• Organize a voter registration drive at your church.
WHAT CHURCHES CAN DO
In 1954, when then-Senator Lyndon Johnson wanted to silence opposition from some non-profit groups, he attached an amendment to a bill that prohibited non-profits from engaging in political activities. The bill passed. Since then, the secularists have used that law to convince churches and their leaders that they cannot be involved in politics. So for over four decades, many churches have been silent and uninvolved.
Before 1954, Christian clergy and other religious leaders were a dominant influence upon the culture, the issues, and political campaigns. It was the pastors in colonial times who were speaking about rights coming from God, long before Jefferson used that concept in the Declaration of Independence. It was the sermons preached by George Whitefield, an English evangelist who made seven tours in the colonies during the first Great Awakening, that helped spark a rebellion that led to the American Revolution. It was pastors that founded the great learning institutions of Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Columbia, William and Mary, and others for one specific reason: they understood the importance of an educated and moral citizenry to the survival of a free society. And after America became a country, abolitionism was a religiously inspired movement led from the pulpit.
Pastors for most of America’s history were the thought and opinion leaders of the nation. But today, too many have confined themselves and their cultural influence within the walls of their churches. That must end.
There are three centers of influence in America today—economic, political, and spiritual. Wall Street will not restore America’s foundations. Politicians mostly reflect the culture that keeps them in office. That leaves pastors, priests, and rabbis as the last best hope for renewing freedom.
But where do churches start? What can they do? What should they do and not do?
All good questions. Here are some answers.
Churches are uniquely deemed non-profit by definition. Every election year, the secular advocacy group People United for the Separation of Church and State sends letters to pastors warning them their not-for-profit status could be revoked if they talk about political issues or get involved in elections. But that letter is pure intimidation that stands on thin legal precedent. No church in America has ever lost its non-profit status. Not one.
There are many ways churches and pastors can address the issues of our day. The idea is not to make churches and their leaders into political operations. That is not the purpose of a church. But if churches don’t provide moral leadership to the citizens in their pews and apply their teachings to today’s issues, they are doing a major disservice to their congregations and their communities. There is a lot of ground to make up if we are to reverse our cultural decay.
Here are some basic, fully legal forms of church engagement:
• Churches can conduct voter registration drives to make sure every congregant is registered to vote. Better yet, have all the members stand and ask those who are registered to sit down, leaving those unregistered standing. Have ushers pass out voter registration cards and pens and ask them to fill them out right then and there. The ushers should then collect them and get them to the registrar of voters.
• Talk about issues from the pulpit. Don’t wait until election time, when your congregation may get uncomfortable hearing the pastor address contemporary issues for the first time. Get them used to hearing about how Biblical principals apply to today’s issues. There are organizations that provide sermon resources on how to do this correctly, such as United in Purpose (www.unitedinpurpose.org) and the Pastors Rapid Response Team.
• At election time, talk about the importance of voting. American history is full of wonderful stories showing how people of faith created this great nation. You can use these stories to encourage your members to vote.
• Make voter guides available explaining issues that affect your church and where the candidates stand on those issues. Many faith organizations like Wallbuilders (www.wallbuilders.com) produce them.
• Invite guest speakers who have expertise in America’s Godly heritage to address your congregation.
If every church and synagogue did these things, it would be very difficult for the secular Left to get their candidates elected. The secular socialists know this. That’s why they work so hard to intimidate churches from getting involved. But does it really make sense for people of faith not to be involved when the secularists are working overtime?
There are nearly 65 million evangelical Christians in the United States who are eligible to vote. But in some areas, nearly half are not registered, and up to half of those who register don’t bother to vote. That’s almost 45 million Americans who sit out some elections. If only 10 percent of those voted in every election, the secular-socialist Left would be in dire straits. They’re terrified people of faith will wake up one day and decide never to sit out the process again. But it is up to the faith leaders to mobilize them.
A couple precautions: under current law, churches cannot endorse candidates but pastors can, if done correctly. Politicians can speak to the congregation but they cannot ask people to vote for them. To find out what churches can and cannot do legally, contact either Liberty Council (www.lc.org) or the Alliance Defense Fund (www.alliancedefensefund.org). If a church is threatened, these groups can provide the legal defense, usually pro bono.
