ETHICS VS. NO ETHICS(EDUCATION 101)

NAPTA knows that our administrations excel at turning parents against teachers, assuring they will not unite and see the real enemy. This is not the only divided group. We believe that many people desire reform, but speak from limited perspectives and thus strengthen those in power as disagreement foments, creating layers of confusion. An example of this is the strong Christian movement for educational reform. Below is an article I submitted in hopes of exposing this roadblock for reform that assures our administrators our battles will blind us to what really needs to be done.

The Real Enemy - An Article Submitted to the Christian Science Monitor

By Karen Horwitz

As a former elementary teacher who has become an activist after experiencing an abusive, immoral system, I have a vision for a healthy system. There are two areas in which educational reform is being sidetracked. First, I believe that teacher abuse is the glue that is holding the current, dysfunctional system together. Teachers know that administrators will bully them, forcing them from their positions if they speak out. Making a teacher's life miserable is the agenda of choice used against teachers with divergent opinions, and divergent today is believing in doing what is right over what is popular. So teachers remain quiet in spite of the fact that most love children and are appalled by what they see going on in the schools. Secondly, on the opposite side of the spectrum for reform is the Christian Right with the strongest voice for change. They insist that we must put God back in the school.

I believe we need to make teacher abuse public, the way we finally acknowledged child and wife abuse as a regretful aspect of our society during the last quarter of the twentieth century. Then we will eliminate this tool that has enabled one of the most uneven playing fields in any American institution since slavery. Then, if we can think in terms of putting back what God represents, Jesus taught, the Torah and Koran teach, and ethical atheists and agnostics believe, this movement will soar. Currently we have an unheard voice and a somewhat alienating voice. We need a voice that can be heard by all.

Those of us who are appalled by our schools may differ in our beliefs, but we share the same goals for society and thus education. Some interpret God through an organized religion. Some see God in ethics and in the way we treat our fellow human beings. Some see ethics as evolving purely from science. The Christian Right says we need a Christian God in the schools and others say we need ethics. We are saying the same thing. Since this is a democracy, we can coexist with different beliefs and still live and teach an ethical way of life. That is not happening in the schools. Given that teachers are timid both naturally and due to the structure of the system, it exacerbates the lack of ethics. If the people teaching our children cannot stand up for ethics, we suffer. Few can afford to stand up with an organized system of abuse in place.

My goal is to encourage people to scrutinize educators. Shining light on impropriety is the American way for change. With honorable educators, choices could be made for the sake of the children and not for power and greed as they are now. Parental concerns for the betterment of society would be addressed in a system that honors its mission. We don't have that. We need to purge the system by revealing it. The schools are truly not about the needs of society as long as people with lucrative salaries scramble to preserve their power at the helm, utilizing unscrupulous means to do so.

If each camp holds on to their individual beliefs, we are absorbed in the quicksand of murky thinking. I think about 9/11 and how everyone came together united against terrorism. We need to get to that juncture in educational reform and identify our real enemy, or those stacking the playing field and ignoring parents, teachers and children.

As long as we strive to treat our neighbors the way we want to be treated, God is there for those who believe. It matters not what religion or philosophy. It is with small minds that we divide and lose our battle against the real enemy. Right thinking people could come together and make decisions about curriculum, programs, philosophies and appropriate school purpose. Detrimental decisions are being made because people prioritizing power and money control our schools. We need to take the schools back. We need to do it together.

Months after I wrote the above article, or on June 27, 2002, I came across an article written by Joseph Farah called "The Pledge" © 2002 WorldNetDaily.com, reacting to the Appellate Court ruling against using "under God" in The Pledge of Allegiance. His article illustrated a positive step in the direction of uniting people of different religious beliefs. He stated that Christian and Jews "should have picked up their kids and gone home. Instead, they succumbed. Instead, they adapted to the changing morality. Instead, they did what they were told. Get your children out, and don't look back."

This was the first time I had seen an article where the "God and State issue" was not framed as a Christian issue. I did not agree with everything he wrote in the article, but I agreed with the spirit of his words when he stated: "The alternative is the kind of pathetic protest I expect to see. If you act like a doormat for 40 years, expect to be treated like one. If you invite abuse, expect it to continue. If you act like a slave, be prepared to be treated like one."

Teacher abuse actually is parent abuse since it is the shield that assures that parents do not influence our schools. Rather than have our schools fulfill the desires of our upstanding parents, administrations want to continue their Good Ol' Boy networks and ride the gravy train that won't stop to meet children's needs; they won't because to do so would mean not enough goodies for the guys holding the power. Farah's comment that parents have acted as doormats is correct. NAPTA believes this has happened insidiously because they trust our schools and believe they have our children's welfare foremost on their agendas. Trust blinded many people to sexual abuse in the church, the only other institution people hesitate to scrutinize. Motherhood, apple pie and our schools simply have been given a free ride for far too long. We believe that once parents realize what is really occurring in many of our public schools, they will no longer be doormats. However, a huge step in making this realization happen, is eliminating this divisive religious war and opening up dialogue amongst all people who care about living an ethical life. We cannot afford to be divided in any way while up against such a huge power.

Hopefully, we can continue to move in this direction and include all people who believe in ethics, whether evolving from God or from any other belief system that demands people respect their fellow man. The belief system currently in place in our schools is people and children as property, or materialism in its most hideous form. We need to strive toward valuing people over objects, whether we believe in humans as part of God or as simply our most precious resource. It is materialism, or worshipping objects, that we need to fight, not divergent religions. We do not need organized, mandatory prayer in schools to be a country of ethics; we need real schools, not facades pretending to be there for children. FRONTS FOR SCHOOLS

Top

MORE POLITICS