The court-initiated prohibition of school prayer is only the symptom of a deeper problem, the neglect of moral education and character formation. The value-free education offered by the government run schools has all too often proven to be education without value. This is especially true now that Outcome Based Education has been used as an excuse to establish curricular elements that amount to the politically correct brainwashing of our children.

Government money is increasingly used to enforce a low quality, crass form of vocationalism in the School-to-Work scheme, while the same educrats debase traditional academic work with such fads as Whole Language Learning and Fuzzy Math. Parents and local citizens often know better than their educrat masters, but find themselves unable to resist the power of an entrenched and costly monopoly. Education reform is thus a question of liberty and self-government.

I strongly favor school choice approaches that empower parents to send their children to schools that reflect the parents' faith and values. This should include choices in both the public and the independent schools.

We not only need prayer in schools, we need schools that are in the hands of people who pray. Above all, we must break the government monopoly on public education.