The Founders who declared our independence and created a government based upon their understanding of God’s principles were committed to the idea of a federal government with limited power. Because of their success, our government today is now the oldest government on earth. The best way to ensure its continuation and to secure religious liberty is to further limit federal powers and maintain the right of redress articulated in the Declaration of Independence:
That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,—That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
Remember Jefferson’s great insight: “The God who gave us life gave us liberty.” Religious liberty is much too precious to allow it to be further eroded. People of faith must educate themselves, get involved, and encourage others to do the same. For too long the secularist campaign against religious freedom has gone unanswered. But to change that we need only reflect on Psalm 11:3 (NIV): “When the foundations are being destroyed, what can the righteous do?”
There is a great deal we can do. And when we do it we will not be without God’s help. Our national motto says it all: “In God we trust.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
Solving the Education Crisis
With
Lisa Graham Keegan—Advisor, American
Solutions Learning Project
Nancy Sinnott Dwight—Advisor, American
Solutions Learning Project
Fred Asbell—American Solutions
Education Policy Director
No American should underestimate the continuing crisis in our educational system or the threat that crisis poses to our nation.
This is not a new problem. More than a quarter century ago, in 1983, the Reagan administration released “A Nation at Risk.” That devastating critique of our education bureaucracy declared that if a foreign power were doing as much damage to our children as our unionized, bureaucratic, government schools, we would consider it an act of war.
Nearly a decade ago, in March 2001, the Hart-Rudman Commission on National Security—the most comprehensive review of national security requirements since 1947—warned the second greatest threat to America was the failure of math and science education and the failure to sustain our scientific investments. It argued this failure was a greater threat than any conceivable conventional war.
Today, any American can go to 2mmillion.com and see Bob Compton’s remarkable documentary film 2 Million Minutes, which compares two Indian, two Chinese, and two American high school students. Even though the Americans are from a “high-performing” high school, they simply cannot compete with their Chinese and Indian peers. Compton has since filmed a movie on the Basis School in Tucson, Arizona, which he asserts is the best high school in the world. He upholds the school as proof Americans can perform and compete when the system is changed from bureaucratic mediocrity into a learning-oriented, high-standards model that both challenges and reinforces students.
THREE IMPORTANT LEARNING TRENDS IN TODAY’S AMERICA
The challenge we face involves three crucial trends:
1. The coming revolution in learning through technology and brain science.
2. The requirement that all Americans learn all their lives.
3. The failure of unionized bureaucratic education and the need to replace it with a student- and parent-centered competitive model.
First, we are on the edge of a revolution that will outstrip anything we have ever imagined possible in human learning and adaptation. The combination of breakthroughs in neuroscience and the emergence of inexpensive wireless technologies with massive computational powers (enabling expert systems and personalized learning feedback applications) will revolutionize how we think about learning in the next decade.
Therefore, we must design a system of learning that is available 24/7 every day for all Americans to learn with unprecedented speed and effectiveness at their convenience and in their homes or communities. The work of Apple on iPhone applications, of Amazon on Kindle applications, and of neuroscientists who have developed many startup companies studying how advances in brain science might improve our lives, are all encouraging indicators of a future learning system more personalized, more convenient, and more effective than anything we have in the unionized, 1840s-era bureaucratic model of education today.
Second, we have to think about learning policies for every American at every age. Every American will have to learn virtually his entire life. We cannot go into states like Michigan with massive structural unemployment and consign thousands of middle-aged Americans to unemployment or underemployment for the rest of their lives. With huge scientific advances (4 to 7 times as much new science in the next twenty-five years) combined with the pressures of competing in a world market, Americans will have to commit to lifetime learning if they want to be effective.
Furthermore, we will discover we need to learn different things at different times. Someone can be an expert in one area and a beginner in another. We must integrate learning at every age and on every topic so there is a seamless web of opportunity that Americans can access. This requires Congress and the state legislatures to rethink the artificial divisions they now have between primary learning, vocational education, adult education, and the like. We may need new committees that cover the entire spectrum of learning. We may also need to rethink how learning is organized in the state and federal government to bring together activities that today are spread across the Department of Education, the Labor Department, the Commerce Department, Health and Human Services, the National Science Foundation, and the National Institutes of Health.
Third, we have to recognize the greatest barrier to the coming revolution in effective, convenient learning for all ages is the unionized, bureaucratic systems that absorb vast amounts of money while protecting bad teachers and bad schools. This system cripples the future of young Americans, especially the poor and minorities. As long as our system is characterized by waste such as New York City’s $65 million-per-year rubber rooms for failed teachers, it will never substantially improve learning outcomes.
