THE LATEST GROUNDS FOR ABANDONING GOVERNMENT SCHOOLS

 

 

 

By Steven Yates
November 10, 2007
NewsWithViews.com

Last month California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed a legislative package effectively banning the phrases �mom and dad� and �husband and wife� from the state�s government schools as discriminatory against homosexuals. The same measures would allow boys to use girls� restrooms and vice versa. Critics are charging that this will enable California schools to finish their journey towards becoming full-fledged indoctrination centers for those promoting a homosexual-bisexual-transgender lifestyle.

SB777, a major component of the package Schwarzenegger signed, bans anything that could be interpreted as negative or discriminatory against homosexuality or any other alternative �lifestyle� choices. Another part of this package was AB394, which targets teachers and parents for indoctrination through �anti-harassment� training. There are, of course, no special protections from harassment written into these bills for, e.g., Christian students.

Ripple effects are already being felt. Analysts have noted, for example, that California is the largest market in the country for many textbook publishers. The latter will likely not spend the money it would take to produce separate editions for other states. Thus where California goes, the rest of the nation will be dragged, kicking and screaming if necessary.

This is political correctness running straight off the cliff. In my book Civil Wrongs, published back in 1994, I argued that if political correctness was not stopped, it would very soon embrace homosexuals. This would place it on direct collision course with Christianity not just in academia but in the workplace where it had already gained a solid foothold via radical feminism and the �hostile workplace environment� that grew out of the Clarence Thomas / Anita Hill hearings. Leftist affirmative action provisions for homosexuals were already being introduced in ultraliberal states such as Massachusetts.

More specifically, I argued in Civil Wrongs that leftist affirmative action programs had resulted in reverse discrimination against white men, and that political correctness had become one of the hard left�s most effective counterassaults against legitimate criticism of programs that offered favors to some at the expense of others. It worked through mind control�by enabling opponents of leftist programs to be demonized. I argued that if political correctness was not exposed for what it was and ended, it would embrace more and more groups nationally, including homosexuals, until it became one of the dominant features of this society. Opposition to the political agendas of these groups would be criminalized little by little, in the form of �hate crimes� legislation.

I hate to say it, but you were warned, especially since schools at all levels have been the primary testing grounds for all manner of social experimentation.

There remains, however, a way out, and Christians in particular need to pay attention to it before it is too late. The way out is to abandon government schools. Under present circumstances, thinking Christians are more justified than ever in the belief that government schools have become repositories of indoctrination into evil. They need to remove their children from these schools pronto, and either homeschool them or send them to private Christian schools.

During my Civil Wrongs period I, too, was locked into a box where I believed government schools could be �reformed.� Then I became acquainted with Rev. E. Ray Moore who was just setting up Exodus Mandate, which calls on Christians to leave government schools. Rev. Moore�s book Let My Children Go! Why Parents Must Remove Their Children From Public Schools Now goes further. This meticulously researched book compares the history of public education in America with what the Founding Fathers wrote in this country�s founding documents. Rev. Moore shows there is no evidence that the latter ever intended education to be a government responsibility.

Government schools as such didn�t really begin until the 1840s, when Horace Mann visited Prussia and returned with the �Prussian model.� This model was alien to our founding traditions. According to the latter, following British philosophers such as Locke, children do not belong to the state. Prussia, following German collectivists such as Hegel, reversed this. Mann promoted an Americanized version of the Prussian model. Government schools caught on slowly but eventually became ubiquitous and then mandatory. The word kindergarden is derived from Prussian. It means, roughly, �child garden��growing children, like vegetables, as in a garden.

Regrettably, in the late 1800s, few sensed danger. Initially, there didn�t seem to be any.

Then, in 1902, John D. Rockefeller created the General Education Board. Its initial publications contained chilling statements like �In our dreams we have limitless resources and the people yield themselves with perfect docility to our molding hands. The present education conventions fade from their minds, and unhampered by tradition, we work our own good will upon a responsive and rural folk.�

This was a recipe for social control, and when the Rockefeller Foundation began to bankroll John Dewey�s Progressive Education movement a couple of decades later, the use of government schools as laboratories of social engineering proceeded apace�delayed, perhaps, only by the second world war. We can see the results all around us�a significant percentage of public school graduates cannot read or write well enough to fill out a job application. They cannot make change without machines or do simple arithmetic without calculators. They cannot get Thomas Jefferson in the right century much less describe any features of his thought. They cannot walk up to a world map and find, e.g., Iraq (or even the U.S. and find, say, Louisiana).

Is it any wonder foreigners are cleaning our clocks in areas like science and engineering?

One of the key missions of government schools in modern times has been to disrupt the values children inherit from their parents. This has been admitted openly. Benjamin Bloom, a giant among modern education philosophers and inventor of the �cognitive� vs. �affective� domains dichotomy, once said, �a large part of what we call �good teaching� is the teacher�s ability to attain affective objectives [attitudes, values, beliefs] through challenging the students' fixed beliefs ��

There has been little evidence that the remaining part involves real education in any recognizable form. Here are the exact words of two 1990s School-To-Work educrats, David Hornbeck and Laren Resnick respectively: �[E]ducated employees have higher turnover rates, lower job satisfaction, and poorer promotion records than less educated employees.� �Most employees under this model need not be educated. It is far more important that they be reliable, steady, and willing to follow directions.� With the dominance of this kind of thinking, it is small wonder we have college students who cannot write a coherent paragraph!

