Subject: Crusader Vows to Put God Back Into Schools Using Local Elections Date: Published: 7/15/92 (237 lines) Source: Wall Street Journal. Copyright Dow Jones & Co. Inc. Church and State: Crusader Vows to Put God Back Into Schools Using Local Elections --- Robert Simonds and Disciples Exploit Voters' Apathy Toward School Boards --- Must Jack and Jill Be Banned? ---- By Sonia L. Nazario Staff Reporter of The Wall Street Journal COSTA MESA, Calif. -- One summer evening, Robert Simonds fell to his knees, began to pray and had a vision, he says. Mr. Simonds, then a college math teacher, saw himself floating above the U. S., gazing down on thousands of children with tear-streaked cheeks, all begging, "Please, come and help me." To Mr. Simonds, a one-time preacher, the vision a decade ago was a summons to a higher calling: bringing God back to America's public schools. Mr. Simonds left his teaching job to launch a new organization, Citizens for Excellence in Education (CEE), dedicated to restoring prayer in the classroom, banishing anti-biblical language and teaching the story of creation in science classes. Today his fundamentalist group has seats on hundreds of local school boards from Xenia, Ohio, to Vista, Calif., and controls voting blocs on scores of them. That may be just the beginning. In November, CEE-backed candidates are expected to capture majorities on some boards, as the group mobilizes a quiet but powerful grass-roots army determined to transform a school system it believes has turned immoral and atheistic. The group usually enters a community when Mr. Simonds, 66 years old, gets a request to speak from a church group, often in conservative rural and suburban communities. The normally soft-spoken man exhorts his audience to take control of the schools. And because of great apathy toward many school-board elections, a small organization like his can have large effects. Since 1989, Mr. Simonds claims, CEE's 925 chapters have helped elect 1,965 schoolboard members. This year's goal: 3,100 more, as CEE marches toward its goal of taking over all 15,400 U. S. school boards. Meanwhile, as the movement has grown, Mr. Simonds has tried to assuage nonreligious audiences by telling them he only wishes to teach traditional family values. While the number of CEE's victories can't be independently verified, the group clearly worries opponents. People for the American Way, a liberal constitutional-rights group founded by producer Norman Lear, claims that CEE chapters have been instrumental in a large increase in school censorship attempts over the past two years. His group has rushed out a questionnaire to school districts to assess CEE's growth in influence. The Institute for First Amendment Studies Inc., a nonprofit group in Great Barrington, Mass., is sending letters to the heads of the nation's school districts warning of CEE's activities. "This movement could significantly affect what children are taught in public schools," says Scott Plotkin, president of the California School Boards Association. Already, CEE members have (illegible text), Texas, school board into banning "Little Red Riding Hood" from the library's regular shelves, saying the grandmother's drinking wine is inappropriate for a children's book. Two Xenia, Ohio, CEE-backed board members persuaded their board to reject a state-mandated AIDS curriculum and helped to abolish "Kids for Healthy Families," a self-esteem program for elementary schools. Morton, Ill., CEE members last year persuaded the local school board to include the biblical story of Genesis in science classes. Sitting behind the smoked windows at his office in an industrial mall in Costa Mesa, south of Los Angeles, Mr. Simonds talks heatedly about how schools strip children of their religious faith by not teaching them about God. "Public schools teach no absolutes, no God, no wrong or right," he says. In a manual he distributes to parents and teachers, called "Communicating a Christian World View in the Classroom," he writes, "Our schools are the battleground." Mr. Simonds, a graying man with silver-rimmed glasses, angrily dismisses the separation of church and state as "a socialist myth." Children should learn that a supernatural power created the world 6,000 years ago, he says. Books in classrooms and libraries should be banned if they include "anti-biblical" language or any reference to the occult. Sex education courses should teach that it's wrong to have sex before marriage. School counseling for homosexual teens, Mr. Simonds adds, is "recruitment of our innocent children" to a "deviant" life style. "It would be wonderful to see Scripture read in schools so that children learn the truth," says Deidre Holliday, a Vista, Calif., school-board member who credits CEE for her 1990 victory. Teachers should tell students Christ is their savior, says Mrs. Holliday, as she serves her four children cookies in a living room adorned with a large portrait of Jesus. "This is our heritage. Anyone who comes into this country is welcome, but we shouldn't be diluted by others' beliefs." Critics contend that Mr. Simonds has another, hidden agenda -- to abolish public schools altogether. Until last year, Mr. Simonds served on the national coordinating committee of the California-based Coalition on Revival. The group seeks to abolish the Federal Reserve System and all public schools by the year 2000 and advocates the election of Christian government officials, including sheriffs to direct "Christian" militias. Mr. Simonds says he wants to transform, not abolish, public schools; he also wants a federal voucher system that would help Christians to send their children to religious schools. Also among Mr. Simonds's allies is the Rev. Billy Falling of Escondido, Calif. In a recent book, "The Political Mission of the Church," Mr. Falling, director of the Christian Voters League, says government must be "the police department within the Kingdom of God on earth," ready to "impose God's vengeance upon those who abandon God's laws of justice." Mr. Simonds says he sells Mr. Falling's book, but doesn't agree with everything in it. Mr. Simonds's antagonism toward public schools began at an early age. The youngest of 12 children, he grew up "among the black and browns" of East Los Angeles, always running, he says, to "get to school alive." A World War II aviator, he credits several wartime brushes with death for steering him toward God. He was a pastor for four years until "God called me to teach," he says, laying his hand on a well-worn Bible in the middle of his desk. For 20 years as a math instructor at Orange Coast College in Costa Mesa, Mr. Simonds says he sought to "win souls to Jesus Christ." He began each lesson by projecting Scripture onto the classroom wall. When a Jewish student or a Hare Krishna follower objected, he would beckon them into his office, tell them