Two Schools of Thought
Many believers wonder what's best for their children—Christian or public education. Two Dallas schools suggest an answer
Edward Gilbreath and John Wilson | posted 5/21/2001 12:00AM
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Edward Gilbreath is associate editor of CT and John Wilson is editor of Books & Culture.
Copyright © 2001 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.
Related Elsewhere
More Christianity Today articles on public and private schools are available in our education area.
Further Reading
Diane Ravitch's Left Back: A Century of Failed School Reforms (Simon & Schuster, 2000) puts the current crisis in American public education in historical perspective, showing how schools have been used to promote shifting social agendas. Her modest conclusion: "To be effective, schools must concentrate on their fundamental mission of teaching and learning. And they must do it for all children." In Tinkering Toward Utopia: A Century of Public School Reform (Harvard University Press, 1995), David Tyack and Larry Cuban cover some of the same territory; they too offer a modest realism in contrast to the extravagant claims of many educational reformers, with a focus on helping teachers become more effective.
The leading figure in the classical Christian education movement is Douglas Wilson, whose Logos School, founded in Moscow, Idaho, in 1980, is the prototype. Wilson's book, Recovering the Lost Tools of Learning: An Approach to Distinctively Christian Education (Crossway, 1991), is the best introduction to the ethos of the movement.
Yahoo's has links to news articles and opinion pieces in its full coverage areas on Education Curriculum and Policy and School Choice and Tuition Vouchers.
Public Agenda's education area is one of the best sites for nonpartisan statistics, demographics, and opinion-poll results. It also has several articles outlining education reform issues, who has taken what sides, and what's at stake.
The U.S. Department of Education site has statistics, "the nation's report card," and other resources.
Some "local" resources are excellent for readers around the country. The Texas Education Agency site is a handy reference for information about the public education in Logos Academy's and Pinkston High's state. The Washington Post's education section archives all of the paper's related news articles, columns, and other pieces. Chicago public radio station WBEZ's "Chicago Matters" series on education, "Education Matters," runs through the end of this month. All of the audio segments, of which there are dozens, are available online.
SchoolReformers.com has links to news stories and other resources favoring charter schools, vouchers, tuition tax credits, and other such "market-based school reforms." The Center for Education Reform, meanwhile, is one of the leading organizations pushing for such reforms.
Douglas Wilson's Association of Classical & Christian Schools seeks ":to promote, establish, and equip schools committed to a classical approach to education in the light of a Christian world view grounded in the Old and New Testament Scriptures" through the Trivium (grammar, logic, and rhetoric).
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