Christian School
Every fundamentalist knows that all public schools are bastions of devil-worship and endless drug-fueled orgies. The public schools are obviously a mess because after prayer was removed from them by the Supreme Court, real Christians stopped going there. And in a feat of perfect circular logic it then follows that (unless they are protesting something) real Christians should stay far away from public schools since only infidels attend and teach there. This is know as being “in the world but not of it.”
To solve the problem of how to educate their children, fundamentalists in a church of any decent size will inevitably start a school. Often times these schools have neat rules that require the parents of students to be members of the church in order to keep the riff-raff out. Unfortunately, government regulation has stepped in here as well to prevent many of these schools from carrying out biblical corporal punishment on children for offenses such as not raising their hands before talking in class or wearing the wrong colored socks with their uniform. It is obviously the age of Laodicea when you can’t even whip a child at school anymore.
For the most part fundamentalist schools run just about like any other school with the exception of having a pledge to the Christian flag, having chapel services ever day, and having a curriculum from the greatest minds that non-accredited fundamentalist colleges have ever produced. This curriculum is in turn taught by top-flight teachers who earn less than the pay at a good fast-food job.
Never fear, these schools are sure to give students have all the tools they need for a successful career at the basement bible college of their choosing. ab ove maiori discit arare minor
Posted by Darrell
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Don’t forget the ever-popular “greenhouse” theory, where we start the little plants/children in a safe environment before planting them in the wild/world.
As a product of one of those schools (A.C.E., or School of Tomorrow, as it’s called now), let me just say: I wouldn’t have done so well post-secondary if I hadn’t been a self-starting, Type A student. My school didn’t do much for me academically that I couldn’t have gotten from home schooling.
Problems w/ Christian schools in the 80′s & into the early 90′s:
1. The corporal punishment. I got a spanking for not doing a paper I didn’t even know I was supposed to do when I was in first grade. It was not a nice experience. No warnings. . just “the rod”.
2. Lack of educated teachers. I basically didn’t get a math education from 6th grade on, and very little science.
3. Really dumb rules (wear skirts to school even in 10 degree weather, etc. . )
4. One size fits all type of classrooms & instruction. No hands-on. Just sit for hours and do that seat-work.
I must say that Christian schools today have largely improved, and many require certified, well-trained teachers. Most are bigger schools and are made up of students from many churches as well as open to the community at large (just my observation). The tuition is a lot higher than the 80′s church-basement schools as well. :>)
I think it is flatly irresponsible to send your children to a non-accredited school. How are these children supposed to get into any accredited college? Oh wait, I forgot these poor kids can apply at HAC – a non-accredited college. Let’s just spread the ignorance around….
Full disclosure. I went to a Christian school from 4-8th grade in the 70′s, but it was accredited and taught by an accredited teacher.
I went on to graduate from City University magna cum laude. So Christian schools can’t all be lumped together in the same boat.
Well fundies actually aren’t that against “higher education” – in fact I believe they’re kinda view it with a biased attitude. Almost anything that helps their cause they will do.
You see how hard they try to dig into the Hebrew and Greek when they try to justify KJV-Onlyism and alcohol prohibitionism, or even Landmarkism. How can we say Fundies hate ‘higher education’?
In fact, I believe that the reason why secular culture today at large is so ungodly is because Fundies have advocated retreat from it. I’ve read IFB books dating all the way back from the 40s and 50s when the writer was ranting against movies, cards, etc. etc.
I am disappointed by much of the Christian education I have seen. It is mostly the same as the government schools with the addition of chapel and a Bible class.
I am surprised that anyone here brings up the accreditation issue. Where did accreditation come from? All schools were once unaccredited. What accreditation agency is going to cancel Harvard’s accreditation? (Lisa, you have the credentials. Can you research this? It might make a great grad school thesis.)
Despite the lack of accreditation, home schooled kids do not seem to have trouble getting to state run colleges or many private ones. If they can’t get into Yale on the first try, just enroll in the local community college and transfer. Isn’t it great to know that the Ivy League schools compare well with Back Water State in everything except price and snob appeal? They often use the same text books.
How has accreditation kept the schools from becoming fountain heads of failed theory? Marxism is discredited everywhere it has been practiced, except in the most elite schools. But then it is not practiced there, only taught.
If you think it is only fundies who think government schools are horrors, read John Taylor Gatto’s book, The Underground History of American Education. It is on line free.
