Lost

I have a good friend who is a pilot. He once told me that flying at night is very dangerous to the inexperienced pilot because you can get upside down in your plane, and it will still feel right side up. You have then hopelessly lost your bearings and without instruments nothing good will happen to you. I think our country has been in this predicament for many many years. We have been flying upside down yet, we are always being told we are right side up, but we are really hopelessly lost and without instruments nothing good is going to happen to us. It is that way in education today as well.

Dr. Joe Renfro offers his view of the public school system in his article, Broken Schools, Broken Economy and Broken Culture. From his article:

"In August 2007, National Public Radio’s “Talk of the Nation” showed public schools were in serious trouble—one-third of American eighth graders couldn’t perform basic math, one-third of all teachers left the profession after the first three years, and by five years, one-half had left."

More from his article:

"The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) reported that between 1993 and 2003, population growth rates for youth ages five through nineteen was higher in the U.S. than in any other industrialized country. In those ten years, 4.7 million children entered the public schools with sixty-four percent or about 3 million being Hispanic, while white enrollment dropped by 1.2 million. Attached to this, in 2006 NCES reported that our fourth graders are scoring twelfth in the world in math skills after such nations as Singapore, Latvia, and Hungary. Our eighth graders were fifteenth, even below Malaysia and Slovakia. And by the time they reached the tenth grade, they had fallen to twenty-forth place."


The rest of the article is worth reading. Are we lost? Yesterday, I read that the Detroit Public School CFO held a press conference to announce that he could not balance their budget. Our government bails out mismanaged car companies, insurance giants and banks... what about our schools? I am sure that CFO could use some TARP money.

As Democrats and Republicans bicker over health care and cap and trade, our kids suffer. Too many children are taught to memorize and repeat instead of to think and discern. I am sincerely saddened by the state of our schools because even though I oversee a Christian school I am for all children. Last month a 10 year old Christian school closed its doors over enrollment; today we find out that the state of Alabama is cutting another 2% from their already cut public school system budget. Is there nothing else to cut?

I have watched for over 20 years and sincerely believe our country is lost. We are flying upside down and before long we will crash into the ground unless we learn some hard lessons. South Korea has learned some hard lessons and will come out of this recession as the educational leaders in the world. They are already the world leaders as evidenced by this BBC News article. A fellow Head of School running a Christian school in Seoul recently told me that his school had struggled for years in a 6 story building on a small tract of land. A few years ago the government of South Korea came to him with an offer: a brand new state of the art multi-million dollar campus. The catch... keep providing an excellent "Christian" education. Apparently the South Koreans understand that an excellent education takes many forms and morality is a vital part of all education.

What is the answer? For our school, it is to keep striving for excellence and Christ and engaging our culture for Christ. This means that we will continue to be a resource for Christian parents, a friend to other faith-based schools and a good citizen and neighbor. As for our nation, the only instrument ever needed is the truth, and that is not found in a book or an idea, but only in the Lord Jesus Christ. I can only hope that we have not waited to long. Blessings!