Dr. Paul Kengor: Dr. Wolfe, you’ve led a fascinating life. From a remarkable career in advertising to your work in free-market education and Christian education. But let’s start from the beginning, which, in your case, is quite interesting: When were you born, and who were your parents?

Wolfe: I was born in New York City on June 5^th, 1919—from a liberal, college-professor Dad and a conservative get-things-done Mom.

Kengor: Your mother was not political. You called her an “old-fashioned working girl, a non-philosophical American free-enterpriser.” That’s not the case with your father. Your father, Dr. Ernest J. Wolfe, studied and taught with Ruth Bryan Owen, who was the daughter of the great William Jennings Bryan, the liberal Democrat of her day, and was ensconced at the University of Miami at Coral Gables, Florida. But your father ended up moving quite far to the left, politically. He became a Marxist, right?

Wolfe: Yes, became a Marxist as an all-out personal conviction, but that was not something he advocated on the job. Dad never especially publicized his Marxism.

Kengor: Your father ended up at Columbia University? Was this in the 1930s? What department?

Wolfe: Yes, in the 1930s, in the economics and history departments. At Columbia University, and the University of Miami he taught economics with the intention to provide a historic background that would show that the American people faced some sort of economic crisis, and various parts of the population, such as the elderly or the unemployed, needed some kind of social security from the U.S. government.

My Dad’s proposal resulted in the Social Security system America has today.

Kengor: He was close to Columbia economists like R.G. Tugwell, correct? Tugwell was well-known for his interest in the Soviet experiment, as recently profiled in Amity Shlaes’ book, The Forgotten Man. (For the record, Ms. Shlaes will be the keynote at our conference on progressivism next April.)

Wolfe: The only kind of economics my Dad wanted me to teach was socialism, but I never did, and l never promised to. He may have kind of dreamed of me going out and winning thousands of ignorant students to socialism, just as I aspired to win them to Christ, but my Dad never succeeded in winning me to any of his radical views.

Essentially, my Dad felt things I never felt. He felt rich Americans were bad, that there was no right or moral way for one person to earn or get a lot more money than other people had. He felt that essentially all Americans should have about the same amount of money or wealth, and that it should come from a generous government, from Uncle Sam, not from energetic individuals acquiring land or building a uniquely useful business, or selling exceptionally valuable products.

You asked how my father sought to make me a communist. Was it by giving me persuasive literature or certain books? Yes, and there are loads of those, but I didn’t find them either very interesting or convincing. I told my father I had enough to read for school—first for high school, then for college. Like most boys, I needed some time for recreation and some time for sports. Dad felt both were more or less a waste of time. We also disagreed on religion.

I felt religion was not just a ritual or a routine, that God existed, that He was real, that He loved me, that He loved everyone, and that He could bless everyone far more than He was currently, and that people first have to open themselves up to Him, “Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you.” My Dad expressed his religious beliefs toward me by sending me to the Ethical Culture Sunday School.

Kengor: Had not your father raised you to be a devoted Marxist, and to crusade for Marxism among college students? Is it true (George Cahill told me this) that you were literally conceived to be a communist? Or, at the least, that this you’re your father’s intention in having a child? (I’m sure it wasn’t your mother’s intention.)

Wolfe: It was never overtly stated as such. However, as my life unfolded it could very well have been so.

Kengor: How did your father try to make that happen? Did he give you communist literature? Did he send you to CPUSA meetings? Did he have you meet with party representatives around the country?

Instead, you went to the University of Arizona—which you chose because of the warm climate, and because you had serious health problems, then went to Mexico and had a religious experience, and your father, who in addition to being a Marxist, was a non-believer, an agnostic or atheist. He didn’t approve of your conversion, did he? How did your father react when you told him you had rejected his dream of his son being a Marxist?

Wolfe: By and large, when my father found I had no particular interest in his scheme for my life, he lost interest in my career.

Kengor: When you rejected that goal of your father, is it true that your father rejected you?

Wolfe: When he found I was not going to play out the dream he had conceived for my life, I would say he literally lost interest in my life.

Kengor: Your father left Columbia to work for FDR and the Social Security Board. Did you have much contact with your father after these New Deal years, and after the two of you split over Marxism?

Wolfe: No, once my father, Ernest J. Wolfe, left Columbia to work for FDR and his Social Security Board, he broke with all his past—with his wife, i.e., my mother and with me.

Kengor: Ultimately, you ended up earning a very successful living in advertising. For which firms did you work? You wrote a bestselling textbook on advertising?

Wolfe: I joined a radio station, WSTC, and wrote everything for the Stamford, Connecticut radio station, commercials, then joined a Brooklyn, New York station, WLIB, and wrote everything for them.

