- Tom Garfield

This was going to be great! I could hardly wait. I had made sure I was safely situated, well beyond the range of the shrapnel. The flames were starting to rise above the top of the barrel… any second now…

For context, as a young, healthy preteen, I was given the task of gathering all combustible trash in our home and burning it in the fifty-gallon drum my dad had placed behind our woodpile. Our home in Ann Arbor, Michigan, was built outside the city limits, in a lovely wooded area. That meant, among other things, that we had no city services, hence my task. Since I was a semi-normal boy, I was obligated to grumble about any assigned task. However, I secretly loved this job. Being a closet pyromaniac, I had added a nifty twist to the mundane burning of boxes and bags. While ostensibly garnering all the trash in the house, I covertly sought out empty or almost empty aerosol cans (this was pre-ozone “hole” days). I had been tipped to their unique possibilities for excitement by the warning label - “Combustible contents: Do not place near heat source -
So, buried deep within almost every pile of trash I set a match to, there was a little time bomb. And, as I anticipated with beating heart, this fire should produce the same spectacular results I had achieved every other time. I could see it in my mind’s eye already - the wonderful sound, WHOOOMP!, and then the flames leaping a dozen feet in the air. Sometimes the aerosol can itself flew as high as the lowest trees. That was a neat bonus.

Any moment now…just then out of the corner of my eye I saw my father emerge from the back door with another bag of trash in his hand. He was walking toward the FIRE BARREL! Moral quandary time: Do I warn my father, indicting myself instantly on the federal crime of being an idiot about fire, or do I keep quiet and allow my father to be blown up, just to protect my reputation? Seconds mattered… “Dad! Wait! Don’t put that in just yet!”

He stopped and came back toward me. “Why not, Tom?”

“Well, I don’t thin…”

WHOOOOMP! Whoooshhh!  Zinnnnnnnng! It was the best yet, I thought even while simultaneously realizing it was the last time I would be able to witness such a marvelous spectacle.

Throughout the land these days is the cry for moral, and possibly even religious training to become part of the government schools’ curriculum. Recently, I was invited by the local district’s superintendent to be present at a meeting of public school and religious leaders, to discuss that very issue. There was the predictable hand-wringing talk about the degenerate state of our youth. It was as hopeless as it was sincere. Their answer? “We need more programs!”  We have come almost full circle from the early sixties when we (in the form of the U.S. Supreme Court) capped a century of humanistic rebellion by openly removing Bibles and prayer from the government schools. Now seeing that, gee whiz, kids really do need some specific moral guidance vs. morally “neutral” education, we wonder if there might be another open door to the ark. We’re getting really wet out here.

Christian schools were more than happy to take up the fallen banner of morality and try to run with it to the high ground.  “We can make kids good, because we’ve got God on our side!” So, why is it that, even among Christian schools, we are talking in too many conferences, seminars, and new curriculum materials about the increasing problem of teen pregnancies, theft, swearing, drug-use, etc. among these “good” Christian school students? The responses to these growing problems tend to fall into two categories: either the Christian school lowers its standards of behavior and does its best to tolerate and assimilate these kids instead of expelling them; or they call for more “biblical” education about these problems. The former is a cave-in, and the latter is a baptized version of the government school “answer.”

I grew up with the “Just Say Yes To Drugs!” generation of the sixties and seventies. The schools didn’t even try to teach us about the nasty effects of drugs on our brains. We knew anyway, and that was exactly why many of my friends used them. But even though friends literally thrust joints (marijuana) at me with the strong advice to just try them, I said no. It certainly wasn’t my knowledge of the bad effects of the drugs or even some particular Bible verse I recalled that kept me from indulging. It was the plain and simple fact that if I took drugs, I would deeply hurt my parents and destroy their trust in me. That knowledge was stronger than any program or pastor’s admonition.

I have written, in various contexts, on the unequaled, profound influence the home has on children. The home’s effectiveness and character is showcased by the moral decisions the children make, particularly when they are absent from their parents like they are at school. Sadly, many Christian schools and all government schools continue to disregard God’s primary agency for instilling morals in children - the parents. The good news is that more and more parents are getting tired of being left out of the equation and are starting schools where their God-given authority is recognized and included practically in all the school’s policies and programs. Even there, however, each family and set of parents affects the child’s moral decisions far more than the school. That’s as it should be. Otherwise, we might as well start programs to teach pyromaniac kids about the bad effects of blowing up their fathers.