"A Case for Moral Absolutes"

By Kenneth M. Pierce

Christian schools go forth and multiply

When students at the Irvington Pentecostal Academy in Houston have a question about their lessons, they signal for the supervisor's attention by raising either an eight-inch American flag or a small blue and white Christian flag at their desks. Each day they recite pledges of allegiance to both flags, and to the Bible. They all wear an eye-catching school uniform of red, white and blue; for men (including the school's principal), blue pants, red shirts and flag-studded blue neckties; for women, plaid jumpers or blue skirts and vests with white blouses. Irvington's rules not only bar cheating, swearing and drugs, but also "rock or country music, dancing and Hollywood movies." Says Principal Fred Corrie, 27:

"We teach the students that living by the Bible is the road to real peace." Sartorial rules aside, Irvington's devout classrooms and moral aims are typical of thousands of fundamentalist Christian schools that have been popping up all over America. Some proponents claim that such schools, usually sponsored by local churches, are being born at the rate of three a day. They estimate too that the number of pupils enrolled has risen since 1971 from about 140,000 to 450,000--or roughly 1% of the current school-age population. The figures may exaggerate the growth; a number of new "schools" are merely living room affairs run by families who teach their own children at home. But there is no doubt that Christian schools have grown dramatically, or that their growth is seen as a dramatic sign of dissatisfaction with the public school system.

An early catalyst for the Christian schools movement was the Supreme Court's 1962 decision in Engel vs. Vitale, leading to a ban on prayer and, as practically interpreted in the public schools, to virtual elimination of religious discussion in schools. Another was 1954's Brown vs. The Board of Education, which inspired the establishment of a number of Southern Christian schools as "segregation academies" for white students.

Christian schoolmen concede such un-Christian influences on the movement in the past, but not today. After comparing Christian school enrollment in Louisville with that in Madison, Wis., Education Researchers Virginia Nordin and William Turner concluded that the schools in both cities had sprung up primarily out of moral and religious concerns.

Says Harvard Sociologist David Riesman: "Those schools reflect a backlash against rampant peer domination in junior high and high schools in the country as a whole." Parents of students who have transferred out of public high schools complain that their children were made fun of for wanting to study and for refusing to dance or take drugs. As Theologian Carl F.H. Henry, former editor of Christianity Today, puts it: "A reasonable case is no longer made' in the public schools for moral absolutes."

Arising from a thicket of local grass roots, Christian schools today are found in a bewildering variety of shapes and sizes from kindergarten through grade twelve, at academic levels that range from fairly high to very low. Discrimination in favor of religion is a basic raison d'etre, and at the more zealous schools, a tub-thumping suspicion of all nonreligious learning fills the air. In a 150-page how-to-start-a-school guide for would-be organizers, Educator Robert Billings (now a top Reaganite administrator in the Department of Education) warns in capital letters: NO UNSAVED INDIVIDUALS SHOULD BE ON THE STAFF!

Says the Rev. Rex Heath, 65, who runs the Mother Lode Christian School in Tuolumne City, Calif.: "When the community appeals to higher standards of academics, that always kills spiritual values. All those schools like Yale and Harvard started out as Christian schools, but then they got concerned with quality." Tuition can be as low as $225, as high as $2,500 per year. But whatever they cost, the schools do seem to excel at training in basic skills, personal courtesy and classroom decorum. A cross section of Christian schools-Christian Liberty Academy. "Government schools are a taxpayer rip-off and a blight on our students," says the Rev. Paul Lindstrom, 41, head of the Christian Liberty Academy in the Chicago suburb of Prospect Heights. A former inner-city schoolteacher, Lindstrom founded the academy in 1968 partly to oppose what he saw as creeping socialism in the public school curricula. Today, 150 students (preschool through twelfth grade) get a stiff dose of moral education and free-enterprise economics in small classes (average pupil-teacher ratio: 15 to 1).

For grades one through eight, the main reading and literature textbooks are McGufley readers dating from the 19th century, which progress from primers designed to teach reading by the use of phonics to literary anthologies of great poetry and prose--often heroic or uplifting excerpts. Instead of sentences like "See Spot run," special first-grade texts use Christian lessons to teach reading: "Adam was the first father. Eve was the first mother." Two plus two will always equal four, says a math lesson, just as "Thou shalt not kill" will always mean thou shalt not kill. In high school economics, students are taught the need to return to the gold standard--on biblical authority. (To buttress their policy academy economics teachers cite Isaiah 1: 22, "Thy silver has become dross, thy wine mixed with water.") The academy proudly reports measurable results of this curriculum, taught in strict classrooms by teachers who view their work not as a job but as a calling: the five-year-olds, who attend for only half-days, read fluently. Academy students generally test one or two years above national norms. Lindstrom is unabashed about the mix of politics and morals in his classrooms. Says he: "We espouse all the views of the Moral Majority, and then some."

The Christiansburg Christian School. Situated in a church basement in southwestern Virginia, Christiansburg Christian teaches all grades from kindergarten through twelve, although it has only seven faculty members (and just one of these has prior teaching experience). Total enrollment is 65 and the annual budget is a bare $110,000. The school's teaching is conducted with a package of self-study workbooks and tapes published by Accelerated Christian Education of Lewisville, Texas, a fast-growing company that markets start-a-school kits nationwide. The fee scale is complicated, but a basic initial A.C.E. charge is $950. Students work at their own speed, completing workbooks every three to four weeks. They are not allowed to proceed unless they score at least 80% on tests of each packet they complete. Sample English lesson: "It is a great tragedy that as talented a man as Mark Twain could never find peace with God instead of fighting Him."