That prepared me to become a radio writer for the great advertising agency in New York, Batten, Batton, Durstine & Osborn, otherwise known as BBDO, where I wrote a best-selling textbook, Modern Radio and TV Advertising published by Funk & Wagnalls, which made me relatively famous, and I accepted a position as Television and Radio Creative Director of McCann-Erickson. This was challenging, lucrative and exciting, but left me little time for anything but my job.

I negotiated a new relationship with McCann-Erickson, through negotiation with Marion Harper Jr., the chief executive, in which I cut my work-time (and salary) in half, moved to California, and devoted the rest of my time to developing serious interests.

Kengor: Certainly you developed a very serious interest in economics, and actually joined the staff of the Foundation for Economic Education. How did that come about? Can you tell us about that experience? Did you encounter our own Hans Sennholz there?

Wolfe: I certainly did. I got to know and greatly admire Hans Sennholz. I also came to know and admire a man that Hans would agree was the world’s greatest economist, Ludwig von Mises.

Kengor: You also became concerned with the tragic drift to the extreme left by American higher education. Tell us what you saw in higher education, and when? Which colleges, in your view, have stayed true to both faith and freedom, including a respect for market freedom?

Wolfe: That is a profound and complex question I would not like to answer here in the midst of this casual conversation. It is a question which for a long time did not need to be asked, but now does need to be. It makes choosing a college much more difficult.

Kengor: You sent your son, Gregory, to Hillsdale. Gregory is an excellent scholar and writer, whose work includes a superb biography of Malcolm Muggeridge. You’re a big fan of both Hillsdale and Grove City College. Tell us about that.

Wolfe: To a large extent, America’s original intellectual foundation was built around a handful of distinguished colleges—beginning with Harvard, Yale, Princeton and Columbia. In the last century, and especially in the Great Depression, as we lost confidence in our country’s original foundations—in the Bible and Pilgrim and Puritan scholarship, we began to accept a new array of secular liberal European scholars into our premier universities, who moved them leftward, eroded their colleges’ character, confused their teaching of history, and opened the way for a new wave of truth-seeking colleges such as Hillsdale and Grove City.

To make a firm point of reference, referring to someone we both know—or are somewhat familiar with—after high school, Greg was determined to attend Harvard. I talked with him at length, and introduced him to Dr. George Roche, the young and very bright president of Hillsdale; they talked at great length, and Dr. Roche introduced Greg to one of Hillsdale’s most distinguished Professors, Dr. Russell Kirk. After several hours of conversation, they became fast friends. Greg came to me and said, “Dad, I don’t want to go to Harvard. I want to go to Hillsdale.” Greg never regretted that decision.

Kengor: You also developed a deep interest in America’s Christian history. You’ve done a lot of lecturing on that subject over the years. Tell us about that. Tell us also about your work with the late D. James Kennedy and Coral Ridge Ministries.

Wolfe: I came to admire Dr. Kennedy’s knowledge of America’s Christian history simply as a listener. Then he invited me to join his ministry in Fort Lauderdale, and it was a great pleasure. Among my students there was a talented young man named Dr. Jerry Newcombe who became Dr. Kennedy’s senior producer of his television productions. In his fine volume, The Book That Made America, he devoted the entire first page to a letter from me!

Kengor: How does all of this tie in to your involvement with the Plymouth Rock Foundation? You live today in Plymouth, Massachusetts. We’re approaching the 400^th anniversary of the Plymouth Landing of the Pilgrims?

Wolfe: Twenty-five years ago, in celebrating the 350^th anniversary of the Pilgrims’ famous landing, a great Christian musician, the marimba artist Dr. Jack Conner, played a concert sponsored by one of Plymouth’s leading citizens, John G. Talcott Jr. In a discussion after the concert, Mr. Talcott asked Dr. Conner for his ideas about how Plymouth should celebrate that event. The marimba artist said, “I know a man who’s written very well about the Pilgrims, a New Yorker named Dr. Charles Hull Wolfe. I’d like to ask him about his ideas.” That’s what Dr. Conner did.

He came to New York on a concert, talked to me about Plymouth, invited me to come with him on a visit to Mr. Talcott, which I promptly did. Finding there was not a single organization devoted solely to perpetuating the spiritual significance of the Pilgrims, and enriching the religious understanding of their lives, I proposed that Mr. Talcott and I, then and there, form such an institution. He quickly agreed, brought a competent attorney to his home, and together we drew up the document; thus was born The Plymouth Rock Foundation.

Kengor: Dr. Wolfe is there anything else you would like to say?

Wolfe: Yes, I would like to speak with you again sometime to share what I perceive to be the strategy to help lead Americans back to our deep spiritual roots of true liberty. The Biblical Principle Approach to Education. Whether by Home School or Christian School the overwhelming empirical evidence is in. By giving our current generation, as well as future generations, a Biblical World View and the ability to reason from a Biblical Principled Approach, we will free the slaves to secular humanism that now have them all in chains.

