Family Research Council

Fifty Questions to Ask Before Going to College

by Chris Gacek

April 26, 2013

“Fifty Questions to Ask Before Going to College” is the title of an article by Lynn O’Shaughnessy, a writer with CBS MoneyWatch.  I think she is correct that these questions focus the mind on the “rubber meets the road” issues.  She concentrates on topics like graduation rates, class size, who does the actual teaching, what honors programs exist, job placement rates, rates of tuition increases, levels of graduate indebtedness, and student load default rates.  These are much more practical topics than: “How many rock climbing walls do you have?”

Clearly, anyone going to college needs to develop a profile for each potential school like the one outlined in the article.  This article provides a well-grounded list of questions from which potential college students and their parents can improvise and create their specific set of questions.

Bach’s Bible

by Robert Morrison

April 9, 2013

I don’t speak German. I wish I did. That amazing language wasn’t offered in my Long Island high school or even in any neighboring school when I was growing up. The memories, the wounds of the Holocaust were still very raw. I remember parents of some of my classmates saying they would never buy, or even ride in, one of those new Volkswagens that were becoming popular in the early 1960s here.

When I was selected in 1987 as the first Washington representative of The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod, I began to get clued in to the German heritage of the LCMS. As part of my responsibilities, I would visit many Midwestern congregations of this confessional church body. Older people in those congregations had grown up in the Missouri Synod at a time when German was used in all church services, in all LCMS parochial schools. They would speak Deutsche to me. I would politely answer them—in Russian.

The LCMS members had fought hard to protect their linguistic heritage. They even went to the U.S. Supreme Court in 1923 to fight back against a xenophobic Nebraska state law that had banned teaching in a foreign language, any modern foreign language.

America had just emerged victorious from World War I and the anti-German sentiment was high. But the Supreme Court in the case of Meyer v. Nebraska sided with LCMS in what became a first important ruling on parents’ rights before the High Court. Shortly thereafter, the Court went further, in the case of Pierce v. Society of Sisters. In that Oregon case, a Ku Klux Klan-inspired referendum had outlawed all private education.

The Court said no, declaring: “the child is not the mere creature of the state.” Pierce is a more far-reaching case than Meyer, to be sure, but what was at issue in Meyer was not just the right of parochial Lutheran schools to teach members’ children in German, it was the right of those kids’ parents to seek the education that comported with their deeply held values.

This is a right not recognized by the modern democratic German government. So admirable in so many ways, the German government nonetheless persecutes home schoolers.

The Romeike (roh-MIKE-uh) family of home schoolers had to flee their native land and has sought refuge here in America. The Obama administration wants to deport this wholly innocent family from their Tennessee home. You can push back against this shameful attempt by visiting the Home School Legal Defense Association’s website. You can help by signing their petition.

Issues of faith and nation were to be seen once again in this amazing story of the Bible of Johann Sebastian Bach. When I would be introduced around Washington as the LCMS’s representative, I would often be teased with: “Ah yes, the Missouri Synod Lutherans—Bach, bier, und Bibel.”

I understood enough German to say, that should be “Bibel, Bach, und bier.” This YouTube video tells the amazing story of the miraculous discovery of Bach’s Bible and its preservation from the clutches of Hitler’s Nazis, as well as the perils of Allied bombing and Russian pillaging.

This much German we can all share: Gottes wort bleibt in Ewigkeit. “God’s Word stands Forever!”

An Era Ends: Sheet Music Magazine Publishes Its Last Edition

by Chris Gacek

March 23, 2013

David R. Sands of the Washington Times recently published this article about our changing cultural landscape entitled “Sheet Music’s Last Note.” In it, he informs us that the last issue of America’s only magazine providing its readers with piano sheet music expired last autumn.  In thirty-six years years, Sheet Music Magazine had printed nearly 3,000 songs.  At its height, the magazine had 150,000 subscribers who received a copy every two months. 

What killed the Sheet Music?  Accordingly to the publisher, Ed Shanaphy, his magazine…

…couldn’t survive a perfect storm of factors gathering in recent years, from a bad economy, falling piano sales and the rise of online downloading services for sheet music to the decline of a generation that played piano for fun and the rise of a generation that gets into music through earbuds and prefers its musical scores auto-translated into audio online.

