c. 2003 Religion News Service

(Samuel K. Atchison is an ordained minister and has worked as a policy analyst and social worker to the homeless. He currently is a prison chaplain in Trenton, N.J., and a fellow of the George H. Gallup International Institute in Princeton, N.J.)

(UNDATED) As African-American parents who home-school their children, my wife and I find ourselves in the midst of a cultural debate. It is a debate as wrenching as it is fascinating, as complex in nature as the solution (for us, at least) is simple.

At issue is the deceptively easy question of what education should accomplish and of the elements required to meet that end.

In the minds of most people, for example, education has traditionally been about obtaining the knowledge and skills necessary both to compete in the marketplace and gain a reasonable understanding of the world in which we live. With few exceptions, the means by which this has been accomplished has been to consign education to a specific place _ school _ and to entrust the actual educating to specially trained persons _ teachers.

The underlying assumption, of course, was that the teachers (as well as the principals, school board administrators and curriculum developers) had our children’s best interests at heart. We believed, as an act of faith, that, consistent with the oft-quoted notion of the importance of the village in raising the child, the other members of the village shared both our values and perspective; that, in effect, the entire village was on the same page with respect to the education of the child.

Moreover, many people, including most African-Americans, were bound by an even more fundamental belief that the educators knew more than we did. Such, indeed, was at the heart of the decadeslong fight over school desegregation and busing _ to obtain access to the best schools, the best resources and the best teachers, in an effort to attain the best possible education.

However, as many educators and policymakers can attest, the whole notion of education and the assumptions on which it is built has undergone a radical change over the last generation. This change is largely philosophical in nature and is consistent with those observed in other areas of American life by such commentators as religion sociologists Wade Roof and William McKinney, pollster George Gallup Jr., Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne, conservative intellectual Dinesh D’Souza, and traditional values advocate David Blankenhorn.

What these and other observers have noted is the radical redefinition of all things American as a result of the diminution of what Dionne has termed “Protestant hegemony.” That is, under the aegis of multiculturalism, new ideas and concepts have challenged the basic texts, creeds and assumptions on which the American experiment was built. This has had the effect of redefining the nation’s history and undermining the biblical basis of many of its founding principles.

In terms of our children’s education, the effect has been to change the curriculum in ways that often challenge the values and beliefs parents want to pass on to their children. As a result, many _ including my wife and me _ have made the decision to educate our children ourselves.

A peculiar irony of the success of the traditional educational system, despite its inherent inequities, is that with our advanced degrees, my wife and I are now better educated, more experienced, and better equipped to teach than most former teachers of our children. We are also impressed with the increasing number of parents of all races who are making similar decisions regarding the future of their children.

Indeed, another irony of the multicultural movement is that among the emigres who are having such a dramatic effect on the nation’s culture is a growing number of homeschoolers who not only question the quality of American public education, but who, themselves, are attempting to inculcate their children with their own traditional values.

Thus it appears that the actions of American homeschoolers are being mirrored by those of their foreign-born neighbors. Perhaps multiculturalism is bringing people together after all.

DEA END ATCHISON