Considering Values

One was an editorial on a recent address by our schools’ chancellor here in the city, David Banks. With admirable honesty and realism, Chancellor Banks acknowledged the woeful record of the city’s government schools. The more money they get, the worse the test scores, the attendance, and graduation rates get. In five years, over 120,000 families have fled the city’s public schools seeking alternatives.

Bravo, Chancellor Banks, for your candor, and for your resolve to repair a decimated system. What a good time for all to embrace enthusiastically the justice of school choice, lifting caps on Charter Schools, opening new ones, allowing parents to choose schools, like our splendid Catholic ones, and have their tax money follow the students, while all the time working to improve the government schools.

Two, as one who has always admired Sandy Koufax’s decision not to pitch a World Series game that occurred on Yom Kippur, and one who has watched Chariots of Fire about the Christian athlete who would not run in the Olympics on a Sunday, I very much agree with high school senior Jett Rosen, who reports on how teams at Jewish schools, or teams with many observant Jews, are penalized by elimination from competition on their Sabbath, when they cannot play.  This faithful Jewish young man defends the Oakwood Adventist Academy varsity boy’s basketball team in Alabama, whose request to move a game to a day other than their Sabbath, was denied.

Bravo, again, to these devoted believers, whose allegiance to God’s law is more important than winning a game – – a choice, by the way, an American should not be forced to make.

But, I have to admit, these two cases prompted me to wonder about our values at our schools and parishes.

When I hear of parents telling the religious education program at the parish that their son won’t be coming during basketball season; or when I have Mass at a parish only to see a CYO game going on in the gym, I worry about the signal we’re giving our kids.