Kengor: Dr. Charles Hull Wolfe, you’re a true apostle of faith and freedom. Thank you very much for talking to us.

Wolfe: Thank you for having me. I have thoroughly enjoyed sharing what the Lord has done in and through me these past 90 years. May the Lord bless your efforts and writings.

Chris Klicka studied law after his Grove City College years at O.W. Coburn School of Law in Oklahoma and was hired in 1985 as the first executive director of an organization that had been formed by another tenacious fighter for educational and religious freedom, Mr. Michael Farris. His new position was with the Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA). The organization charged a reasonable annual fee to parents who were home schooling. The pooled fees were used to provide a legal defense fund for those who located in states in which laws and courts were hostile to the efforts of parents whose only “transgression” was that they had chosen to home-educate their children.

Basically, the compulsory attendance laws in most states were a product of an earlier era in which state legislatures had attempted to prevent children from working in factories and on farms by compelling them to get an education. Unfortunately, the courts and state departments of education had interpreted that requirement to mean that the education had to be provided by a conventional day school, public or private. In the 1970s and 1980s, the traditional school choices offered to parents had become less attractive and some began to look for alternatives. However, the idea of home schooling in the eyes of public school principals, superintendents, social workers and most state court judges was still foreign and frankly somewhat threatening. Their response was to prosecute parents, who dared to provide education another way, under the compulsory attendance laws.

In the early 1980s, Pennsylvania was called by HSLDA one of the “worst states” in the country for home schoolers. Many of the threatened moms and dads in Western Pennsylvania were clients of mine. Consequently, though we had not planned it, Chris Klicka and I had the “pleasure” of working together with Mike Farris on a number of cases here on behalf of HSLDA families, where school districts, through their superintendents, sought to criminally prosecute parents who were home schooling.

By the end of the 1980s, the climate changed due, in no small measure, to the perseverance and tenacity of Chris Klicka and HSLDA. Today, the acceptance of home schooling is well established nationwide. That is a tribute to the personal courage and legal acumen of that dark-haired constitutional student—Chris Klicka—who saw an injustice and sought, by the grace of God, to right it.

All this, I add, he accomplished while fighting an individual battle with Multiple Sclerosis. In these last years that disease sapped his physical strength and challenged his endurance. Nevertheless, his indomitable spirit, which was clearly Christ working through him, made him a warrior for freedom to the end. His gentle demeanor, disarming smile, and courageous heart were combined in a winsome way with his unyielding stance for scriptural principles. He died with the gratifying knowledge that parents across the land could instruct their children without fearing the heavy hand of state intervention. Now he rests peacefully in the bosom of the Lord he served so well.

Mr. Lloyd, who has lived in Guelph for four years, graduated with a teaching degree in 2006 and since then has worked short-term contract positions with public boards in Hamilton and Guelph.  He applied to the Wellington Catholic board in 2006 but did not hear back.

He contends that their policy is discriminatory.  “I need work,” he told the Guelph Mercury.  “But that’s not entirely it. It’s a higher conviction than that. I don’t think it’s right to have a publicly-funded institution where everyone is not welcome to work there.”

Lloyd is not optimistic about his case, but nevertheless thinks that it has value.  “I definitely think there’s some substance to it,” he said.  “I’m not convinced it will go through, but there’s definitely substance.  I hope somebody will look at this and say: ‘You’re right, this isn’t fair and it needs to be changed.’”

The board’s director of education, Donald Drone, insists, however, that the board has a legal right to focus their hiring on active Catholics, and that this is essential to the very purpose of the Catholic school.

Catholic school districts have a constitutional right to restrict hiring to Catholics, he said, particularly those who work in direct service with children.  “They need to be, should be, Catholic and therefore share the same values of the Church, because we’re founded on the teachings of Christ and salvation history.  Therefore from our standpoint, from a board policy standpoint, it’s very important that people who are working with us would be Roman Catholic.”

“The reason for our existence is to provide a Catholic education to students,” he explained, “and by axiom, from my standpoint, those who are delivering that program should be Catholic, and should be knowledgeable in the faith.  And I would say that that’s likely the same position that most Catholic boards in this province would have.”

Drone indicated that they do have non-Catholics working in the board, “but generally speaking, they’re not, for most cases, offering direct service by way of curriculum,” he said.  “They certainly make a contribution, and they also, from our perspective, add to the social fabric of our organization.”

He says respects the concern that some might have about the hiring policy, but, he said, “I also respect our right…to show preferential treatment for people who are in concert with our teaching and our culture.”

The board’s lawyer, Eric Roher, has issued a written response to the tribunal.  While he indicates that the complaint should be dismissed due to its lateness and because Lloyd was not qualified for the position despite the difference in religious belief, he focuses on the board’s right to be authentically Catholic.

