God and the classroom

They’ve taken God out of the classroom

The Christian fundamentalist ilk routinely claim that they’ve withdrawn their children from the public education system the cause “they,” whoever “they” are, have taken and God out of the classroom.  This is just a convenient excuse for those who don’t like what they see happening in the American education system to take up their marbles and go home and play alone.  I think more often than not the motives are xenophobic, racist or classist. 

Taking God of the classroom or the school is like trying to take God it out of a foxhole.  When I think back to my childhood and my experiences in the school system, I prayed to God every day.  In fourth grade I prayed that God would wake me up from the nightmare that was my fourth grade teacher Mrs. Scott.  This is a woman who had no business being around small children, she was cruel, demanding, authoritarian and loud.  I got through it though and my experience with Mrs. Scott taught me how to deal with loud, authoritarian and cruel people and that sometimes, like in a foxhole you keep your head down.

When I was in middle school and had to deal with the boys in the locker room, God was with me as well.  I’m here aren’t I?  PE class in the middle school was the first time that I experienced an entire grade level of some 150 boys coming together at one time to change clothes in a moderately  supervised environment.  I became acutely aware of who the predators were and who I should stick with as part of the safety herd.  This was a valuable lesson for later in life.  There was constant prayer during that experience, and God was indeed present in the public school locker room. Years later I’d become aware of lesser gods in the boys locker room. That topic is for another musing.

Throughout my public school career every quiz, test, assignment and big project required that prayers be lifted to God.  Those prayers asked for wisdom, discernment, encouragement and perseverance.  God had me in an environment where I would meet many different people, with many different ideas, with many different backgrounds and I’d have to learn how to cope with them in that venue.  This lesson prepared me to cope with them in the greater world too.  Funny, even in NJ, no one took God out of my school experience.

I believe that many who home school do so because it is the easy way out.  It is easy to collect up one’s children and shepherd them away to a safe same thinking environment.  That action at its heart is intellectual malpractice, why in a democratic republic it might even be treason.  Those actions are also very dangerous to maintaining a  democracy, the ideals of Franklin, Jefferson and Adams require enlightenment.  It is also a complete for twisting and perversion of the Gospel.  These people should read the Gospel of John chapter three vs. 16 and…17.  Verse 17 is very clear Jesus as God did not come into the world to condemn it but to save it.  How in heaven’s name can we save the world as disciples if we hide and ourselves away from that world? Simple answer, we can’t.