Ventura County Perspective : The Golden Rule: Alive, Well and Taught at a School Near You : A nationwide ‘values-based’ curriculum would hold no moral compass. It would disregard the virtues, values and commitment, reflected in the classroom, that put teachers there in the first place.

After the school tragedies that gripped the nation last spring, the clarion call to “bring God back into the schools” has been heard from coast to coast. I find the notion that God ever left the schools rather amusing.

The continued proclamation by political pundits that teachers are subjecting our children to “values-neutral curriculum” is a far from accurate assessment of what really goes on in the classroom. Just who do these people think teachers are?

To judge by recent rants about bringing “Judeo-Christian values” back into the classroom, you’d think educators were a bunch of unscrupulous opportunists devoid of any moral compass. I rather like the definition offered by humorist Garrison Keillor, whose sister is a teacher: “Teachers are the last true missionaries left in our society.”

For many, the choice to teach stems from deeply held religious convictions and the desire to pursue a profession that has a moral and spiritual dimension. It is this dimension that teachers across the country faithfully bring into the classroom each day. Educators don’t teach to garner power, prestige or money. Rather, it is their sense of moral obligation to the future that pushes them onward even during our nation’s most trying seasons.

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The problem is not that values and virtues aren’t taught in the classroom; the opposite is true. Apart from the home, often the classroom is the only place where such concepts are introduced and reinforced in a consistent manner. No classroom teacher can maintain order and create an atmosphere conducive to learning without teaching kids basic virtues.

Despite media portraits to the contrary, the Golden Rule is still very much alive in schools across America. Unfortunately, the same can’t be said of many other sectors of our society. The idea that we need to develop a nationwide “values-based” curriculum that focuses on “God” sends shivers down my spine. Surely, any such curriculum would have to be developed and approved by a committee of “interested parties” and bureaucrats. What tablet of virtues would a committee of interested parties inscribe? And what god would a board of bureaucrats suggest we present to our students?

At the risk of offending one-world utopians, any god that all parties might agree to in much the same vein as a public works project can’t be much of a god. Are we to pay educational consultants and university think-tank strategists to come up with an inoffensive, nondescript god? I can only imagine the homogenized, pasteurized “god by committee” that educational reformists would have us swallow. Such a god would be akin to a “divine Cheez Whiz” that kids would be spoon-fed until they lost all taste for the real thing.

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As educators, our commitment to continue to promote the virtues of honesty, tolerance, compassion, hard work and generosity has always been and will always be present in the curriculum we teach.

As far as I’m concerned, God is present in our classrooms every day. I see God’s reflection in each student’s face--and in my colleagues’ daily choice to commit their time, energy and talents toward building a better future for all of us.

Teachers don’t need more mandated curriculum. What we need is for all “interested parties” to have a little faith in us and in America’s children.