While I’m sure this is 100% the one and only cause of school quality changes over the years, just to head off the nay sayers, what were class sizes when you were growing up? Also why is it only US schools that require God to work, why do other countries with either secular school systems of those that ignore Christianity entirely in favor of the local predominant religion often do as well or better than US schools?
We generally had around 30 kids in a classroom. One teacher. We did have a music teacher at the public school that I attended, so three times a week, we spent an hour with her, and our classroom teacher had a break from us. But there were no reading specialists, no P.E. teachers, no STEMC teachers, no math specialists–it was all up to the classroom teacher. Often the classroom teacher would have a student teacher (whom we always loved because she–usually a she—was young and cute!), but I’m guessing that the classroom teacher had to work with/train the student teacher–which meant that the student teacher ADDED to the teacher’s workload.
As for your second question–it’s not that U.S. schools “require God to work.” God works whether schools/teachers/students/families recognize Him or not.
But when the public schools fail to reinforce what parents are teaching at home, or even worse, when public schools UNDERMINE what parents are teaching at home, society fragments.
Parents and grandparents lose “authority” over their children–authority that GOD has given to them–if you believe the Bible–as the children are forced to choose between their parents and their school systems/teachers/peers. Many children will choose their peers.
I know that some children can and do speak up if a teacher makes a comment implying that God doesn’t exist, or that all gods are equal, or other comments that undermine a child’s religion.
But most kids don’t. They know that they are not going to prevail against an adult teacher, and that they might even get in trouble. They don’t want to be ostracized by their peers, and they don’t want to lose the “friendship” of the teacher.
So they keep quiet.
Many “quiet” dissenters are able to hold onto the religion that they are taught in their home, but some don’t. For various reasons, they believe their school teacher, and reject their parents’ religion and other life philosophies. Now, if the parents are serial killers or belong to a racist hate group, that a good thing!
But…many kids end up rejecting their Christian religion.
A child spends 6 hours (at least) a day under the influence of someone who has school curricula that is obviously (to anyone with any level of discernment) opposed to the religion and philosophies of their parent.
IF the teacher is also opposed to that curricula, he or she may be able to temper their teaching and not undermine the child’s parents’ teaching and possibly even reinforce the parents/family.
BUT…if the teacher, like so many in the teachers’ unions, is committed to the godless, human-centered, revisionist philosophies that saturate current curricula–families are in trouble.
