Christian schools go forth and multiply
When students at the Irvington Pentecostal Academy in Houston have a question about their lessons, they signal for the supervisor's attention by raising either an eight-inch American flag or a small blue and white Christian flag at their desks. Each day they recite pledges of allegiance to both flags, and to the Bible. They all wear an eye-catching school uniform of red, white and blue; for men (including the school's principal), blue pants, red shirts and flag-studded blue neckties; for women, plaid jumpers or blue skirts and vests with white blouses. Irvington's rules not only bar cheating, swearing and drugs, but also "rock or country music, dancing and Hollywood movies." Says Principal Fred Corrie, 27:
"We teach the students that living by the Bible is the road to real peace." Sartorial rules aside, Irvington's devout classrooms and moral aims are typical of thousands of fundamentalist Christian schools that have been popping up all over America. Some proponents claim that such schools, usually sponsored by local churches, are being born at the rate of three a day. They estimate too that the number of pupils enrolled has risen since 1971 from about 140,000 to 450,000—or roughly 1% of the current school-age population. The figures may exaggerate the growth; a number of new "schools" are merely living room affairs run by families who teach their own children at home. But there is no doubt that Christian schools have grown dramatically, or that their growth is seen as a dramatic sign of dissatisfaction with the public school system.
An early catalyst for the Christian schools movement was the Supreme Court's 1962 decision in Engel vs. Vitale, leading to a ban on prayer and, as practically interpreted in the public schools, to virtual elimination of religious discussion in schools. Another was 1954's Brown vs. The Board of Education, which inspired the establishment of a number of Southern Christian schools as "segregation academies" for white students.
Christian schoolmen concede such un-Christian influences on the movement in the past, but not today. After comparing Christian school enrollment in Louisville with that in Madison, Wis., Education Researchers Virginia Nordin and William Turner concluded that the schools in both cities had sprung up primarily out of moral and religious concerns.
Says Harvard Sociologist David Riesman: "Those schools reflect a backlash against rampant peer domination in junior high and high schools in the country as a whole." Parents of students who have transferred out of public high schools complain that their children were made fun of for wanting to study and for refusing to dance or take drugs. As Theologian Carl F.H. Henry, former editor of Christianity Today, puts it: "A reasonable case is no longer made' in the public schools for moral absolutes."