Throwing Money At Character Deficiency

TIME, May 24—Even a major secular publication like this one could not resist the temptation to mock the latest educational fad: character education devoid of any mention of God or the Ten Commandments.

Wrote Andrew Ferguson: “Character ed revolves around pillars or building blocks of character — universally accepted values bleached of any sectarian contamination. And they are transmitted by the familiar methods beloved of today's pedagogues: posters and banners, role playing and sharing, multi-culti storytelling and words of the week — all the cheerful paraphernalia that makes the modern American classroom seem like a Maoist re-education camp run by Barney the dinosaur.”

Educator and author Alfie Kohn is also a skeptic. “Most of what passes for character education is behavioral manipulation, not an invitation to reflect on values,” he told Time. “It's no way to transform a community to say, ‘today isTuesday; it must be Honesty day,’ or by giving kids doggy biscuits.”

Time's Ferguson also reported that, “at his conference last week on school violence, President Clinton — without apparent irony — endorsed character education.”

Democrats on Wrong Side Of Vouchers Debate

THE NEW YORK TIMES, May 25—Democrats are on the wrong side of the school voucher debate — and not only because they are afraid to offend the teachers' unions. “The Democratic Party's intellectual leaders have attacked school choice with superficial complaints that are far from the heart of the debate,” said Democrat Charles Wheelan in an opinion piece.

“Democrats say that vouchers will destroy the public schools, but this is probably a better argument in favor of school choice,” said Wheelan, a correspondent for The Economist who has also served on his local school board in Chicago. “The supposed logic is that millions of students will stream out of the public schools if given the opportunity, leaving behind a shell of a system.”

Wheelan counters with two further points: “First, if students will flee public schools like rats from a sinking ship, then what makes this system so worth protecting? And second, the essence of ‘public education’ is that the government provides an opportunity for all students to attend a decent school, not that all students must attend a publicly operated school.”

Wheelan said “vouchers will bolster urban tax bases by stemming the flight of middle-class parents who move out of the city because they do not trust urban public schools and cannot afford private ones. Vouchers are pro-city, which is something that we Democrats are supposed to care about.

Judge's Ruling Favors Catholic Families Over Hindu-type ‘Dolls’

LOS ANGELES TIMES, May 22—A federal judge in White Plains, N.Y., ruled that a school district violated the religious rights of three Catholic families by having youngsters make “worry dolls,” brightly painted miniature dolls that are supposed to dispel everyday anxieties when left under a child's pillow.

U.S. District Judge Charles Brieant ordered the Bedford Central school district to stop the activities and give clear instructions to teachers about Supreme Court standards for the separation of church and state. Brieant said he found “subtle coercive pressure to engage in the Hindu religion” when a third-grade teacher, during a lesson about India, had her pupils make construction-paper cutouts of elephant heads after reading a story about Ganesha, an elephant-headed Hindu god, reported the Los Angeles Times.

A New York Times account of the ruling added that the judge also ordered the district to end Fox Lane High School's “truly bizarre” Earth Day celebrations.

“He said a creed students listened to — ‘This is what we believe. The mother of us all is Earth. The father is the Sun’ — constituted religious worship.”

“While the case has received wide attention,” said New York Times reporter Paul Zielbauer, “legal experts said that the activities struck down by [the] ruling were too esoteric for [it] to have far-reaching implications.”

Rosemary C. Solomone, a professor of law at New York's St. John's University, did not agree. “The case has opened up American education to public view,” she told Zielbauer. A chronicler of parental dissent in education, Solomone said parents are beginning to ask questions like, “Is it appropriate to invite a yogi into the school?”