A Meandering of my thoughts about PVA and Adventist Education in general.
This is the first time I have chosen to speak out on this forum. I have spent the last six and a half years of my life working with Platte Valley Academy in the capacity of district pastor. I sent my son Justin there, and he graduated in "04". My daughter Heather just finished her junior year and looks forward to returning her senior year "07". I have watched enrollment decline over the past six and a half years. There has been genuine concern over this decline on the part of the board upon which I have been a member. Currently I have accepted a call, and by the time this is posted to the blog will have already left for my new post in Northern California.
PVA is not where I graduated from. I attended Monterey Bay Academy in Watsonville. It was one of the best four years of my teenage life, and it was strict. nothing like the strictness of today. Today we are extremely lax in comparison. Movie Theatre attendance was grounds for being expelled. and there was nothing more than intramural sports. I don't think things were so bad back then. Yes, the discipline was much more strict than in many Adventist homes, but is it possible that this is a shame on our Adventist homes, and not the school.
In my academy days many of the kids referred to "the prison" I never thought of it that way, because my home was far more strict than the academy. That is why the pen of inspiration warns parents to be careful who their children play with, and to make sure that the standards of parenting are the same. It disturbs me that the discussion even came up about video games. My stand is, and has been, if it has nothing to do with enhancing academics, then it doesn't belong on campus. Computers are to assist young people in research, and to help them understand the high tech world they are going to be entering. The games themselves, many of them innocuous are for the most part a colossal waste of time. I have observed my daughter spend hours in front of a game boy brought into the home by my son-in-law. I mean hours and hours. Granted she gets good grades, and she does a great deal of reading. But, she is like myself, sedentary in her habits which contributes to an unhealthy outcome.
I was, and remain antagonistic to competitive sports in our schools. I have heard all the arguments about learning sportsmanship, and learning to be gracious in loss and victory, sorry, it's so much trash as far as I am concerned. Competitive sports by their very nature are a part of Satan's kingdom. Now don't rise up and say I said they were Satanic. I DID NOT SAY THAT! However, in Satan's system there is always a loser. For you to win in Satan's system someone else has to lose. Well you say, that's life, and so it is, but to nurture and encourage the competitive spirit is antagonistic to God's system in which you compete with yourself. You strive continually to be better than you were before, not to best someone else, or to defeat another individual, but to constantly be doing whatever it is you do better than you did it before. music, physical exercise, work. Whatever it is. That is God's system. Which system are we stressing at our academies, which we have declared are dedicated to the training of young people of service to God? "Training The Youth of Today To Be The Leaders of Tomorrow!"
I recognize that the unregenerate, unconverted heart is selfish, and is always striving for supremacy. That is the natural course of our sinful condition. Competition will be present whether we want it or not. It will take the form of: our band is better than their band, or our choir is better than their choir, and the story will go on and on. However, the thrust of academic activities should still be to be the best you can be despite a grade curve, or what someone else is doing, and the question is which system are we emphasizing in our schools. How in the world of competitive sports ever made into our schools with the plethora of statements from the pen of inspiration that is totally and completely and without equivocation antagonistic to it, is beyond me. There has been some artful twisting of the Spirit of Prophecy to get that one accomplished.
The video games are just an extension of the competitive sports deal with the exception that is does nothing to physically invigorate you spiritually, or physically, and in fact evidence would suggest that it makes some young people withdraw socially. Maybe your kid won't react that way, just like not every person has a gene that makes them an alcoholic with very little exposure to alcohol, but if even one kid is adversely effected, is it worth the risk.
I know this piece is meandering as it has touched on what many will think are unrelated issues, but they are related. What are we sending our kids to academy for? Why are we spending $10,000.00 a year in tuition? if not for something better than the world offers. An Oasis from worldly influences. Will the worldly influences come? Yes. Do we need to invite them, receive them, and go out and hunt for them to come? Absolutely NOT!
One more thought about the competitive sports issue. Since the emphasis on sports has come into our educational system. Music programs nationwide have suffered. Money that once went to support scholarships at universities like Southwestern Adventist University now go for sports scholarships. It used to be that if you were a sat lead chair, or were in the select choir you were eligible for scholarships. Not anymore! Now that money is channeled to sports scholarships, and for what? not one of those kids with those scholarships will ever play professional ball. they will never make a living at it. Recruiters won't even come and see them play in our little one horse arenas, and basically Sports are just not academic, it does nothing to enhance mental discipline which is what education is all about. The best that can be said about it is that it keeps you physically fit, and there is numerous other things that could keep you equally fit. We have traded our silk purse for a sow ear, and no one seems to get it.
Last but no least. I never opposed outright video games on campus. I did oppose and still oppose video games on students personal computers in their rooms. It has put the deans in a position of policing something that is virtually impossible to police. It force them to invade the privacy of the students computer to be sure that games that have absolutely no place in a Christian's possession are not there.
Had the suggestion been to create a student center in the administration building where students with qualifying grades could come for some down time and play games on a school owned machine, controlled by the staff, game boy, any of the programs. That would have been far better than what we got.
The board voted for the academy staff to come up with a policy regarding video games. They (the faculty) did. They said they didn't want them on campus. The Board then interpreted that vote in November to be a vote to force the acceptance of video games in the dorms, and since the staff and faculty had not come up with a policy (which did not include not having video games) they had lost their right to call the shots. I was one of those board members who absolutely did not believe that we had voted to force the staff to make a policy. I was as amazed at the next board meeting when we were informed that the vote was a done deal, and that it could only be revisited by a 2/3rds majority vote. "Like that was going to happen".
Well it is no longer my responsibility. I love PVA, my heart is there, my children have attended there. I respect the staff and teachers. They have done an outstanding job training my children. It is my opinion that with both Gary Russell and Jim Goodchild which I know to be honest, moral and deeply devout men, have been micro managed from Topeka. This must stop. PVA administration must have the ability to make decisions regarding policy that as long as it does not violate the educational code of the General Conference, Mid-America Union, or the Kansas-Nebraska Conference, and have the unconditional backing of the conference administration and the academy board. Neither the conference officials, or the board members with the exception of a very few are on campus enough to know what is really going on, and therefore policy issues regarding academic standards, leisure activity and discipline should be left to the Administration of the academy without interference from conference or board.
When each young person and their parent registers for school, they sign that they have read the handbook and will comply with the provisions of that handbook, and any subsequent provisions that may be adopted. What I have observed is a few whiny brat kids that have run to mommy and daddy with "poor me, their being mean to me, and they won't let me do this or that", and mommy and daddy instead of saying, "That's tough, life doesn't always go your way, and you need to buck up and do what you signed at the beginning of the year that you would do. Comply with rules of this institution, not come and then try to change the rules because you don't like them." Rather parents have themselves become whiny and complained and at times verbally abused the faculty and staff because their kids were whiners. My grandmother (who raised me) might not always have agreed with what the teachers or staff did, but I never knew it. There was always a united front between my grandmother and the teachers. If I caught it at school, I double caught it at home. To bad it's not that way anymore.
I will continue to pray for Platte Valley Academy. I still believe it is the best kept secret in North America. Please, PLEASE, PLEASE don't let it die because of micro management from above. May God help us all to this end, and sorry I rambled.
Pastor Randy Brehms
Former Pastor: Aurora, Grand Island, and Shelton/Platte Valley Academy
Adrianne