That is quite a combination of technological and social change. 

The article has some fascinating figures on piano sales in the United States.  In 1909, 360,000 pianos were sold in America with a population of 90.5 million.  In 1969 (see diagram), there were 220,000 sold (pop. 220 million).  Finally, in 2007, there 315 million people in the country, but sales totaled only 62,500. 

The 1909 figure is useful because it represents a time when there were no/few recorded music players, no radios, etc.  If you wanted to have musical entertainment, you had to do it yourself or pay someone to play it live.  More instructive is 1969 when we had high quality FM radio and very good stereo recordings for sale.  Since then, piano sales have really plunged.

What does it mean?  Are we watching a decline of cultural literacy.  Perhaps, it just represents a decline of the piano relative to other instruments, but I doubt it.

As a consumer of music, I know that what I listen to – just in terms of the sound quality – seems greatly inferior to my parents’ high fidelity stereo.  People used to spend a fortune on sound equipment.  That doesn’t seem to happen now.  There has been a huge shift to video technology with ever-better formats like blu-ray.  Does an audio analog (ha-ha, no irony intended) of blu-ray exist?  The world seems to be moving in the opposite direction.  MP3 files aren’t even as good as the much-criticized recordings on CDs.  Now I listen to classical music using the speakers on my Kindle.  Sound quality may not matter with rap, but it matters if you want to hear the percussion instruments in Carmen.  True that, but I just paid $1.99 for 13 hours of some composer whose music is play by the Latvian Symphony Orchestra and sits on my cloud.  I can listen any place that has wi-fi.  That enhances my cultural literacy.

I have no great theory, but David Sands’ article will make you think a bit.  How has your appreciation and interaction with quality music changed?  For better, worse?  Do you care?

Homeschooling and the Attack on Religious Freedom

by Nathan Oppman

March 21, 2013

There is a case that has caught the attention of homeschool advocates on an international level. The Romeike family of Germany was granted asylum by a U.S. judge due to the persecution they had experienced for homeschooling their children in Germany. This persecution included police intervention well beyond simple fines or reprimands. The family believes that the school system in Germany does not teach what they as Christians believe should be taught to their children, so they wish to teach their children in an environment where their convictions are honored – their home.

This is not merely a question of the freedom to homeschool but a question of who determines what children are taught. In other words it is a question of religious freedom. Religious faith is often passed on through the teaching that parents give to their children. The Scripture clearly states in Deut. 6:6-7 “And these words which I command thee this day, [the Law of God to Israel] shall be in thine heart: and thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up.” (KJV)

Many who homeschool wish to teach their children that God is engaged in everyday life. For them, the school is an extension of the home. Schools should serve parents in the education of children. However, when state-run schools begin to serve a wholly secular agenda and deny parents the ability to train their children, they begin to do what the First Amendment says the state must never do: Establish religion.

In the landmark case Pierce v. Society of Sisters, the Supreme Court asserted that children are not mere creatures of the state and that the state could not dictate where they went to school. German law is essentially asserting that the state knows more about children’s needs than parents. This is a dangerous threat to religious freedom and the Romeike family was right in seeking to teach their children the things that they believed to be true. The U.S. should be a place where those threatened because of their beliefs can come for refuge. It is sad when the ICE division of our Federal government ignores the importance of education as an expression of religious belief and works against granting families like the Romeikes asylum.

Cases like this have become more common in the current administration. The current administration sees a “freedom to worship” that is confined to the church and ends when you exit its doors. They do not recognize James’ teaching in the New Testament when he stated that a faith without works is dead. Freedom of religion has everything to do with practice. It is time our government recognized that.

I am glad my mother exercised her freedom of religion and chose to homeschool me all the way through high school. She and my father wanted me to be taught reading, writing and, arithmetic, all of which I could have received at a public school. But with those they also taught me the old fashioned, life changing, sin cleansing, grace receiving, others loving, Bible believing version of the wonderful gospel of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. And the freedom to teach those wonderful truths is priceless. If freedom of religion does not include a freedom to practice then freedom of religion is dead.