Lloyd is currently preparing his response to the board’s submission, says the Guelph Mercury.

Phil Horgan of the Catholic Civil Rights League told LifeSiteNews.com, “Based on the initial reports, this issue flies in the face of the constitutional guarantees afforded Catholics dating back to Confederation and I am not aware of any court or tribunal which has challenged those provisions in respect of Catholic preferential hiring rights.”

Horgan pointed to the 1984 Caldwell v. Stuart case as precedent upholding the hiring rights of Catholic schools.  In that case, the Supreme Court of Canada dismissed the appeal of a teacher who was not rehired at a Catholic school after having contravened Church teaching by ‘marrying’ a divorced man in a civil ceremony.

According to Horgan, however, despite the legal precedent, “it is somewhat unknown as to what some adjudicator from the human rights commission may decide.”

In making his decision, the judge, Justice Jean-Guy Dubois, relied heavily on two Catholic sources: (1) the testimony of a Catholic theologian who emphasized that the Catholic Church values instruction in other religions, and (2) the position of the Assembly of Quebec Catholic Bishops, who did not support "a priori" exemptions based on religion.

Even without the support of his brother bishops, Quebec City Cardinal Marc Ouellet has spoken out vigorously against the relativistic religion program, saying the course "subjects religions to the control and the interests of the State and puts an end to religious freedoms in school which were acquired many generations ago."

The program, developed by the Quebec Ministry of Education, was mandated as of the beginning of the 2008-2009 school year for all students, including homeschoolers, and spans from grade 1 to the end of high school.

In a spirit of openness and questioning, the relativist curriculum covers a spectrum of world religions, including Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, and aboriginal spirituality, as well as pseudo-religions such as atheism.  The curriculum presents homosexuality as a normal choice for family life, aiming, for example, in grade 1 and 2 "to bring children to explore the diversity of relationships of interdependence between members of different types of families."

The curriculum replaced a previous religious education program that allowed parents to choose between a Catholic, Protestant, or secular curriculum.

The new program sparked a loud outcry from the Quebec religious community, especially among the Catholic parents, and marches have been held in protest.  Over 1,700 requests for exemptions have been submitted, but all have been refused.  Children whose parents have removed them from the class have faced sanctions, including suspension.

In this case, the parents made their appeal on the grounds that the school program violated their freedom of conscience and religion.  Before the case, the parents stated that the mandatory nature of the course  violated these freedoms "in that the course imposes on the student a polytheistic vision of the religious phenomenon, is relativist, separates ethics from morality, and claims to maintain a neutrality in dealing with ethical questions, and interferes with the ability of parents to transmit their faith to their child."

Justice Dubois disagrees, however, stating in his decision that their freedom is not violated because the curriculum does not require the children to believe that which it teaches.

"In light of all the evidence presented," he wrote, "the court does not see how the … course limits the plaintiff’s freedom of conscience and of religion for the children when it provides an overall presentation of various religions without obliging the children to adhere to them."

The judge based his ruling in part on the testimony of theologian Fr. Gilles Routhier of Laval University who presented the Catholic teaching that religious education is primarily the responsibility of the parents, and that the Catholic Church values instruction in other religions, rather than seeing such instruction as impugning the freedom of conscience.

Further, the judge quoted a March 11, 2008 letter written by Bishop Martin Veillette, president of the bishops’ assembly and bishop of Trois-Rivières, to Minister of Education Michelle Courchesne, which stated that the ERC program is not objectionable enough in itself to warrant an exemption.  Exemptions should only be given after the fact, he said, if the program is discovered to have caused injury.

"We know it requires a very serious reason to justify an exemption from a school program," he wrote.  "The most serious reason would be without doubt the violation of the freedom of conscience, which is a fundamental right.  The program in itself does not seem to us to be vulnerable to such a dispute a priori [before the fact].  It is rather a posteriori [after the fact], based on experience, that a demand for exemption could in our view become admissible in cases where an injury might be serious enough."

Based on this evidence from Fr. Routhier and the bishops, the judge wrote, "the court does not see how a Catholic child who attends the ERC course could be violated in his conscience and his religion.  Even the leaders of the Catholic Church admit the validity of an objective presentation of other religions."

"While the school presents various religions in the ERC program, that does not mean that the child is put in a obligatory or coercive situation," he wrote.  "It is up to parents and pastors of the Catholic Church, in the case of the plaintiffs, to ensure their children understand that the religious precepts of Catholicism to which they belong, can be implemented in a free and enlightened way while recognizing the existence of other religions."

Montreal’s Loyola Catholic High School, a private Catholic boys’ school, presented its case against the mandatory ERC curriculum in June, and awaits the court’s decision.  Loyola was also refused an exemption, despite the fact that they have had a required study of world religions in their program for twelve years.

