State of education

[apothanein kerdos]

I think there is no doubt that, for Christians, the public school system has failed our students. At the same time, as Christians, we should value education. Thus, what are we to do? Not everyone has the resources to send their children to private schools or the time to home school....so what are Christians to do?

As anyone here will know I do not advocate seperation from the world but instead inclusion without adopting their ethics. At the same time, I think one has to be spiritually mature to do this. A 14 year old heading into a public school is not spiritually mature and is having his education sacrificed as well. My question:

In bigger cities, would it be profitable for like minded churches to get together and form their own private school, one where the rates are not too terribly high and that students can afford? THus far, it seems most private schools are owned by a single church, a denomination, or wealthy individuals. Why not cross denominational lines to like minded churches to create private schools?

[Scarletprayers]

AK, while I agree with everything you've just said, I don't think it will happen. The problem is "like minded" crossing denominational lines, every one, okay a generalization I know, but a pretty truthful one, wants things "their" way. While I've seen more than once even at this site that about certain issues its okay to disagree, very few people actually want to be the one that gives in and concedes to the other side.

[Marnie]

AK, you know I am a big believer in private schools. Under no circumstances would I send a child of mine to a public school these days. The SOL's are the biggest joke in education, as is teacher certification. Parents need to really take control of their children's education and stop entrusting them to, in many cases, teachers who had to take the exam (PRAXIS) umpteen times just to pull off a passing grade.

[nebula]

Hey - if you can get the churches to work together, that'd be a great idea!

[Sadat13]

I live in a big city and there are quite a few private schools which I could not even dream of affording. Some of them are non-denominational, but one church or organization owns them, so they are still expensive. I used to think I wanted my kids home-schooled, but my husband did not want to. I am glad now that I listened to him. My kids have had the opportunity to witness to friends at school who may not have had the chance to have a christian friend if they werent in the same school. Alot of those kids have come to church with my kids and some have accepted the Lord into their lives. It seems like the private schools have stricter guidlines and good teachers, but even then there is no guarantee. My kids are both in High School now and doing an awesome job. I really like the friends they have made and they have had quite a few christian teachers, mostly ministers wives. And quite a few times they have even witnessed to their teachers. I thank God daily for christian children who arent afraid to share their faith with others at school. I would not dream of putting my kids into a private school, just because of those opportunities. I wholeheartedly believe in a good education, but I know that my kids today are learning more in school than I did, and it is much harder than when I skimmed through school in the late 70s, early 80s. There are things that have gotten worse, but some things are actually better.

[buckthesystem]

I am sooooo glad that my kids are in their 20s now and "out of the clutches" of the freaks that control the "education system today". I would really hate to have a young child today and would do what ever I could, work 20 hours a day if I had to, to send them to a private school.

Even though we lived in NZ's third largest city, my kids went to a local high school with 400 pupils. It has closed now - or rather merged with another school in the area. When my daughter was in year 11, only one kid at the school passed the exams to get into year 12 in the whole school so they didn't even have a year 12 class the following year. When my son got to year 11 the highlight of his school career was a welding course, they planned to send his class four at a time on this course and fortunately he was in the first intake, because after that the school decided they could no longer afford the fees and dropped it.

It seems that my daughter spent most of her time either playing sport or learning how to put a condom on a wooden peg, and then I didn't have to worry about this so much with my son because he was more interested in skipping school and driving cars around the neighbourhood. Of course the school had a policy of not telling the parents until the end of term report - if I could actually get hold of it and read it - showed how many days they had attended and how many they had not. Of course if I went to the school to query these figures, I was told "well of course we can't remember now, a lot of this was months ago".

Parents of young children today are being faced with a lot more problems with their kids attending school. It seems that "taking kids fingerprints to (allegedly) issue them with library books" is the main one that I have heard. Of course these things always happen before the parents get to know about it. One of my ex-neighbours was telling me about her problems with one of her kid's teachers being "heavily into a particular Eastern religion, and one heavily into 'new age' philosophy" and imposing this on her charges all the time. The woman approached the school about it and was told "are you discriminating against these teachers' religion or race? That is against the law you know" and suddenly all the kids in the school were aware that one particular kid "had a bigoted mother".

It didn't seem quite so bad in my kids' day, but today I would home-school, or send kids to a private school, no matter what it took.

This is the kids' lives we are talking about and they will always remember their high school years as having a great deal of influence on their adult lives.