Education Reform

Education Reform challenges secular education as a failed educational paradigm andproposes an alternate paradigm with far-reaching potential. It reveals how secularschools have insufficient resources to support the public's educational interests.Further it reveals how religious schools within a plural public education system havethe superior capacity to nurture citizens with the moral intellectual and civic qualitiesof good citizenship. The fulcrum upon which Engelhardt's argument rests is therecognition that beliefs and values of a religious nature not only provide motivatingframeworks for individual life but also they naturally provide core sources ofmeaning understanding and motivation for education. Whereas secular schools avoidthese ideological resources they potentially suffuse the curriculum climate andcommunity of religious schools to increase their educational success. Thus this book argues that the move to a pluralpublic education system in which families are free to choose publicly supportive religious schools will advance theeducational interests of America.The argument of this book is developed in three parts. The first entails a multi-chapter analysis of education history todiscern the relationship between religion and the public's education goals. By tracing ways in which religion is a keyresource for curricular meaning parent buy-in rational thought individual morality public unity and academic inspirationit correlates school secularization with many of our education problems. Part two engages criticisms that may arise fromthe proposal to reform the secular education model¬-such as concerns regarding autonomy skills of deliberation equityand public cohesion. Finally part three illumines superior ways in which religiousschools can address the public's educational concerns. It ends by proposing ideasand principles to guide the development of an American plural public educationsystem that allows the public to draw from the strengths of religious schoolswithout secularizing them in the process.