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Throughout the history of U.S. education, as Lawrence Cremin, president of Columbia University's Teachers College, points out in a 100-year survey published last year, the pendulum has swung repeatedly between academic and religious values in U.S. schools. If, as ex-Principal Barton suggests, fundamentalist schools lean too far toward indoctrination and authoritarianism, public school educators are increasingly willing to concede they have been neglecting traditional values of character and citizenship in the classroom.
"Public schools can teach some as pects of moral education — such as deal ing with drugs, theft, personal responsi bility, better manners, decency," says Scott Thomson, executive director of the National Association of Secondary School Principals. "What the Christian school movement is saying is that public schools have two to three years to do a better job. If public schoolteachers are moral, work hard, and don't hide behind one or an other legal curtain in dealing with val ues, then most of the Christian parents will be happy and they'll go back to teaching Christianity elsewhere as they have done in the past."
— By Kenneth M. Pierce.
Reported by D.L Coutu/San Diego and Civia Tamarkin/Chicago, with other U.S. bureaus