Principal Paul Donovan wrote in a letter to the Montreal Gazette that Loyola was willing to offer the program in a way more in line with the school’s Catholic and Jesuit identity, but the Ministry objected to the Catholic context.  "We were informed that these things cannot be taught ‘according to ministerial expectation’ in a Catholic context," he wrote.  "Our question to the courts, since the ministry would not talk with us, is quite simply, Why not?"

According to Daniel Weinstock, a professor who consulted in the drafting of the ERC, one faith should not be given preference to another in religious instruction.  "Part of the mandate of the course is to present religion in an even-handed way," he wrote in a recent MacLeans magazine report. "If a school has as its guiding intention to inculcate children into the Catholic faith, it clearly means a part of their mandate is not to present all religions in an even-handed way."

Let’s recap the situation.

Nationwide, the public K-12 schools will continue to fail miserably despite an increased budget in 2009-10 that will include Obama stimulus money and total over $667 Billion spread over 50 million students — $13,000 plus per child. At colleges, freshmen with GPA’s of 4.7 and a slew of AP courses on their high school transcript will be guided to remedial writing labs so they can get up to speed and write a coherent essay by mid term. Many will not get better at it.

At the same time this is happening we as a nation are having town hall meetings and shouting matches with arrogant politicians and their minions over our distrust with the thought of having government run the health care delivery industry in this country.

Do you sense the disconnect? Why does the idea of public instruction or as my title suggests National Ed Care not bring about the same questioning and emotion and distrust inspired by the prospect of public health management? With education we have years of failure in the U.S. to use as evidence to argue for another path. A path devoid of public finance. But we’re not going there. Why?

Some things need to be laid on the table.

One: The Federal Department of Education and state departments of education are tools of statists. I defer here to Proverbs 22. You know the passages about “the parent is the primary educator of the child.” The educating of a child is a very personal thing. And despite many parent’s lack of confidence it’s something they have traditionally done and can do. Don’t believe me? Read some of the letters sent home during the Civil War and WWI by primarily home educated soldiers. Their expressions of wit, solemnity and grace are far more eloguent than the stuff that lands today’s college freshmen in that writing lab described above. Have doubts? read your kid’s emails. With its continued reach into our education, the government is increasingly pushing to mold curriculum in a fashion that ignores tradition, reason and faith.

Two: The benefit of an educated public is an informed electorate. That’s what Thomas Jefferson believed and it remains an absolute necessity for sustaining a free people. Sadly, our knowledge of American History and Civics is lacking. We left it to the public schools and they have predictably dropped the ball. Don’t believe me? What about earlier this year when Congress almost unanimously voted to tax after the fact employees of a private company who had been paid bonus money. That’s called an “ex post facto” law and is forbid by the U.S. Constitution [Article I, Section 10], the law those legislators swore to support and defend. But the question of doing something explicitly against the law since the country’s founding didn’t raise a stir among the public. Very likely because they never learned about it in their public schools.

Three: Not all students should be pushed toward college. The ease with which credit became available to finance college costs increased the “opportunity” and cost for students who in other times might have chosen a trade or career path that didn’t require four years of college. Now, everyone is considered eligible for that trophy. Most High Schools no longer offer non-college prep tracts so many kids are either overwhelmed or drop out instead of being guided into skills and job training that would fill the nation’s need for tasks which go wanting these days. Stuff like plumbers, electricians, food service, office staffing. I don’t know what it’s like in your neighborhood but in mine a plumber with a good attitude and some cheap cologne can make a valuable contribution and more money than many college graduates.

Charter Schools are public schools under different management . That’s likely to make some of my friends in this debate unhappy but it’s true and I have to tell you that if the LAUSD charter plan goes through, you will see a rush by progressive, leftist activists groups in the Los Angeles area to file applications and start charter schools of their own design, to push their own agenda. The review of charter curriculums after initial approval will not take place for three or more years and since it will be done by the same bureaucrats who have dropped the ball for the past 50 years, we cannot count on the public’s money being put to use in a way that satisfies my point “Two” above: to educate an informed public. Don’t kid yourselves, the charter will not look for operating savings, they’ll use up the $13,000. per child the state’s accustomed to spending. That’s what is happening now.

Anecdotal proof of a need for concern is the furor that took place in 2008 in the San Francisco Bay area of California when elementary school children were taken to the same sex union of their lesbian teacher without parental notification. The teacher thought it would be an enriching experience. The school was a charter.

“But we can’t home school our kids,” cries a mother. “I’ve got to work. We both have to. We don’t have a choice.”

The alternative to chartering is a voucher. Parochial K-8 schools like those run by the Catholic Church and other denominations charge an average of $5,000 for annual tuition in many areas of the U.S.. The number is significantly less than the state spends and the results are superior and the surroundings more in line with a family’s beliefs. As a parent a voucher would allow you to be free to choose.

