What Can We Do About
             The Public Schools?
            by John Morris, Ph.D.

For those of us who attended public
schools some years ago, it is often
difficult to believe the shocking tales
we hear about the decadence, drugs,
inferior teaching, etc., that seem to
reign there now.  When I was going to
school, the wrong influences were
certainly present, but they weren’t
that bad.

     The situation in public schools is
now much different.  The mood now in
many schools is aggressively anti-
Christian, although there are still
many fine and dedicated public
school teachers and administrators. 
We especially thank God for Christian
teachers who consider their jobs a
mission field and a Christian calling. 
But our Judeo-Christian morality and
ethics are often but a faded memory,
and attempts to retain them are fre-
quently met with opposition and intim-
idation.

     I am most familiar with the situation
in California, of course, and perhaps
here it is the worst.  Open drug sales
and use, ethnic gang wars, and stu-
dent/teacher violence are easily
recognized problems, but how about
the more subtle attempts at “values
clarification,” or the encouragement
of experimentation in “sex educa-
tion” classes, or the inclusion of
homosexuality as a legitimate life-
style, or easy access to abortions
through school clinics.

     In Los Angeles, a recent State-
encouraged pilot program actually
described the step-by-step process
by which students could contact their
“spirit guides.” Literature courses are
now less dominated by humanistic
classics (offensive as even they are),
but, instead, by occultic and demonic
readings, including ritualistic murder. 
My own niece and her first-grade
classmates were recently taken from
the school grounds and driven to an
ancient Indian site of worship, where
certain initiation rites, incantations,
and individual prophecies were given. 
What has happened to our schools?
What can we do about them?

     In our dealings with the State De-
partment of Education here in Cali-
fornia, we have come to recognize a
virtual stronghold on education by the
humanistic “elite.” Even these usually
atheistic educators, however, are now
welcoming New Age and occultic In-
fluences in the schools.  The new
“Science Framework” mandates
teaching evolution as fact.  Christians
have avoided public policy and politics
for so long that such people seem well-
entrenched.

     There is one ray of hope.  Many
Christians all over America have re-
cently been elected to local and state
school boards, and many more are
running for these offices.  The legiti-
mate problems facing education are
monumental, and solutions need to be
found within a Christian context.  At
the very least, the tide must be
stemmed!

  As Christians, we must commit our-
selves to support good school board
officials, to educate ourselves as to
the problems and needs, and, most of
all, to become involved.  We are “the
salt of the earth,” said the Lord Jesus,
and there is no other.