"From Crayons to Condoms" editors: innovative new schools spark a needed revolution

What do Latin, the study of Western civilization, Cicero and Chaucer have in common? "They are all subjects or authors ignored or mocked in many public school curriculums," observes Steve Baldwin, co-editor of From Crayons to Condoms: The Ugly Truth about America's Public Schools (WND Books, ISBN: 978-0-979267-11-6, June 2008.) And yet these same topics have been embraced by an exciting new breed of private schools such as Chesterton Academy in Minneapolis. Why?

"As the founder of this new school states, our kids are being cheated by the public schools," co-editor Karen Holgate asserts, a belief documented in From Crayons To Condoms through fast-moving anecdotes from teachers and parents. As these public school horror stories show, money, fancy facilities, and unionized teachers have very little to do with the quality of education. In fact, teachers' unions are a big part of the problem when it comes to school reform.

That's why it's exciting to see new schools like Chesterton go "back to the future" by teaching the 3,000-year old body of knowledge that is every child's heritage. As Crayons editors Baldwin and Holgate observe, "Compare this emphasis on classics and critical thinking to our public schools' obsession with explicit and obscene literature, whole language, 'new new Math,' and history re-written by those who hate this country, and it's obvious why parents would be abandoning public schools in droves if they could."

The editors of From Crayons to Condoms agree that if the teacher unions would quit blocking education reforms such as vouchers, then innovative schools like this would blossom all over America. As it currently stands, only the well-to-do can afford this kind of quality education, and that's a tragedy for both our children and our nation.

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