Government schools are run on two principles: extortion by taxation and kidnapping by truancy laws. Even the worst of the Christian schools are exempt from this.
Self-starters will do well. This says a lot about education. Don’t believe the system we use is the best because it is all you see. Is schooling (it is not the same as education) a racket? A student in my church attends Cornell. She took the introductory biology course with 1200 other students in a lecture hall. The course was taught by a teaching assistant (i.e., a graduate student shanghaied into the role). Wow! community college level quality at Cornell price.
By the way, just what constitutes “Christian Education”?
Randy addressed the flaws in this post very well. I know of people that were homeschooled and never saw a day in an accredited school, but are very successful and are able to go places that public school kids rarely go. Christian school is second best to homeschooling, because only a few Christian schools are really as bad as you’re describing. It’s just like with homeschooling, most do it right, but a few do it wrong and make a bad name for homeschoolers.
“most do it right, but a few do it wrong and make a bad name for [the rest].”
Agreed. I spent my entire kindergarten-high school career in two separate Christian schools, neither accredited, and got a decent education at both, thanks also to encouraging, dilligent parents who instilled in my the value of learning. I also went to the previously-unaccredited Bob Jones and had no trouble getting into the public, secular university where I am now pursuing a graduate degree. The only place I absolutely couldn’t get into was the University of Georgia, but they didn’t even accept my credits from the University of Heidelberg.
But good point, Darrell, in bringing up the curricula that a lot of Christian schools use. Some of them are quite good, but there seems to be a direct correlation between a school’s perceived “worldliness” and the quality of its textbooks, especially where literature and history textbooks are concerned.
Christian Schools is probably bad title for the topic. FundyX-style Christian schools with very narrow curricula and more concern about teaching standards than exposing young minds to the large world is more the point.
And just my own opinion here, but I think that ACE (or whatever they’re called this year) is the one of the worst educational systems ever devised. I speak as someone who went to an ACE school for a year and spent most of my time reading books from the library after knocking out my total schoolwork in the first hour.
That would be the The New England Association of Schools and Colleges which is the accrediting body that grants Harvard its status. Not only is Harvard University accredited, it has been accredited for over seven decades. The New England Association of Schools and Colleges first accredited Harvard in 1929. In addition, Harvard Divinity School has been accredited by the Association of Theological Schools since 1940.
Whether or not it was important in the past, accreditation is an increasingly important issue both in the workplace and in higher education.
Is it possible to go on to do Post-Grad work with an unaccredited degree? Yes. Does it hinder you and throw up roadblocks to getting into specific schools and jobs? You’d better believe it.
Full disclosure: I hold an unaccredited Bachelors degree and really wish that it were accredited.
“FundyX-style Christian schools with very narrow curricula and more concern about teaching standards than exposing young minds to the large world is more the point.”
Absolutely correct!!!
Darryl;
I am a cristan skool teacher at Backdoor Bible Indepenat Babtist Church. I am uphauled by you’re post attaking my church skool.
We have a very strong cericulem where I work. My Sicsth graders are very smart and get a exemplury education. Our day starts out like these:
1. Pleje of allejiance (we scream out UNDER GOD) as loud as posible. They dont do that in public schools. We also pleje to the christian flag and bible.
2. Sing songs for 1.5 hours.
3. Chappel. We had Bro. Johnny Pope last week.
4. Lunch.
5. Resess.
6. Bible storys.
7. glitter/play do or macuroni crafts.
8. 15 minuts of academic teaching.
9. home
“able to go places public school students rarely go”
Like where? The Bill Rice Ranch? Music Camp at PCC? Sword Conference? Help me out here…
I pulled a double, 9 years of ACE (Accelerated Christian Education) and 4 years of Jonestown. I still remember going to the ACE national conference and we would stand and sing this silly song that went something like “Christian education doesn’t cost it pays, pays eternal dividends in so many ways…” I can’t remember the rest…does anyone else remember this?
The problem with BJU is that it is nationally accredited and not regionally accredited. So basically it is still worthless unless you want to transfer to another nationally accredited school. Just imagine, you go 3 1/2 years to this school and are close to graduating and then get kicked out for listening to the devil’s music. This happened to several of my friends. They basically had to start over at a real school or sit out a year and come back after “getting right with God”.
Needless to say, we home school our 6 year old, have two in public high school, and the oldest is at UGA.
