Welcome to breakpoint, a daily look, and an ever-changing culture through the lens of unchanging

truth. For the Colson Center, I'm John Stone Street. Conservatives often blame the systemic

failings of U.S. public schools on things like whokeness or other progressive indoctrinations

that masquerade as education, and there's plenty of blame to be laid there. However, another prior,

and perhaps bigger, widespread problem, is destructive classroom behavior by students,

according to a post-COVID survey conducted by the American Psychological Association, which included

nearly 15,000 pre-K-12 teachers, administrators, staff, and counselors,

quote, 33% of teachers reported at least one incident of verbal harassment or violence,

while 18% of school psychologists, 15% of school administrators, and 22% of other school staff

reported at least one violent incident by a

student." The survey also revealed that nearly 50% of all teachers hoped to quit or transfer jobs

due to school safety concerns. While the root cause of student behavior problems is the

widespread breakdown of American families, the adoption of

critical theory adjacent ideology in the classroom have only made it worse. Behavioral adjustment

approaches that often go by names like social and emotional learning or restorative justice in

education or restorative discipline in the classroom, reframe classroom discipline

around notions of things like fairness, empathy, anti-racism, privilege, justice, and inclusion.

In some schools, these ideas are baked into every part of the curriculum, including math.

Secular educational models like these operate from a naturalistic worldview, specifically ideas that were birthed from secular humanism, a worldview that believes that humans who exist without a supreme creator will naturally bend toward kindness, altruism, and fairness. In this view, students should not be held responsible for bad behavior, at least not in any significant

way, because they themselves are victims. Rather than consequences, which parents often do not

support anyway, students should be understood and reminded to act justly. Within a Christian worldview,

there is a radically different understanding of human relationships, what has been broken between

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