A Nice Summary of the College Debt Mess

by Chris Gacek

March 9, 2013

Charles Blow of the New York Times has written a very helpful analysis of recent statistics and realities pertaining to the College Debt Crisis.  His column appeared in the March 9^th print edition (“A Dangerous ‘New Normal’ in College Debt.”)  See the online article with excellent links to a number of studies, reports.  He begins with the observation, “We are reaching a crisis point in this country’s higher education system.”  A statement that is undeniable. 

He concludes as follows: “Our national educational aspirations and the debt crisis that they’re creating are colliding. We are on an unsustainable track. This will not end well.”  Again, undeniable.

I don’t know if this is sequester-driven brinksmanship or part of a larger budgetary trend, but the Army Times writes that “[t]he Army’s popular Tuition Assistance program is being suspended because of the budget squeeze, although the many thousands of soldiers currently enrolled in courses will be allowed to complete those courses.”  The shutdown began at 5 p.m. EST on March 8^th.  If it is the former, it is despicable.  However, I fear that even if sequester-driven politics is in play, the long-term outlook for military budgets keeping up with ever-escalating college tuition is not great.

About Early Childhood Ed, My Boss is Right!

by Robert Morrison

February 22, 2013

You don’t usually get in trouble saying your boss it right. But my boss, Tony Perkins, is really right about early childhood education. Tony’s column is in USA Today.

I worked in the U.S. Education Department under the Reagan administration. Yes, I know conservatives; you don’t think there should even be a federal education department. And you’re right about that. Ronald Reagan didn’t think so, either. He would have disestablished it if liberals in Congress had allowed him to.

Tony’s right because there is no better place for a young child than in a loving home with a married mother and dad. We had an interesting experience on this issue with my former boss, Sec. Bill Bennett, in the Reagan years. The Secretary had to go up to Capitol Hill regularly to testify about the zeroing out of the Department’s budget.

Liberal committee chairmen pitched a fit. One of them came to the hearing primed to beat up the administration—and Sec. Bennett in particular—over federally-funded day care initiatives. The Chairman wanted the feds to establish a national system of secular, regulated, and unionized day care centers.

He bore down on Sec. Bennett. Why even the Soviet Union is ahead of us on this, the Chairman growled.

Happily, we Reaganauts had prepped the Secretary for this.

Bennett politely rejoined. “Mr. Chairman: I can tell you why the USSR has a national system of day care.”

Once he drew everyone’s attention, Bennett informed the committee that we had a copy of Raisa Gorbachev’s Ph.D. dissertation. In it, the atheist wife of the Communist Party General Secretary made an impassioned case for Soviet day care for all dyeti—children.

It seemed that too many of the little ones were being raised by their grandparents. And their grandparents were filling their heads full of “superstition.”

Superstition is the Marxist term for religion. In order to raise a properly indoctrinated Soviet citizenry, they had to be taught atheism from the start. That was the motive behind Raisa’s strong insistence that little children increasingly be raised by the state.

So what is President Obama’s motive for pushing for more institutionalized child-rearing? I cannot of course claim that it’s because of those Marxist professors he sought out on campus. I doubt they taught the young Columbia student about day care.

Still, in order to have more “Julias,” it will be necessary to push more and more children out of the home and into institutionalized state care earlier. “Julia” is not the new Soviet man; she’s the new Obama woman. “Julia” was the fictional character invented by the Obama team last year to represent an American who finds government support—from Head Start to Social Security and Medicare—a seamless web of dependence.

In “Julia’s” life, there is no father, no brother, no husband, no father of her child, no male friend or business partner. The only man in “Julia’s” life is President Barack Obama.

And now, they want Barack Obama to be father to the nation’s pre-schoolers. Remember Mmm-mmm-mmm—Barack Hussein Obama? Head Start may not improve children’s cognitive skills, but it’s the seedbed for social engineering.

