California Family Minute

• The Response - A Call to Prayer by Texas Governor Rick Perry at Houston’s Reliant Stadium. Join the event online by registering here.
  
• Another Walmart/Proctor & Gamble Family Movie Night! Bring the family together to watch "Who is Simon Miller?" on NBC at 8 pm.
  

At the same time a renewed emphasis has been placed on standardized testing, to insure that students have mastered the language, science, math, and social science curricula. Teachers are placed in no-win situations with special interest-driven curricula, and it should come as no surprise that administrators and teachers in Georgia and Pennsylvania have recently been charged with cheating on student test results, as their jobs and funding are dependent upon satisfactory scores.

Later yesterday I joined Frank Pastore on his radio talk show, and our discussion turned again to education. The question is where and how our children and grandchildren should be introduced to alternative sexual orientations, “earthcare,” or issues of discrimination. You see, for every worldview perspective that government chooses to teach through public education, many other worldviews will be refuted or silenced. In California, government-taught curriculum is moving further and further from a Christian worldview.

The California Teacher Education Network is “a non-partisan, non-political group dedicated to providing teachers with reliable and balanced information about professional affiliations and positions on educational issues.” CTEN was formed by public school educators who found that no teacher union was truly representing their interests or those of children. Read this recent blog by CTEN’s president, Larry Sand, on the political motivations of labor unions.

Because of the condition of public education I am especially appreciative of the vision and work being accomplished by several of CFC’s regional groups. These local forums bring together “people of influence” from churches, organizations, and communities to inform and strategize, and significant emphasis will be given this year to the consequences coming to public education. Cooperative efforts are underway to amplify the voices and opinions of local churches and parents on public education’s shortfalls, and educational alternatives.