man Series," McDougal, Littell and Co.
  • "Interaction," Houghton Mifflin Co.
  • "Breakthrough," Allyn and Bacon Inc.
  • "Man Series," McDougal, Littell and Co.

Also:

  • "Lord of the Flies" by William Golding
  • "Paradise Lost" by John Milton
  • "The Great Gatsby" by F. Scott Fitzgerald
  • "The Old Man and the Sea" by Ernest Hemingway
  • "The Crucible" by Arthur Miller
  • "The Good Earth" by Pearl Buck
  • "Crime and Punishment" by Fyodor Dostoevsky
  • "The Iliad" by Homer
  • "Animal Farm" by George Orwell
     

© Copyright 2005 Charleston Daily Mail

[Quelle: http://www.dailymail.com/static/specialsections/lookingback/lb09071.htm. -- Zugriff am 2005-0-19]


5. Zweite Option: Weg von den öffentlichen Schulen


Father, bless our school today;
Be in all we do and say;
Be in every song we sing,
Every prayer to Thee we bring.

Jesus, well belovèd Son,
May Thy will by us be done;
Come and meet with us today;
Teach us, Lord, Thyself, we pray.

Holy Spirit, mighty power,
Consecrate this Lord’s day hour;
Unto us Thine unction give;
Touch our souls that we may live.

Sunday-School Hymnal
(St. Louis, Missouri: Concordia Publishing House, 1912)

    Klicken Sie hier, um "Father bless..." zu hören
Quelle der midi-Datei: http://www.cyberhymnal.org/htm/f/a/fatbless.htm. -- Zugriff am 2005-05-14

"Exodus Mandate is a Christian ministry to encourage and assist Christian families to leave Pharaoh's school system (i.e. government schools) for the Promised Land of Christian schools or home schooling. It is our prayer and hope that a fresh obedience by Christian families in educating their children according to Biblical mandates will prove to be a key for the revival of our families, our churches and our nation."

[Quelle: http://www.exodusmandate.org/info_get_involved.htm. -- Zugriff am 2005-04-01]

Ein Manifest des "Weg von den öffentlichen Schulen!" ist das Buch:


Abb.: Einbandtitel

Moore, E. Ray <Jr.>: Let my children go : why parents must remove their children from public schools NOW. -- Columbia, SC : Gilead Media, ©2002. -- 352 S. -- ISBN 1931600163. -- {Wenn Sie HIER klicken, können Sie dieses Buch bei amazon.de bestellen}

Zu E. Ray Moore siehe: http://www.exodusmandate.org/. -- Zugriff am 2005-04-01

Darin schreibt E. Ray Moore:

"OUR MISSION AS CHRISTIAN EDUCATORS

It is important to stress, then, that we are not trying to reform the public schools. Nor are we trying, in any sense, to "take them over." Our mission as Christian educators must be nothing less than complete independence from the state-sponsored educational system. We believe that carrying forth this mission could be an important strategy in reversing our present moral and cultural decline and restoring the moral foundation of this nation.

This is, of course, an ambitious order. It must be approached prayerfully, with God's Word, the Bible, firmly before us. Most Christians, like most Americans generally, are accustomed to public schools and just consider them part of the landscape of American life. This is because of the dominant paradigm, which takes state-sponsored education for granted as necessary.

Many Christians compartmentalize their faith; that is, they don't allow Scripture to address certain areas. Still, Scriptural Law is written to be obeyed. One area Christians have historically and tragically compartmentalized has been the education of their children, so we will take a look at specific Biblical instructions (in Deuteronomy, Matthew's Gospel and elsewhere) regarding the education of children.

What we will discover is that God assigned responsibility for education to the family, with assistance from the Church. When secular humanism came to be the dominant

worldview among the educational intelligentsia of our society and when the necessity of state-sponsored education became the dominant paradigm, even among Christians, the government—federal, state and local—was able to usurp the responsibility of the family and the Church. The government, however, has no God-ordained role in education any more than it has a constitutional role.

ABANDONING GOVERNMENT SCHOOLS

We therefore advocate, with solid Scriptural foundation, that Christians abandon rather than attempt to reform public schools. We believe our call to Christians to leave public schools in favor of home schooling and private Christian schooling is based on Scripture, the historical American constitutional model, sound, Bible-based educational philosophy, and also free-market principles. We will not convince Congress with this argument, or even local school boards."

[Quelle: Moore, E. Ray <Jr.>: Let my children go : why parents must remove their children from public schools NOW. -- Columbia, SC : Gilead Media, ©2002. -- 352 S. -- ISBN 1931600163. -- S. 20f. -- {Wenn Sie HIER klicken, können Sie dieses Buch bei amazon.de bestellen}]

"WHEN CHRISTIAN CHILDREN ARE SUBJECTED TO THE SECULAR HUMANIST WORLDVIEW

Nehemiah Institute President Daniel J. Smithwick's essay "Teachers, Curriculum and Control: A World of Difference in Public and Christian Schools" [http://www2.whidbey.net/jmboyes/teachers.htm. -- Zugriff am 2005-04-04] discusses in detail what happens when Christian parents turn their children over to education in K-12 schools dominated by secular humanism.

The result is that a few hours of Bible study and education per week—perhaps fewer than that, if their only real exposure to Christian education is in Sunday School—cannot possibly overcome the net effects of 30 or more hours of humanistic propaganda during the week.

Thus, too many children turn away from their Christian upbringing as soon as they get to college. They quit attending church. Often, they turn their backs on their upbringing altogether and even start engaging in such un-Christian behaviors as out-of-wedlock sex, and in many cases even living with a boyfriend or girlfriend. They may begin drinking or taking illegal drugs.

Having no actual convictions to guide their everyday conduct has made them vulnerable to losing their former faith and left them with no motivation to obey its rules.

Smithwick's strength is his awareness of worldviews and his realization that every educational system embodies a worldview that affects the way a subject matter is organized and taught.

He goes further by observing how worldviews shape students. Worldviews may enter the classroom having been brought in by the teacher; they may be incorporated into the curriculum, including which texts are selected, what kinds of assignments are made, what kinds of tests are given or they may be developed in the context of control by the federal government.

With every federal dollar, strings are attached, and these strings become instruments through which the agenda of the elites becomes the agenda of Pharaoh's school system. This agenda has promoted an exclusively secular, anti-Christian worldview.

Since Christianity may not be under attack explicitly but only implicitly and very subtly, it may not be obvious to Christian parents who are not monitoring their children's education closely. Their children are, therefore, vulnerable to what might be called creeping secularization of their overall outlook on life—the sort of disconnected values that leads them to abandon their Christian upbringing as simply irrelevant when they get to college and beyond.

HOW YOUTH ARE LOST TO HUMANISM

Smithwick observes that there are ways of determining which worldview is being promoted, such as what he calls the PEERS test (PEERS: Politics, Economics, Education, Religion, Social Issues).

This test, administered to students from Christian homes, will indicate the extent to which a worldview other than Biblical theism has permeated their education and may eventually permeate their lives, leading them to secular preoccupations and philosophies of life.

The results of the PEERS test show that youth from Christian homes who attend government schools frequently do not retain a consistent Christian worldview against the onslaught of humanistic doctrine and preoccupations.

Some teachers bring secular humanism into the classroom by virtue of their training as specialists in a technical vocation and masters of teaching methodology. In fairness to teachers, most are probably not even aware that they are doing so. That is one reason for the slow rot has occurred in much of the system.

What about teachers who are committed Christians? Even they are not immune, because most school districts require some kind of certification or other kind of creden-tialing. This can only be obtained from a university or some other educational entity that is part of the humanistic educational edifice that has been established everywhere, requiring a largely invisible set of litmus tests.

Christian teachers operating in Pharaoh's school system are simply not aware of the degree of secularization involved in their own education, and not aware to what extent they are aiding an anti-Christian system.

In the area of curriculum, education is dispensed to students in the form of government-approved texts, standardized lesson plans, group projects, and so on.

Largely, students are not allowed to pursue individual interests or strengths, or they are pacified with athletics and extra-curricular activities. Rewards for pursuing individual interests or strengths are scant and temporary (e.g., a prize won, or not won, at a science fair). The result is a gradual stilling of students' innate cognitive abilities as well as their faith.

They come to view school as mostly an effort to make it from test to test, and what is memorized for the test is quickly forgotten when the test is over.

For bright students in particular, this induces a cynical view of school, and since school may be their only extensive exposure to books and learning, their cynicism is transferred to the whole enterprise of education and to the use of their God-given, cognitive abilities. The secular curriculum has done its damage: By harming students' cognitive abilities and undermining their incentive to engage in independent learning, it has succeeded in preparing young people for a lifetime of drone-like behavior which services the global economy. This is the ultimate purpose of the school-to-work movement."

[Quelle: Moore, E. Ray <Jr.>: Let my children go : why parents must remove their children from public schools NOW. -- Columbia, SC : Gilead Media, ©2002. -- 352 S. -- ISBN 1931600163. -- S. 107 - 110. -- {Wenn Sie HIER klicken, können Sie dieses Buch bei amazon.de bestellen}]

"THE BIBLE'S GREATEST PARENT: JEHONADAB

We have already seen how Scripture provides instructions to fathers who bear the primary burden for their children's Christian education and upbringing (Ephesians 6:4 again, for example).

It might also help if we can answer the question: In Biblical terms, who is the ideal parent?

If we can answer this question by pointing to a specific person, whom Scripture describes and whose successes are explained in Biblical terms, then we have the immediate advantage of having a role model to follow, someone Christian parents today can study and learn to emulate.

In fact, there is such a person. His name is Jehonadab, and his story can be found in the Old Testament book of Second Kings. His is hardly a household name, but by integrating a number of Biblical texts, there emerges a clear picture of why he was a successful father—in the Biblical sense of success which places God first.

WHAT CAN WE LEARN FROM JEHONADAB?

Jehonadab is important because he cracked the code, so to speak, on how to transmit faith to his children and family in such a way that his children would transmit it to their children, and so on, so that his faith would be passed down from generation to generation. He did this where much better known Biblical men and women failed. David, for example, was a successful king and military leader, but not the best father.

Men and women can be sincere Christians, but may still flounder badly as parents, unable to pass down love for and devotion to Christ to their children. What can we learn from Jehonadab?

In fact, we see four primary qualities in Jehonadab's life that made him the greatest father in the Bible.

First, Jehonadab had a great zeal for the holiness of God (2 Kings 10:15-28). In him, we see a man who was consumed by a zeal for the holiness of God in his nation and among God's people. He assisted in the great reformation started under Elijah and concluded under Jehu.

[2. Könige 10

15Und da er von dannen zog, fand er Jonadab, den Sohn Rechabs, der ihm begegnete. Und er grüßte ihn und sprach zu ihm: Ist dein Herz richtig wie mein Herz mit deinem Herzen? Jonadab sprach: Ja. Ist's also, so gib mir deine Hand! Und er gab ihm seine Hand! Und er ließ ihn zu sich auf den Wagen sitzen
16und sprach: Komm mit mir und siehe meinen Eifer um den HERRN! Und sie führten ihn mit ihm auf seinem Wagen.
17Und da er gen Samaria kam, schlug er alles, was übrig war von Ahab zu Samaria, bis dass er ihn vertilgte nach dem Wort des HERRN, das er zu Elia geredet hatte.
18Und Jehu versammelt alles Volk und ließ ihnen sagen: Ahab hat Baal wenig gedient; Jehu will ihm besser dienen.
19So lasst nun rufen alle Propheten Baals, alle seine Knechte und alle seine Priester zu mir, dass man niemand vermisse; denn ich habe ein großes Opfer dem Baal zu tun. Wen man vermissen wird, der soll nicht leben. Aber Jehu tat solches mit Hinterlist, dass er die Diener Baals umbrächte.
20Und Jehu sprach: Heiligt dem Baal das Fest! Und sie ließen es ausrufen.
21Auch sandte Jehu in ganz Israel und ließ alle Diener Baals kommen, dass niemand übrig war, der nicht gekommen wäre. Und sie gingen in das Haus Baals, dass das Haus Baals voll ward an allen Enden.
22Da sprach er zu denen, die über das Kleiderhaus waren: Bringet allen Dienern Baals Kleider heraus! Und sie brachten die Kleider heraus.
23Und Jehu ging in das Haus Baal mit Jonadab, dem Sohn Rechabs, und sprach zu den Dienern Baals: Forschet und sehet zu, dass nicht hier unter euch sei jemand von des HERRN Dienern, sondern Baals Diener allein!
24Und da sie hineinkamen Opfer und Brandopfer zu tun, bestellte sich Jehu außen achtzig Mann und sprach: Wenn der Männer jemand entrinnt, die ich unter eure Hände gebe, so soll für seine Seele dessen Seele sein.
25Da er nun die Brandopfer vollendet hatte, sprach Jehu zu den Trabanten und Rittern: Geht hinein und schlagt jedermann; lasst niemand herausgehen! Und sie schlugen sie mit der Schärfe des Schwerts. Und die Trabanten und Ritter warfen sie weg und gingen zur Stadt des Hauses Baals
26und brachte heraus die Säulen in dem Hause Baal und verbrannten sie
27und zerbrachen die Säule Baals samt dem Hause Baals und machten heimliche Gemächer daraus bis auf diesen Tag.
28Also vertilgte Jehu den Baal aus Israel;

[Luther-Bibel 1912]]
 

While not an absolute and pure reformation so that the proper worship of Jehovah God was completely restored, it nevertheless purged the worship of Baal from the Northern Kingdom permanently.

