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Loosening Standards. What they all have in common is strict, paddle-wielding discipline (a Briarcrest assistant principal paddles half a dozen students each month) and a "back-to-basics" approach to teaching, often laced with a strong dose of fundamentalist Christianity. Charlotte's Queen City Christian Academy (enrollment: 50) was founded by parents who objected to sex education courses in the public schools. Other Southern parents say they are enrolling their children in academies because they are as upset by a loosening of academic standards and a lack of discipline in the public schools as they are about race. "They are trying to re-create the society they knew before," says David Nevin, research director of the Lamar Society, a civic-minded group of liberal Southerners that is studying the private schools. "A lot of them say that this is the kind of school I went to as a boy."
The future of the private schools is now under a legal cloud, however. The Supreme Court will probably rule next spring on whether private schools can continue to refuse admission to black students because of their race. The Internal Revenue Service in 1970 denied a tax exemption to schools that segregate in their admissions procedures but has not been enforcing that decision vigorously.
Even if the private academies open their doors to blacks, few black families have the money to afford them or the inclination to send their children to schools where they are not wanted. As one 17-year-old student at Briarcrest put it, "I left the public schools to get away from blacks. If they came here, I don't think they would be welcome at all."