About Lloyd as an educator

Lloyd served for almost forty years as a public school teacher. He has written a book, Education Revolution summarizing what his experience has taught him about the reasons for the failure of our educational system. Following is a chapter that is being added to a new edition of the book. This chapter addresses the concerns of Christians who feel we should leave our children and teachers in the government school system as a testimony of Christ. A new edition of the book will soon be offered. We hope this chapter clarifies how we feel about this crucial subject.

The video to the left presents the basic dangers of Common Core, a federally mandated program geared to set up national standards for education of our children. It is a top-down program being developed and set to be administered from Washington D.C. It will reflect the philosophy of progressive reformers such as Achieve Inc. a progressive non-profit reform organization that has pushed for national standards and curriculum for many years. Lloyd attended an informational meeting in Clovis, CA on this pervasive program that does even more to take local control away from our schools and parents. Here is Lloyd's article to our local newspaper on this meeting.

                                                  

                                       A Message to Teachers and Parents of Children in the Public School System

                                                                                  I have come to believe that a great teacher is a great artist
                                                            and that there are as few as there are any other great artists.
                                                                     Teaching might even be the greatest of the arts
                                                                     since the medium is the human mind and spirit.
                                                                                                  John Steinbeck


            The biggest criticism I receive can be expressed as follows: If we remove our Christian children from the public school system, who will be there to present and live out Christian message for those who do not believe? Worded another way it could be asked, “How will the schools ever experience transformation if the Christian influence is removed?” These are excellent questions and genuine concerns. I hope my answers are helpful.

            First of all I believe that our children are especially vulnerable in today’s educational climate. We are sending them into a secular-liberal institution to be influenced by the world daily. The school system has them as a captive audience for six or more hours of the day. The influence of the family is declining rapidly and the minds of our children are being shaped by someone other than their parents or the church.

            The simple truth is that we are losing our young people. David Kinnaman in his book You Lost Me writes, “The ages eighteen to twenty-nine are the black hole of church attendance; this age segment is ‘missing in action’ from most congregations.”[1]

            Kinnaman goes on to present his understanding of the reasons for this dropout of our young people from the Christian community. He places the blame on the failure of our church structures to provide an environment that effectively challenges young people. I believe that statement to be true but we must admit that our children are bombarded with the secular world view from Kindergarten to graduation from high school. Then, if they go to a secular college it gets even worse. The indoctrination process is overwhelming our young people and our families and churches are not meeting the challenge.

            If you are one of those parents who feels that you should keep your children in the public system so they represent a Christian presence there, consider two things. First, is your family providing your children with a solid enough spiritual foundation so that they will not be overwhelmed by the system? This means spending regular, quality time building up their understanding of the Christian world view and how it is superior to the secular world view presented in the schools. Are they learning how to walk by the Spirit and trust God in all things.

            Your child must be prepared spiritually and educationally enough to defend what he/she believes when presented with the alternative. This is not something that is being done successfully in our families. Many of our Christian children who have been going to church for many years are ill prepared to meet the worldview challenge of the purveyors of the secular ideas that are prevalent in society.

            You may be thinking that your church or youth group provides this preparation. The late Marlin Maddoux, after much research came to this conclusion: “Without a Christian education that includes a programmed course of study in the Christian worldview, our children have a slim chance of maintaining their faith through their teen years.”[2] I am a parent of grown children with almost forty years of experience in the classroom and I sadly agree with Maddoux. We must take this issue very seriously because it involves our children. Are you sure beyond any doubt that your church is providing what is necessary or are you just assuming that they are doing the job effectively?

            Statistics are showing that the churches are not meeting this challenge. If they were we would not be losing many of our children to the secular-liberals after they complete the indoctrination program in our schools. Kinnaman’s research data indicates that “59 percent of young people with a Christian background report that they had or have ‘dropped out of attending church, after going regularly’.”[3] Of these, 38 percent have significantly doubted their faith.

            These are staggering numbers that show that in general our churches are not providing young people what is needed to maintain their walk with Christ. So, two things are at work here. First, the students, during their formative years, are being indoctrinated in the public schools and secondly, they are not getting what they need in our churches and families to counter this problem. Are you willing to entrust your children to the government schools knowing this?

