Deliberate Dumbing Down of America Public Education

437 However, leadership in the homeschool community seems to have embraced at least a portion of the school-to-work proposition. While apprenticeship has been promoted to home schoolers as an alternative to “electives” by some homeschool organizations and leaders (Bill Gothard, Doug Wilson et al.), now the apprenticeship concept is being embraced at the post high school level by none other than Michael Farris of Home School Legal Defense Association. In his announcement about the forthcoming establishment of the Patrick Henry College in Purcellville, Virginia, Farris stated in an interview with Andrea Billups of The Washington Times (May 17, 1999): The Noxious Nineties : c. 1999 “I wanted to break out of the educational box like I’ve helped to do with K-through-12 education.”… …Initially, the school will offer a lone undergraduate major in government, featuring an apprenticeship program designed to give students practical experience in public policy and service…. As a part of their curriculum, Patrick Henry students will work on faculty-supervised research and writing projects for congressional offices, state legislators, federal agencies, think tanks and advocacy groups. “We are combining a traditional liberal arts model with a white-collar version of vo cational training,” said the school’s provost and academic dean, Brad Jacob, a lawyer and professor who served as the CEO of the Christian Legal Society. “It all comes from the ivory tower concerns, where students learn theory but don’t know beans about how to work in the workplace…. We believe in mentoring and disciplining.” 68 This should come as no surprise in light of Mr. Farris’s previous public enthusiasm for apprenticeships expressed at his organization’s National Home Educator’s Leadership Con ference in Orlando, Florida in 1995. During a “debate” with William Spady, Farris lauded the Swiss educational system as a “very successful national model.” 68 The Swiss system is committed to apprenticeships, with 75%of its students never going to high school or college but into apprenticeships after the eighth grade. Their K–8 system prepares students to enter apprenticeships, certainly limiting career employment choices and movement. The bottom line is this: “apprenticeship” is “workforce training.” Skipping over traditional academic high school and college subjects, or watering down a liberal arts college education to accommodate its “application” to a workplace setting, constitute the “deliberate dumbing down” of homeschoolers. Could school-to-work at the college level be the “camel’s nose under the tent for STW at K–12 level for homeschoolers?] T HE J ANUARY 1999 ISSUE OF C OMMUNITY U PDATE PUBLISHED BY THE U.S. D EPARTMENT OF Edu cation provided an update on activities being held by the Religion and Education Partnership (first established in 1995). The following excerpts describe the involvement of “the church in the state” and “the state in the church”— something heretofore not spelled out in government publications. The U.S. Department of Education announced that: Religious leaders, educators, members of the higher education community, and students came together at Spalding University in Louisville, Kentucky on December 11, for the fourth Religion and Education Summit supported by the Partnership for Family Involvement in Education.... More than 500 participants gathered in Louisville from Kentucky, Ohio, Indiana, and