I tremble for our nation when I hear extremists discrediting our public school system, the only truly ecumenical program left in our community....[The public schools] do more of the Lord's work every day than most other institutions.—Robert H. Meneilly, Senior Pastor of the Village Presbyterian Church
Who are the extremists who so concern Pastor Meneilly? Many educators would probably answer, Fundamentalist Christians. If so, they would be wrong.
The majority of Fundamentalist Christians are not political activists calling for, as Pat Buchanan recently did, a relentless cultural war. In fact, Fundamentalist Christians do not necessarily hold common views on social, economic, and educational matters.
Fundamentalist Christians are a diverse group, and only a minority advocate extreme right-wing political causes. Consider abortion, the issue perhaps most closely linked in the public mind to Christian Fundamentalism. Only 22 percent of self-identified, born-again, evangelical Christians listed abortion as a major issue in the last presidential election. For another example, consider what happened last summer when right-wing political activists bitterly denounced University of South Carolina Professor James Sears for developing a course entitled “Christian Fundamentalism and Public Education.” The course was intended to examine the “curricular and administrative issues related to the growing influence of Christian Fundamentalism in public education.” As it turned out, some of Professor Sears' staunchest defenders were Fundamentalist Christians who had taken his class.
Professor Sears' experience suggests that educators and Fundamentalist Christians can, at times, unite against right-wing political activists—provided that educators and members of the Fundamentalist community are able to establish and maintain mutually respectful and constructive relationships.
Establishing good relations will not always be easy. Politically active right-wing idealogues use the basic characteristics of our system of public education to argue that the system itself is a challenge to Christian belief. To be sure, the American public school system embodies a humanistic tradition in which truth is not regarded as revealed and absolute but as tentative and subject to change in light of new information. Our public schools are monuments to the belief that human beings can, by applying their intellect, progressively improve their condition. And although schools must respect individual differences in religious belief, our Constitution prohibits them from propagating any religion. They are secular humanist institutions.
Because the basic characteristics of American public education are at odds with the religious sensibilities and political objectives of some right-wing activists, it is unlikely that better communication will resolve their conflict with educators. That conflict is, at its root, political and can only be resolved through the political process. However, if educators take care to establish respectful relationships with members of the larger Fundamentalist Christian community, it will be possible to find common grounds for cooperation.
At the moment, a good deal of the tension between Fundamentalist Christian parents and the public school their children attend is, no doubt, a product of suspicion, ignorance, and fear on both sides. To a certain extent the situation reminds me of something I learned several years ago while preparing for a talk to school administrators about how to better articulate elementary and middle school curriculum.
As I reviewed the literature on middle school education, I found remarkable agreement among middle school experts. The emotional, intellectual, and physical development of children of this age varies considerably, the experts said. As a result, the curriculum should be organized to accommodate the wide differences among them. Teachers should attempt to foster a school environment that offers students lots of emotional support. And the school program should provide abundant opportunities for children to interact with one another and to talk with teachers about their lives and their concerns.
The recommendations of the middle school experts I read seemed logical and reasonable. Then I read the right-wing call to arms, Child Abuse in the Classroom by Phyllis Schlafly. I was amazed to discover that the practices advocated by educators as ways of responding to the developmental needs of adolescents were attacked as the cause of the problems they were intended to address.
I began to realize that this book could only have struck such a responsive chord because many parents probably thought that it was the middle school that had turned their child into a moody, self-absorbed, rebellious stranger. Behaviors that educators regarded as predictable during the turbulent transition of adolescence, parents might think of as precipitated by whatever it was their child was doing in middle school. I could imagine a mother or father remembering the summer before middle school when a happy, loving child eagerly took part in family activities. Then, suddenly, apparently for no other reason than moving from elementary to middle school, he or she turned into some sort of monster. What were they doing in that middle school anyway?
Conflicts between educators and Fundamentalist Christian parents sometimes seem to spiral out of control for some of the same reasons Child Abuse in the Classroom found an audience. Educators too often do a poor job of reaching out to diverse groups of parents and community members and drawing them into the life of their schools. Part of the job of public school educators is explaining the logic behind the school curriculum to community members, soliciting their ideas, and being willing to participate with them in defining and directing the school program. Just as it once seemed to me that middle school educators should have been talking with elementary school parents about the changes their soon-to-be-adolescent children would be going through, it now seems to me that educators should reach out to Fundamentalist Christian parents before there is a crisis in their school district.
Perhaps important disagreements between educators and Fundamentalist Christians will always exist. However, I believe that we can find considerable common ground if we learn to respect each other and are willing to acknowledge that, even when we disagree, our respective views are shaped by an abiding respect for public education and concern for the welfare of our young. If we can accomplish these things, the attacks of right-wing extremists will lose much of their force.