            More home schooled children continue on with Christ after graduating from high school. They consistently score higher in reading and math (86% and 73%) where the national average is about 50%. They are more mature and better socialized and 74% go on to college where only 46% of the general public do so.[4] A 2003 survey revealed that while 29% of eighteen to twenty-four year-olds voted in state elections over a five year period. 74% of homeschoolers voted. In the population at large only 40% voted while 93% of homeschooled students voted.[5] This means that homeschooled children are becoming better citizens and more effective agents for future transformation of our schools.

            I say all of this and could say much more to make the point that the most obvious answer to our dilemma is to pull our children out of the stifling system that is indoctrinating them and slowing down their progress. And yet I know that there are many parents who still choose to leave their children in the government school system. To those parents I give the following advice.


Make sure your home and church are successfully training your children.

Develop your own home program that systematically addresses the issues of worldview, evolution v. creation, sexual standards, Gay-lesbian-bisexual-transgender issues, revision of history, literature choices, religious beliefs, drugs, the occult, morality and values. You need to be aware that the school is systematized in its effort to indoctrinate so you must counter that with a good home program.

            This means that your children need to be taught to think critically rather than passively. They must be able to “Test all things” so that they can “hold fast what is good” in the words of the apostle Paul (1 Thess. 5:21). If they go through the public school system without learning to withstand and judge what is being taught, they will be sitting ducks for the secular-liberals who do not hold back in their indoctrination blitzkrieg. If you are not able to instill this attitude in your children you must enlist the help of others who can do so.

            In order to be effective this must be a regular family meeting that goes deep at least one day a week and touches bases with the children every night. Their homework should be monitored daily for any obvious violations of the Christian worldview. If you are one of those who take the position that the schools are a missionary field and your child is a missionary to the schools, then you must prepare your missionary child adequately for the challenge. Missionaries are not just fed to the wolves without preparation but trained and prepared for their ministries.

            Next you must get involved with what your church is doing to prepare its children to meet the challenges of the school system. Check out their materials and plans to see how deeply they are going. If the program is lacking you must get involved. Ironically, most parents are going to discover that they are working just as hard this way as if they chose to homeschool their children. Our attitude must be that we the parents are the true teachers of our children until they are no longer under our care.


Private Schools

               Of course the next option is private schools or quality charter schools but you must monitor those schools as well. Do not take the attitude that the schools will simply do what is right. They will do what they are held accountable to. Private schools can be expensive but the cost may be worth it if your child gets a quality education and is not indoctrinated with the secular-liberal agenda.

            If you are a Christian teacher in the public school system you must realize that you fill a crucial position. You are truly a missionary to the students and school personnel you work with. In order to fulfill your mission you must know how you can legally and confidently share your faith while functioning in the schools system. The following suggestions may help.

           
Transformed people can transform the schools.

        `        Scripture calls us to be transformed by the presence of Christ within us (Rom. 12:2; 2 Cor. 3:18). If we are not living lives that are gradually being transformed and taking on the character of Christ and the fruit of the Spirit, we cannot help transform our schools. Transformation begins in the heart and is expressed in our lives by how we behave in regard to others. If we say we are a Christian, people are looking at how we live in order to see if it is real. If we have the same selfish ways of the people of the world, we are not going to cause people to be attracted the Christ we serve.

            Your own personal journey with Christ must be real before it can be effective. A true Christian is one who is genuinely following Christ. A follower of Christ is one who has denied himself so that he can truly follow Christ by taking up his cross daily (Matt. 16:24). If you are such a follower, your life will be light and salt to a world in desperate need (Matt. 5:13, 14). If your life does not prove your words, your words will have little power to transform.


Know your legal parameters.

                  Christians in today’s public school system must be “wise as serpents and harmless as doves” (Matt. 10:16). You must understand the laws that govern your activities and limit what you can do as a teacher, but you must be harmless in the sense that you do not do things to draw attention to yourself and raise the concern of people in authority.

            The legal parameters have been established by several Supreme Court decisions that have interpreted the First Amendment’s Establishment and Free Exercise clauses as applying not only to Congress but to all extensions of the government, including the government school system. I dealt with this extensively in chapter four of this book.

