"The U.S. educational system gets a failing grade" is commonly acknowledged. What can be done about it? How can we make the schools "stay after school" until they bring their grades up? This is a broad issue with numerous ramifications and complexities. Should more teachers be hired, so class sizes can be cut and the teacher-student ratio improved? Should teachers be paid a better salary, in order to retain the good ones and attract high caliber ones from other professions? Do classrooms need to be "wired" for Internet access and equipped with the latest technology? Should children with behavior problems be separated from the normal student population? Should tax dollars fund private schools, if they can provide a better education than public schools do?

All of these strategies have been suggested-and implemented on small scales in various parts of the country. They all have one thing in common-a high price tag. Cost to taxpayers will be in the multiple billions of dollars. Both presidential candidates of the major parties proffer a large influx of federal money to address the problems. That's the first thought-reach for the checkbook, especially with the burgeoning federal budget surplus.

But will more money produce the desired result? Congress already passed the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 2000, allocating $1.3 billion for "class size reduction."

However, few seem to realize that class sizes in public schools have actually been declining over the past 30 years. In 1970, the average class contained 22.3 students. Today, the average is 17 students per teacher (syndicated columnist Mona Charen, "Who Needs Computers in Schools," June 27, 2000, emphasis added).

Has student performance improved? The "National Assessment of Educational Progress, the gold-standard test of academic achievement given every two years to students in grades four, eight and 12 nationwide, shows no discernible educational benefit in reading scores for children in smaller classes" (ibid., emphasis added).

Missing dimension in education

One of the presidential candidates, campaigning in California, was chided by a member of the audience for not proposing even more money for education. He replied that spending money wasn't the only solution to educational problems. How true that is! A good education is not directly proportional to the amount of money spent on it! There is a missing dimension in education, and it's not dollars.

Three phenomena have affected the U.S. educational system greatly: working mothers, single mothers and feminism. They all relate to "the missing dimension in education."

Regardless of the quality of care provided to infants, no program and no human being can replace the good accomplished by the full-time presence of a mother. Until recently, few studies had linked this unique mother-care with educational performance.

"An extensive study of child development suggests that children's educational achievement can be significantly held back if their mothers work," reported Ed Crooks in a May 15, 2000, article in The Financial Times. He was referring to a survey of over 4,000 children in the U.S. published by the nonpartisan National Bureau of Economic Research.

The survey discovered that the full-time presence of the mother in the life of a young child is essential for optimum verbal and math skill development. The child's first year is apparently critical in the development of verbal ability, and his or her first three years in the development of math skills.

"Earlier studies, both in the U.S. and elsewhere, have found that working mothers had little effect on child development. But [the author of the report] says these have generally used smaller samples and controlled for fewer factors…" (ibid., p. 1).

Single-mother homes

The article also noted that "the involvement of fathers in bringing up young children also appears to be important." What does this have to do with educational performance? Much. It is widely known that high divorce rates have increased the number of single-parent (usually the mother) homes. The National Fatherhood Institute reported that 18 million children lived in single-parent homes in 1995 (Melinda Sacks, "Fatherhood in the '90s: Kids of Absent Fathers More 'at Risk,'" San Jose Mercury News, October 29, 1995).

But how does this relate to the school issue? "The impact of parental divorce and subsequent father absence in the wake of this event has long been thought to affect children quite negatively. For instance, parental divorce and father loss has been associated with difficulties in school adjustment" (Thomas S. Parish, "Children's Self Concepts: Are They Affected by Parental Divorce and Remarriage?" Journal of Social Behavior and Personality, 1987, Vol. 2, No. 4, pp. 559-562, quoted on fathermag.com).

Societal pressures and trends have encouraged women to remove themselves and their children from the children's father. At the same time, government programs have encouraged industry to make it easier and more profitable for women to care for a family without a husband. That's not to say it is easy-more on that in a moment.

First, look at the facts: 85 percent of all children that exhibit behavioral disorders come from fatherless homes (Centers for Disease Control). Children from fatherless homes are 20 times more likely to have behavioral disorders than those from homes with a father and mother. A University of Michigan study showed that 63 percent of children whose parents had divorced suffered subjective psychological problems such as anxiety, sadness, pronounced moodiness, phobias and depression. And 56 percent had poor grades or grades substantially below ability and/or past performance. (Statistics from "Fatherless Homes Breed Violence," p. 1 and "Fatherless Homes Statistics," p. 1, Fathering Magazine, fathermag.com.)

It should be self-evident that the children populating our schools have come from our nation's homes. As goes the health of our homes, so goes the behavioral health of our nation's students.

"Because schools reflect the families from which pupils come, school discipline was bound to worsen as more broken families resulted in more troubled or badly reared children" (columnist George Will, "Schools Beset by Lawyers and Shrinks," June 15, 2000).

A further negative spin-off to the single-mother home is poverty, which spawns poor performance in all areas of life, including academics. "A new study by the Centre [British spelling] of Budget and Policy Priorities, a Washington think-tank, suggests that America's poorest families, those headed by single women, have fallen more deeply into poverty" (The Economist, August 28, 1999).