In my novel about a family’s decision to home school , the mother cries out in doubt, “What if I screw up. What if he can’t get into college.” She is persuaded by an older neighbor and former professor that there will be “lots of help.” And there is. But it’s help that is there to guide them to the truth; not what the state whispers in our ears — a persuasion that there can be a heaven on earth.

National Health Care is a bad idea. State run education has been a failure. Both need to be rejected.

[This article was previously published by www.acton.org and is used by permission.]

Liberty Counsel, a non-profit public advocacy group dedicated to advancing religious freedom, filed a Petition for Certiorari at the United States Supreme Court, on behalf of Erica Corder, who graduated with a 4.0 GPA but was denied her diploma until she issued a publically disseminated, coerced, written apology for presenting a thirty-second valedictory speech that included a reference to her faith in Jesus Christ. The petition asks the high court to review the case for themselves and if four justices out of nine justices agree, then Corder will get her final appeal before the full US Supreme Court.

Corder was one of fifteen valedictorians from the Lewis-Palmer High School class of 2006. Each valedictorian orally presented a proposed speech to the principal before graduation. However, at the graduation ceremony, Corder deviated from her prepared speech and expressed her faith in Jesus Christ, encouraging the audience to learn more about her Savior.

"We are all capable of standing firm and expressing our own beliefs," she said in her address, "which is why I need to tell you about someone who loves you more than you could ever imagine.  He died for you on a cross over 2,000 years ago, yet was resurrected and is living today in heaven. His name is Jesus Christ. If you don’t already know Him personally I encourage you to find out more about the sacrifice He made for you so that you now have the opportunity to live in eternity with Him."

Afterwards, she was escorted to see the assistant principal, who stated that Corder would not receive her diploma because of the speech she had given. Principal Mark Brewer then decided that Corder could only receive her diploma if she apologized to the school community.

Corder prepared a statement saying the message was her own and was not endorsed by the principal. But Principal Brewer also insisted that she include the words: "I realize that, had I asked ahead of time, I would not have been allowed to say what I did."

Brewer sent out the valedictorian’s message in an e-mail to the entire high school community. Shortly thereafter, Erica received her diploma.

Nonetheless, Liberty Counsel points out that Corder only complied because she feared the school would withhold her diploma, put damaging disciplinary notes in her file, and would generate negative publicity that could prevent her from becoming a school teacher.

"A valedictorian’s speech is not government speech. Everyone knows that a valedictorian earned the high GPA and understands the speech belongs to the student," said Mat Staver, the founder of Liberty Counsel and one of Corder’s representatives. "It is reprehensible that the school district threatened to withhold Erica Corder’s diploma, merely because a few sentences of her 30-second speech included references to God."

Corder filed suit against the Lewis-Palmer School District of Colorado in August 2007, seeking declaratory relief and nominal damages for a violation of her First Amendment right to freedom of speech. The district court ruled there was no constitutional violation, stating that Corder’s speech was "school-sponsored," and therefore the forced apology was not improper. This past May, the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals denied Corder’s appeal and affirmed the ruling.

However Liberty Counsel is arguing that the Tenth Circuit’s decision undermines student free speech rights and conflicts with an Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals decision, another graduation message case called Adler v. Duval County School Board. There a 12-judge panel of the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals sitting en banc sided with Liberty Counsel against the ACLU and found that a policy whereby students select the content of their messages is student speech, not school-sponsored speech.

Liberty Counsel hopes to use the precedent to argue before the Supreme Court that the religious viewpoints of students are protected by the First Amendment. The case is Corder v. Lewis-Palmer School District No. 38.

Although the marital master making recommendations to the court agreed the child is “well liked, social and interactive with her peers, academically promising, and intellectually at or superior to grade level” and that “it is clear that the home schooling…has more than kept up with the academic requirements of the…public school system,” he nonetheless proposed that the Christian girl be ordered into a government-run school after considering “the impact of [her religious] beliefs on her interaction with others.”  The court approved the order.

“Parents have a fundamental right to make educational choices for their children.  In this case specifically, the court is illegitimately altering a method of education that the court itself admits is working,” said ADF-allied attorney John Anthony Simmons of Hampton.

“The court is essentially saying that the evidence shows that, socially and academically, this girl is doing great, but her religious beliefs are a bit too sincerely held and must be sifted, tested by, and mixed among other worldviews.  This is a step too far for any court to take.”

The parents of the child divorced in 1999.  The mother has home-schooled their daughter since first grade with curriculum that meets all state review standards.  In addition to home schooling, the girl attends supplemental public school classes and has also been involved in a variety of extra-curricular sports activities.

In the process of renegotiating the terms of a parenting plan for the girl, the guardian ad litem involved in the case concluded, according to the court order, that the girl “appeared to reflect her mother’s rigidity on questions of faith” and that the girl’s interests “would be best served by exposure to a public school setting.”