            As I wrote in chapter four, the original problem is the fact that we have a government school system rather than one regulated by a free market system. The establishment of a federal department of education and placing of the education of our children into the hands of the federal government is the real problem. Because of this top-down, liberal development, the federal government, through the judicial branch has been able to take over our school system and control it by declaring it an extension of the federal government. Anything put under the control of the federal government generally tends to fail eventually.

            Even though I and many others believe that the judicial interpretations of the First Amendment are erroneous, we still must understand that it is the law of the land. In other words, we may disagree with this interpretation while at the same time submitting to the laws while maintaining our testimony as followers of Christ.

            As a rule of thumb teachers, now seen as agents of the government, may not do anything that establishes or prohibits religion. In 1962 Engel v. Vitale ruled that requiring students to recite the prayer is unconstitutional. In 1963 Abington School District v. Schempp ruled that Bible reading was unconstitutional for the same reason. Students can pray and read the Bible on their own but the school cannot require it. The bottom line is that teachers are considered an extension of the federal government by virtue of the fact that the public school system is under the control of the federal government.

            A teacher may do anything that has to do with his personal life as a citizen. But the courts will rule that his/her actions are the actions of the federal government. This means the teacher may not do something that fosters religion in the classroom. The teacher may discuss religion in the context of the class assignment. He may refer to the Bible in reference to the class lesson. He may answer a student’s question about religion. He may participate in prayer or Bible study outside of the school’s jurisdiction. But he may not within the classroom do anything that the courts may deem to be the establishing or the prohibiting religion. The teacher and the state must remain neutral but not hostile to religion.

            Each state and local district presents its own challenges. Some administrators and teachers may misinterpret their rights and restrictions. This confusion is caused by the failure of the courts to interpret the Constitution in a straightforward manner. Their attempts to please everyone have resulted in a long list of judicial decisions that have created chaos in schools across the country. Every Christian teacher must spend time in prayer and examination of the courts’ decisions so that he/she knows where to stand on these issues.

            I was once castigated for attending a “prayer around the pole” activity before school hours. Students came to me saying a teacher had told them they could not have a Bible study under a tree at lunch time. Some teachers believe you cannot have a Bible on your desk or in your book shelf. Some have carried this so far that they believe the words Jesus Christ, or God can never be mentioned in class. Can a group of teachers meet for prayer in a classroom before school hours? Can teachers answer questions about evolution or same-sex marriage in the context of the class? The answer lies in the First Amendment. Study it carefully. Know its application to the teaching situation. Above all, be subordinate to your administrators until you have all the facts.


Be Submissive to your leaders.

                  Several cases have been ruled against Christian teachers because they were insubordinate to their administrators. You can be totally right but if you are insubordinate the courts will use that as an excuse to rule against you. Always obey the directives of your supervisor until you have reviewed all the facts and know where you stand. If, after much investigation, you believe that your administrator or district has ruled in violation of the Constitution, then and only then should you take action. That action may be to seek legal counsel or advice from others with more knowledge on the issue. Remember, be wise as serpents but harmless as doves. Keep quiet and subservient until you know where you stand. If the Constitution is on your side, you will be vindicated.



Be salt and light in a bland and dark society

                  Our society is on the lookout for people who will take a knowledgeable stand for what they believe. Society does not appreciate people who are radical for the sake of being radical. They want to see people who are radical for a real, viable purpose. Those who stand for Jesus Christ and live by His life may be persecuted in the beginning but there will always be those who will look on and be impressed.

            Remember that the apostle Paul was looking on at the stoning of Stephen and people laid their cloaks at his feet (Acts 7:58). This is the man who later became the foremost proclaimer of the good news of Jesus Christ. Is it possible that letting our light shine may touch the life of an onlooker seeing evidence of Christ? Is not a life well lived the ultimate evidence? Think about it.

             
[1] David Kinnaman, You Lost Me. (Baker Books, 2011). P. 22.
[2] Marlin Maddoux, Public Education Against America The Hidden Agenda. (Whitaker House, 2006). P. 254.
[3] Kinnaman. P. 23.
[4] Robert McCain, “Homegrown Success,” The Washington Times, October 21, 2003.
[5] Michael Farris, various experts from interview by Marlin Maddoux, Point of View radio talk show, Nov. 2003.