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In conversation with a 16-year-old daughter some time ago, I uttered one of those standard parental sentences that started, "When I was in high school . …" She listened patiently to the end of the sentence before replying with unaccustomed seriousness, "Mom, things aren't the way they were when you were in school." This was not adolescent one-upmanship. Mary Pipher, author of Reviving Ophelia, makes the same point: most middle-class parents have very little idea of what their kids are facing when they grab their backpacks and head for school. The social world of school is more complicated for our children than it was for us.

Complicated doesn't necessarily mean bad, but it does mean strenuous. Kids are expected to master complex, evolving technologies, to recognize early and often how race, class, and gender modify points of view; to look back on American history in light not only of two world wars and a depression, but of subsequent conflicts with murkier moral terms. They know they're a "target market"—the big guns of advertising are aimed directly at them. They have no choice about whether to "think globally": global trade, global warming, and global conflicts are far less remote than a generation ago. And the constraints upon public-school instructors who wish to provide moral grounding points are more rigorous now than they were 30 years ago. In many public schools, explicit reflection from the standpoint of faith is virtually prohibited in the classroom, or even in campus clubs.

One widespread response to these pressures is private schooling. Nearly 2 million students are now homeschooled, not to mention the many in Christian schools. That strategy has obvious selling points (control of curriculum, integration of faith and learning, control of social influences) and involves some tradeoffs (the danger of insularity, fewer encounters with differences that provide chances to rethink one's own worldview more complexly). In any case, many can't afford private school, and some oppose the class segregation it often involves. Many young Christians sit in secular classrooms wondering where to put their faith from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m.

Thus the question remains: How can churches—not only parents, but the whole local community of believers—equip kids for life in public schools? If the local church is to be the "village" that helps raise the child, we need to take very seriously the connectedness implied in the terms "family of faith" and "body of Christ."

With all due respect (and much is due) to youth pastors, Young Life leaders, and others, I don't believe youth programs are enough. It takes not only programs but also the community to provide what kids urgently need:

1. Conversation—which means both building trust and giving them language to address carefully the issues they will have to confront. It means modeling curiosity, graciousness in disagreement, good argumentation and thoughtful open-mindedness that will enable them to enter their late-night bull sessions with lively wit, humility, and courage.

2. Criteria—a repertoire of critical questions that will help them make fair and discriminating assessments of movies they see, textbooks they read, practices they wonder about.

3. Encouragement—not just cheering from the stands, but prayer, pertinent information, and coaching.

4. Incentive—which means answering the "why" questions (why go to church, why do homework, why take time for Bible study, why forgo common pleasures) honestly, in a way that is theologically sound.

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October 1 2001, Vol. 45, No. 12