Bill:
I rememebr that song. I went to the national convention 1988-1992. Tim LaHaye actually spoke one year, which still floors me.
The school I atttended high school at used Abeka for the elementary except for the
bible ciricculum, In high school Abeka is used for every subject except English( Bob
Jones) and Math(Saxon). Elementary kids got spanked but I do not think that it was
as bad as some people listed. A bonus for my Senior trip I got to go to Spain. What
was funny was another scholl not far from us complained that our trip was cooler than
their’s. As a punishment for complaining they went on a dear hunting trip with their
pastor( it was a class of all boys)instead of the planned trip. THe class before mine
went to Hawaii(all boys plus principal) and the class behind me went to England. I
don’t think that the next classs will be able to go out of country.
We are a homeschool family. We homeschool out of a firm belief that governement schools are at odds with what the Bible teaches. Why then would we send our kids to an institution that desires to remove our God from society as a whole? Governement schools are not neutral. Neither are we.
Some of us don’t wish to have our kids taught that God is bad, allah is good. Sex is not only ok but expected behavior before marriage. We don’t desire to have our kids exposed to negative peer pressure, gang fighting, homosexuality taught in the class room and practiced in the halls of government schools. I could go on but I won’t.
We have this crazy idea that kids should be able to read above the 3rd grade level. We desire that our kids actually know how to do basic math WITHOUT a calculator. We have high standards for education and are NOT satisfied by the low moral and educational standards of the government schools.
There is no teacher in this world who loves our children more than we do. Nor is there a teacher in this world who desires the best for each one of our children as we do. Despite obvious popular opinion, homeschoolers ARE accepted by all major colleges and universities. They have no problems getting into local colleges either. In fact, Homeschoolers are preferred by schools of higher education because they know these kids have a solid education even though homeschools are not accredited.
I encourage you to check out http://www.HSLD.org for further information on how successful homeschooling truly is.
opps, wrong link. http://www.hslda.org
Accrediation is important because it demonstrates that the school and the teachers meet minimum standards. My son is currently studying to be a teacher, and he needs four years of univeristy plus an extra unpaid intern year in order to graduate. The school who hires him will be certain that he has met certain standards in education and will be qualified to teach. I feel sorry for graduates of unaccredited schools, because out here in the REAL WORLD it is difficult to get or advance in a career outside of the fundy world. Really, with a degree in “bus ministry”, what are you supposed to do?
Yes, there is a lot of garbage in the public school, but most people don’t have the choice to homeschool when both parents are working full time, or the kids are being raised by a single mother. You just have to combat the bad stuff they may learn at school or tv with the good stuff at home.
I thought the subject of the post was Christian schools. If someone can homeschool and do it well, more power to them. But let me say that I went to public schools and they were nothing like the charicature that the Christian education industry likes to make. And do not kid yourself– it is an industry and fortunes are tied up in it.
I also went to fundamentalist Christian school and having been through that, I’d rather put my kids in a public school.
Yes, accreditation is important. It is an important barrier to entry. This is a classic cartel. You can not get in no matter how good you are because your papers are not in order. You are not one of us. Accreditation means that Newton can’t teach calculus, Einstein physics, Jesus anything in a government school. The only thing that accreditation certifies is that you are accredited.
Standards are not the same thing as accreditation. My company is certified ISO9001 compliant by an out side auditor. It is a farce. Nothing but more paperwork that is properly filled out and then forgotten.
It seems my earlier question about Harvard’s accreditation was misread. I did not ask if Harvard was accredited. I asked what agency would dare cancel such accreditation. It is inconceivable. If it did happen, it would mean that the local no prestige community college really is a better deal.
Where do you go with a degree in bus ministry? The same place you go with one in early English Literature: the end of the line.
Sorry to be a smarty pants, but a small correction to the Latin phrase at the end of this post should be noted. It doesn’t make any sense the way it is written.
“ab ove maiori discit arare minor” means “from the older sheep the younger learns to plow.”
But sheep don’t plow, do they. What you should have wrote was
“a bove maiori discit arare minor,” which means “from the older ox the younger learns to plow.”