Instead of wasting resources harboring incompetence, we should be investing in a new campaign to recruit the finest and the fittest to lead our classrooms and laboratories, an “Operation Teach” that spotlights the twenty-first century imperative of teacher recruitment. We should build on programs that pull highly qualified college graduates into teaching, such as Teach for America, KIPP schools, and others.
While attracting the very young into this vital profession, older generations could be mobilized to patiently teach the generations to come. We should recruit retired professionals eager to share their knowledge with the next wave of learners: museum and library workers to teach science and literature; retired military officers to lead classrooms in mathematics and geography; retired medical professionals to share their knowledge in biology sections; journalists to teach the texting generation how to write and read. This will require a whole new approach to part-time and specialized teachers that breaks all the molds of bureaucratic structure, useless credentials, and tenured unionization.
Twenty-first century teachers should be masters of their subject’s content and methodology, earning salaries that reflect a community’s real commitment to learning. Teacher certification should no longer be tied to the vagaries of union demands but to measured student advancement and performance.
This requirement for a fundamental improvement in learning is more than a national security issue or an economic issue. It is the issue that will determine our nation’s future. Learning and its fraternal twin, education, are this century’s battleground in a three-century quest for equality in America—this is the number one civil rights issue of the twenty-first century.
At American Solutions, we believe lifelong, limitless (but not effortless) learning is the key to a successful America, an America that embodies prosperity, safety, and freedom for every American of every background and every neighborhood.
We must be an intellectually hungry, morally strong, and urgently demanding nation with an education system capable of responding to a voracious American desire to learn. The following solutions can put American education on that path:
1. A model charter school law featuring freedom in personnel decisions, direct and full funding, and no limits on growth should be adopted in every state with these provisions:
a. All the money allocated for student education goes directly to the school.
b. The school manages its own staff, whereby it is exempt from laws regarding tenure and unionization.
c. The school defines its own curriculum in line with state standards and assessments. Students in charters are not exempt from state assessments. The schools are not exempt from reporting requirements, nor should they be.
d. State law allows the schools to “franchise” its model without limitation. That means they need not apply for a new school every time they want to build one. If they have the demand, they should be allowed to meet it.
e. The state has no caps on the number of charter schools that can be approved, and the process for approving charter schools is smooth and efficient.
2. All states should use student achievement and outside performance data as key components of teacher evaluation. Exceptional teachers deserve greater leadership roles and higher pay, and this judgment must be made by reviewing the success of the students they teach.
3. Parents whose children are currently trapped in failing schools must be given immediate, broad options for change.
4. The president and all fifty state governors should make learning and education reform a top priority and pledge specific action.
5. States should revise their teacher certification processes to provide preferential and expedited access to unquestionable excellence. Every state should open its systems up to part-time expert teachers so that retired physicists, neighborhood pharmacists, local accountants, and others can teach one or two hours a day, bringing knowledge to the classroom and business-like adult expectations to the students. Programs like Teach for America should be encouraged and expanded.
6. States should adopt new technologies in teaching, including online schools and the use of web-based curricula within their legal frameworks.
7. Business leadership should engage directly in partnerships with schools to cre
ate job-ready graduates.
8. States and school districts should provide expansion incentives for any school with a breakthrough record of achievement.
9. Every state should adopt an early learner program so students can learn faster than the state curriculum. Students who can graduate early could be awarded the cost of the years they skip as scholarships toward college or vocational school.
These initial, practical steps can be adopted in the near future with bipartisan majorities. President Obama and his secretary of education, Arne Duncan, have advocated similar measures such as open-ended charter schools, real accountability for teachers and schools, and a much faster system of firing bad teachers and attracting better ones. We should act now on these issues.
Ultimately, I favor a “Pell Grant for kindergarten through twelfth grade” (as Senator Lamar Alexander describes it) so all parents can send their child to the school they believe is best for that child. The Netherlands and Israel have done well with this kind of open-ended public funding of non-bureaucratic learning, which sparks competition and encourages start-ups and creativity.
Liberals passionately support Pell Grants for colleges so poor children can continue their education, but they tend to oppose Pell Grants before college. As a result, they keep America’s poorest and most disadvantaged children trapped in bureaucracies that cripple their future and leave them without enough education to ever use a college Pell Grant.
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