More Than NOT

"Did you sign [name omitted] up for the 'Voluntary Drug Testing' program?" she asked. (My child and her child were both entering 7^th grade.) The other parent was referring to a program that was new to the public school at the time, "Voluntary Drug Testing." Starting in 7^th grade, parents could sign their children up for random urine drug screens and be notified of the results.

"No," I immediately responded. "I'm not going to have my teens subjected to random drug tests or mandatory counseling."

Her chin dropped. "Why not?"

"I've worked as a drug and alcohol counselor," was the only answer I could muster. Sensing that anything I could say would fall on deaf ears, I simply walked away. But a myriad of thoughts occurred to me. "What if the results are positive?" I thought to myself. "Does that then allow the school system to mandate drug and alcohol treatment? And if so, do the parents get a choice in which treatment provider the children see?" Though I am concerned and quite vigilant about ensuring my children do not use drugs or alcohol, in many ways I'm even more frightened of the drug and alcohol treatment industry. Often, especially in relatively mild cases of substance abuse, the status quo of treatment in the United States does more harm than good. Confrontational counseling—now unequivocally debunked (Miller & Rollnick 1991)—continues to be all-too prevalent. Watered-down theology and new-age spirituality are mainstays, and genuine religious practice is discouraged (eg. Bradshaw). No, I'm not about to turn over the decision-making process regarding my children's lives to the school system, police, and treatment industry. For me, declining the "Voluntary Drug Testing" program was an easy decision.

Nonetheless, that other parent's remark did bother me enough to talk about it later with my wife. Her response was something like, "If our teenagers don't think we trust them, then they might as well be doing drugs or whatever else we suspect them of doing!" My wife sees trust as a two-way street. The children need to know that they can rely on us, but we also have to trust them. Of course, we are cautious not to provide too much freedom, and we try to make sure they are not abusing their liberty. For example, when they come home from being out with friends, we talk to them for a few minutes. Occasionally, we may even check their breath. Most importantly, we do this in a nonintrusive, non-accusatory manner. In the words of Ronald Reagan, "Trust, but verify."

Recently, during a break, I discussed this "Voluntary Drug Testing" program with my clinical supervisor, a psychologist who specializes in the behavioral treatment of children. He had a different take on the subject. He had two major concerns with a school program such as drug-testing of teens. First, parents who sign up for this program are relinquishing their parental role and allowing the school-system to pick up the responsibility. Second, these parents are assuming that the school-system is competent to take over the task adequately.

My clinical supervisor compared the "Voluntary Drug Testing" to an ecological study on Driver's Education (Robinson 1980). The gist of this study was that, back in the late 1970s, the state of Connecticut cut funding for school-based, Driver's Education. Some of the school districts dropped the program entirely, while other districts chose to continue funding Driver's Education from their own coffers. This led to a natural or ecological way of measuring the effectiveness of Driver's Education, by comparing the motor vehicle accident rates between these large populations of youths, with or without school-based Driver's Education. The results were interesting. The school districts that opted out of the Driver's Education actually had lower accident rates, and the school districts that continued to have Driver's Education had higher rates. Did this mean that the Driver's Education was somehow to blame for the higher accident rate? No, that wasn't the problem. Upon closer analysis, it turns out that the students without the Driver's Education class waited longer to get their licenses and that delay accounted for the change in the accident rate. My clinical supervisor interprets this difference as a change in parental involvement. The parents of students with Driver's Training assumed that their teens were ready to drive. They relinquished the decision of when to allow the teen to get a license over to the driving instructor. The parents of teens without Driver's Training had to make the decision themselves. With first-hand knowledge of their teens' driving performance, they were more apt to delay the licensure, resulting in fewer accidents.

In a similar way, his concern about a "Voluntary Drug Testing" program at the school was that parents would become prone to relinquishing their parental role. These parents might be less apt to keep a watchful eye and nose on their children, and more prone to trust that the school's drug-testing would pick up any misbehaviors. Anyone with a slight knowledge about drug and alcohol screenings knows that these tests can miss a lot. There is no substitute for parental mindfulness. Besides, if circumstances warrant, parents can now purchase these tests over-the-counter at the local pharmacy. At least then, the parents (and students) can decide for themselves how to proceed and not be at the mercy of the school, police, and treatment providers.

This discussion is timely. President Obama's Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, is now talking about expanding the role of public schools. With single parents and dual-career families, parents are time-strapped to provide the kind of activity, supervision, and assistance that many students appear to need. Amazingly (to me, at least), many parents are more than willing to allow the school-system to pick up the slack. Couple this with an elitist attitude toward the families of "at-risk-youth," and many of these programs are likely to get the green light.

Meanwhile, we traditional Catholics and conservative Christians are pulling our children out of the public school system by the droves. It occurs to me: This "Voluntary Drug Testing" program can be seen as a metaphor for public schooling in general. By dropping our children off at the doors of the public school, we parents relinquish control. We leave the education of our progeny to people we barely know. By allowing the school system to educate our children, we trust that they are competent to do so. Yet, in the back of our minds, we know that the United States has one of the worst-ranked educational systems in the civilized world.