Again, it's not a matter of opening the public purse and doling out more dollars. Dependency on welfare perpetuates itself, rather than developing the kind of moral character that a family needs to succeed in life. Besides, the amount of money required to bring a single-mother home up to the economic standard of a two-parent home is staggering. A University of California at Santa Barbara study quotes economists' estimates that "it requires an increase in family income of approximately $50,000 to counter the father's absence" (UCSB press release, "Study Finds Teen Pregnancy and Crime Levels Are Higher Among Kids From Fatherless Homes," Father Magazine, fathermag.com, p. 1).

Consequences of feminism

Enter the consequences of two decades of feminism. Evidence of feminism from Christina Sommer's book, The War Against Boys, is related by columnist John Leo:

"Sommer's book is packed with examples of the anti-male attitudes that pervade the public schools. At University High School in Pacific Heights, Calif., boys must sit quietly through a 'Women's Assembly,' in which women are celebrated and men are blamed. Boys in one San Francisco class are regularly put through feminist paces-made to enjoy quilting, forced to listen as girls vent their anger at males. When Barbara Wilder Smith, a teacher and researcher in the Boston area, made 'Boys Are Good' T-shirts for her class, all 10 female teachers under her supervision strongly objected to the message. One of the 10 was wearing a button saying 'So many men, so little intelligence.'"

Leo adds: "Teachers know that girls are better suited to schooling. So, if you want to teach boys, allowances must be made. One of the tragedies of the last 20 years or so is that school systems are increasingly unwilling to make those allowances. Instead, in the wake of the feminist movement, they have absorbed anti-male attitudes.… They are now more likely to see ordinary boy behavior as something dangerous that must be reined in. Or they may tighten the screws on boys by drafting extraordinarily broad zero-tolerance and sexual-harassment policies. Worse, they may simply decide that the most active boys are suffering from attention deficit disorder and dope them up with Ritalin.…

"We spent most of the 1990s fretting about bogus research claiming that schools were shortchanging and damaging girls, when the truth is that boys are the ones in trouble.

"Boys were much more likely than girls to have problems with schoolwork, repeat a grade, get suspended and develop learning difficulties. In some schools, boys account for up to three-fourths of 'special-education' classes. They are…four to nine times more likely to be drugged with Ritalin. Student polls show that both girls and boys say their teachers like the girls more and punish the boys more often.

"Girls get better grades than boys, take more rigorous courses, and now attend college in much greater numbers. While the traditional advantage of boys over girls in math and science has narrowed…, the advantage of girls over boys in reading and writing is large and stable. In writing achievement, 11th-grade boys score at the level of eighth-grade girls. The Department of Education reported this year: 'There is evidence that the female advantage in school performance is real and persistent.' The school failure of so many boys, magnified and fanned by anti-male hostility, is a severe social problem" (columnist John Leo, "It's Tough to Be a Boy in American Schools," July 10, 2000).

"Boys are wired differently," says Michael Gurian, family therapist and author of The Wonder of Boys, "noting what he sees as the boy's natural inclination to be more competitive, aggressive risktakers-tendencies which can be interpreted as misbehavior. 'It's the teacher's job to create a classroom environment that accommodates both male and female energy, not just mainly female energy'" (Brad Knickerbocker, "Young and Male in America: It's Hard Being a Boy," The Christian Science Monitor, April 29, 1999, p. 2).

Children oppress, women rule, leaders mislead

In a long ago prophecy of the consequences of moral corruption of a nation, God warned His people, "As for My people, children are their oppressors, and women rule over them. O My people! Those who lead you cause you to err, and destroy the way of your paths" (Isaiah 3:12).

Children, whose lives have been scrambled by incomplete homes and who have been abused by a society confused about sexual identity, truly have become oppressors. Their behavior is making them unteachable and the teaching profession untenable. Women are often the sole authority figures in the home; men are largely absent. Not a feminine, but a feminist philosophy leads education.

One of the primary reasons why it is difficult to obtain and retain good teachers is the fact that schools are not safe places in which to work. Students are increasingly violent in their behavior and less inclined to subject themselves to the discipline of a learning environment. They cause an unsafe environment and one in which both learning and teaching are impossible. Gifted teachers who love their profession are being driven from the classroom, but not over pay issues. More dollars in their paychecks cannot compensate for the unworkable circumstances.

How long will it take to rectify the current condition? If God's instructions to His model nation of Israel are an indication, it will take at least one generation-one that believes and lives by godly values, which in turn passes those values on to its children. Then children will be teachable. When the Israelites were poised to enter the Promised Land, God explained how they could ensure a peaceful society:

"Now this is the commandment, and these are the statutes and judgments which the LORD your God has commanded to teach you, that you may observe them in the land which you are crossing over to possess, that you may fear the LORD your God, to keep all His statutes and His commandments which I command you, you and your son and your grandson, all the days of your life, and that your days may be prolonged. Therefore hear, O Israel, and be careful to observe it, that it may be well with you, and that you may multiply greatly as the LORD God of your fathers has promised you-'a land flowing with milk and honey.'…

"And these words which I command you today shall be in your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you rise up. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates" (Deuteronomy 6:1-9).

"It's not the money" that will solve the educational problems of America. When its homes are healthy again, then its schools will pass the grade. WNP