never to interrupt him again and read them more Scripture, he says. Repeated complaints about Mr. Simonds's proselytizing during math lectures led the college president to insist that he "cease and desist," a college spokesman says. Mr. Simonds says he became increasingly troubled by his students' lack of moral stricture; many would come to class on drugs, he adds. After years of frustration over failure to get a constitutional amendment on school prayer and losing battles to make curriculum changes, he became convinced that his movement would have to work at the local level. Mr. Simonds now treks from state to state sleeping in the handiest Motel 6 and attending "banquets," usually home-cooked meals set up by a local church group. About 300 faithful flocked to one gathering in a Hagerstown, Md., hotel dining room to hear his accusations against public schools. "But for the grace of God, I survived the public schools," Mr. Simonds told the throng. "Praise the Lord," the crowd responded. Among Mr. Simonds's oft-repeated stories is one about a 16-year-old Georgia girl who developed a 105-degree fever and was rushed to a doctor, who grilled her parents: "My God, who did this to your daughter? She's had an abortion by a butcher!" The girl regained consciousness and said school officials had driven her to an abortion clinic. Georgia officials say that they have checked out the story and that it's not true. After local CEE chapters are launched, Mr. Simonds sends out a stream of newsletters, urges members to tune in to one of the 76 radio stations that broadcast his weekly program, and he sells his books on how to take over local school districts. An affiliated group, the National Association of Christian Educators, works to persuade teachers to promote CEE's agenda in their classrooms."He believes students should make a decision to receive Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord and that teachers should be presenters of God's truth," says Roy Grimm, who recently completed a Ph.D. dissertation about Mr. Simonds. In kindling the faithful, Mr. Simonds's rhetoric knows few bounds. At a Gospel rally at the San Jose, Calif., Crossroads Bible Church, he prods the crowd. "In your district there is a superintendent who's a homosexual," he says, without giving specifics. "There's a top guidance guy who's a homosexual. There are several teachers who are lesbians." Several members of the audience gasp, then give him a standing ovation. Mr. Simonds often lashes out at the National Education Association. He criticizes the teachers' union for promoting the "whole-word" rather than the phonics approach to reading, calling it part of a Communist plot to undermine America by fomenting illiteracy. Paul Putnam, NEA's senior professional associate, says CEE and other such groups have been raising the Red flag to rally people to their cause since the 1960s. "A vocal minority can take over the school," he says. "It works." With the help of TV evangelist Pat Robertson's Christian Coalition and other groups on the religious right, observers say, CEE has a good chance of achieving some school-board majorities this fall, especially in places like conservative San Diego County in Southern California. Two dozen CEE-backed school-board candidates swept into office more than a year ago to form minorities on many of the district's 48 school boards. Since then, the Escondido, Calif., school board, with two CEE-backed members, has adopted an abstinence-only sex education curriculum. Some parents are now calling for a ban on the witch-filled "Wizard of Oz," and in one Escondido elementary school, tiny Bibles were stuffed into classroom Christmas stockings. The Vista, Calif., board has been presented with measures to ban drug-abuse education and self-esteem programs. Linda Steele, who heads the San Diego county chapter of CEE, calls its efforts a drive "to take over the school boards and debunk the myth of separation of church and state," a separation she believes was foisted on the country by the Supreme Court of the 1960s. "This is going to be warfare," she vows of November's elections. "We'll use prayer and God's way." The new activism on the right already has turned many school-board meetings from sparsely attended and soporific affairs into standing-room-only battles, complete with hissing and booing. "I don't want anyone putting forward their religion on my son," fumes Ken Blalack, a San Diego County father of two, who has helped form groups to oppose the Christian activists. "And not to address sex education is a real threat to my son's life." Many parents in the San Diego area say they fear groups like CEE will gain power by not disclosing their true agenda. "They use stealth campaign techniques to put people with extremist views in office," says Rita Collier, a parent in La Mesa. Candidates hid their views by refusing to participate in electoral debates or not filing candidate statements, she says. But Christians were blanketed with appeals to vote: 200,000 fliers were put on windshields in church parking lots, and phone banks using church directories and anti-abortion petitions were used to prod church-goers to vote. Mr. Simonds tells CEE members not to disclose their links to the group or say "kooky" things. "Parents are very afraid," says Sharon Jones, another La Mesa parent. "If they get a majority, things will change." Earlier this year, she and 30 other parents gathered at the United Church of Christ to plot a counterattack: a political-action committee to keep a third conservative Christian from being elected to their five-member school board. Some teachers are also fighting back. Last fall, Vista teachers won an "academic freedom" clause in their contract to protect their right to teach lawful material relevant to a course. "We feel beaten up and distrusted," says Tamara Drean, former head of the Vista Teachers Association, who fears teachers may be censoring themselves to avoid CEE attacks. Some teachers watched a board meeting in horror as a few parents argued that "Jack and Jill" should be purged on the ground that the children's fall is a metaphor for a descent into hell. The nursery rhyme stayed, but Voltaire's "Candide" was removed from the high school English classes because of a passing reference to two women whose lovers were monkeys. Mr. Simonds hopes the November elections will let CEE-backed candidates make more such changes. "We can take complete control of all local school boards," he tells his followers. "Our time has come!" (See related letters: "Letters to the Editor: Fundamentalist Attack on Democracy" -- WSJ August 11, 1992) [This article is made available here by Dow Jones Co. for the personal and non-commercial use of callers to this bbs, in the hope that it will be of some help to those who are suffering from the disease and others who are seeking to help them.]