There’s not a lot in this posts that resounds with me. But some of the comments, now—
On the Christian education industry, Mountain says, “do not kid yourself- it is an industry and fortunes are tied up in it,” as if the same weren’t true—only more so—of the public education industry. Follow the money and you’ll wind up at Carnegies, Fords and Rockefellers. You think with all that idle money they had sitting around, those men didn’t help shape the manifold bureaucracy that is public education. Its compulsiveness, its disjointed curricula and facts train a child to seek relief from learning, relief like text messaging and facebook, mountain dew and pot. Public education rewards the studious regurgitators, who don’t ask questions. It’s logical to want a workforce like that if you’re an industrial kingpin. Furthermore, you’d also want the rest of the students—the jaded ones like most of us who hated being there—conditioned into adulthood to hate what they do from 9-5. What they really live for is Miller time! and spend most of their day at work living in the futurity of that relief. And that drives consumption always ever higher, as the law of diminishing returns makes it still harder to block out the pain of living in a time when even an accredited BA is barely enough to get you off the dayshift.
And I agree with Randy on accreditation, when he says, “Nothing but more paperwork that is properly filled out and then forgotten.”
Except to say that most of schoolwork I ever did seems to fit this definition as well. Except for the paperwork that was improperly filled out.
I’m not a fundamentalist Christian, and I’m sure they’d say the same of me. But those people DO live in the REAL WORLD (as opposed to the fake, I suppose, hm?), and have real emotions and problems just like the rest of us schmucks. So why all the negativity? Has some parochial school child made fun of you today? Has one condemned you to the fires of hell and damnation? Their parents are like the rest of us who want their children educated the best way they see fit. You might have a problem with the way they do it, but then again, isn’t their goal—that is, educated children—the same as someone’s in a public, charter or home schooling setting? So once you can agree on the essential, you can have a fruitful, maybe even enlightening, discussion on the particulars of education.
Well Randy, I would much rather have my children taught at an accredited school by accredited teachers. I wouldn’t want them taught by Bubba from the bus ministry, who may or may not have made it through high school.
Speaking of private Christian schools – sending your child to one is no guarantee they will be safe. In a local Christian school in my area, the principal of the school (related – oh the coincidence! to three school board members) was accused of raping a high school girl. I am sure, based on inside evidence that I have, that he is guilty. So all these holier-than-thou Christian school promoters still have to keep a sharp eye on their kids, no matter if they are in private or public school. Bad stuff still happens.
Just finished k-12 public schooling! And I don’t think I turned out too bad…Haha. I’ve known other friends and such who’ve gone to these kind of schools and come out worse than some kids who when through public schools. Sad. (i’m probably really off topic of what everyone else is saying but oh well)
The “Never fear, these schools are sure to give students have all the tools they need for a successful career at the basement bible college of their choosing.” part was hilarious. Too often are we seduced (be that the word) to go to these such “colleges.” I’m no exception. But thankfully I’ve changed my mind recently from that. Thank goodness. And God.
I went to christian school for 3 years and hated it. . .except for the senior trip to hawaii. thats where i learned what my chaps really thought about the school
Barring ACE (which I wouldn’t cross the road to use) I’ve taught in just about every style of fundy-ed there is. I taught in Christian schools for 14 years starting out in the late 70s. And I started out as a first-year rookie in a very strict A Beka school. I was miserable and thought I had just wasted all those years and dollars earning my degree! I was issued a mammoth 3 ring binder of daily lesson plans (which I was require to copy into my own lesson planner–what a waste if time!) complete with instructions on when to take my kids to the bathroom and where to have them stand waiting in line in the hall! I felt like the administration didn’t trust me or my degree, not to mention my spiritual gift of teaching. Or maybe I was not called to teach after all, if this was the way it was supposed to be. I left after that year. God didn’t let me quit, though, and over the next few years I was in schools that allowed me more freedom. My final 8 years in the classroom were in an awesome school where we used a lot of hands-on methods and had great fun with creative ways to educate,
Oh boy, interesting topic and comments. I do imagine there are some good fundie Christians schools out there. I didn’t happen to go to any, but there must be some, right?
I went to Christian schools from K-12. The first part through 4th grade was ACE. Let me say that it was the worst experience. That system does not work. Unless you are self motivated, it will do nothing but frustrate you. I can remember my mom trying to get me to do the math “paces”. They had an entire page of long division problems…there must have been about 25 to 30 on the page. I was not motivated in the least, and the sight of it intimidated me. So, I procrastinated. At one point, I resorted to hiding them under my bed if I had homework and saying I “lost” them.
