Whitewashed-Tomb Watch
I recently blogged about a gleaming new $21 million high school in Oklahoma City where the students assault policemen, scream obscenities at the teachers, and set one another ablaze. Then the other day I noticed that a beautiful new $7 million elementary school is being planned for Deer Creek. Both schools appear beautiful on the outside, but what goes on inside?
"By omission and implication," Joe Sobran observes, "the public schools teach that religion is unnecessary. And if it is unnecessary, it is superfluous. And if it is superfluous, it can be a harmless private interest at best and, at worst, an obstacle to progress and tolerance. These are precisely the attitudes many people emerge with after spending their entire youth in public schools."
The public schools' underlying message is this: God may or may not exist, but he or she is simply not relevant to what goes on in biology class or history or sex education or English literature. And yet "the school system that ignores God," writes Gordon H. Clark, "teaches its pupils to ignore God; and this is not neutrality. It is the worst form of antagonism, for it judges God to be unimportant and irrelevant in human affairs. This is atheism."
Oh well. At least we can keep applauding ourselves for erecting monuments "which indeed appear beautiful outwardly."
"By omission and implication," Joe Sobran observes, "the public schools teach that religion is unnecessary. And if it is unnecessary, it is superfluous. And if it is superfluous, it can be a harmless private interest at best and, at worst, an obstacle to progress and tolerance. These are precisely the attitudes many people emerge with after spending their entire youth in public schools."
The public schools' underlying message is this: God may or may not exist, but he or she is simply not relevant to what goes on in biology class or history or sex education or English literature. And yet "the school system that ignores God," writes Gordon H. Clark, "teaches its pupils to ignore God; and this is not neutrality. It is the worst form of antagonism, for it judges God to be unimportant and irrelevant in human affairs. This is atheism."
Oh well. At least we can keep applauding ourselves for erecting monuments "which indeed appear beautiful outwardly."