WHY WE SHOULDN'T TOLERATE TOLERANCE

This was a remarkable event, and we see that Jehonadab was the principal aide to Jehu in this endeavor. While their actions may seem a bit harsh by New Testament standards, the example of Jehu and Jehonadab do model the correct attitude to have toward false doctrine and religious practices that diminish and challenge the name of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

Many Christians today have become "religious inclusivists" willing to tolerate the many new gods and cults that have proliferated in America under secular humanism, so long as they themselves may worship Jesus Christ freely.

They say, "Let Jesus take His place among the gods and religions of our culture, just as long as He gets equal time and a little respect."

If Jehonadab were here today, we would be very uncomfortable with him. He would not endorse this practice of tolerance and pluralism that has become a blight to the modern church. He would not like what he sees in modern evangelical Christianity or society, or how easily we Christians put up with false gods of the New Age and other idols around us. Jehonadab was an "exclusionist," and had no use for the worship of Baal.

In a similar vein, Paul spoke of "casting down arguments and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ" (2 Corinthians 10:5).

From 2 Kings 10 we don't have much in the way of a description of Jehonadab's immediate family life. But we can surmise that he didn't have any "Baal Barbie dolls" around the house or any "Baal rock music" groups playing from the local radio station. Jehonadab and the followers of Baal just plain didn't see eye to eye, and he would have taken care of any evidence of "Baalism" creeping into his house and family life through the side door from the various cultural and media outlets of his time. His children learned that Dad didn't like Baal, that people who followed Baal were unsavory; and they learned from their earliest days to emulate these choices.

Second, Jehonadab believed the word of the Lord through the Prophets. Jehonadab would have been a good Bible student for his day. Several prophets had spoken the word of the Lord predicting the destruction of the Northern Kingdom starting with Abijah (1 Kings 14:15,16).

Then, along came Elijah a few years later and predicted the complete destruction of the family of Ahab and Jezebel (1 Kings 21:17-24). Perhaps Jehonadab had been a youth, one of many like himself, who gathered on top of Mt. Carmel that day, seeing Elijah's challenge to the prophets of Baal in direct battle and his victory.

Perhaps he saw the fire of God fall and the entire nation break before the Lord falling on their faces, crying out, "The Lord, He is God, The Lord, He is God!" He had only to see something like that one time in his life to know that Baal was a defeated god.

He would finish the job much later that Elijah had begun that day. Also, Elijah had prophesied that Jehu would be King of Israel. Jehonadab had plenty of Scripture and many words from God. He would take steps and set standards for his family accordingly.

He was willing to risk a confrontation and battle with the family of Ahab and assist Jehu because he knew the promises of God would be fulfilled. Strikingly, he "believed the prophets," not merely had knowledge of the prophets. Many people believe the word of the Lord but do not live accordingly. Jehonadab knew that the Northern Kingdom would soon disappear, and he prepared his family accordingly."

[Quelle: Moore, E. Ray <Jr.>: Let my children go : why parents must remove their children from public schools NOW. -- Columbia, SC : Gilead Media, ©2002. -- 352 S. -- ISBN 1931600163. -- S. 125 - 128. -- {Wenn Sie HIER klicken, können Sie dieses Buch bei amazon.de bestellen}]


5.1. Christliche Privatschulen



Abb.: Klassenzimmer, Lee's Summit Community Christian School, Montana
[Bildquelle: http://www.lsccs.org/. -- Zugriff am 2005-04-02] 

Das Buch von

Peshkin, Alan: God's choice : the total world of a fundamentalist Christian school. -- Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 1986.  -- x, 349 S. ; 24 cm. -- ISBN 0226661989

gibt einen ausgezeichneten Einblick in christlich fundamentalistische Schulen. Das ganze "geistige" Klima unterscheidet sich nicht von der totalitär-christlichen Atmosphäre in Jesuitenschulen wie z.B. der ehemaligen Stella Matutina in Feldkirch (Vorarlberg), die mein Mann von 1954 bis 1962 besuchte.

Folgende Originalzitat, die Peshkin wiedergibt, mögen diese Atmosphäre illustrieren:

Ein Schulleiter:

"Our classes here reflect the word of God. We believe that history, for example, is his story, the unfolding of the word of Jesus Christ on the center stage of the world. A man trying to write a history textbook that presents Jesus Christ as just another historical figure has no concept of real truth. We don't teach that way in our history classes. Math is a study of orderliness. The Word of God says, "Let everything be done decently and in order." Try to keep a checkbook sometimes without using some order and organization. Science is an understanding of God's handiwork. Men deny the Word of God and try to make us believe that all that we see about us has come about just through a series of events. Sometimes, the general term of evolution is used to apply to all this, but the Word of God is different on that. It clearly teaches that man was created from nothing: "Out of nothing," God states. The evolutionist says that the dinosaur and man were epochs of time apart, but Dr. Henry Morris, a born-again man, a Christian man, has a picture in one of his books you won't find in the average, secular high school biology book. It shows in the same petrified stream bed a footprint of a man and a footprint of a large dinosaur. So these creatures were on earth the same time as man. The evolutionists deny that, but here's a photograph that clearly shows the untruth of the evolutionary position. You'll get that kind of information in our school; you'll see that kind of thing emphasized.

Now, we don't have Christian textbooks in every area; they aren't available. But the textbook is not the key. The teacher is the key. So we insist that you respect your teachers, learn a proper attitude toward authority. Your teacher is the key for you getting the truth here, not the textbook but your teacher."

[Quelle: Peshkin, Alan: God's choice : the total world of a fundamentalist Christian school. -- Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 1986.  -- x, 349 S. ; 24 cm. -- ISBN 0226661989. -- S. 50]

Aus dem Anstellungsvertrag für Lehrer:

"I affirm that I am a born-again Christian believing the Bible to be the inspired Word of God without contradiction or error in its original languages. I believe that every Christian should be separated from worldly habits."

[Quelle: Peshkin, Alan: God's choice : the total world of a fundamentalist Christian school. -- Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 1986.  -- x, 349 S. ; 24 cm. -- ISBN 0226661989. -- S. 97]

Ein Studierender:

"As Americans we think that democracy is the best form of government—but it is not. The most perfect form of government is total monarchy. Look to the end of time. Who and what type of government will there be in heaven? The only king will be God. The only problem that the United States would have is to get a good monarch that would rule for the people, not for himself."

[Quelle: Peshkin, Alan: God's choice : the total world of a fundamentalist Christian school. -- Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 1986.  -- x, 349 S. ; 24 cm. -- ISBN 0226661989. -- S. 186]

Eine Schulbibliothekarin:

"Some of the science books, if they have too much evolution or are too slanted in certain places, but they have a lot of good qualities in them, then I take them to Mr. Kruger [the science teacher]. I let him pick out what he can use.

I can't deface encyclopedias. No one's told me I had to, so I just don't do anything with them. If students find a picture in them, well, that's an encyclopedia; you have them in your home. Everybody buys the same encyclopedias. I don't see why I have to go through them. It isn't that you're giving 'em to read for pleasure; they're there for finding facts. And the facts are there. What the evolutionists think about, that's there. If someone wants to write a book report on it, it's there. The Almanac, the World Almanac, the Guinness Book of Records, and those, I don't change them at all. I don't even think about those.

I look for evolution. That's one of the things. I look for swear words. We take those out. I found a double page of monkeys developing into man and, of course, we don't approve of that at all, so I just sealed the pages together and it didn't bother the reading on either side. Then, in the beginning, there was a section on evolution. I bracketed that in black letters and wrote EVOLUTION across it so that anybody reading knows that it is evolution, rather than destroying the whole book, because a lot of it was good. If I find a naked person, I draw a little bathing suit on them or I put a little dress on, but just in a regular book that doesn't have anything to do with art. But in art, art is art, and if you find a person without any clothes on, that's what they drew. We had one storybook where the kids were all bathing in the nude. It was not anything, so I just put bathing suits on them.

We just put out twenty new books on the value of honesty and that sort of thing. I had each of the lower-grade teachers take four and read them through to see if they contained anything we should worry about. One of the books sort of made light of discipline and so we, instead of having a little frowning boy in there, you know, that had been punished and he didn't accept it, we put a sticker on there with a smiling face.

Then, of course, if there's anti-God, anything that's against God, those books we don't even put on the shelf. You see, it doesn't go with our philosophy. If something came through that sounded like it was for ERA, I wouldn't have that on the shelf because we're very much against that."

[Quelle: Peshkin, Alan: God's choice : the total world of a fundamentalist Christian school. -- Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 1986.  -- x, 349 S. ; 24 cm. -- ISBN 0226661989. -- S. 262f.]

Zum Beispiel: Schulhymne der Tri-City Christian Academy, A ministry of Christian Reconstruction in Somersworth, New Hampshire, USA.  [Webpräsenz: http://www.tccc-tcca.org. -- Zugriff am 2005-04-05]

Lead on, O King eternal,
The day of march has come;
Henceforth in fields of conquest
Thy tents shall be our home.
Through days of preparation
Thy grace has made us strong;
And now, O King eternal,
We lift our battle song.

Lead on, O King eternal,
Till sin’s fierce war shall cease,
And holiness shall whisper
The sweet amen of peace.
For not with swords’ loud clashing,
Nor roll of stirring drums;
With deeds of love and mercy
The heavenly kingdom comes.

Lead on, O King eternal,
We follow, not with fears,
For gladness breaks like morning
Where’er Thy face appears.
Thy cross is lifted over us,
We journey in its light;
The crown awaits the conquest;
Lead on, O God of might.

Text: Ernest Warburton Shurtleff (1862-1917), 1888
Melodie: Henry Thomas Smart (1813-1879), 1836

Klicken Sie hier, um "Lead on..." zu hören

[Quelle der midi-Datei: http://www.scriptures.hillbillyhousewife.com/midi_ohbecareful.htm. -- Zugriff am 2005-04-03]


5.1.1. Bible schools/institutes/colleges


"With the proliferation of such institutions across the North American landscape, from Florida to Alaska, from Texas to Alberta, the Bible-school movement constitutes an intriguing chapter in the history of twentieth-century evangelicalism. Bible schools were an important component of the evangelical subculture, this network of institutions—churches, denominations, Bible camps, colleges, seminaries, publishing houses, mission societies—that evangelicals built in earnest after 1925. The subculture made possible a wholesale retreat from the larger culture. Evangelicals could socialize almost entirely among friends at their churches, send contributions to trustworthy evangelical agencies and missions, purchase reading materials from Christian bookstores, and send their children to Bible camps in the summers, to a Bible institute for higher education, and, perhaps, to an evangelical seminary for further professional training and a career in "full-time Christian service." This sense of envelopment within the cocoon of the evangelical subculture held strong appeal for evangelicals who believed that the larger culture was inherently both corrupted and corrupting.

In the last several decades, however, and especially since the mid-1970s, as evangelicals began to emerge, albeit tentatively, from their self-imposed exile, this suspicion of "the world" has dissipated considerably. The antipathy toward the broader culture so characteristic of evangelicals in the twenties and thirties has gradually given way to ambivalence. Even as many evangelicals retain the old rhetoric of opposition to the world, they are eager to appropriate many of that world's standards of success. This explains, for instance, the proliferation of prosperity theology in evangelical circles, the doctrine that God eagerly bestows the accouterments of middle-class materialism—automobiles, houses, furs, jewelry—upon the faithful. This ambivalence also impels many evangelical pastors to seek advanced degrees, both for the satisfaction of being addressed as "doctor" and also to brandish a title that, they believe, confers status within the larger culture. Whereas once evangelicals intentionally spurned higher education as a species of arrogance and compromise with the world, so many now openly court such approval that we are rapidly approaching the point where evangelicalism can claim more "doctors" than it can people.