It was also concluded that “different points of view at a time when she must begin to critically evaluate multiple systems of belief…in order to select, as a young adult, which of those systems will best suit her own needs.”

Marital Master Michael Garner reasoned that the girl’s “vigorous defense of her religious beliefs to [her] counselor suggests strongly that she has not had the opportunity to seriously consider any other point of view,” and then recommended that the girl be ordered to enroll in a government school instead of being home-schooled.

Judge Lucinda V. Sadler approved the recommendation and issued the order on July 14.

“The New Hampshire Supreme Court itself has specifically declared, ‘Home education is an enduring American tradition and right,’” said ADF Senior Legal Counsel Mike Johnson.  “There is clearly and without question no legitimate legal basis for the court’s decision, and we trust it will reconsider its conclusions.”

In each instance, these acts of religious censorship are defended as necessary in order preserve the integrity of that infamous mandate: the separation of church and state.  Perhaps no other founding idea has been so politicized, so manipulated and twisted to unjust ends.  The increasing boldness with which teachers, administrators, and the courts that support them are suppressing students’ legitimate expressions of faith reflects the growing predominance of an ideology within the American education system committed to eradicating all traces of traditional religious influence on public life in America.  Indeed, if Abraham Lincoln was correct in his suggestion that "the philosophy of the school room in one generation is the philosophy of government in the next," and if this radical element within the public education system has its way, then America’s future is grim indeed.

President Lincoln clearly recognized the profound importance of education, and the immense responsibility incumbent upon educators to guide the next generation rightly.  The primary goal, at least in Lincoln’s day, was a system of schooling which effectively prepared our nation’s youth to join society as productive, responsible, virtuous participants.  It’s nice to imagine that there was a time when it was that simple.  Teachers busied themselves with the work of nourishing eager young minds with the fundamental skills necessary to develop into intelligent, capable, thoughtful adults.

In today’s classroom, however, the story is very different.  Modern sensitivities decry the presumptuous suggestion that productivity, responsibility, and virtue are legitimate universal measures by which to evaluate a good citizen.  The goals of education in today’s postmodern, multicultural, post-religious, globally-oriented society have evolved past these antiquated ideals.  Hence the rise in influence of the radical ideology mentioned earlier.  Too many teachers today enter the classroom with an agenda far more ambitious than the simple desire to instill a love of learning; these teachers go into the education business to proselytize a religion.  This religion is comprehensive in its scope.  It will not tolerate dissent because it cannot withstand scrutiny.  Ironically, the State is its staunchest advocate and most ardent defender.

This state-sponsored religion teaches the theory of evolution as an indisputable fact, singling out and eliminating from its ranks proponents of intelligent design theory―or, heaven forbid, actual Creationists―with Puritanical zeal.  This religion mandates the normalization of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered lifestyles with no regard for parental consent while singling out traditionalists as ignorant bigots in need of reprogramming.  Thus the classroom, once a forum for critical thought, analysis, and debate that allowed for many competing points of view, is now used to transform raw human material into homogenous batches of progressive, enlightened, politically correct, intellectually timid, and spiritually vacant progeny, ready to shape tomorrow’s world.

We need not look far to see what happens when a rogue individual or group breaks ranks to speak out against this secular orthodoxy.  It’s happening all around us in ways large and small, and these acts of censorship will only get worse if our society continues in its attitude of complacency and apathy.  Parents must ask themselves if they are really willing to stand idly by while their children are exploited as pawns in a campaign to render the Judeo-Christian worldview and all its precepts obsolete.  They must ask themselves if they are comfortable exposing their unwitting offspring to this disordered agenda.

If the answer to these questions is "no," then the time for complacency must end and parents must stand up against the monolithic institution more commonly known as the U.S. Department of Education.  Public schools, after all, exist to serve the people, but like most creatures of government they have been co-opted by a relatively small yet highly influential lobby of radicals that seeks to control the flow of information in order to secure its desired ends.  As parents, we must educate ourselves about what is being taught in our classrooms.  When our children are persecuted for expressing their constitutionally-protected religious beliefs in the public square, we must be ready to stand up for what’s right despite the daunting odds.  We must make our stand now before this new religion amasses so many converts that we find ourselves outnumbered, outmaneuvered, and ultimately, irrelevant.

University of Virginia professor and cognitive psychologist Daniel T. Willingham sought to answer that very question and thereby wrote the book that should be at the very top of every parent, teacher, and principal’s summer reading list: Why Don’t Students Like School? A Cognitive Scientist Answers Questions about How the Mind Works and What It Means for Your Classroom.

In just 165 pages, Willingham pulls off in his newly released book two feats heretofore assumed impossible: For starters, he synthesizes decades of technical findings in cognitive psychology in prose not only comprehensible to the layman but enjoyable, too.

