Peg Luksik and the Right Want To Back Schools Into the Future

By Patte Barth

Whether President Clinton's "goals 2000: educate America act'' passes or not may ultimately be irrelevant. The real challenge to meeting the national education goals is more likely to be met outside the purview of Capitol Hill. This resistance is currently mobilizing in Christian churches and parents' meetings in Pennsylvania, Oklahoma, Nebraska, Ohio, Iowa, and California and is rapidly moving into other states. It is flamed with talk of global conspiracies, psychological manipulation, and supercomputers concealed in federal buildings. Its inspiration is a politically ambitious housewife named Peg Luksik ("Pennsylvania Parent Becomes Mother of 'Outcomes' Revolt,'' Sept 22, 1993).

To many observers of education reform, the religious right's opposition seems too strange, too fanatical to take seriously. Certainly, it invites ridicule with continued charges that New Age-ists and other brainwashing bogeymen have infiltrated our schools. And in general, people are tired of the disruptive, sometimes vicious campaigns to remove classic literature and evolution from the classroom.

Even so, these religious groups tap into some legitimate fears shared by many American parents who don't trust either government or schools to do what's right for their children. The opposition's leadership recognizes this. As a result, they are becoming more sophisticated at delivering their message publicly, limiting the inflammatory rhetoric to communication...