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Christian Unified School District of San Diego. California's second largest city has a Christian school district with no fewer than two high schools, two junior highs, five elementary schools, and a budget of $4.4 million raised from tuition and private gifts. Last year, after 14 years as a public schoolteacher, Tom Barton, 41, an ex-Marine and graduate of Texas Christian University, took on the principalship of San Diego's flagship, Christian High, which has been running for 16 years. Bar ton was deeply concerned about public school vandalism, teen-age drinking, cheating and classroom chaos. Says he: "When you have public schoolteachers who don't live in the communities they serve, who have unlisted phone numbers, you've veered a long way from the ideal." So he applauded the order and decency maintained in Christian schools, and the notable dedication of their teachers. Parental involvement in Christian school activities also impressed him. Recalls he: "In my old public school there were some 3,000 students, but only 20 or 30 parents would turn up for a P.T.A. meeting. Last October at Christian High, I asked parents if they would help out with typing, carpentry, answering the phones. I had 650 responses—out of a total student population of 750."
Barton's praise is all the more remarkable in view of the fact that he was fired by the school board, which includes the district's founding pastor, Tim LaHaye, in January. The sacking followed a series of disputes about school policy that, in Barton's view, illustrate the dark side of the Christian school movement. First there was the narrowness of the curriculum. Says Barton: "Almost all authors considered humanists—Emerson, Thoreau, even Shakespeare—are often eliminated wholesale from the curriculum at many schools." When Barton opposed sending the school band to a political rally for Ronald Reagan, he was overruled by the superintendent. When he began to discuss the role of partisan politics in the school with other teachers, the district's superintendent warned, as he later wrote in a memo, that "it would be extremely dangerous to engage in any discussion that might seem contrary to the generally understood political position of the institution." Later, Pastor LaHaye helpfully sent along John Birch Society materials for Barton to study. Barton was also criticized for hiring two Catholics to work at Christian High. After reviewing the record, current School Superintendent Alex Lackey said Barton's dismissal was based "solely on his inadequacies as an administrator."
Barton, a graduate of Harvard Divinity School, is now teaching U.S. history to eleventh-graders in the San Diego public school system. "I would consider working again in a Christian school," he says, "but only if I found one that truly cared about scholastic excellence, academic freedom and the Bible's principles rather than biblical legalism."