"The Soup" thought that the uncle PSA was a little over the top, but if you can tell the truth about child predators (i.e, that they are usually well-known to the child before the abuse starts) in forty seconds more power to you.
I was wondering, Mr. Walker, if you knew if there is a website somewhere listing failed and defunct private schools. I've gone gone back and looked at the schools I attended and all that remain are the public school I attended as a kindergartener, the IFB school I graduated from in junior high, and my first private high school. I'd love to see the statistics on how long these schools last, which denominations are more prone to running schools, and where in the US these schools are most common.
Good question! I don't know but I'll keep that in mind while web surfing.
There is an excellent book called GOD'S CHOICE by Alan Peshkin, which I haven't yet got rid of on ebay. That shows you the esteem I have for this book! It's the closest I can think of to providing demographics concerning Christian schools.
It's dated, but it's almost an optimistic read because of that. When I first read it, the idea of child molestation, abuse, teacher-student sexual relations, scriptural rationalizations for such, was not in my mind. Nor is it in the book!
The book concentrates on growing up with the strange standards of not being allowed to go to movies, listen to rock music, and all the taboos associated with Christian schools in the seventies. Today, most of those taboos are either gone, or just swept under the carpet.
Since the movement was rather young back then, the author was more concerned about how the students, raised in that atmosphere, would turn out as adults. That's the book, I now believe, that inspired me to get in touch with former Trinity alumni (pre-internet).
During the time period I began getting in touch with previous alumni, I noticed Jacksonville Baptist Temple Christian School, founded by Wendell Zimmerman (WZ taught Falwell at BBC, btw.), had closed its doors. It moved closer to Orange Park and changed its name.
Trinity, of course, still stands.
I've noticed churches and Christian schools actually moving into defunct businesses and public high schools. In Beckley, West Virginia, what used to be Lincoln Elementary School (a public school) has now become a full fledged church.
An ACE school I saw 'get born' in Lake City, Florida, is still going.
So, from my personal experience, this leaves one private fundamentalist school defunct, with one business (Waltco Engineering in Gardena, CA) becoming a Korean evangelical church, and a public school in West Virginia closing its doors and becoming a church.
That West Virginia church is kinda scary-looking, though. It's still maintained in the original school building, dark brings, two or three stories, dark hallways, etc.
It would be interesting to see a study that analyzes the success/failure ratio of private schools, though. My guess is most are run by non-denominational evangelical groups like Calvary Chapel, etc.
I'm sure no child was harmed during the making of this video, but this video was just too creepy for me to post in the article! Although, I don't seem to have a problem posting it in the reply section.
I don't even think I could make a video like this one. I'd be grimacing all during the shoot!
In my part of the country* church schools may die but the buildings become the homes to new churches; one of my Xtian schools which was two campuses (one for grade school, the other a high school) has become a Korean Protestant church and an IFB congregation. Weirdly enough I did attend an ACE high school in my sophmore year (God was that a dull year!) and that church school is now just a church. It's very hard to run a school and I've noticed that fewer and fewer private/religious schools are being set up in the county. That written, there are 10 to 15 private/religious schools in operation here.
Speaking of school rules about popular culture, when I was going to the IFB schools in the 1980s it was a lot like Catholic school; no radios, toys, or gum were to be brought to class. We didn't have uniforms but we did have to wear collared shirts. Girls wore dresses, though they could wear jeans on field trips. No really large earrings (and the `80s was the decade of really clunky jewelry) were allowed. The school teachers would badmouth rock music and movies but everbody went home to play Nintendo or watch "Batman" on Pay Per View**. Faced with an unwinnable culture war one principal (who was an ex-pastor) forced us to watch the insane anti-rock video diatribes of Dr. David Benoit as a "special chapel service." Benoit (who is still out there) would analyze the covers of Fleetwood Mac albums for "hidden messages" and occult symbols while rehashing the Motley Crue*** murder suicide case (the one where they claimed "backmasked" messages drove the teenagers to kill) in grisly detail. He also brought up all those crazy stories about the Eagles' "Hotel California" album while telling us that the Smurfs were Satanic. To top that we had to watch a tape of Geraldo's crazy Occultism special (featuring a very confused Ozzy Osbourn) in class a few weeks later. They really had it in for the Devil, but then this was the decade of the criminological theory that there were large occult criminal organizations or that there were groups of occult child molesters running daycare facilities (case in point: the McMartin Preschool trial.) Benoit and the cops seemed to be reading old Jack Chick tracts and listening to John Todd**** tapes no matter that it was all easily debunked. It didn't matter to the teachers, however; I heard one of them calling Mikhail Gorbachev the Anti-Christ!
_________________
* San Diego County, CA.
** Allegedly there was a young woman who attended the church (but not the school) who had only seen Disney films her whole life, but I never ran into her.
***Or was it Quiet Riot? I get a lot of the two-word metal bands of the era confused. BTW, Benoit's lecture (which took up two VHS tapes!) was filmed before an audience of intensly quiet Christian teenagers. I thought it was the greatest trainwreck I had ever seen on video.
*** Ironically a year before the Benoit tape I was at another school and my teacher decided to read Mike Wernke's debunked book "the Satan Seller" to the class.