Then, like a laser, Willingham cuts through multiple thorny and perpetual educational debates. Armed with clear explanations, examples, and top-line research, Willingham shows that many of these debates are actually over, or should be, as many long-held beliefs regarding education are simply false.

Did you know for instance that praising a child for being smart only succeeds in making him dumb? Did you know that an effective attention-getter at the beginning of a lesson is a surefire way to ruin a child’s concentration? Did you know that adjusting lessons for “visual,” “auditory,” and “kinesthetic” learners is an exercise in futility since they don’t really exist? Did you know that attempting to relate a subject to the “child’s world” will most often destroy interest?

Based solely on the previous paragraph, there are now undoubtedly many educationists running to break out worn clichés to attack Willingham. Stale cries against “drill and kill,” “boring,” and “old” pedagogy will be unleashed unfairly and inaccurately to marginalize Willingham and the truths he explains. This reaction will be tragic because Willingham is not offering yet another diatribe from any particular educational or political camp. Rather, he eloquently reports on nine principles “that are so fundamental to the mind’s operation that they do not change as circumstances change. They are as true in the classroom as they are in the laboratory and therefore can reliably be applied to classroom situations.”

Willingham has two straightforward goals: to “tell you how your students’ minds work, and to clarify how to use that knowledge to be a better teacher.” He masterfully succeeds at both.

Each of Willingham’s chapters revolve around a crucial question, so readers will discover not only why students don’t like school, but why students remember TV shows and forget school lessons (memory is a residue of thought), whether drilling is worth it (it is), and how to get students to think like real scientists, mathematicians, and historians (you can’t immediately). Willingham’s explication in chapter three of why teachers must “pay careful attention to what an assignment will actually make students think about (not what you hope they will think about)” has literally revolutionary power to improve schools if only it were widely applied.

Willingham opens his book Cognition by stating that a “long-standing goal of human inquiry is to understand ourselves.” His book will appeal to all for just that reason. Most importantly though, Willingham correctly notes that it “would be a shame indeed if we did not use the accumulated wisdom of science to inform the methods by which we educate children.” This was the purpose of Why Don’t Students Like School? and is the reason this book is essential for anyone concerned about education.

Students understandably dislike school for a host of reasons, but we needlessly design our lessons against the grain of what we know about the human mind. Using just a brief part of the summer to learn from Willingham will make looking forward to the next school year a real possibility for students and teachers alike.

“By excluding religious expression, and Christian expression and symbols in particular, from the classroom, school officials have exhibited the kind of hostility toward religion that should never be found in an American public school,” stated John W. Whitehead, president of The Rutherford Institute. “If these situations continue, there will be absolutely no freedom for religious people in public schools in this country.”

The case began in October 2004, when Donna Busch accepted an invitation to visit her son Wesley’s kindergarten classroom at Culbertson Elementary School in Newtown Square, Penn., and read an excerpt of Wesley’s favorite book to his classmates. Wesley’s teacher had invited Mrs. Busch because Wesley was the featured student of “All About Me,” a school program intended to feature a particular student during the week and emphasize that student’s personal characteristics, preferences and personality in classroom activities.

One activity made available to all featured students during “All About Me” is the opportunity to have the child’s parent read aloud from his or her favorite book. Wesley, a Christian, had chosen the Bible as his favorite book, and Mrs. Busch planned to read an excerpt from Psalm 118. However, on the day of the reading, Wesley’s teacher directed Mrs. Busch not to read the passage until the principal had determined if it could be read to the class. When Principal Thomas Cook was summoned, he informed Mrs. Busch that she could not read from the Bible in the classroom because it was against the law and that the reading would violate the “separation of church and state.”

In filing suit against the Marple Newtown school district in May 2005, Institute attorneys alleged that the reading incident was just one example of the school’s efforts to suppress the right of Christians to freely express their religious beliefs. For example, although Mrs. Busch was not permitted to read from the Bible, another parent was allowed to read a book about Judaism; teach the class the dreidel game; and display a menorah in celebration of Hanukkah.

In upholding the lower court’s ruling, the court of appeals held that “educators may appropriately restrict forms of expression in elementary school classrooms” even when they have invited speakers into the classroom.

“The public school setting may implicate the Establishment Clause, especially where public authority undertakes or is reasonably perceived to have undertaken to give one religious belief official approval or approval over other religious beliefs,” Anthony Joseph Scirica, chief judge of the appeals court, wrote in his decision.

However, Circuit Judge Thomas Hardiman issued a vigorous dissent, pointing out that the reading of a passage from Psalms to Wesley’s class was within the subject matter of the “All About Me” unit, which was to highlight things of interest and important to Wesley, and the exclusion constituted viewpoint discrimination in violation of the First Amendment because it was based solely upon its religious character.