What Rod Paige Really Said

...Last week the Baptist Press, a denominational news service, asked him in an interview, "Given the choice between private and Christian, uh, or private and public universities, who do you think has the best deal...

...faiths and educational choices your remarks have denigrated...

...A difficult virtue like forgiveness of enemies, for example, is more likely to impress students when it is presented as necessary to the formation of a christ-like character, just as the compassion of the Buddha or the justice demanded by the Torah is best taught in a Buddhist or a Jewish school setting...

...But check out almost any inner-city Catholic school and you will find that black Baptists, Hispanic Pentecostals, and even Muslims may constitute the majority of the students...

...A further irony is that until the 1960s, when the Supreme Court banned prayer in public schools, there were few if any evangelical grade or high schools, and leaders of Paige's own Southern Baptist denomination routinely criticized Catholic schools for being divisive and un-American...

...The Post editorial at least acknowledged Paige's extraordinary achievements as superintendent of Houston's public schools...

...As the overreaction to Secretary Paige indicates, any public official who expresses a personal preference for religious schools is still suspect in so-called liberal circles...

...Once the interview made its way into the Washington Post and other secular publications, Paige became the target of liberal assault...

...Many of them are...

...To which Paige replied: "That's a judgment, too, that would vary because each of them have real strong points and some of them have vulnerabilities, but you know, all things being equal, I'd prefer to have a child in a school where there's a strong appreciation for values, the kind of values that I think are associated with Christian communities...

...That kind of prejudice is long gone...

...Diversity, it appears, is in the eye of the beholder...

...But readers of the Times and those in Congress who echo its editorial views know more about the Muslim madrassas in Pakistan than they do the religious schools in New York or Washington...

...No reporter at the Times, or at New York's tabs for that matter, is assigned to cover non-public schools...

...So, one has to believe, do some of those who write editorials for our elite newspapers—at least those editorialists who are old enough to have school-age children...

...BY KENNETH L. WOODWARD EDUCATION SECRETARY Roderick R. Paige, it appears, is the latest victim of gotcha journalism...

...As a transcript later released by Paige's office showed, this was amended by the Baptist Press reporter, fired for changing Paige's words, to read: "All things being equal, I would prefer to have a child in a school that has a strong appreciation for the values of the Christian community, where a child is taught to have a strong faith...

...A New York Times editorial the next day mongered the same fear...

...Study of the faith is one of them, but more important is the ethos of the school community and the explicitly religious formation it provides...

...But equally virulent forms of ignorance and bias still pollute our public discourse about how to educate our youth...

...Do Paige's critics really believe a pious Southern Baptist—or devout Muslim or observant Jew—cannot, should not, run the federal educational establishment if, as a parent, he would prefer to see his own kids in a religiously run school...

...This kind of formation cannot—should not—be part of the public school experience...

...But neither the Times nor the Post seems to realize that thousands of public school teachers, principals, and superintendents send their own children to private and parochial schools for much the same reason—values— that Paige cites...

...At a press conference, Paige said he saw no reason to do either, adding that he had intended to convey only his personal preference to have a child in a college that emphasizes strong Christian values...

...In his private life, Paige is a deacon at Houston Baptist church...

...For more than 30 years I have been reading the Times's annual Education supplement, and only once have I seen a story on what is one of the largest Catholic school systems in the country...

...When last I visited the Catholic grammar school that my relatives attended in Detroit, I found in the classroom a statue of the Madonna in one corner and an open Bible, an icon for the school's many black Baptist students, in another...

...Paige's statements, said the Times, "reinforce suspicions that the administration is in sympathy with the religious right's drive to undermine the public school system in favor of a voucher-financed nationwide network of religious schools...

...But the liberal media saw a chance to play Toto, ripping away the curtain of educational impartiality to expose the Bush administration's hoaxing Wizard of Oz...

...Jerrold Nadler of New York circulated a letter among party colleagues demanding an apology "to the many American families whose Kenneth L. Woodward is a contributing editor at Newsweek...

...Running throughout the ongoing debates in American education is the assumption that public schools are, by their very public-ness, more diverse than religious schools...

...But the heavy-handed reaction to Secretary Paige is more than just the public education lobby acting on alert status...

...But there are other elements that only a religious education can provide...

...My own experience has since been reinforced by a study of Catholic education published a decade ago by two scholars from Harvard University...

...Gotcha Deacon Paige...

...Gotcha...

...In Chicago or Cleveland or Dallas or Houston, the media recognize that Catholic, Lutheran, and other parochial school systems serve the public and are therefore news...

...A Washington Post editorial claimed the secretary's remarks revealed that the administration's support of school choice "is a cover for christian school advocates who have given up on public education...

...If you are unprepared to make clear that this sort of religious bigotry has no place in the Department of Education, then we would urge you to resign...

...In my own public school district, one of those Westchester County upper-income enclaves that promise "private school education at public school expense," students are far more uniform—in terms of family income, parental background, and cultural capital—than those I studied with in a Midwestern Jesuit high school half a century ago...

...The difference between religious and public schools lies less in values than in ethos: Elements of the ethos that makes catholic schools work so well—things like discipline, esteem for students, personal attention, and equal academic demands on all students, not to mention on-site educational direction—can and should be duplicated in public schools...

...Gotcha...

...A few years ago, the winner of the annual award for the best religion essay at Rice High School, a private Catholic school near Harlem, was a Muslim...

...Indeed, as late as the 1930s, when my mother-in-law got out of normal school, a Catholic like her could not get a job teaching in a public school in rural Iowa because of her religion...

...But that story never made the New York Times...

...One has to ask where the editors of the Times get their information on parochial schools...

...Those who champion a state monopoly on education, it turns out, are the real enemies of diversity...

...Civil rights groups, educational organizations and, of course, Democrats in Congress expressed their ire...

...The irony, of course, is that the common school those fathers fashioned, with its mandatory reading of the King James Bible, was designed to make good Protestants out of everyone, especially immigrant Catholic children...

...There is vincible ignorance at play here, as well as ideological bias...

...They found that in terms of real diversity—name-ly socioeconomic background, including ethnic mix—and in terms of providing all students with a demanding curriculum, the Catholic rather than the public schools are the true heirs of the American "common school," as envisioned by public education's founding fathers...