My sister, on the other hand, flourished, because she was a self-starter. I flourished in the English and Vocabulary section, so I was advanced in those areas, but math was definitely behind. My parents eventually decided that it was not the best system for me and moved us to a more traditional Christian school that used Abeka textbooks. That was much better for me. At that point, I learned to be motivated, and I was able to keep pace with all of my classmates after adjusting to an actual teacher and schedule. In the ACE school we were left to our own with a monitor, and the score keys. It’s hard to get kids to teach themselves with very little adult interaction. Plus, so many of the ACE students cheated by looking at the score keys anyway…
So, I spend 5th to 12th grade at the much larger Christian school. It also had it’s issues, but I think generally, the education was good. Well, the texbooks were ok. We did have a problem with the teacher talent pool. Most of our teachers were either PCC or HAC graduates, and had little experience in the subjects they were teaching. I remember our Spanish teacher (who was also our Homeroom, PE, and History teacher) being absolutely clueless about Spanish. At a certain point he had to concede and we started using the PCC video tapes. That was the case with a lot of the subjects. Our Biology teacher knew little about science, our physics teacher…yeah, the same. So, we got a lot of “green” teachers who were fresh out of college, but they were enthusiastic. I remember there was one of the older kids who graduated and went to HAC only to come back four years later as one of our teachers! It was hard to take him seriously though, since he wasn’t that much older than we were, and we knew what he was like as a student…
Anyway, I think if I could have chosen, I would have preferred to go to a public school. I had friends who did, and they seemed to get the same basics that I did, and they seemed pretty smart. None of the things most Christians fear actually went on in the classroom. Sure, my public school friends were a little more tolerant of things, but there didn’t seem to be any indoctrination going on. Plus, we had a perfectly good public school in my housing block that my friends could ride their bikes to in five minutes. My Christian school was 2 hours away. I certainly was envious of their commute, LOL!
“None of the things most Christians fear actually went on in the classroom.”
I put my 11 year old child in public school this year – 6th grade but still in elementary school in our district. She has heard bad words that she didn’t even know existed until this year (my kids thought the s-word was “stupid”); kids curse often and daily in the classroom and lunchroom. (For example, she tossed her lunch bag toward the garbage can but missed. Before she could pick it up, someone snarled at her, “Pick up you f***ing trash.” Nice, huh?) Kids are unfriendly, telling her “go away” when she tries to join a group on the playground. Girls talk about their “lesbian” relationships. One girl says she wants to be a pole-dancer like her mom and shows her moves using the basketball hoop pole. The teacher plays a top-40 radio station during study hall (listen to some of those lyrics – not words suitable for children!!!!). The teacher showed a movie in which the male private part breaks off a naked statue and ends up in a character’s mouth. It’s played for laughs, but was shocking for my child. The girl sitting next to her wants to be a witch. Another child yesterday told her how she wants to kill herself (she sleeps with her dad’s gun). So, yeah, it’s pretty much been as bad as I thought, despite all the Christian parents who told me their kids did just fine in public school. Mind you, this is a school in the suburbs that is considered a good school with a very good principal.
Perhaps I would continue to encourage her to be a “light on a hill” at the school if she had at least one good friend there. But she is lonely and overwhelmed, discouraged and attacked. Her spirit is being crushed by what goes on around her.
@Pastor’s Wife – don’t give up. My daughter came into public middle school in 8th grade after 8 years in Christian school and she had a horrible time adjusting…. but just for that year. When she got into high school, she found a group of classmates that suited her, and did very well. My boys adjusted fairly well (they were in 3rd and 5th grades) and though they brought home some stories, we discussed them from a Biblical standpoint. In the end, they were both marked as gifted, which enabled them to be in classes where their classmates actually wanted to work. And, as we discovered, in both elementary and middle schools, everybody knew who they were and what they stood for.
Have you talked with the teacher or the principal about your concerns? A movie like the one shown should be discussed with both as it was inappropriate for kids of that age (was it rated PG-13? Then it shouldn’t have been shown to 11 and 12 year olds.)
In any case, please consider giving it one more year. In middle school/junior high, she’ll be on the same footing as everyone else. New school, new teachers, new classmates. She’ll have more opportunity to meet new people, and find kids of like mind.
@ Tikatu, thank you for your encouragement. We’re still praying about what to do, and we appreciate insight and experiences from others as we make our decision. I’m glad your daughter had a better second year than the first! (We did talk to the teacher about the movie; they admitted they were wrong in not getting parental permission before showing a movie – that’s in their school guidelines.)