What surprises me about this situation is that there is a widespread hunger on the part of parents today for excellence, moral values and a religious foundation to be given to their children.
These parents recognise that there is a need to counterbalance the doctrines of mediocrity, amorality, dishonesty and self-glorification - in short, new-age political correctness - that the secular humanist social engineers have sneaked into the education system.
That's why Catholic and other private schools, in which scriptural studies - which cover morals, ethics and values - are part of the curriculum, have become in such demand that places have to be rationed.
A few years ago a former moderator of the Presbyterian Church pointed out in a newspaper article that five times as many children were influenced through Bible in Schools than all the other children's outreaches of the churches and para-church organisations combined.
The Rev. Rob Yule said the years of childhood were not so much a time for evangelism as a time for telling stories, providing heroes, inspiring idealism, celebrating achievements, creating an appetite and laying a foundation for appropriate behaviours.
Bible in Schools, he said, should give children reference points of belief, conduct and decision making by which to orient themselves in later life.
There was a time, many years ago, when most children received scriptural teaching through church Sunday schools. Unfortunately that is not the case today. In fact, many churches - particularly those known as "mainline" - no longer have Sunday schools.
Yet it was in them that children throughout the nation heard the simple Christian message of, "Be good for Jesus' sake, obey Mum and Dad and the teacher, be kind to others and try to live by the Ten Commandments."
Many a child went to Sunday school whose parents were never seen. But that was okay by the churchfolk, who knew that the kids had been sent so Mum and Dad could have a bit of time to themselves of a Sunday morning.
They didn't mind because they were devotees of the proverb: "Train a child in the way he should go and he will not depart from it."
If Bible in Schools is to be rendered ineffective because too few attend, then it is up to the churches to resume their sacred duty to the children of this age.
They must be prepared to go knocking on doors in their neighbourhoods and inviting children to Sunday schools.
And not just inviting them, but arranging to pick them up and deliver them home in these days when it is not necessarily safe for little ones to be on the streets unaccompanied.
In short, those of us who delight in whatever things are honest, noble, just, pure, lovely and of good report need to start getting a bit more aggressive in making these concepts available to as many children as will receive them.
garth.george@hotmail.com
