I found an interesting set of blog posts about Platte Valley Academy on the issue of video games in the rooms of students at their Adventist boarding academy. Apparently this has been quite a divisive issue, with the parents, and the school board, the administrators, and conference officials all coming down on different sides of the issue. Apparently some teachers or school administrators may have been fired for having a different opinion that the board members.
I thing Adventist education is a great way to prepare kids for life. I went to Adventist grade school from grades 5 thru 8, and I learned a lot there. But I've also been on the wrong end of conflicts with school boards, so this whole story brings back some sorry memories. Sometimes school boards close ranks to keep an opinion that flies in the face of facts. Some people may find it hard to see the love of Jesus in the bickerings of school board meetings.
The first post in the blog series I read was where Pastor Randy Brehms speaks out about sports and video games in Adventist schools
. I then read quite a few of the other posts.
Some parents complained that they've seen their kids waste a lot of time in playing video games. Others mentioned that, historically, movie theatre attendance was grounds for expulsion, and that the schools have become much too lax. Others said their school experience was much stricter than home, while others said that school rules were easier than at home. Some people said they never would have known if their parents had a disagreement with the school staff, their parents always backed up the school. Others said the biggest problem was parents who are manipulated by their children into battling the school boards over any rule that their children find inconvenient. Others said that Ellen G. White's prohibitions against very