Bible institutes have also fallen prey to these broader cultural forces within evangelicalism. With the attenuation of dualistic attitudes—us versus the world, righteousness versus unrighteousness—the image of the Bible institute as a kind of fortress against the assaults of intellectual liberalism no longer resonates as it once did. Many Bible institutes, accordingly, have undertaken their own quests for respectability. The patterns, in fact, are remarkably consistent. With an eye toward accreditation so that it can offer a bachelor's degree instead of merely a diploma, the school will shore up its offerings in the sciences and the liberal arts. This has the inevitable effect of de-emphasizing classes in the Bible, which had been at the core of its curriculum. At some point in the process the parietal rules ease a bit, and the name changes from "Bible school" or "Bible institute" to "Bible college," then simply to "college," and sometimes, with the introduction of advanced degrees, to "university." There are numerous examples of this phenomenon, but none illustrates the process more completely than Biola in southern California. The name Biola originally was an acronym for Bible Institute of Los Angeles, but the school changed its name to Biola College in 1949 and in 1981 adopted the moniker Biola University. School officials are now so intent on putting aside the institution's Bible-school connotations that they insist that Biola is no longer an acronym but a proper name.

To be sure, there are still many Bible institutes in North America that cling to their heritage as separatist schools. Prairie Bible Institute comes to mind, as does Taccoa Falls Bible College, Alaska Bible College, and many others. Moody Bible Institute in Chicago is probably the best known and the most prominent of the Bible schools, but for every Bible institute that remains, there are two or three that have evolved into liberal arts colleges or even universities."

[Quelle: Balmer, Randall Herbert <1954 - >: Mine eyes have seen the glory : a journey into the evangelical subculture in America. -- 3rd ed.  -- New York : Oxford University Press, ©2000.  -- xviii, 327 S. ; 21 cm.  -- ISBN: 0195131800. -- S. 133f. -- {Wenn Sie HIER klicken, können Sie dieses Buch bei amazon.de bestellen}]


5.2. School vouchers — Gutscheine statt staatlicher Schulen


"An education voucher, commonly called a school voucher, is a certificate by which parents are given the ability to pay for the education of their children at a school of their choice, rather than the public school to which they were assigned. These vouchers would be paid for using tax revenues.

Those in favor of school choice argue that they should be permitted to spend their tax dollars at the educational facility of their choosing, allowing parents to be able to choose which school they want their children to attend. In addition, it is promised that this will allow competition between schools, improving the quality of schools overall. Some studies support the hypothesis of reduced racial and economic segregation through the abolishment of territorial-based school allocation in the public monopoly system (where students are assigned to schools according to territory, thus dividing students between richer and poorer neighborhoods), as well as greater free choice and quality improvement by forcing schools to compete among themselves by offering more diverse and interesting programs.

Some critics of the voucher system note that it is possible to have choice between schools without vouchers within the public school system, as in Los Angeles, California, and other places.

American detractors state that such choice often results in the selection of a religious school, so that public funds are given to a religious institution, thus violating the separation of church and state (although a United States Supreme Court decision in 2003 invalidated this claim). Further, many argue that given the limited budget for schools, a voucher system weakens public schools while at the same time not necessarily providing enough money for people to attend private schools (the tendency of the costs of tuition to rise along with its demand further compounds the problem). This weakens the educational possibilities for many. Since vouchers typically pay much less than the tuition charged by the private schools, only the richer students and those given scholarships will be able to attend them. Opponents also claim that the vouchers are tantamount to providing taxpayer-subsidized white flight from urban public schools, whose student bodies are predominantly non-white in most large cities.

A minority of voucher opponents in the U.S. object on radically different grounds. These opponents believe that granting government money, even indirectly, to private and religious schools will inevitably lead to increased governmental control over non-government education. Individuals who oppose vouchers on these grounds are often libertarian; a few of them go so far as to call for the abolition of all government sponsorship of education in the U.S.

In addition, economists point to the problem of "cream skimming," a variety of adverse selection in the "educational market." With a presumably greater pool of applicants, the private schools will be more selective over which students to admit, possibly excluding those who belong to the "wrong" religion or ethnicity, those with disabilities such as autism or multiple sclerosis, and those with disciplinary problems. On the other hand, by law the public schools have to educate everyone, so that they become a "dumping ground" for those students unwanted by the private schools. This further undermines the reputation of the public schools, leading to a vicious circle that tends toward the total abolition of the public schools and the end of universal education.

Often, the low costs of the private schools benefiting from voucher funds arises from the non-union status of their staffs and their limited overhead because of their exemption from laws protecting those with disabilities and the like. Government regulations aimed at making the private schools act like "good citizens" threaten to make them be exactly like the public schools.

In Chile, there is a voucher system in which the State pays directly to private schools based on recruitment. The schools show consistently better results in standarized testing than state schools (municipal), with 35% of children studying in such schools. School choice also exists in the Netherlands, Sweden, Spain, the United Kingdom, Poland and a few other countries, generally supported by political parties from around the political spectrum (except for Communist parties), and where notably introduced by the Left (notably in the Netherlands, Sweden and the United Kingdom). It should be stressed that not all voucher programs are alike, so that those introduced by the Left may differ in many ways from those of the Right. As usual, the "devil" may be "in the details" of a voucher plan, so that there are bad voucher plans along with the good. Since the context in which the plan is introduced affects outcomes, it can be hard to generalize from either successses or failures."

[Quelle: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_voucher. -- Zugriff am 2005-04-05]

"School choice is the slogan of a U.S. movement to give parents more say in which primary and secondary schools their children attend. The movement hopes that increased choice will cause more fierce competition between different schools, and thereby raise the overall quality of education.

School choice proponents differ in the extent to which they advocate privatization. Some don't advocate it at all, wishing only to allow parents greater choice between different public schools within a district. Others seek to blur the distinction between public and private schools by granting parents the option either of spending vouchers at private (or possibly religious) school or of getting tax credits for doing the same. Usually, those who advocate these latter schemes suggest that public schools not receive funding for those pupils who did not choose to attend. A few school choice proponents call for the complete elimination of government funding of education, amounting to total privatization.

See Charter schools for another American idea for providing school choice options to parents.

Arguments in favor

The proponents of this idea say that if parents were given a choice about where public money should go, they would pick the better schools and the under-performing schools would have to improve or lose public funding. Proponents claim that school choice is a good way to improve public education at low cost, by forcing schools to perform more efficiently.

Another argument is based on cost-effectiveness. Moe and the CATO institute (see references, below) cite public statistics for the U.S. costs and quality of education that show private education usually costs between one quarter and one half of public education while giving superior outcomes. Boston schools spend $7,300 per enrollee each year, Washington D.C. $9,500 per enrollee, and New York City, $7,350 per enrollee. These figures are larger than all but the most expensive private schools (See the CATO link).

In areas with these expenditures, many public schools are unaccredited, while private schools are fully accredited in order to retain students and avoid regulatory difficulties. In many large public school districts, administrators do not publicize accredition for this reason. (See Moe, or ask accrediting organizations in your area)

One other argument is that, since the U.S. public schools have a monopoly on poor families, a voucher system would allow these students to opt out of bad schools and acquire a better future.

Arguments against

Critics argue that tax breaks and vouchers would take away money from the schools that most need financial assistance and that taking money away from them would make those schools' position even worse. Some also note that private schools are not obligated to take just any students; many have entrance exams, and only admit those who score well. Thus, there is some concern that private schools would take the best students, leaving the most disadvantaged in a school system which is unable to improve and saddled with the hardest children to teach. Even if private schools aren't allowed to participate, critics note, this might prompt a two-tiered public education system, in which those students with motivated parents leave for good schools, while less-advantaged students languish. There is also a concern that some of this public funding would go to religious schools and that this might conflict with the separation of church and state.

Legal standing of vouchers in the US

In the U.S., the legal and moral precedents for vouchers may have been set by the G.I. bill, which includes a voucher program for university-level education of veterans. The G.I. bill permits veterans to take their educational benefits at religious schools, an extremely divisive issue when applied to primary and secondary schools.

In Zelman v. Simmons-Harris, 536 U.S. 639 (2002), the Supreme Court of the United States held that school vouchers could be used to pay for education in sectarian schools without violating the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. As a result, states are basically free to enact voucher programs that provide funding for any school of the parent's choosing.

The Court has not decided, however, whether states can provide vouchers for secular schools only, excluding sectarian schools. Proponents of funding for parochial schools argue that such an exclusion would violate the Free Exercise Clause. However, in Locke v. Davey, 540 U.S. 712 (2004), the Court held that states could exclude majors in "devotional theology" from an otherwise generally available college scholarship. The Court has not indicated, however, whether this holding extends to the public school context, and it may well be limited to the context of individuals training to enter the ministry.

Vouchers in use today

In France

The French government heavily subsidizes most private primary and secondary schools, including those affiliated with religious denominations, under contracts stipulating that education much follow the same curriculum as public schools and that schools cannot discriminate on grounds of religion or force pupils to attend religion classes.

This system of école libre (Free Schooling) is mostly used not for religious reasons, but for practical reasons (private schools may offer more services, such as after-class tutoring) as well as the desire of parents living in disenfranchised areas to send their children away from the local schools, where they perceive that the youth are too prone to delinquence or have too many difficulties keeping up with schooling requirements that the educational content is bound to suffer. The threatened repealing of that status in the 1980s triggered mass street demonstrations in favor of the status.

In the US

Voucher systems for primary schools have also quietly operated in some New Hampshire school districts since education became mandatory in the 19th century. In addition, in 2003 the Republican-controlled House of Representatives passed a voucher plan for public schools in the District of Columbia. The plan will be included in the omnibus spending bill and sent to President Bush. It is expected to become law.

Vouchers in the U.S. for underprivileged children are viewed as experiments, and the issue has yet to be conclusively decided.

In Chile

In Chile, there is a voucher systems in which the state pays the private schools directly based on average attendance. These schools show consistently better results in standardized testing than public schools, with 35% of children studying in such schools.

Regading vouchers in Chile, respected researchers (Carnoy, McEwan and others) have found that when controls for student background (parents income and education) are introduced, the difference in performance between the public and private subsectors is not significant. Mizala and Romaguera (and I) have found that there is vastly greater variation within a subsector than between the two."

[Quelle: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_choice. -- Zugriff am 2005-04-05]


Abb.: Oooh... A big fat juicy worm. -- Cartoon von Russmo. -- 2004-09-12
[Bildquelle: http://www.russmo.com/04_09_12.html. -- Zugriff am 2005-04-02]

Manche Evangelikale lehnen das Voucher-System strikt ab, da es staatliche Kontrolle der Privatschulen bedeutet:

"ACCEPTANCE OF GOVERNMENT MONEY IS MISSION SUICIDE

Moreover, the state will demand more and more influence over those schools that accept the voucher. Influence will gradually amount to control, risking the dilution of the distinct mission of private and Christian education.

Recipients of funds in the Lord's work should receive funds or private scholarships in such a way that they will see the Lord as their provider, not the state. The children of Christian families who have sacrificed or who have received private scholarships to put their children in a Christian school will always place a high value on their Christian education.

In my judgment, the tax-funded voucher is likely to diminish the spiritual value that a child and his family put on Christian education.

If private and Christian educational institutions and Christian families accept tax-funded vouchers, Christians run an all-too-real risk of becoming dependent on this easy new money.

Most will be unable to wean themselves away once the inevitable government regulations become burdensome.

The politicians who promise to protect those religious institutions will be sincere, but unless they are re-elected they might not be around a few years later.

Some Christians believe that sympathetic officeholders can craft a law that will protect private and religious schools. 1 doubt any legislative body today can create a law immune to being interpreted by some postmodernist federal judge in a very different way from the original intent.

A more ardent regime or faceless bureaucracy may also be in place. Those promises may be soon forgotten, the laws changed and the religious institutions they were designed to protect could end up on the chopping block.

The Grove City College v. Bell U.S. Supreme Court case (1984) and the follow-up Civil Rights Restoration Act of 1987 have defined a recipient institution as one in which any student on campus receives a loan or grant from the federal government. Thus, any student or family receiving indirect aid in the form of a tax-funded voucher would make the school attended a recipient institution.

There is good reason to believe that a move from state-sponsored schools to the use of vouchers for private schools of whatever character would be almost immediately hijacked, as those running the state-sponsored schools moved to protect their interests.

The voucher would certainly fall under the category of provisions making private and religious schools recipient institutions, and it would probably not be long before the first court challenge erupted—possibly over Christian schools' refusal to hire a homosexual teacher (just one likely possibility). Christian supporters of tax-funded vouchers, as Cathy Duffy recently put it, could wake up to discover that they had won a battle—if vouchers become a reality—but lost the war, by having lost control of private Christian education."

