Reclaiming high school education

By Richard Baehr

More and more families have given up on the public school system, and for good reason. The curriculum has been substantially dumbed down, and with the exception of preaching Al Gore's global warming medicine, and the danger of Islamophobia ( Islam is a religion of peace), the schools have become values-neutral or values-deficient (the key is not to offend).

More and more parents have opted for home schooling or religious schools for their children. There is evidence that many of these alternative programs are quite substantive, and the students regularly out perform their public high school colleagues, even after adjusting for demographic and income factors. Now comes word of a new Jewish high school in an unlikely place -- Las Vegas, Nevada, where some very original and creative approaches are being adopted, including a Jewish Great Books program.

I have lectured at the new high school, founded by Sheldon Adelson, one of many philanthropic efforts in Jewish education and Israel programming (the Birthright effort) in which he has contributed, and found the overall intellectual level and the seriousness, openness and fairness that characterized the discussion on major historical and political issues to be quite stunning.