The Rev. Charles Sustar, 39, whose Pentecostal church established the school in 1977, explains his position: "We completely rebel against the humanistic flavor of our public school system. Can you imagine the Children of Israel coming out of Egypt, camping on the desert, and the mothers packing lunches every day and sending their kids back to Egypt for school?"

The Rushtons' Basement School. Weekdays from 8 a.m. to 2:30 p.m., Nebraska Housewife Loralea Rushton, 39, is not called Mom by her three daughters, but Mrs. Rushton. Reason: Mrs. Rushton, who is a registered nurse, acts as principal and teacher for her children, who attend school in the basement family room of her home in Columbus, Neb. She sits at a small desk before a sign on a bulletin board that proclaims: HE is RISEN. The girls, ages 9, 11 and 12, are the school's only students. They sit at a large table partitioned into three cubicles, quietly working on a correspondence curriculum supplied by Illinois' Christian Liberty Academy. The curriculum covers traditional subjects from a religious perspective, and includes a special Bible course and "truth packs" criticizing such "liberal values" as equality for women, socialism, abortion and premarital sex. The academy grades schoolwork and issues report cards through the mail. On the nationally standardized Iowa Tests of Basic Skills, which measure linguistic and mathematical ability, the Rushton girls, who have studied at home for the past two years, scored two to three years above their grade levels.

"The girls like to be with other children," says Mrs. Rushton, "but they don't want to be with children who are taught contrary to our thinking." Nebraska authorities have challenged the activities of some Christian schools in the state, but have so far ignored home study in Columbus. Says Warren Rushton, 42, a mechanical engineer and teaching elder at the Platte Valley Baptist Church in Columbus: "It would be horrible if the sheriff comes some day when I'm gone and gives Loralea and the children a summons, when they let the dopeheads and potheads run loose. The dedicated Christians I know are not going to stop educating their children simply because of any whimsical decree of some court."

Christian Unified School District of San Diego. California's second largest city has a Christian school district with no fewer than two high schools, two junior highs, five elementary schools, and a budget of $4.4 million raised from tuition and private gifts. Last year, after 14 years as a public schoolteacher, Tom Barton, 41, an ex-Marine and graduate of Texas Christian University, took on the principalship of San Diego's flagship, Christian High, which has been running for 16 years. Bar ton was deeply concerned about public school vandalism, teen-age drinking, cheating and classroom chaos. Says he: "When you have public schoolteachers who don't live in the communities they serve, who have unlisted phone numbers, you've veered a long way from the ideal." So he applauded the order and decency maintained in Christian schools, and the notable dedication of their teachers. Parental involvement in Christian school activities also impressed him. Recalls he: "In my old public school there were some 3,000 students, but only 20 or 30 parents would turn up for a P.T.A. meeting. Last October at Christian High, I asked parents if they would help out with typing, carpentry, answering the phones. I had 650 responses--out of a total student population of 750."

Barton's praise is all the more remarkable in view of the fact that he was fired by the school board, which includes the district's founding pastor, Tim LaHaye, in January. The sacking followed a series of disputes about school policy that, in Barton's view, illustrate the dark side of the Christian school movement. First there was the narrowness of the curriculum. Says Barton: "Almost all authors considered humanists--Emerson, Thoreau, even Shakespeare--are often eliminated wholesale from the curriculum at many schools." When Barton opposed sending the school band to a political rally for Ronald Reagan, he was overruled by the superintendent. When he began to discuss the role of partisan politics in the school with other teachers, the district's superintendent warned, as he later wrote in a memo, that "it would be extremely dangerous to engage in any discussion that might seem contrary to the generally understood political position of the institution." Later, Pastor LaHaye helpfully sent along John Birch Society materials for Barton to study. Barton was also criticized for hiring two Catholics to work at Christian High. After reviewing the record, current School Superintendent Alex Lackey said Barton's dismissal was based "solely on his inadequacies as an administrator."

Barton, a graduate of Harvard Divinity School, is now teaching U.S. history to eleventh-graders in the San Diego public school system. "I would consider working again in a Christian school," he says, "but only if I found one that truly cared about scholastic excellence, academic freedom and the Bible's principles rather than biblical legalism."

Throughout the history of U.S. education, as Lawrence Cremin, president of Columbia University's Teachers College, points out in a 100-year survey published last year, the pendulum has swung repeatedly between academic and religious values in U.S. schools. If, as ex-Principal Barton suggests, fundamentalist schools lean too far toward indoctrination and authoritarianism, public school educators are increasingly willing to concede they have been neglecting traditional values of character and citizenship in the classroom.

"Public schools can teach some as pects of moral education -- such as deal ing with drugs, theft, personal responsi bility, better manners, decency," says Scott Thomson, executive director of the National Association of Secondary School Principals. "What the Christian school movement is saying is that public schools have two to three years to do a better job. If public schoolteachers are moral, work hard, and don't hide behind one or an other legal curtain in dealing with val ues, then most of the Christian parents will be happy and they'll go back to teaching Christianity elsewhere as they have done in the past."

-- By Kenneth M. Pierce.

Reported by D.L Coutu/San Diego and Civia Tamarkin/Chicago, with other U.S. bureaus

With reporting by D.L Coutu/San Diego, Civia Tamarkin/Chicago, other U.S. bureaus

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