[Quelle: Moore, E. Ray <Jr.>: Let my children go : why parents must remove their children from public schools NOW. -- Columbia, SC : Gilead Media, ©2002. -- 352 S. -- ISBN 1931600163. -- S. 220f. -- {Wenn Sie HIER klicken, können Sie dieses Buch bei amazon.de bestellen}]

School Vouchers werden aber auch von Liberalen und Bürgerrechtlern begrüßt:

"The unlikely laboratory for the country's most radical free-market reform of education is Milwaukee—a city that elected a succession of socialist mayors and once helped to give birth to the Progressive movement, which radically expanded government. Vouchers took off in Milwaukee because of an improbable combination of circumstances. First, the city is home to one of the country's leading conservative foundations, the Bradley Foundation, which has been pushing for vouchers for years. Second, the local black population was tired of watching its children being bussed to the other side of the city so that white neighborhoods could achieve the court-mandated goal of racial balance. Two prominent local blacks, Polly "Williams, a state legislator, and Howard Fuller, a former basketball star who became superintendent of schools, argued that the solution to black educational problems was not court-mandated schemes but parental choice. Third, voucher activists reached out to politicians of both parties. Both Tommy Thompson, the state's Republican governor, and John Norquist, the city's Democratic mayor, supported the idea.

The city's voucher experiment was small when it started in 1990: only 1 percent of schoolchildren were eligible and religious schools were excluded. But black parents approved of vouchers by overwhelming margins. Valerie Johnson, a mother of five, became a provoucher activist because she had seen her brothers destroyed by the Chicago school system (one was murdered for refusing to join a gang, one dropped out of school and is now homeless in California) and she was determined that her own children avoid the same fate. Activists such as Fuller argued that the voucher movement was nothing less than the modern equivalent of the civil rights movement. "Did we sit down at a lunch counter at Woolworth's in Greensboro, North Carolina, to arrive at another lunch counter today where we can't read the menu?" Over the past decade, the authorities have gradually removed restrictions from the scheme. By 2003, Milwaukee's "parental choice program" distributed vouchers to ten thousand students from poor families. Studies in Milwaukee and also in Cleveland and Florida, two other pioneers, show not only that voucher children did well, but also that the reforms seem to have sparked an improvement in local public schools—particularly the ones that faced the most competition.

Buoyed by these results, and a 2002 Supreme Court ruling that vouchers could be used in parochial schools, the voucher movement is continuing to spread around black America, prompted by organizations like the Black Alliance for Educational Options (BAEO), activists like Queen Sister Afrika from We Are the Village People, and a rising generation of black leaders. Cory Booker, a young black Democratic politician, argues that the only way to fix the educational system is to return power to parents. Omar Wasow, who runs a web site called BlackPlanet.com, sees school choice as a direct outgrowth of Brown v. Board of Education, the Supreme Court decision of 1954 that desegregated public schools. None of these activists is a conservative; but all of them are willing to borrow conservative ideas and form alliances with conservative organizations to improve the desperate state of black schools.

Indeed, there has been something of a break in the Democratic coalition between its most loyal constituents, blacks, and its main source of activists, the teachers' unions. One of the most poignant moments in the 2000 Democratic primary came during a debate between Al Gore and Bill Bradley at the Apollo Theatre in Harlem, one of black America's hallowed sites. Tamela Edwards, a young black journalist, asked the then vice president why he so adamantly opposed school vouchers while sending his own children to private schools. "Is there not a public or charter school in D.C. good enough for your child?" she asked to loud applause from the predominantly black audience. "And, if not, why should the parents here have to keep their kids in public schools because they don't have the financial resources that you do?"

Seeing their tormentors in the Democratic Party pull themselves apart over vouchers is all very well; but black conservatives also have a problem persuading white Republicans to embrace the cause. The picture is not entirely gloomy: Jeb Bush, a more cerebral type than his older brother, has long supported school choice in Florida. The White House has persuaded Anthony Williams, the mayor of Washington, D.C, to come out in favor of vouchers in the nation's capital. It is noticeable how many young conservatives, such as Maura and Dustin (with whom we began this book), are passionate about vouchers. On the other hand, George W. Bush dropped vouchers from his mammoth education bill at the first whisper of protest from Ted Kennedy. And there remains the suspicion that many white Republican suburbs would be extremely nervous about giving poorer children the choice to come to their schools."

[Quelle: Micklethwait, John ; Wooldridge, Adrian: The right nation : conservative power in America. --  New York : Penguin Press, 2004.  -- 450 S. : Ill. ; 24 cm. ISBN: 1594200203. -- S. 275-277. -- {Wenn Sie HIER klicken, können Sie dieses Buch bei amazon.de bestellen}]


5.3. Homeschooling



Abb.: ©Logo The Network of Iowa Christian Home Educators
[Bildquelle: http://www.the-niche.org/. -- Zugriff am 2005-04-05]

Homeschooling ist nicht nur bei christlichen Fundamentalisten eine erwägenswerte Alternative zu den oft miserablen öffentlichen Schulen der USA.

"Homeschooling (also called home education and sometimes spelled home schooling) is the education of children at home and in the community, in contrast to education in an institution such as a public or parochial school. In the United States, homeschooling is the focus of a substantial minority movement among parents who wish to provide their children with a custom or more complete education which they feel is unattainable in most public or even private schools.

Overview

Homeschooling (also known as home education) is an alternative means of education that has proven to be controversial in the United States. The general historic foundations of homeschooling originate with the informal education systems that existed in the United States before the implementation of current formal education institutions. For example, famous figures such as Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, and Thomas Edison might be considered to have been homeschooled as they were self-educated or had tutors growing up, but received little formal schooling.

Although estimates vary, roughly 1 to 2 million children are homeschooled in the United States, about 90,000 in the UK[1] (http://www.home-education.org.uk/), and about 26,000 in Australia/New Zealand[2] (http://www.hea.asn.au/hea/resources/disp_res.asp?type=4&id=60). Individual motivations to homeschool, homeschooling methods, and results of homeschooling (both social and academic) are varied, and are the source of vibrant debate.

Homeschooling motivations

Proponents of home education invoke parental responsibility and the classical liberal arguments for personal freedom from government intrusion. Few proponents advocate that homeschooling should be the dominant educational policy. Most homeschooling advocates are wary of the established educational institutions for various reasons. Some are religious conservatives who see non-religious education as contrary their moral or religious systems. Others feel that they can more effectively tailor a curriculum to suit an individual student’s academic strengths and weaknesses, especially those with learning disabilities. Still others feel that the negative social pressures of schools (such as bullying and drugs) are detrimental to a child’s proper development.

Options which make homeschooling attractive to some families also include:

  • The flexibility of the education schedule allows each student to work at his own pace, enjoy family vacations, and integrate outside activities or current events with subjects they are studying.
  • Religion, ethics, and character topics not included in public school curriculums can be freely taught.
  • Non-traditional curriculums such as Classical education, or the Trivium, and exotic subjects such as Latin and Greek can be taught.
  • Geography, art and music curriculum can be enhanced
  • Money management and business topics may be taught and integrated with a family business.

Homeschooling may have a financial impact on families. In addition to having to purchase school supplies and curriculum materials, a homeschooler’s parent(s) often cut back or refrain from employment outside the home in order to supervise the child’s education. This may have long-term career consequences as well. However, many homeschooling parents say that one unique benefit is the additional time they get to spend with their children.

Public opinion of homeschooling

Gallup polls of American voters have shown a significant change in attitude in the last twenty years, from 73% opposed in 1985 to 54% opposed in 2001[3] (http://eric.uoregon.edu/trends_issues/choice/home_schooling.html).

Opposition to homeschooling comes from varied sources, including organizations of teachers and school districts. Opponents' stated concerns fall into several broad categories, including: academic quality and completeness; socialization of children with peers; and fear of religious or social extremism. Opponents often argue that homeschooling parents are sheltering their children and denying them opportunities that are their children's right.

Legality of homeschooling

In the U.S., homeschooling is generally viewed as legal, although in many states homeschool parents are occasionally threatened with prosecution under truancy laws. The U.S. Supreme Court has never ruled on homeschooling specifically, but in (Wisconsin v. Yoder, 406 U.S. 205 (1972))[4] (http://www.oyez.org/oyez/resource/case/449/) it supported the rights of Amish parents to keep their children out of public schools for religious reasons. Registration practices vary from state to state; for example, in California homeschoolers must register as private schools (a category which has no minimum-enrollment requirement), and are required to have attendance records and lesson plans available for state inspection, although this is rarely performed. In 2002, California Secretary of Public Instruction Delaine Eastin announced that such registration was illegal for homeschoolers, but this has not been tested in court. Other states require submission of curriculum plans or require standardized testing.

A few school districts have extension programs which allow homeschooled students to use district resources, such as school libraries or computer labs, or meet with a teacher periodically for curriculum review and suggestions.

In the United Kingdom, section 7 of the Education Act, 1996, states:

The parent of every child of compulsory school age shall cause him to receive efficient full-time education suitable:
a. to his age, ability and aptitude, and
b. to any special educational needs he may have,
either by regular attendance at school or otherwise.
Homeschooling Methods

There is a wide variety of homeschooling methods and materials. Because homeschool laws vary widely according to state statutes, official curriculum requirements vary.

Unit Studies

Unit studies teach most subjects in the context of a central theme. For example, a unit study of Native Americans would combine age-appropriate lessons in social studies (how different tribes lived), art (making Native American clothing), history (the history of Native Americans in the U.S.), Reading (usually by a reading list), science (plants used by Native Americans). The following month, the unit-study subject could change to "Construction," or some other broad topic of study. Supporters say unit studies make excellent use of student time by combining several fields into one study time, and permit students to follow personal interests. Unit studies also permit children of different ages to study together. For example, in a Native American unit, a 10th-grade student might make a deer-skin coat for an art project, while a 1st-grade student might make construction-paper tipis. Homeschoolers often purchase unit-study guides that suggest materials, projects and shopping lists, and supplement them with specialized curricula for math, and sometimes reading and writing.

Special Materials

Special materials focus on skill-building. Individual subject materials usually consist of workbooks, sometimes with textbooks and a teachers' guide. Many specialized subjects are only available in this form. Special materials are frequently used for math and primary reading. Critics say that some parents over-focus on skills while excluding Social Studies, Science, Art, History and other fields that help children learn their place in the world.

All-in-one curricula

All-in-one curricula are comprehensive packages covering many subjects, usually an entire year's worth. Some call them "school in a box." They contain all needed books and materials, including pencils and writing paper. Most such curricula were developed for isolated families who lack access to public schools, libraries and shops, or are overseas. These materials typically recreate the school environment in the home, and are typically based on the same subject-area expectations as public schools, allowing an easy re-transition into school if desired. They are among the most expensive options for homeschoolers, but are easy to use and require minimal preparation. The teacher's guides are usually extensive, with step-by-step instructions. These programs may include nationally-normed tests, and remote examinations to yield an accredited private-school diploma.

Community resources

Homeschoolers take advantage of educational programs at museums, community centers, athletic clubs, after-school programs, churches, science preserves, parks, and other community resources. High-school level students often take classes at community colleges.

Eclectic Curricula

The majority of today's homeschoolers use an eclectic mix of materials. For instance, they might use a pre-designed program for language arts or math, and fill in history with reading and field trips, art with classes at a community center, science through a homeschool science club, PE with membership in local sports teams, and so on.

Unschooling

Unschooling is an area within homeschooling in which students are not directly instructed but encouraged to learn through exploring their interests. Also known as interest-led or child-led learning, unschooling attempts to provide opportunities with games and real life problems where a child will learn without coercion. An unschooled child may choose to use texts or classroom instruction, but it is never considered central to education. Advocates for unschooling claim that children learn best by learning from doing. A child may learn reading and math skills from playing card games, better spelling and other writing skills because he's inspired to write a science fiction story for publication, or local history by following a zoning or historical-status dispute.

Homeschooling results

Academic results

The academic effectiveness of homeschooling is disputed. While homeschooled students generally do extremely well on standardized tests[5] (http://www.hslda.org/docs/nche/000010/200410250.asp), critics argue that such students are a self-selected group whose parents care strongly about their education; such students would also do well in a conventional school environment. Increasingly, colleges are recruiting homeschooled students; many colleges accept a GED as well as parent statements and portfolios of students' work as admission criteria; others also require SATs or other standardized tests.

Opponents argue that parents with little training in education are less effective in teaching.

Homeschooled children's curricula often include many subjects not included in school curricula. Some colleges find this an advantage in creating a more academically diverse student body, and proponents argue this creates a more well-rounded and self-sufficient adult. Opponents argue that homeschoolers' eclectic curricula often exclude critical subjects and isolate them from the rest of society, or present them with ideological worldviews, especially dogmatic religious ones.

The results with gifted and learning-disabled children is particularly controversial.

Social development

A common concern voiced about homeschooled children is they lack the social interaction with peers that a school environment provides. Many homeschooling families address these concerns by joining numerous organizations, including independent study programs and specialized enrichment groups for PE, Art, Music, and Debate. Most are also active in community groups. Homeschooled children generally socialize with other children the same way that school children do: outside of school, via personal visits and through sports teams, clubs and religious groups.