“The Boys at the Back”: Could stable marriage be what’s lacking?

by Anna Dorminey

February 14, 2013

Christina Hoff Sommers of the American Enterprise Institute published an opinion piece in the New York Times earlier this week entitled “The Boys at the Back.” In her interesting and well-written article, the author addresses the classroom gap boys are witnessing today. The problem isn’t one of intelligence—boys’ test scores are on par with girls’. The problem boys face at school is behavioral: teachers factor behavior into grades, and the classroom structural deck is stacked against boys. Hoff Sommers cites “boy-averse trends like the decline of recess, zero-tolerance disciplinary policies, the tendency to criminalize minor juvenile misconduct and the turn away from single-sex schooling” as culprits.

Ms. Hoff Sommers addresses three policy reasons to care about boys’ performance: the long-term effects of grades (not merely education, but grades) on children’s future well-being and happiness, the need to keep up in the global economic race, and the fact that male educational performance is lagging particularly in black, Latino, and low-income communities. The author makes several valid suggestions for how to engage boys, but as at least a partial explanation (and remedy) for her third reason for concern about boys’ poor performance, I would point to weak family structure.

As the Marriage and Religion Research Institute’s (MARRI) Second Annual Index of Family Belonging and Rejection shows, family intactness (growing up with both biological parents married to one another) is dishearteningly low among blacks and Latinos in the U.S.: only about 17 percent of black children and 41 percent of Hispanic children reach age 17 in an intact household. This matters for children’s educational performance: children in intact married families are significantly more likely to earn mostly A’s in school. Perhaps this is because parents in always-intact married families are more likely to help their children do their homework than are parents in stepfamilies or single-parent families, but more likely it is because children from married households have higher cognitive scores and more self-control. (For these and more educational benefits of marriage, see MARRI’s 162 Reasons to Marry.)

Certainly the fact that boys are falling behind can be traced to many issues. Hoff Sommers notes that “[a]s our schools have become more feelings-centered, risk-averse, collaboration-oriented and sedentary, they have moved further and further from boys’ characteristic sensibilities.” But doesn’t it stand to reason that stable homes produce more disciplined children? And as the author notes, “If boys are restless and unfocused, why not look for ways to help them do better? As a nation, can we afford not to?”

National School Choice Week: Time for More Freedom, Less Red Tape

by Krystle Gabele

February 1, 2013

This week is National School Choice Week. It is a time to bring awareness and advocate for more educational options to be available for children. Too often, we hear countless stories about public schools failing students and the decline of educational standards in the classroom. It is this type of news that makes a parent cringe at the fact that their child might not be receiving quality education. Parents should have the opportunity to decide the right learning environment for their child, and they have many options available to them.

However, school choice does have its critics, and it is those who want to place bureaucracy before the well being of the student. For example, the Virginia State Senate was considering a measure recently that would allow the State Board of Education to authorize more charter schools. When the measure came to a vote, the Senate Democrats all voted to strike down the measure.

Why? Could it be that allowing school choice would punish public schools that are failing? In the Virginia bill that was killed by the State Senate, there was only opposition from key organization: the Virginia School Boards Association. This association was against the bill, because they want to keep things under local control. If you want to keep education under local control, then you should punish the schools that are failing and hold educators responsible.

School choice gives students an opportunity to achieve a quality education and helps them not to fall through the cracks. We should all be in favor of helping children reach their fullest potential.

College Gone Wild: Classes on How to Achieve Orgasm, Yet Neglects Abstinence

by Krystle Gabele

January 29, 2013

Every year, the Young America’s Foundation releases a list of outrageous course offerings at various colleges and universities across the country.  Aside from the courses that a student might take, they are also exposed to campus wide events that may stand contradictory to morals and have nothing to do with the reason why they are there in the first place:  To learn and gain the skill set necessary for their future.

Case in point, the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities is having an event, and this is one that will no doubt raise some eyebrows.  In April, students at this public university will have the opportunity to attend an event about the female orgasm (no, I am not making this up) from two sex educators.  This event is open to both genders, and while the goal of the class is to educate students to use the skills learned in a current relationship or for marriage, it is no doubt sending the wrong message.

