"Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully
as when they do it from religious conviction."
Philosopher Pascal

      Of all the groundless, hurtful attacks on public educators, none is more painful than the charge that public schools are "godless" institutions of secular humanism. From Phyllis Schlafly and William Bennett to Pat Robertson, D. James Kennedy, James Dobson and Pat McGuigan, the staccato drumbeat against public education includes religious defamation. The Constitution requires that public education be neutral in the arena of sectarian religion, but that's a far cry from the debasement heaped upon public educators. Who is for spiritual values for kids and who is just kidding? Can you name one other institution in America that comes nearest biblical injunctions?
Feeding the hungry?
      Last year for nearly 30% of public school children, it was the only hot meal they got.
Clothing the naked?
      There's hardly an elementary school in a poor neighborhood in American that does not have a clothing closet stuffed with underwear, socks, and other necessities for have-not children.
The widow's mite?
      The average teacher spent more than $400 of personal funds for such things as workbooks and pencils for poor children.
Visiting the prisoners?
      Those are public educators manning the vo-Tech, literacy and skill centers behind the walls - redeeming tens of thousands of otherwise lost lives. Those are public educators teaching in alternative schools-rescuing troubled youth being given a second chance.
No greater love?
      The Littleton teacher who herded children into a room for safety, then shielded them with his own body, lay shot and dying in front of the praying students he had saved.
Role models?
       No other profession provides a higher percentage of Sunday school teachers.
Suffer the little ones?
      Who takes the little ones who are retarded, developmentally disabled or mentally handicapped? Who redeems the dispossessed and the delinquent in alternative education programs?
      If you are looking for values, consider the majority of teachers who spend their own time and money mentoring students, sponsoring nonacademic class activities, all the while attempting to deal with the most undisciplined generation ever to enter public education.
      Because teachers can't pin on a church label and baptize the students doesn't make public education any less spiritual..It isn't the babbling critics who wrap themselves in religious intolerance who are making a difference for all of God's children. They preach to the saved in the rear echelon while public school teachers staff the front line. Public educators don't have the time or the inclination to bash Christian, parochial or private schools, or the home schoolers who so bitterly denounce public education.
      Look who comes to public school among the 46.5 million enrolled this year, then consider who truly does God's work:
...Six million for whom English is a second language
...Six million special education children
...More than two million abused children
...Nearly 50,000 from no permanent address - the homeless ones
...One out of four comes from extreme poverty, are often born out of wedlock and many are abused, neglected, unwashed, unwanted and unloved.
      You won't find these kids on the 700 Club or at D. James Kennedy's Florida church or playing in the backyards of William Bennett of Lamar Alexander. They won't profit from $114 million that poured in Focus on the Family last year, and they won't be adopted by the childless Pat Buchanans. The teachers who minister to them are scorned on editorial pages and maligned from ignorant pulpits, but they keep on keeping on - and only God knows why.
      They earn the poorest salaries among the industrial nations, yet a new study shows they are among the brightest college students and nearly half hold master's degrees. More than 61% call themselves "conservative", and they are church-related in excess of the national population.
       With all its warts, public education produces more math and science brains than all of the private education combines. From astronauts to Pulitzer prize winners, from Nobel laureates to the clergy, they are in the front rank. The public school day may not start with a Hail Mary or an Our Father, a mantra or a blood sacrifice, But public education does more humanitarian work every day than any other institution in American - and that includes the churches.