Proponents argue further that the social environment of schools:

  • eradicates individuality and creativity.
  • sinks to the standards of the lowest common denominator
  • involves bullying, drug use, early sexuality, defiance, criminality, materialism, and eating disorders.

and that socialization in the wider community:

  • leads them to use adults as role models rather than peers
  • better prepares them for real life
  • encourages them to be more involved in youth organizations, church organizations, and sports
  • helps them develop an independent understanding of themselves and their role in the world, with the freedom to reject or approve conventionial values without the risk of ridicule.

Opponents of homeschooling offer the following criticisms concerning socialization, pointing out that not all homeschooling families participate extensively in community activities:

  • Interaction with peers and different social groups is essential to learning to live in society.
  • Schools are a unique environment that provide students with necessary social networking skills that help them succeed in the workplace and in the politics of high-level business. Real life includes school as well.
  • Homeschoolers tend to live in an insulated world where they aren't exposed to a variety of ideas, which can prevent any personal growth and independence later on in life.
  • If children are insulated from unpleasant social situations, then they will be left unprepared when they are inevitably left to make their own way in the world. Children should be allowed to live and learn from their mistakes rather than sheltered from reality.

Some persons oppose homeschooling because they fear that children in such homes could be trapped into a cult-like atmosphere and raised entirely without a view of the larger social world. These persons say that there is a pronounced risk that religious or social extremism could be taught to children in the sheltered environment of a homeschool."

[Quelle: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeschooling. -- Zugriff am 2005-04-05]


Abb.: Home school zone

[Bildquelle: Klicka, Christopher J. <1961 - >: Home schooling : the right choice : an academic, historical, practical, and legal perspective. -- Rev. ed. -- Nashville, Tennessee : Broadman & Holmes, 2002.  -- 480 S. : Ill. ; 23 cm.  -- ISBN 0805425853. -- S. 438. -- {Wenn Sie HIER klicken, können Sie dieses Buch bei amazon.de bestellen}]

Christliche Fundamentalisten befürworten Homeschooling aus folgenden Gründen:

"The Right Choice: Home Education!

By Home School Legal Defense Association's Christopher J. Klicka 

With a majority of school-aged children attending public schools, education in America has primarily become a function of the state. This public school system is failing miserably, both academically and morally.

If we are honest with ourselves, we cannot escape the fact that the public schools are no longer a safe place for children academically, physically, or most important of all, spiritually. The state, meanwhile, not content to control only public schools, constantly encroaches on the freedoms of private schools and home schools through various case precedents, regulations, and statutes. As a result many public school authorities have come to believe that they are the guardians of all the children.

Many home schooling parents, however, take offense to this presumption by superintendents. In the tradition of their forefathers, these parents believe that God, not the state, has given parents the sole authority and responsibility for the education of their children.

Approximately ninety percent of the estimated home schooling families in the United States are Bible-believing Christians. Therefore, the word of God is recognized as the source of all truth and the standard by which all things are measured.

When the United States was formed, the framers of the Constitution and many of the citizens had a biblical mind-set. Today, it has been replaced by a secular mind-set. Public schools are teaching the children to be biblically illiterate and to ignore God's absolute moral values. The negative effects are being felt throughout the country. In many ways we have "sown the wind and now reap the whirlwind," as we allow children's minds to be wasted in the public schools, void of godly values and truth.

Home schoolers are working to restore that biblical mind-set in their children and trying to fulfill the commands of God concerning the education of their children.

The following is a summary of the biblical principles of education which support Christian home schooling.

The Raising of Children is Delegated to Parents by God

According to the Bible, children belong to God, but the responsibility and authority to raise and educate them is delegated to their parents. Lo, children are an heritage of the Lord: and the fruit of the womb is his reward.-Psalm 127:3. In Genesis 33:5 Jacob introduces his children to his brother Esau as "the children which God hath graciously given thy servant."

In Isaiah 8:18, the prophet says, "and the children whom the Lord hath given me."

Although God has "given" children to parents, children are a "gift of stewardship," which means that parents do not really "own" their children. Parents, therefore, are not free to raise their children any way they want because God gives the parents certain "conditions" that must be met.

God still considers the children to be His children. God refers to Jacob's children as "the work of My hands" in Isaiah 29:23. David gives thanks to God for being "fearfully and wonderfully made" while in his mother's womb in Psalm 139:13-14.

In Ezekiel 16:20-21 the Lord emphasizes again that the children are His, "you slaughtered My children and offered them up to idols causing them to pass through fire." God judged these parents severely because they did not meet God's condition for raising His children. They gave their children up to an idolatrous system which hated God.

As a result, home schooling parents, aware of the anti-God curriculum and complete lack of absolute values in the public schools, cannot sacrifice their children to such a system.

The Bible states further that parents must "render to Caesar [the state] the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's." Since children are not the state's or Caesar's in the first place, but rather God's, parents do not have any obligation to render their children to the public school by enrolling them in public school or complying with excessively restrictive state controls of their children's education and training.

Nowhere in Scripture can a reference be found in which God delegates to the state the authority to raise and educate children. In fact, the only time that God's people were educated by the state was when they were occupied by a heathen nation which left them no alternatives. God, nevertheless, has clearly delegated the responsibility and authority to teach and raise children to the parents first.

God-Mandated Conditions for Educating Children

Part of the parents' stewardship responsibility in raising children is that certain commands and conditions set by God must be followed in raising and educating His children.

For example, concerning children's education: "And , ye fathers, provoke not your children to wrath: but bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord" (Ephesians 6:4). The word "admonition" is the same word as "discipline," and it involves using the biblical methods...in order to ensure our child's obedience and ability to "stay the course." We must not "provoke" our children by acting hypocritically, ignoring them, or being preoccupied with our work.

I believe we are "provoking" our children when we send them to public schools to learn the ways of the world, outside of godly training and nurture. Let us train our children diligently in order to sear the truth of God into their very souls. Furthermore in Deuteronomy 6:6-9 the Lord declares: "And thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk to them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up."

These commands to educate our children, of course, cannot be accomplished once a week at Sunday school. It involves a comprehensive approach to education on a daily basis...taught to our children when we sit in our homes, when we rise up, lie down, and when we travel. In other words, all the time.

This comprehensive educational program is to be based on God's commands; "For he established a testimony in Jacob, and appointed a law in Israel, which he commanded our fathers, they they should make them known to their children. That the generation to come might know them, even the children which should be born; who should arise and declare them to their children" (Psalm 78:5-6).

In Proverbs 22:6, God commands, "Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it."

Of course, the children also have some responsibility. They must obey the commandments of their parents who, in turn, are obeying God: "My son, keep thy father's commandment, and forsake not the law of thy mother: Bind them continually upon thine heart, and tie them about thy neck. When thou goest, it shall lead thee; when thou sleepest, it shall keep thee; and when thou awakest, it shall talk with thee. For the commandment is a lamp; and the law is light; and reproofs of instruction are the way of life:" (Proverbs 6:20-23).

Teaching these commandments of God comprehensively to our children is "light" to our children and leads them to "the way of life." A side effect of a biblical education, then, can be the salvation of our children's souls for all eternity. Learning God's Law and His principles tutors and leads us to Christ. If the very souls of our children are at stake, should we risk having them taught thousands of hours of information that is contrary to God's truths and in an atmosphere that denies God's existence?

In addition, our children will receive a tremendous blessing, according to Isaiah 54:13: "And all thy children shall be taught of the Lord; and great shall be the peace of thy children." It seems apparent that the children's peace will affect the parents by contributing to a peaceful home and minimal rebellion. No wonder so many parents who send their children to the public school for six or more hours a day of ungodly instruction have chaotic homes in which the children regularly challenge the parents' authority.

God Commands to Train Our Children's Minds

God commands His people in Jeremiah 10:2, "Learn not the way of the heathen." The public schools are teaching the children the "way of the heathen," while ignoring God's ways. Furthermore, David explains that we need to "meditate" on God's Law, day and night (Psalm 1:2). How can our children meditate on God's Law, when they are never even taught God's Law in the public schools?

Parents must train their children to think God's thoughts after Him. A godly education, therefore, is learning not only to believe as a Christian (for salvation), but to think as a Christian. Christian home schooling teaches children to think as Christians. Unfortunately, public schools and some private schools are teaching children who believe as Christians to think as non-Christians.

Since Christian parents in the past have neglected their duty to follow this comprehensive approach to education, generations of adult Christians now apply ungodly principles in their lives and work places, while simultaneously believing as Christians. In essence, many parents are raising humanistic Christians, many of whom are "lukewarm" and not thinking God's thoughts after Him.

Scripture states that, after being fully trained, a student will be like his teacher (Luke 6:40). This passage continues by describing the blind who lead the blind into the pit. This is why it is so important that parents teach their children to think as Christians and that children be taught by godly teachers. Parents must not let their children be conformed to the pattern of this world (Romans 12:12). Unfortunately, public schools are working to conform our children's minds to the pattern of this world.

Negative Socialization

Even though parents are commanded to give their children a biblical education, they must also protect them from "negative socialization." The Scripture warns, "Be not deceived: evil communications corrupt good manners" (1 Corinthians 15:33). Proverbs 13:20 states, "...but a companion of fools shall be destroyed."

The public schools fail miserably in the area of socialization, with the abundance of crime, drugs, immorality, and gang warfare rampant in the school system. Home schooling enables parents to fulfill this responsibility by fostering positive socialization.

Content of True Education

God requires us to make certain that His Word and principles are applied in a daily, comprehensive manner to the education and upbringing of our children. Furthermore, he will hold us responsible for how we direct the education of our children. Therefore, parents must be careful to provide their children with an education in which the content is based on the His Word, "And that from a child thou hast known the holy scriptures, which are able to make thee wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus" (2 Timothy 3:16)

The goal of true education is found in Psalm 119:97-101: To train children in God's laws so they can govern themselves, be wiser than their enemies, have more insight than their teachers, and understand more than the aged. If we train our children this way God will no doubt find us faithful stewards of the children He has placed in our care.

Does Sending Our Children to Public Schools as Missionaries Make it Right?

As far as our children are concerned, God commands us to provide our children with a comprehensive education based on His principles. Sending our children to public school to "save souls" while they receive six or more hours of secular brainwashing does not relieve us of our responsibility before God. Disobeying God by doing something in the name of God does not justify our sin.

In Samuel 15:1-23, King Saul directly disobeyed God's command to destroy the Amalekite animals by sparing the animals and then offering them as sacrifices to the Lord. God rebuked Saul through Samuel, saying, "Has the Lord as much delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices, as in obeying the voice of the Lord? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to heed than the fat of rams." Are we trying to make a "sacrifice" to God by sending our children to public school while disobeying God's command to us concerning raising our children?

Home Schooling is a Biblical Form of Education

As seen above, home schooling has the support of the Word of God. It provides, in fact, the most successful way that parents fulfill their immense obligations, in providing their children with a comprehensive biblical education and restoring and preserving their families.

The goal of home schooling is to raise the children so that each of them will "study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth." Sending our children to public school violates nearly every biblical principle described above. It is tantamount to sending our children to be trained by the enemy!

God is blessing the home schooling movement, not because families are home schooling for home schooling's sake, but because the families are faithfully teaching their children to obey and glorify God! God will bless you as you seek first the "kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you."

By making your children and their training a priority, God will bring many invaluable blessings. However, most important of all is our children's souls. Some day I would much rather have [my children] standing with me in heaven than having them live as geniuses in terms of their secular education and lost forever in hell. John said it all when he said: "I have no greater joy than to hear that my children walk in truth" (3 John 4).

[Zitate aus der 1. Aufl. (1995) von: Klicka, Christopher J. <1961 -  >: Home schooling : the right choice : an academic, historical, practical, and legal perspective. -- Rev. ed. Sisters, OR : Loyal Pub., 2000.  -- 480 p. : ill. ; 23 cm. --  ISBN: 1929125070. -- {Wenn Sie HIER klicken, können Sie dieses Buch bei amazon.de bestellen}. -- Zitiert in: http://homeschoolinformation.com/Articles/the_right_choice.htm. -- Zugriff am 2005-04-05]

Einen guten Einblick in christliches Homeschooling gibt:

http://homeschoolinformation.com/. -- Zugriff am 2005-04-05


Abb.: Patrick Henry College
[Bildquelle: http://www.phc.edu/. -- Zugriff am 2005-05-27]

Das erste College, das auf evangelikale homeschooled Jugendliche spezialisiert ist ist Patrick Henry College, Purcellville, VA. Webpräsenz: http://www.phc.edu/. -- Zugriff am 2005-05-27 


5.4. Alliance for the Separation of School & State


Webpräsenz: http://honestedu.org/. -- Zugriff am 2005-04-01

"Children need Honest Education

Separating School from State
Is the Only Way to Get There

Fifty years ago, Americans were thunderstruck by Rudolph Flesch's best seller, "Why Johnny Can't Read." Today we have evidence that Johnny not only can't read, but he doesn't even want to. Worse, Johnny can't behave himself. What happened?