With the primary unstated mission of government schools being social engineering�for political correctness and corporate-globalist economics�should we be surprised that homosexuality and other alternative �lifestyles� are now being openly promoted in them, that criticisms are being labeled as �hate speech,� and that commonplace phrases such as �mom and dad� or �husband and wife� are banned by a state legislature in a bill signed by a celebrity governor?

The underlying philosophy of government schools has been hostile right from the start to fundamental American values of limited government and freedom of the individual from dominance by state and corporate interests. This hostility, as we noted, was invisible for a long time. The schools seemed to be doing a good job. Today it is out of the closet. Government schools, absent any instruction in decent values, are now dangerous. They are breeding grounds not just for politically correct indoctrination but for gang activity, drug abuse, and even sexual abuse of children by teachers. WorldNetDaily has a published roster of no less than 114 cases of female teachers who have been either convicted or credibly accused of sexual assaults on students!. This may be just the tip of the iceberg! An Associated Press investigation suggests that there may be more than 2,500 cases of sexual abuse of students by teachers!

There is no evidence these problems can be �fixed� from within by conservative �reforms.� They are now part of the fabric of public education itself. The only solution�especially for Christian parents�is to get their children out.

Rev. Moore, of Exodus Mandate mentioned above, recently told me, �The difference of opinion between those supporting Exodus Mandate and conservative public school reform will soon reach a critical moment. In the past, this has been a debate among friends on how to proceed, but no longer, with the growth of homosexualism in the public schools. The conservative public school reformers and their Christian Right allies who advocate little children being �salt and light� in public schools will deny us a chance for victory by not joining efforts to set up a K-12 Christian or home school system.�

He explained further, �These same conservative reformers have failed to make any gains over the humanist left in the last 30-40 years of public school reform. The conservatives have lost all the major battles and will continue to lose because they follow an unbiblical strategy.� Rev. Moore believes Christians have a biblical mandate to take charge of the education of children, based on passages such as Deuteronomy 6: 1-9, Proverbs 22:6, Psalms 78:5, Ephesians 6:4, Joel 1:2-3, and elsewhere. �The way to victory,� he said, �is now for Christian families and churches to set up a whole new K-12 Christian education system. This will save our Christian children and give other families hope for their children, too. This is the way of revival in our nation.�

He warned, �The rise of homosexualism in the public schools will continue to grow and finally engulf the entire system. It is inevitable now. Applying Romans 1:24, 26, and 28 to the institution of public schools that have officially and legally denied God as Creator and Lawgiver, we can see that God Himself is �handing them over� to moral corruption. To now try to reform such an institution is to fight against God, too! Currently there are over 4,000 GLSEN clubs in public middle and high schools in the U.S. Many are in Bible Belt states. This problem is not just in California but has already reached the Southern states, too.�

Rev. Moore concluded, �We can now safely say that Christian families who leave their children in such morally harmful places are not responsible parents.� Pastors, too, have a moral obligation. �Pastors who fail to warn their flocks and [do not] help set up K-12 Christian education in their churches are not being faithful shepherds.�

His is a harsh-sounding verdict, but it may be the most defensible one. Nor is he alone. Randy Thomasson, of Campaign for Children and Families, told WorldNetDaily, �We're calling upon every California parent to pull their child out of California's public school system.� He added, �The so-called 'public schools' are no longer a safe emotional environment for children. Under the new law, schoolchildren as young as kindergarten will be sexually indoctrinated and introduced to homosexuality, bisexuality, and transsexuality, over the protests of parents, teachers and even school districts.�

�There will be no exemptions to this indoctrination,� he also observed. �Private schools and homeschool will be the only sanctuary left for parents in California who love their children and want to protect their sexual innocence.�

Where California goes, the rest of the nation shall eventually follow.

The time has come to abandon government schools while doing so is still legal. There are organizations in every state devoted to providing information, curricula, etc., for home schooling parents. If evangelical Christians in America were to abandon government schools, removing their children not by the thousands but by the tens and then hundreds of thousands, state-sponsored education would implode, along with its political agendas. New forms of education would already have appeared. They would answer to We The People, not they the social engineers. Children could learn the history of the rise of Christian and Constitutionally-grounded freedoms in the English-speaking world, as well as how to use the latest technology.

This kind of solution should not be thought of as limited to evangelical Christians. Presumably there are people who cannot accept Christianity but still want their children to be able to understand something of this country�s founding principles. Presumably even an atheist wants his children to be literate, able to do simple arithmetic, think as individuals instead of as group members, and perhaps question those with money and power. I doubt that the globalist corporate-governmental elites really care two iotas about homosexuality. As with abortion, they see it as a means to an end: global population control.

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Do parents, Christian or not, want their children to be more than cogwheels in the brave new world of a homosexual-friendly global corporatocracy? Do we, perchance, not want a homosexual-friendly global corporatocracy in our future? What must we do to avoid one? Removing our children from social engineering indoctrination centers might be one very good place to start.

� 2007 Steven Yates - All Rights Reserved