Last week on the radio program I related the story of a 13 year old student at a New Jersey public school who was sent home on Halloween because he was dressed as Jesus Christ. The principal insisted booting the kid had nothing to do with “the religious nature” of his costume, but rather that his costume was “disrupting the eductational process.” It is believed she said this with a straight face!

Anyone who has ever been in or around a public school on Halloween knows that the day in itself is a disruption of the educational process. But then education today really isn’t about standards of learning but rather whether at the end of the day the kids have enjoyed the process.

Sally Thomas, a homeschool mom in North Carolina, identifies the problem with public education in one sentence in a piece she wrote for the current issue of First Things:

Simply put, the educational and cultural establishments have sold out tradition and authority in favor of “collaborative-learning” models and objectives like “working with every young person’s sense of self.” The average teenager, not surprisingly, views himself not as a student in need of enlightenment but as a kind of automatic savant.