The "Three R's"

Many parents believe that the core of "education" is primarily learning the Three R's: Readin', Writin', and 'Rithmatic.

With the media attention to test scores of schools, districts, and states—and politicians sensing that "education is a hot issue"—school leaders have developed a mania for looking good on tests.

Odd as it may seem, their low-score phobia pushes them to turning children into test-taking robots. Many a teacher will tell you that we are drifting ever further from genuine education.

"Education" is more than skills training

When our schools help an intelligent person become the smartest accountant in the world, but somehow undermine his moral formation, they turn out an embezzler you can't catch.

Traditional educators, on the other hand, held "wisdom"—not just skills—as the goal of an educated person. But for over a century, American school leaders have more and more focused on "career skills" and for over a half-century, on "life adjustment" or "social skills" as the ultimate goal for their students.

This is dishonest. Schools implicitly tell students a lie: Mere professional and social success can bring satisfaction. How many parents believe that a person can find happiness by selling a cancer therapy he knew was a fraud?

We in the Alliance for Separation of School & State believe that the restoration of "Honest Education" can help every Johnny and Jill on their path to wisdom.

Indeed, even the earliest stages of wisdom—for example, diligence—will help them apply themselves to learning the many important skills of life, including Readin', Writin', and 'Rithmatic.

Honest Education promotes discussion among teachers and students of "The Big Questions of Life." It can also be called real, authentic, or genuine education.  

Some of the Big Questions of Life

  1. Why am I here? Is there any purpose to my life?
  2. Why is there so much evil in the world? How can I know what is good and what is evil?
  3. Why is there so much suffering in the world? How should I handle suffering of others? How should I handle my own?
  4. Is there a Supreme Being? Does he care about us?
  5. What is truth? Are there any permanent truths?

When one grasps the underlying structure of school-by-government (called "public schools" in U.S.), it becomes easier to solve the riddle of why all school reforms have failed for the entire 160-year existence of state schooling in America.

Separation of school and state applies to schooling the approach Americans have used for churching: Government doesn't run, compel, or finance Sunday School. We believe the same approach should be applied to Monday school, Tuesday school, Wednesday school, etc., etc.

Dishonest Education

Dishonest education deceives teachers, students, and parents by pretending that a person should "compartmentalize" his life. That means the Big Questions of Life can be discussed home and church but not brought into school, the workplace, or the political process.

Compartmentalizing causes a breakdown in the integrity of all who try it. We saw this breakdown at Enron, Arthur Anderson, WorldCom, etc. People who were in the church choir on Sunday were shredding audit reports on Monday. They were compartmentalizing their lives.

School-by-government can never be Honest Education

A teacher who has children of different beliefs in her classroom can't honestly share her own beliefs on the Big Questions because that would seriously undermine some of the parents. Such honesty by a teacher would result in intolerable turmoil among parents and administrators, costly lawsuits, and if she persists, very likely the loss of her job.

Rather than teaching the children in common, some countries have government support for religious schools. Over the years, constant meddling by political forces has gradually drained religion from the subsidized schools so that they have become state school look-alikes. "

[Quelle: http://www.honestedu.org/index.php. -- Zugriff am 2005-04-01]


5.5. A Beka Book: Schulbücher für christliche Fundamentalisten


Abb.: Eine Auswahl von A Beka Materialien für Homeschooling
[Bildquelle: http://www.abeka.com/OurHomeSchoolOptions.html. -- Zugriff am 2005-04-07]

Webpräsenz: http://www.abeka.com/. -- Zugriff am 2005-04-07

Mitte der 1990er Jahre belieferte A Beka Book 680.000 Schüler mit Schulbüchern.

"Three decades ago, God raised up A Beka Book to provide Christian schools with God-honoring, high-quality textbooks and teaching aids to help each school fulfill the goal of its ministry. The hundreds of traditional Christian educational materials developed by A Beka Book have been developed and refined over a period of 50 years in the classrooms of Pensacola Christian Academy. Christian schools throughout the nation recognize that A Beka Book sets the standard of excellence in the publishing of textbooks and other materials for Christian schools.

At A Beka Book, we are unashamedly Christian and traditional in our approach to education.

The A Beka Book approach to Christian education keeps learning lively, interesting, and memorable. Our materials reflect sensible theory that is firmly anchored to practicality. A Beka Book materials have been developed as a result of 50 years of actual classroom experience in Pensacola Christian Academy, one of America’s largest and most respected Christian day schools.

Our skilled researchers and writers do not paraphrase progressive education textbooks and add Biblical principles; they do primary research in every subject and look at the subject from God’s point of view. Of course, the most original source is always the Word of God, the only foundation for true scholarship in any area of human endeavor. Thus our publications are built upon the firm foundation of Scriptural truth and are written by dedicated and talented Christian scholars who are well grounded in the practical aspects of classroom teaching. For excellence for your Christian school, you can trust A Beka Book.

Dr. Arlin Horton, president and founder of Pensacola Christian College, Pensacola Christian Academy, and A Beka Book, has been an outstanding leader in the Christian school movement since 1954. Thousands of Christian school administrators across America have been inspired and helped by his willingness to share his practical wisdom and by his commitment to making the Bible the foundation, guide, and measuring stick for every area of life and service. In the A Beka Book ministry, President Horton’s ultimate goal is not sales but rather training young lives for eternity. His quiet leadership and his desire to be of help to others have combined to make A Beka Book America’s leading producer of textbooks for Christian schools.

Mrs. Arlin (Beka) Horton, senior vice president, has played the leading role in the development of the academic program available from A Beka Book. Through the years, she has faithfully invested her multiple talents to give balance and excellence to all areas of the Christian school curriculum. Beka Horton sets the overall direction and editorial policy for the textbooks and curriculums and personally edits many of the materials published by A Beka Book. Her many years as an outstanding Bible teacher are reflected in the Bible program, and her understanding of the Scriptures, coupled with her keen reasoning abilities, have helped the authors in each subject area to reach our goal of building the content of every textbook on the foundation of God’s Word."

[Quelle: http://www.abeka.com/OurFoundation.html. -- Zugriff am 2005-04-07]

Distinctives

Bible

From a child thou hast known the Holy Scriptures.—2 Timothy 3:15

The clear teaching of the Bible is the foundation for all other learning.

Since the Bible is the most important subject in the Christian school, it should be taught specifically and systematically. The A Beka Book Bible Program presents the Bible in the narrative style in which it is written. The stories of the Old and New Testaments in the lower grades lead up to a presentation of the profound truths of the Gospels, the Epistles, and the other portions of Scripture for older students. The lessons flow from the Word of God, through the heart of the teacher, to the heart of the student. The curriculum has been planned so that students going through the A Beka Book Bible Program will become thoroughly acquainted with the basic portions of the Scriptures.

“Never underestimate the power of God’s Word. As you study it and as you teach it, allow it to speak for itself. A faithful teaching of the Word of God, unmixed with the systems of man, will provide the receptive hearer with a firm foundation for life and a shield against error.”

History

History is for time, what travel is for space; it is an intellectual journey across oceans and continents of duration, and of ages both remote from our own and vitalized and enriched by stupendous events. —Moses Coit Tyler

Students need a realistic view of history, government, geography, and economics based upon the foundational truths of the Scriptures.

Ever since H. G. Wells published his Outline of History in 1920, the theme of world history texts has been man's supposed progress from savagery toward socialism, from tribal religions toward one-world government. American history is usually presented as a series of conflicts-rich vs. poor, black vs. white, North vs. South, labor vs. management, male vs. female, etc.

Our A Beka Book texts reject the Marxist/Hegelian conflict theory of history in favor of a truthful portrayal of peoples, lands, religions, ideals, heroes, triumphs, and setbacks. The result has been positive, uplifting history texts that give students an historical perspective and instill within them an intelligent pride for their own country and a desire to help it back to its traditional values.

We present government as ordained by God for the maintenance of law and order, not as a cure-all for the problems of humanity. We present free-enterprise economics without apology and point out the dangers of Communism, socialism, and liberalism to the well-being of people across the globe. In short, A Beka Book offers you a Christian and conservative approach to the study of what man has done with the time God has given.

Mathematics

Mathematics is the language God used in His creation of the universe, and thus it is logical, orderly, beautiful, and very practical in science and in daily life.

No subject matter better reflects the glory of God than mathematics. To study mathematics is to study God's thoughts after Him, for He is the great Engineer and Architect of the universe.

Unlike the “modern math” theorists, who believe that mathematics is a creation of man and thus arbitrary and relative, we believe that the laws of mathematics are a creation of God and thus absolute. All of the laws of mathematics are God's laws. Our knowledge of God's absolute mathematical laws may be incomplete or at times in error, but that merely shows human frailty, not relativity in mathematics. Man's task is to search out and make use of the laws of the universe, both scientific and mathematical.

A Beka Book provides attractive, legible, workable traditional mathematics texts that are not burdened with modern theories such as set theory. These books have been field-tested, revised, and used successfully for many years in Christian schools. They are classics with up-to-date appeal. Besides training students in the basic skills that they will need all their lives, the A Beka Book traditional mathematics books teach students to believe in the absolutes of the universe, to work diligently to get right answers, and to see the facts of mathematics as part of the truth and order that God has built into the real universe.

Science/Health

It is the glory of God to conceal a thing: but the honour of kings is to search out a matter. —Proverbs 25:2

Science is the study of God's order, provision, and reasonableness as revealed in His physical creation.

While secular science textbooks present modern science as the opposite of faith, the A Beka Book science texts teach that modern science is the product of Western man's return to the Scriptures after the Protestant Reformation, leading to his desire to understand and subdue the earth, which he saw as the orderly, law-abiding creation of the God of the Bible.

The A Beka Book Science and Health Program presents the universe as the direct creation of God and refutes the man-made idea of evolution. Further, the books present God as the Great Designer and Lawgiver, without Whom the evident design and laws of nature would be inexplicable. They give a solid foundation in all areas of science -- a foundation firmly anchored to Scriptural truth. Teachability is assured through accurate, interesting writing, carefully planned demonstrations that can be performed with a minimum of equipment, chapter terms and questions, full-color illustrations, consideration of the interests and comprehension skills of students at each grade level, and detailed Curriculum / Lesson Plans.

English

How forcible are right words! —Job 6:25

Because God has given us the great commission of communicating His truth to mankind, we must give our students the finest tools available to carry out this goal in a reasonable, well-articulated manner.

God gave us our powers of thought and language and chose to reveal His will and His ways to us in a written form, the Bible; thus we need to pay particular attention to the teaching of grammar, spelling, vocabulary, composition, and literature as we seek to educate students from a Christian perspective.

Since Darwin, linguists have sought in vain for a credible explanation for the origin of language. Having accepted evolutionary philosophy, they can only think that language must be simply a response to a stimulus, an emotional outcry, an imitation of animals.

If such foolishness were true, then any talk of language being governed by rules or any claims that some expressions are better than others would be inappropriate, and relativism would rule. This explains many English programs today. But as Christians, we still believe that the Bible provides the only credible explanation for the universe, of man, and of language. Therefore, it is easy to see in language a structure which reflects the logic, reasonableness, and orderliness of the One who created man and his language.

On this basis, we believe that there are standards for man to adhere to in language as in all of life. This is why our A Beka Book grammar books emphasize structure, rules, analysis, and the kind of practice that aims at mastery. This is why we place an importance on correct spelling and the continual enlargement of each student's vocabulary. This is why we aspire to provide students with examples of the very best literature of the ages, and this is why we emphasize the continual improvement of writing abilities. "

[Quelle: http://www.abeka.com/Distinctives.html. -- Zugriff am 2005-04-07]

Das Schulbuch "Economics: works and prosperity" wird so angepriesen:

"Emphasis on free enterprise capitalism in a free market economy sets this book apart from the competition. The Biblical views of work, wealth, and stewardship appear throughout the text, helping students to understand the proper economic roles of individual producers and consumers as well as that of the government from a conservative, Christian perspective. The stark contrast between the market economy—the cornerstone of prosperity in the United States—and the command economy—the hallmark of fiscal failure in Communist countries—is graphically presented in illustration of the economic principles that govern all societies."

[Quelle: http://www.abeka.com/DownloadCatalogs/HSCatalog/HSCatHistGovGeog.pdf. -- Zugriff am 2005-04-07]

Das Schulbuch "Sex, Love and Romance" wird so beworben:

"The acceptance of immoral be havior by today’s society makes it necessary to teach morality in sexual attitudes at an early age. Using Biblical term inology and examples, this book offers principles that will guide the young teen in setting dating standards. The author, Dr. Hugh Pyle, discusses the sins of adultery, fornication, and homosexuality as they are presented in the Bible and explains their results. The book details God’s plan concerning dating and marriage and the consequences of disobeying His moral commands in these areas. It can be used as part of the physical education, Bible, health, or science curriculum."

