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Wow!! I go on vacation and check back in for a moment and what do I find....Sandy is taking fire. Dang, Sandy, if I woulda known this would happen, I would have left you my BL flak jacket I put on before jumping into these discussions....ya'll have fun...back to Orlando and more volleyball for me.

Sandy, have you become acquainted with some of the best thinking in science and faith. Your students need to be aware of this organization as do your teachers. It is the BioLogos Foundation. Their website is

This article certainly provides an interesting twist to the idea of using tax money for private education, especially those who support it most vigorously.

Sandy you are mixing a lot of subjects in your most recent post. College education is another subject and off topic of funding public or private primary and secondary education. But I don't think religion programs should be funded at any school by the government.

Also, comparing a government program to a "monopoly" is also a big stretch. Next you will argue that we should have a competing army in the US because the US military is a "monopoly." Monopoly laws are about corporations and not basic government services. Public education is a basic necessary government service, not a monopoly any more than public roads are a monopoly.

But I don't know why I'm bothering to respond anymore. Since you think people like my wife are teaching anti-Christian values in the public schools I'm not sure you know enough about public schools to have a cogent conversation.

You are practically frothing at the mouth about schools being anti-Christian while I know my wife spent most of her time teaching handicapped children how to read and do their math. The broad sweeping generalizations you make just so don't match what any of us know who are closely involved with public schools. As I've said above, with a little time I could list numerous Christian people I know who are public school teachers, staff, and administrators. This whole conversation has a bizarre tinge because it seems to have so little connection with reality.

I am as strong a proponent of Baptist principles as anyone could find, including church-state separation. Prior to my becoming a teacher and teaching in the public schools, I would have agreed with those on here who are opposing Sandy. But it's funny how actual real world experience can wake one up from liberal theory, and that's what happened to me from the time I got my first public school teaching job. I came to see that government had destroyed the public schools. And it's getting worse, not better.

I think it's a bit simplistic to presume that the primary reason for someone to attend a Christian school is due to the issue of evolution/creation. I've had a wide experience in the education world. Three of my four grandparents were public education teachers. My parents were career teachers in public education. I went to both public (1-3rd, 11th, 12th) and private schools (4th-10th), but the private school I attended was not explicitly Christian. I learned about evolution at both the public and private school. My brother went to a public middle school, but had a bad experience and begged my parents to go to a Christian school and they worked that out, even on their teacher salaries.

My two oldest children went to public schools almost all of their educational lives. Oldest was there up through 8th grade. Next one went up through 6th, then we home schooled a couple of years before going to the same private Christian school as the oldest. The youngest has been home schooled since the 3rd grade. We were happy with the school, but our youngest is a self-driven girl and moved along faster than her classmates and the teacher and my wife decided we needed to look for faster or more advanced coursework, so we ended up home schooling over a private school since there weren't any other alternatives within the local public school. Didn't have a thing to do with evolution or leftist teachers.

I think one other consideration is that not all kids who end up at Christian schools end up there because of the religious nature of the school. I know plenty of folks who have sent their kids to Christian schools here in Memphis and it's got more to do with the "private" part than the "Christian" part.

Next adventure in home schooling for us: our home schooler is going to play volleyball this year for the high school she would attend if she went to public school. Tennessee got around this year to passing a law to allow home schoolers to play for the public school in which they are zoned.