As obvious as the homeschooling decision seems to me now, our family has only recently joined the trend of Christians fleeing from the public schools. Five weeks ago, we started homeschooling. As such, I'm still sorting out various aspects of the whole decision. Initially, for me, the decision had a lot to do with setting more rigorous academic standards. This is clearly the case. Our homeschooling program, one of the largest, substantially challenges our 4^th and 10^th graders, who were both superb students in the public schools. In certain skill areas, particularly reading comprehension, they are struggling to pick up the pace in homeschooling. My dear wife—who does the lion's share of the teaching—is finding that homeschooling is more work than we anticipated, but with even greater payoff.

Increasingly, though, I'm becoming aware that academics are not the main reason that we or most parents are homeschooling. Children can learn math, science, and reading all day long, but if they don't develop moral character, all that education is for naught. On the subject of values, however, the public schools are mostly silent. Public schools try to create a values-neutral type of environment, but this approach has three fatal flaws as follows: First, values are the most important thing, and any teacher who tries to be mute on values often leaves out the part that gives the lesson meaning. Second, the goal of being values-neutral is a lie; individual values always seep through. Third, increasingly the public schools do endorse a set of values, those of the liberal-progressive, elitist movement. The result is an education that lacks meaning (eg. few modern children can explain the significance of the Pilgrims), lacks integrity (eg. teens will always pick up on their Health teacher's individual belief about premarital sex) and lacks justice (eg. school boards are increasingly banning books that exert morally upright values while making others of reprehensible value required reading). This situation is extremely dire. There is no way to remain in the school system and work from the inside to make things better. The only solution for Christian parents who are serious about their children's moral education is to withdraw them from public school.

The root of the problem regarding values for public schools is they cannot speak positively about character education. For example, public schools cannot rightly espouse the virtues of faith, hope, and charity. These are positive values, and as such relate to a specific set of religious beliefs. The only things that public schools can talk about in regard to values are feelings and behaviors. All of these behaviors are expressed in the negative. Public schools frequently address the importance of NOT using drugs, NOT getting pregnant, NOT treating homosexuals unkindly, and NOT being bigoted towards other groups of people. Thus, the fruit of modern education is a student who is generally nice and gentle, but otherwise lacks real personality or character. These students know nothing of vice or virtue, but only of avoiding bad behavior and hurting other people's feelings. Morality to these young people is not objective or open to debate, but absolutely subjective. Do not challenge their point of view; their pleasant façade will turn vicious. The best that modern education has to offer—if all of these NOT lessons are heard succinctly—is a two-dimensional person, a paper cut-out. These students cannot develop real moral character, as that requires rigorous thought, self-criticism, and positive moral instruction.

And so, as a newly franchised homeschooling parent, I have little fear that my children will use drugs, get pregnant, treat people unkindly, or behave in bigoted ways. My bigger concern is what types of positive traits they will develop and nurture. I want to raise children of moral character. And that's why I think parents choose homeschooling.

Ancient Faith in a Modern World

In the beginning of our marriage, we were invested in the culture. We took advice and suggestions from people in the secular world--doctors, pediatricians, and psychology professors. This had a profound and often negative effect on both us and our children. At that time, though we both believed in God, our faith was more in a generic Higher Power than any specific diety or Christian God. We were cultural Christians. Gradually or sometimes in fits and bounds, as our Christian faith grew, we had increasing doubts about the deluge of messages from the culture about childrearing. We started wondering about anything from dual careers to teenaged dating, and we found that Christianity put these issues under a very different light. As a result, we became more invested in Christ than in the culture.

We came into our marriage with a contempt for Traditional Christianity. None of our parents were particularly strong Christians, and they frankly made meager attempts to educate us in Christianity. As we became young adults in the 80's, many of the traditional Christian values seemed obsolete to us. At that time, we perceived traditional Christians to be rigid and bigoted, and we did not want to raise our children to be that way. Nonetheless, something changed after the birth of our first child. In retrospect, we realize that God was calling us. At that time, though, we were drawn to the fellowship that may be found in a Christian community.

As a consequence, by becoming so focussed on how much God loved us and our family, we became obsessed with our own importance. At that point, we began to put ourselves before our children and certainly before God. As a result, our lives and our Christian faith unraveled. That life without Christ became very painful. Eventually, we both found it necessary to re-examine Christianity--not only God's love for us, but also our love for God. This meant that we had to think about our obedience to God. Our own moral decay led us to this point; even worse, our children were on a similar trajectory. We prayed. We went back to church. And this time we were armed with the Scripture.

We became determined that we were going to live with Christ at the center of our lives, yet somehow live in contemporary society. In other words, we were convicted to do, as Paul said, "to live in the world, but not be of the world." This is often more arduous than it sounds. Contemporary society and technology can easily distract adults from their Christian paths, and raising children either too detached from the modern world or too indulged in it can lead to retaliation or despair. Being a judicious Christian requires not only the balance of Aristotle but also the wisdom of Solomon.

We are not the only Christian parents who are trying to meet this challenge. While some Christian parents seem to isolate from the rest of society and others appear to succumb to the momentum of the culture, judicious Christian parents strive to apply their Christian values to living within society. Their path may be difficult. We know many really good Christian families who struggle with fertility issues, breastfeeding, daycare, unruly children, educational choices, appropriate entertainment, peer groups, attire, grooming, dating, driving, alcohol abuse, sexual identity, teenaged pregnacy, and raising children who go on to become Christians themselves. Our hope is that this blog becomes a platform for giving Christian parents the skills, knowledge, and courage they need to raise their children with an ancient and timeless faith in a modern world.