Zu English Literature (12th grade):

"A Beka Book has skillfully blended the best of early English literature with rigorous editorial scholarship and a strong Christian philosophy to create this text for grade 12. The anthology traces the development of English literature from the Anglo-Saxon period through the twentieth century and features such major literary figures as Chaucer, Malory, Foxe, Spenser, Marlowe, Donne, Shakespeare, Milton, Tennyson, Dickens, and Shaw. The background material with many selections is designed to help students understand the context and the content of the work and evaluate it in Christian perspective. Selections from Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe are presented, including the often-omitted record of Crusoe’s spiritual growth and his Christian witness to Friday. Key chapters from Boswell’s Life of Samuel Johnson highlight Johnson’s belief in the Bible and the vastness of his mind. Hymn writers and the great devotional writers and preachers are also included. The text concludes with ringing tributes to those individuals who have risen above the barrenness of 20th-century thought to continue England’s tradition of Christian faith and vision."

[Quelle: http://www.abeka.com/DownloadCatalogs/HSCatalog/HSCatEnglish.pdf. -- Zugriff am 2005-04-07]


5.6. "The richest Christian" — ein christliches Lernspiel


Nebenbei bemerkt ein bemerkenswertes christliches Lernspiel:

Hersteller: Ornament Publications. --  http://www.ornament-pub.com/. -- Zugriff am 2005-04-11


Abb.: The richest Christian - eien Art christliches Monopoly

"The Richest Christian Game is a full-color board game which is enjoyed by both children and adults. Every move is based on a Scripture verse.

The players are highly motivated to learn the 70 verses which teach how money is gained or lost and how money can be used to serve the Lord.

To win, a player must use his earthly money to lay up treasures in Heaven. The winner is the player who ends with the most ETERNAL TREASURES.

While playing The Richest Christian Game the whole family is blessed because they have meditated on God's Word.  "This book of the law shall not depart out of thy mouth; but thou shalt meditate therein day and night, that thou mayest observe to do according to all that is written therein:  for then thou shalt make thy way prosperous, and then thou shalt have good success"  Joshua 1:8."

More Information on the game

The game involves 2-6 players or teams moving their game pieces around a board landing on various squares. Each square illustrates a verse on either how money is gained or lost in this life. Most of these verses are found in Proverbs.

 
 

Here is a sample square which illustrates a verse on gaining money. The square on the board is called PROFITABLE LABOR.

 
A sample square on losing money is LOVING SLEEP. “Love not sleep lest thou come to poverty...” Proverbs 20:13. You sleep all day instead of going to work. Lose $500 looking for another job.
   
 
 
When a player lands on a square, he reads the verse and the instructions out loud. If he can look away and repeat the verse from memory, he earns $100 bonus money. The players are highly motivated to earn this BONUS MONEY.
 

The players receive or lose EARTHLY MONEY as they move around the board and learn the verses. BUT no one wins by getting all the EARTHLY MONEY!

 

To win a player must choose optional OPPORTUNITY CARDS and use his money to minister to the other players. Here’s a typical OPPORTUNITY CARD:

 
 

DISTRIBUTING TO THE SAINTS
"Distributing to the necessity of saints..."

You have the opportunity to give $300 to help a godly widow pay her utility bills. If you do, receive 20,000 ETERNAL TREASURES. (select widow from among the players.)

 

 
 
 

 The players receive ETERNAL TREASURES when they use their money to minister. The winner is the player with the most ETERNAL TREASURES. He’s THE RICHEST CHRISTIAN.

[Quelle: http://www.ornament-pub.com/. -- Zugriff am 2005-04-11]


6. Eine weltliche Alternative: Weg von den Privatschulen


In ihrem sehr anschaulichen Buch über Berkeley (California) High School

Maran, Meredith: Class dismissed : a year in the life of an American high school : a glimpse into the heart of a nation. -- New York : St. Martin's Press, 2000. -- xviii, 301 S., [16] p. of plates : Ill. ; 22 cm.  -- ISBN: 0312265689. -- {Wenn Sie HIER klicken, können Sie dieses Buch bei amazon.de bestellen}

zieht die Autorin folgende Konsequenzen aus ihrer Erfahrung als Schülerin, Mutter und Beobachterin mit öffentlichen High schools:

"We must first ask ourselves, and answer honestly, what we want our schools to do. If the purpose of educating our children is to prepare a tiny number of them to own and run the country, a slightly larger number of them to ensure the profitability of our corporations, and the vast majority to flip our burgers, clean our hotel rooms, and fill our prisons— in short, to maintain our greed-driven, stratified society as it now exists—then we are doing an excellent job, and we should change nothing.

If, on the other hand, we want our schools to mend, not perpetuate, the sharpening division between Americans of different races and classes; to produce the kind of brilliant, compassionate human beings we all want to work with and drive alongside of and live next door to; to recognize and nurture the miracle that is every child's mind, heart, and potential—then we must radically restructure the American system of education.

I cast my vote for the latter. Toward that end—derived from what I saw, heard, and felt during my years as a parent, volunteer, and journalist at "the most integrated high school in America"—I offer this five-point plan.

1. Abolish private schools

Private schools are a prime instrument for maintaining inequities in education and in society. If we are to fulfill America's yet-unkept promise of democracy, we must first close the hatches through which those with money and privilege escape the common fate. "To the extent change is possible," Berkeley High parent and UC Berkeley professor Pedro Noguera writes in the June 2, 2000, issue of The Nation, "it is more likely to occur in education than in any other sector."

Such change cannot occur as long as wealthy children are taught in small, well-equipped classes by highly skilled professionals, and poor children founder in overcrowded, decaying classrooms with untrained "emergency credential" teachers. We must close the escape hatch—because until public schools have to be good enough for everyone, they won't be good enough for anyone.

In the interim we must immediately abolish private-school vouchers, an insidiously seductive scheme to siphon much-needed public funds from desperately underfunded public schools.

2. Make public schools more like private schools

Everything parents pay for when they write checks to private schools can be replicated in public schools—if we as a nation are willing to write the check. (Wondering where the money will come from? Hint to legislators: check the federal budget. In fiscal year 2000 the government is spending $291 billion on the military and $35 billion on education.) We should exponentially increase per-pupil spending in every school. In the process we should bring to a long-overdue end the disparity between the funding of affluent suburban schools and the funding of schools in poor neighborhoods—and put to rest the dangerous notion of decreasing funds to schools whose students perform poorly on standardized tests. Then we will be able to offer every child:

  • A modern, well equipped, and—dare I suggest it?—beautiful, safe, student-friendly campus of 1,000 students or less. (Small schools have been proven to be safer and more effective. Their students have higher grade point averages, higher attendance and graduation rates, and lower rates of failed classes, retention, and violence);
  • The choice to attend magnet schools that nurture particular interests and talents: in the arts, or in medicine, computer technology, religion, ecology, etc.
  • Classes of twenty students or less;
  • An engaging, rigorous curriculum taught by motivated, talented teachers;
  • Challenging but attainable academic standards, measured not by distracting, discriminatory, mass-administered standardized testing (which leads to "ram, remember, regurgitate" teaching) but by the achievement of individual goals (see below);
  • A personalized education plan, modeled on the Individual Education Plan currently used for special ed students and the Individual Learning Plan implemented by many charter schools, which brings together teacher, family, and student to set and monitor goals and milestones for each child's academic, vocational, and personal development;
  • Real guidance counselors with the time, training, and dedication it takes to be the mentors, role models, and allies all young people need—on site, at school, where students spend most of their waking hours.

3. Abolish segregated schools and segregated classes

As long as our neighborhoods are separate and unequal, so will our neighborhood public schools be. As long as our neighborhood public schools are separate and unequal, so will our neighborhoods be. We cannot level the economic and social playing field, we cannot offer equal opportunity to all, without providing all with an equal education. We cannot offer all an equal education as long as our school districts and schools are segregated. By combining busing with school choice (as the Berkeley Unified School District does), or by any means possible, we must ensure that the population of every American school—its administrators and teachers as well as its students—mirrors the population of the city or region that it serves.

In the interim, we must end the practice of tracking. Aptly named, the practice sends wealthy children down the road to greater wealth and entitlement, while it slams poor children into the dead end of deepening demoralization and poverty. Let's make school a sanctuary from, not an enforcer of, inequity, division, and "me-first" individualism. Let's give all of our children the benefit of each other—by educating them in heterogeneous classes where rich kids and poor kids, "challenged" and "advanced" kids, native Spanish speakers and fourth-year Latin students learn together and learn from one another. Let's include in our definition of "higher standards" the expectation that our children will learn to respect, admire, and share their gifts and needs with others. Let's put all our children in the same boat, then work together to raise the level of the river.


4. Pay teachers what they're worth

What is the value of a good teacher to a child, a community, a nation? Should a teacher earn the same salary as a sales clerk? (Many do, in a calculation of their hourly wage.) A prison guard? (In California, starting teachers earn around two-thirds as much.) A software developer? An advertising executive? A senator? (Not even close.)

Should teachers be paid for half of the hours they work? For most of the hours? For all of them?

Should teachers be able to afford to live in the communities where they teach?

Should teachers be trained thoroughly before they enter a classroom, and continuously as long as they're there?

Should we be able to keep and reward excellent teachers and promptly rescue our children from the others?

As every adult who's been influenced by a teacher knows, there is no more significant determinant of a child's success or a school's ability to educate its students than its teachers. Whether we do it because we value our children, or we do it to sharpen America's competitive edge in the global marketplace, the important thing is that we just do it: retrain or fire bad teachers; pay good teachers fairly for what they do.

5. Get families into the schools

Endless studies have been conducted and analyzed, countless programs devised, many hands wrung over the lack of parental involvement—particularly that of minority parents—in the schools. The problem is serious: in order to succeed, kids need their parents, and so

do the schools. Solving the problem will be difficult, but it is not hard to understand.

Parents must invest their time and money wisely. Most of the parents who attend teacher conferences, back-to-school nights, and PTA meetings are those who have reason to believe that participating in their children's education is a worthwhile investment. That is, they believe that the school is willing and able to educate their children, and that a good education will improve their children's chances of success in life. Not coincidentally, these tend to be the same parents who have the most flexible work schedules (so they can volunteer at school during the day), the most help at home (so they can attend nighttime meetings), the most disposable income (so they can sponsor field trips and donate computers). They also tend to be the parents who have reaped the benefits of education in their own lives, whose circumstances are better than their parents' because of it.

On the other hand, parents (and grandparents and other guardians) who don't believe that the school is willing and/or able to provide their child with an education, or who believe that whatever education their child gets will not ensure a better life—for example, if they believe that their child is likely to be arrested for Driving While Black, no matter how well he does in school—might consider a PTA meeting to be a waste of time. Not coincidentally, these are often the same parents who speak little or no English, have inflexible working hours, younger children and no babysitter at home, no extra money or computers to give away. For many of them, even those who spent more years in school than their parents did, school didn't help: life is harder for them than it was for their forebears.

While we're progressing down the long, winding road to equity and excellence in education, with the final goal of equal opportunity for all, we can take baby steps in the right direction.

  • Require employers to give parents and guardians an hour off each week to work in their children's schools. Sound like a radical idea? The U.S. military currently does exactly that.
  • Make full-family participation possible and popular: provide child care, food, and translation for all evening events; use only universally accessible communication channels (no vital information transmitted via E-mail until all families are online); invite and value the contributions of families from all segments of the school community (hold tamale sales and bake sales; sell sweet potato pie and brownies).
  • Turn high schools into community centers, where families can get the help they need to maximize their children's success in school: information about school programs and resources; referrals for employment, medical care, counseling, legal representation; training in computers, literacy, language, etc.
  • Encourage community use of school facilities for recreation, entertainment, adult education, and community service. Many high schools have the best theater, the best track, the best library in town—and many of them lock their gates at night. Local artists can perform in the school auditorium. Cooking classrooms can be used to feed the homeless with food harvested from student gardens. Students can teach their parents to use computers in their own classrooms. Parents can shoot hoops together on weekends in the gym."

[Quelle: Maran, Meredith: Class dismissed : a year in the life of an American high school : a glimpse into the heart of a nation. -- New York : St. Martin's Press, 2000. -- xviii, 301 S., [16] p. of plates : Ill. ; 22 cm.  -- ISBN: 0312265689. -- S. 289 - 294. -- {Wenn Sie HIER klicken, können Sie dieses Buch bei amazon.de bestellen}]


Abb.: Plan von Berkeley High School

Die Situation an Berkeley High School kann man folgenden Texten von Eltern entnehmen:

Violence at Berkeley High

Advice and recommendations from the UCB Parents mailing list. This page is brought to you by UC Berkeley Parents Network
 

Is Berkeley High School Dangerous?

