Dear Editor,
Ms. Caitlin Kludt in the Jan. 6 Dispatch bemoans the fact that teen-age pregnancies are at an all-time high. She notes (correctly) that a high majority of teenagers are sexually active today. Those two observations go hand in hand. Really, what else would you expect when, as Ms. Kludt observed, “people stop having and teaching morality and enforcing their values.”
Thomas Jefferson is quoted, “You cannot have a moral society without religion.” But religion, especially Christianity, has been driven out of our public education and replaced “Humanism,” a religion which is based upon evolution, denies God and Hell, and advocates situational ethics. Would you expect a youth to be fluent in German if German were not spoken in the home, nor in his schooling? Of course not! So it is with morality: Take religion out of the home and school and watch teen-age pregnancies grow by leaps and bounds.
Since religion, by court order, is prohibited in public schools, parents must enroll their children in a private school, if ethics and morality, fear of God and orientation of purpose is to be instilled in the child. It would be a waste of time to try and change the philosophy and foundation of public schooling where religious instruction is taboo!
The situation in public schools is not hopeless if we can break the monopoly that public schools have upon the education tax dollar through vouchers. (Note the success of vouchers under the GI Bill of Rights Education Program.) Even better than vouchers would be tax credits to parents for their expenses on private schooling.
Honest competition for the tax dollar would greatly improve both private and public schooling and at considerable saving of educational dollars.
J.G. McCormack, Gilroy