Despite the disclaimer that they are trying to empower women, they are denigrating women by merely making them a sex symbol.  While they claim that the information from this lecture can be used in current relationships and in the future for marriage, there is no educating students about respecting women and the choices of abstinence.

Abstinence is not a dirty word, and in fact, it is time for academics to take some time to examine this, rather than orgasms.  FRC’s Marriage and Religion Research Institute (MARRI) has released several studies that show that married couples have more satisfying sex than those who are unmarried.  There are also more benefits to being abstinent, as it cuts down on sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), depression rates are lower in those who are abstinent, and the abortion rate decreases.

While college is for learning, it is a time to expand your horizons towards more academic approaches, like reading the classics, gaining experience in your major through internships and lectures, and debating the merits of studies.  It is definitely not a time to learn about orgasms.  Save that for marriage.

Because You are There

by Robert Morrison

January 10, 2013

Family Research Council President Tony Perkins shared a powerful story at Chapel this morning. A team of climbers successfully ascended Mount Everest. Coming down, however, climber Lincoln Hall suffered a collapse. His teammates, thinking him dead, left him there and continued downward to their base camp. But Lincoln awoke after a day. Hallucinating, he came to the edge of the precipice.

An American team came upon him as they climbed up the mountain. Team Leader Dan Mazur and his fellow climbers took Lincoln back down with them. They missed the summit. They sacrificed their goals and some of their wealth. But they saved a life. Because they were there.

The Hebrew commentaries on Scripture, the Talmud, tell us that “he who saves a single life, it is as if he saved the world entire.” Tony’s message this morning gave us great encouragement after a year of defeat and disappointment. Can we say the cause of unborn life, the cause of marriage (the best protection for new life) have prospered? No. Can we say the flame of religious freedom burns brighter this January than it did last year? No.

But we do not despair. We do not lose hope.

I had a memorable experience working in the U.S. Education Department. Like our boss, President Reagan, I didn’t believe there should even be a federal education department. We worked hard to promote the first federal voucher bill for low income families. It failed. We tried to stop the erasure of all evidence of America’s godly heritage from basal readers. We even commissioned a study by respected NYU psychologist Paul Vitz that showed publishers were censoring all references to God from schoolchildren’s texts. We failed. We tried to “zero out” entire portions of the federal education department, to close down this agency we regarded as unconstitutional and wasteful. We failed.

In one area, however, we saw success. Sec. Bill Bennett testified before a congressional committee calling for reduced federal education spending. The chairman, a liberal, criticized Sec. Bennett for not demanding more money. Then, he launched into an appeal for Bennett to back federally subsidized child care.

He said: “Why even the Soviet Union has a national system of subsidized child care, Mr. Secretary.”

Bennett was ready: “Mr. Chairman: The reason the Soviets have that system can be found in the Ph.D. dissertation written by Raisa Gorbachev. She urged the party leadership to do this because the children on the farms were all being raised by their grandparents, who taught them superstitions.”

To the atheist wife of the Communist Party’s General Secretary, Mikhail Gorbachev, those Russian grandparents’ superstitions were the Christian religion.

On our watch, there was no more push for federal day care. And no demand for national subsidized day care to pull little children out of homes, out of church-based pre-schools, out of those settings their loving parents choose for them.

In another area, home schooling, the Bennett years at USED were a success. He brought into the department Michael Farris, the home school leader. It was the first time this had ever happened.

I had known Michael in Washington State in the Reagan campaign. Now, Michael was presenting the case for home schooling to some very skeptical educrats. In the course of his commanding presentation, he said: “My 7-year old son can read the entire front page of the Washington Post, but my wife and I could still be prosecuted in 40 states for child abuse and neglect.”

Michael Farris provided a powerful defense of home schooling. Later out in the hall, I teased him: “Michael, do you really let your 7-year old boy read the Washington Post?”

Home schooling enjoyed some of its greatest gains in the 1980s, when President Reagan held office. And under Sec. Bennett, the federal education department did not join in the attempts to crush this burgeoning movement.

We wish we could have gotten parental choice in education for millions of low-income parents struggling to break free, but we did make a difference for millions of home schoolers. Because we were there.