March-April 2001

I have a daughter beginning BHS as a 9th grader next fall. I have been told by two "credible" sources that there is a particular hallway on the BHS campus where white kids are not welcome and have been jumped if they stray there. Would someone please comment? Please don't use my name. Thanks


RE: THE PROVERBIAL HALLWAY
I've got two whiter than white children at BHS, and one African American daughter there. I've heard from ignorant people about the "hordes of children from Richmond and Oakland" come to Berkeley so that they can flunk out and terrorize their classmates and, etc. etc. Berkeley High is an active, supportive school that offers a lot to different kinds of students, but offlimits hallways ain't part of it. There is some racial tension from time to time, as there is anytime that ignorant racial stereotyping is alive and present, but the school and all of its people deal with it. I'd love to know who the "credible" sources of this balderdash are. There's lots to criticize BHS about and lots that needs to be done, but to spread garbage like this is sad and silly. KC
Hi. I read your email in "Parents of Teens" that said it isn't really dangerous at BHS-- that this is just balderdash. My daughter is going to be at BHS next year, so I am interested in this issue. I really hope you're right, but I have heard parents say that their kids have been "egged" and "stuffed" (into trashcans), and the Principal and Vice-Principal told the 8th grade parents at several different presentations I attended that there were emergency room-level injuries during spirit week. A BHS parent told me that his daughter's boyfriend was attacked and was badly hurt (his head was cut open and required stitches).in front of the school. A friend of mine discovered a hallway at the school where there were broken bottles, used condoms, and a heavy smell of marijuana. The administration didn't know about the area, but were grateful to be told, and are now trying to deal with cleaning up this area as well as trying to work with parents to make the school safer. I'm grateful to them for taking action. It seems to me that if this is "garbage", then they might be wasting their time. But if there is any truth to it, I think you'll agree that it's worth their time and ours to make sure the high school is safe for all students. It sounds like your kids haven't experienced any violence at BHS. That's great, and I hope we don't either. But I feel better about my kid being there knowing that steps are being taken to ensure that BHS is a safe campus for all. Cynthia
"There's lots to criticize BHS about and lots that needs to be done, but to spread garbage like this is sad and silly." What is sad and silly is that 5 students were beaten at Berkeley High because they were white. What is sad and silly is that even though I saw a drug deal on campus in the Channing corridor the Chief of the Berkeley Police department states there is absolutely nothing he can do. What is sad and silly is that during a meeting about the renovations to the Old Gym (http://www.busduse.org/oldgym/) one of the teachers made the statement that the alley way between the Donahue Gym and the old gym is not safe and even the security guards will not go there. What is sad and silly is that there are students out of class and no one -NO ONE- is telling them they need to be in class. What is sad and silly is that when I walked around campus on April 5th I only saw security near the administration building until we asked them to come over and talk to the students out of class. What is sad and silly is that someone think it is punitive punishment for the school to require a meeting with a parent after there has been 6 unexcused absences. What is sad and silly is that this community is doing a great disservice to its students in the name of racial equity. What is sad and silly is that the Berkeley community is sticking its proverbial head in the sand. Angela
From the BHS Students' Daily Bulletin April 24: "Dear Parents, Students, and Staff, We are aware of the recent assaults on campus. We are shocked and dismayed, but we will put a halt to what is taking place. Perpetrators are being arrested and prosecuted. The school district will be expelling these students. Additional Police Officers and Security Officers will be on campus between now and the end of the school year. In the meantime, please report any suspicious behavior to any adult on campus. Additionally, there will be assemblies dealing with this issue starting next week."
Kudos to Angela and her letter regarding the many issues around security/truancy/race/violence at Berkeley High. I've written letters regarding some of these issues and have had it suggested to me (by the keepers of the BHS newsletter) that I refrain from mentioning race in discussing the incidents of truancy, vandalism, drug taking, etc. that I've witnessed in the campus vicinity. I've called the Berkeley Police Dept. I've called Berkeley High's on-campus security.....all to no avail. Thank you, Angela, for calling attention to these very important issues. Perhaps if we keep pressing, those in positions to take some positive action, will finally realize the disservice that's being done to our community. Lisa
Report on April 27 meeting between BUSD and City on BHS Safety: http://www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/news/04apr01/042701BUSD.html
I would like to add a bit of observation to the discussion of the conditions at Berkeley High School.

I too have been reading about the "dangerous halls" and "disgusting grounds", so I decided to see for myself. I have to be honest, as a 35 yr resident of Berkeley and BHS graduate, I was truly disappointed to see the conditions under which our kids have to pursue their education in academics and life. The atmosphere is not pleasant, and the attitude is meaner, but there is still good work going on in spite of the conditions.

There are far too many kids roaming the halls and grounds during class times, and it is difficult to determine which kids are students and which have come onto campus through the numerous un-monitored entrances. Truancy is a huge problem, but so is scheduling. When I've asked kids why they were not in class at various times, they say they have a "hole" in their schedule. So why don't they fill it, well they are teens, and a hole means "free" time.

The attitude of the parents and administrators needs to change about how to "guide" these potentially great kids, and not just "let it happen", because this is what you get.

Finally, I would like to say, IF YOU ARE REALLY CONCERNED, please take an hour out of your day and come down to the campus and join the effort of the Parents and Guardians on Campus to help "keep an eye on things". Believe me, every teacher I have encountered is very grateful that parents are getting involved. After all, isn't it more effective to start a conversation off with, "I've seen", rather than, "I've heard". Thanks for listening, I hope you heard. Ed


Yesterday I was told something that was very disturbing. A young man at BHS said that when he intervened in a fight on campus, suggesting the older kid pick on someone his own size and age, the older kid picked up his shirt and revealed a gun in his pants. Could this be true? Are there metal detectors?
I just want to throw this out there: no one is disputing that there are problems with rough kids at BHS. It's a big urban school and it has the same kinds of problems other big urban schools have. I do think that problems like truancy and loitering and assault deserve our attention and action. But the original question was whether there is a particular hallway at BHS that white kids can't go in. So far we haven't heard from anyone that there is such a hallway, and several people have written in to dispute it. There is a history of non-BHS parents "hearing things" about BHS that either worry them about their child's safety or turn them off to BHS altogether. Often the "things" are not true, or they are greatly exaggerated, or they are incidents that happened a long time ago. The great majority of students at BHS never experience any kind of violent behavior at school. It is a pity for Berkeley parents to not even consider BHS because of unfounded rumors and diehard exaggerations, a pity for them and a pity for us. So let's try to keep this discussion in perspective. --- a BHS parent
I have heard that quite a few kids have been "jumped" and robbed of their wallets the past few weeks while in various hallways at Berkeley High. This has got to stop. Has anyone else heard about this? Is anything being done? Also heard a group boxed a kid (placed a box over a kids head) while he was in the stairwell and beat him up. This is an outrage. Students are told to always be with a friend or a group, but this is not always possible. Do other parents have stories? My son was jumped recently by a group of students right after school, his wallet taken. There was no security around. We reported this to the school. But then I heard it has happened to quite a few students. If this is so, then this is insanity. The school must crack down on this and BHS must become a safer place to be. I don't remember feeling this way last year, and last year was incredibly tumultuous with all the fires and arson going on. I feel in a way it's gotten worse instead of better, or else I'm more aware of it. I don't know but I don't like it. Anonymous
Editor Note: since the above letter was received, BHS Principal Frank Lynch has sent out informationals about this on the BHS e-tree.
To the BHS parent who thinks that the violence issue at Berkeley High needs to be put into perspective, consider this:

About ten days ago, my son entered the second floor H building hallway and saw the passageway "blocked" by twelve boys. Realizing that he could not pass through them, he walked casually up to two boys whom he did know who were standing close to the group of twelve. He said hello to one of the two boys, talked for a minute or two, and then stood with both of them, since he felt "safer" with them than alone. Suddenly, he told me, the larger group got excited and a boy about 6'2" raised his hand high in the air. Then, without warning, the boy with the arm raised turned 90 degrees to the boy my son had been talking to, and swiftly, powerfully, smashed his fist into the boy's jaw. My son said that he could hear this boy's jaw crack as he fell to the ground. The larger group of boys stood over him as he lay on the floor, laughed at him, called him names and then walked away. The boy got up, his nose bleeding, and walked down the hallway in a daze. A teacher came along who helped him.

A week later when my son saw the boy who had been hit, the boy asked my son if he knew who hit him and why. The group who did it could not be identified.

None of the hallways at Berkeley High are safe. The violence is random and perpetrators go unpunished. There are thugs who go to school every day to prey on unsuspecting "targets" who don't know who hit them or why. Most students don't report being robbed, mugged or threatened because they are afraid. And they have reason to be.

Let's put this into perspective, BHS parent, and others who think because their kid hasn't been victimized, that the safety issue has been overblown. Last year it was fires; this year it is unwarranted assaults. Berkeley High School IS unsafe. Thirty two hundred students are crammed onto this campus and there are only "three escape routes" and no abundance of security. I tell people who ask me about Berkeley High that this safety issue is not rumor. It's real. And it needs to be addressed. NOW. Another Berkeley Parent


From: Shirley Issel (Shirley Issel is on the Berkeley School Board)

I would like to post this in the discussion section in response to parents concerns about violence at BHS

From: "Laura Menard"

Superintendent Steve Goldstone and Principal Frank Lynch have been meeting with City Manager Weldon Rucker, Mayor Shirley Dean and the BPD Youth Services to develop practices and procedures to meet security needs and develop truancy solutions. Frank Lynch explained his intentions to promote a respectful, safe learning environment with this extraordinary mutual support.

Some of the remedies being implemented are: revised security plan, increased personnel, BPD supported training for safety officers, new vests identifying BHS Safety officers, improved student identification cards in the fall and increased reporting practices. When students who have experienced or witness violence report the incident to Principal Frank Lynch, security manager Barry Wiggan and/or the police youth services division, consequences can be given to those responsible.

Walk your Talk Join in! We have been walking the campus in pairs or threesomes. When we encounter a problem, we call BHS Safety Officers via radios. Currently we only have a handful of folks, we need more. Primarily after lunch, noon 3:00. You can volunteer by calling Laura Menard 849-4319 or Frank Lynch 644-4567. Drop-in is fine, red windbreakers and radios are available from Frank Lynch.


From: BUSD Public Information Officer

Mayor Dean is greatly concerned about the violence and physical assaults at the High School. She is working with the City Manager and the School District to take immediate steps to ensure the safety of all students at Berkeley High School. One piece of her efforts to solve the problems at the High School is the attached item that she has submitted to the City Council, for consideration on Tuesday, May 8th. The Mayor believes that all students should be in class between 2nd and 6th periods. Students should not be roaming campus, the building hallways or the Civic Center Park. The Mayor requests that parents who support her suggestion to the School District and who want the violence ended at the High School should come to the City Council and voice their concerns. There is a 30 minute public comment period at the BEGINNING of the Council meeting at 7 p.m. Ten cards are selected at random from those submitted by people wishing to address the Council. If you are not able to come to the meeting, you can send an e-mail to the Mayor and Council members by directing it to clerk@ci.berkeley.ca.us The City Clerk will distribute your message to the Mayor and the Council members.

Maintaining a parent presence on campus all day long for the remaining weeks of school is the principal's number one priority at this time for parent involvement. At the General PTSA Meeting on May 1, Principal Lynch asked that every parent, guardian, grandparent, and significant adult in our children's lives take time to walk on campus. He described a campus situation that has become "critical" and needs all of our immediate attention.

To help out, please go to the front desk of the administration portable any time between 8:00 a.m. and 4:00 p.m. You will be given a red jacket and be sent to walk about the campus in pairs. Drop in is fine, but you may also sign up in advance by calling Principal Frank Lynch at 644-4567.


Regarding BHS:
> Most students don't report being robbed, mugged or threatened
> because they are afraid. And they have reason to be.

This is true -- my son sees the people who jumped him almost everyday at BHS. They are apparently students at the school. He is reluctant to report them, but has described them to security. What is needed but very hard to accomplish is a way to identify these people without fear ot being "discovered" or sought out by those committing the crimes -- how do we accomplish this and insure our kid's safety?

Kids are jumped or robbed at all hours of the day on and off campus -- Last year one of my son's friends was robbed as he was walking to lunch with a group of friends -- he disappeared for 10 minutes and came up to his group and said "I was just robbed" -- this is broad daylight at lunch time near Shattuck Avenue -- lots of people around."

[Quelle: http://parents.berkeley.edu/recommend/schools/BHS/violence.html. -- Zugriff am 2005-04-11]


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