4 comments:
"The Soup" thought that the uncle PSA was a little over the top, but if you can tell the truth about child predators (i.e, that they are usually well-known to the child before the abuse starts) in forty seconds more power to you.
I was wondering, Mr. Walker, if you knew if there is a website somewhere listing failed and defunct private schools. I've gone gone back and looked at the schools I attended and all that remain are the public school I attended as a kindergartener, the IFB school I graduated from in junior high, and my first private high school. I'd love to see the statistics on how long these schools last, which denominations are more prone to running schools, and where in the US these schools are most common.
- mr. mike
Good question! I don't know but I'll keep that in mind while web surfing.
There is an excellent book called GOD'S CHOICE by Alan Peshkin, which I haven't yet got rid of on ebay. That shows you the esteem I have for this book! It's the closest I can think of to providing demographics concerning Christian schools.
It's dated, but it's almost an optimistic read because of that. When I first read it, the idea of child molestation, abuse, teacher-student sexual relations, scriptural rationalizations for such, was not in my mind. Nor is it in the book!
The book concentrates on growing up with the strange standards of not being allowed to go to movies, listen to rock music, and all the taboos associated with Christian schools in the seventies. Today, most of those taboos are either gone, or just swept under the carpet.
Since the movement was rather young back then, the author was more concerned about how the students, raised in that atmosphere, would turn out as adults. That's the book, I now believe, that inspired me to get in touch with former Trinity alumni (pre-internet).
During the time period I began getting in touch with previous alumni, I noticed Jacksonville Baptist Temple Christian School, founded by Wendell Zimmerman (WZ taught Falwell at BBC, btw.), had closed its doors. It moved closer to Orange Park and changed its name.
Trinity, of course, still stands.
I've noticed churches and Christian schools actually moving into defunct businesses and public high schools. In Beckley, West Virginia, what used to be Lincoln Elementary School (a public school) has now become a full fledged church.
An ACE school I saw 'get born' in Lake City, Florida, is still going.
So, from my personal experience, this leaves one private fundamentalist school defunct, with one business (Waltco Engineering in Gardena, CA) becoming a Korean evangelical church, and a public school in West Virginia closing its doors and becoming a church.
That West Virginia church is kinda scary-looking, though. It's still maintained in the original school building, dark brings, two or three stories, dark hallways, etc.
It would be interesting to see a study that analyzes the success/failure ratio of private schools, though. My guess is most are run by non-denominational evangelical groups like Calvary Chapel, etc.
P.S. I wonder what the Soup would think about this one?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NpQvyOMO3ZE
I'm sure no child was harmed during the making of this video, but this video was just too creepy for me to post in the article! Although, I don't seem to have a problem posting it in the reply section.
I don't even think I could make a video like this one. I'd be grimacing all during the shoot!
In my part of the country* church schools may die but the buildings become the homes to new churches; one of my Xtian schools which was two campuses (one for grade school, the other a high school) has become a Korean Protestant church and an IFB congregation. Weirdly enough I did attend an ACE high school in my sophmore year (God was that a dull year!) and that church school is now just a church. It's very hard to run a school and I've noticed that fewer and fewer private/religious schools are being set up in the county. That written, there are 10 to 15 private/religious schools in operation here.
Speaking of school rules about popular culture, when I was going to the IFB schools in the 1980s it was a lot like Catholic school; no radios, toys, or gum were to be brought to class. We didn't have uniforms but we did have to wear collared shirts. Girls wore dresses, though they could wear jeans on field trips. No really large earrings (and the `80s was the decade of really clunky jewelry) were allowed. The school teachers would badmouth rock music and movies but everbody went home to play Nintendo or watch "Batman" on Pay Per View**. Faced with an unwinnable culture war one principal (who was an ex-pastor) forced us to watch the insane anti-rock video diatribes of Dr. David Benoit as a "special chapel service." Benoit (who is still out there) would analyze the covers of Fleetwood Mac albums for "hidden messages" and occult symbols while rehashing the Motley Crue*** murder suicide case (the one where they claimed "backmasked" messages drove the teenagers to kill) in grisly detail. He also brought up all those crazy stories about the Eagles' "Hotel California" album while telling us that the Smurfs were Satanic. To top that we had to watch a tape of Geraldo's crazy Occultism special (featuring a very confused Ozzy Osbourn) in class a few weeks later. They really had it in for the Devil, but then this was the decade of the criminological theory that there were large occult criminal organizations or that there were groups of occult child molesters running daycare facilities (case in point: the McMartin Preschool trial.) Benoit and the cops seemed to be reading old Jack Chick tracts and listening to John Todd**** tapes no matter that it was all easily debunked. It didn't matter to the teachers, however; I heard one of them calling Mikhail Gorbachev the Anti-Christ!
_________________
* San Diego County, CA.
** Allegedly there was a young woman who attended the church (but not the school) who had only seen Disney films her whole life, but I never ran into her.
***Or was it Quiet Riot? I get a lot of the two-word metal bands of the era confused. BTW, Benoit's lecture (which took up two VHS tapes!) was filmed before an audience of intensly quiet Christian teenagers. I thought it was the greatest trainwreck I had ever seen on video.
*** Ironically a year before the Benoit tape I was at another school and my teacher decided to read Mike Wernke's debunked book "the Satan Seller" to the class.
- mr. mike
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