Harping on Education again....

[micah719]

Why are modern people so gullible when it comes to political scams, pavlovian advertising, media spoonfeeding and theological heresies? We are destroyed for lack of knowledge in an age where knowledge overwhelms us in quantity, because our ability to discern quality has been blunted and suppressed and hijacked.



posted in full from:
A Look at Some History
Classical Christian Education:

A Look at Some History

by By Ben House
Originally posted on Covenant Media Foundation
Statement on offsite articles

The modern public education system has been weighed in many scales and found wanting. Critiques of the system in the form of books, articles, news stories, speeches, sermons, government reports, and test results have catalogued the numerous failings of state schools. Within public education, teachers, administrators, and students offer even more criticisms of the system. Whether one considers the arguments of the right or conservative end of the political spectrum, where the call is for a return to "the basics" and prayer, to the left or liberal wing of the political spectrum, where the call is for more government money, Outcome Based Education, and pluralism, the call is clearly for change.

State schools are expected to do everything: prepare students for college or vocational technical jobs, enable both brighter and slower students to excel at their respective levels, inculcate the "right" values, teach proper sexual behavior, teach students to think critically, raise the self-esteem of students, discipline children, prevent them from turning to drugs, alcohol, or suicide, teach a wide-ranging curriculum, create racial, sexual, and gender understanding and harmony, win ball games, and do all of these things in a manner that is pleasing to the students so they will not be bored or discouraged. In spite of these messianic expectations,1 public schools are not sure what they are supposed to be doing. In the midst of a host of bugle commands, they are not sure which way to charge. There is no clear philosophy or direction.

In an age of cultural rootlessness, moral relativism, religious pluralism, social disintegration, and future uncertainty, how can we expect anything other than educational chaos?2 Unstable times call for a return to theological foundations and historical forms. Many Christians mistakenly think that the cultural and social mores of the 1950s provide the answers. But the families, churches, and schools of the 1950s produced the 1960s. The rediscovery of theological foundations and historical forms must go further back in history.

The theological foundations must be established upon the Scriptures. In education, Christians have too often seen the Bible either as a book to be studied in a separate subject, i.e. Bible class, or as a devotional book. Christian education must teach not only Bible details, but biblical systematic theology. From that theology, Christians must develop a worldview that applies biblical concepts to every area of life. Thankfully, this has been done numerous times in the history of Christianity. The historic forms or examples can be found where Christians produced educated, biblically literate, discerning students. The historic form can be called Classical Christian Education.

Historian Christopher Dawson has described the beginnings of Classical Christian Education:

From the time of Plato the Hellenic paideia [system of instruction] was a humanism in search of a theology, and the religious traditions of Greek culture were neither deep nor wide enough to prepare the answer.....The new Christian culture was therefore built from the beginning on a double foundation. The old classical education in the liberal arts was maintained without any interruption, and since this education was inseparable from the study of classical authors, the old classical education continued to be studied. But alongside of--and above--all this, there was now a specifically Christian learning which was Biblical and theological and which produced its own prolific literature.3

Typically the schools in early American history were Classical Christian schools. The instructors were usually ministers whose training was a combination of classical languages and literature and Protestant theology. In other words, they studied the Bible in its original Hebrew and Greek, and they read Homer's Iliad in Greek, Tacitus' histories in Latin, as well as studying John Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion. For example, Moses Waddell, a Southern Presbyterian preacher and teacher (1770-1840), began studying Latin at age eight, and after six years of school, he had finished courses in Greek, Latin, and mathematics. After his conversion and entrance into the ministry, Waddell established, in a log building, a school with an enrollment of as many as 180 students a year. In his book Southern Presbyterian Leaders, Dr. Henry Alexander White made these comments about Waddell's school:

The food furnished to the students in Waddell's log college was plain, for it was usually nothing more than cornbread and bacon. A blast from a ram's horn called them all together from morning and evening prayers. When the weather was mild the students sat or lay beneath the trees to prepare their lessons. The sound of the horn told the class in Homer when to assemble, and all of the members rushed at once to the recitation hall in the main building. Then the horn called up, in regular order, the Cicero, the Horace, and the Virgil classes, as well as those engaged in the study of mathematics and English.4

The success of this school obviously did not come from expensive facilities and modern technology or even a good cafeteria. (This shows the fallacy of those who promote higher school taxes to improve education.) Jack Maddex, Jr. said, "Waddell's students mastered the classical curriculum at an exacting pace, interspersing long study periods with recitations."5 Many of Waddell's students achieved prominence in academic and civil affairs.

The type of student Classical Christian education produced is astounding to modern readers. The difficulty and rigor of education made it a prized commodity. The compulsory and egalitarian education system of today has debased the value of the commodity. While academic degrees are expected in many fields today, they are rarely seen as indicators of academic or intellectual ability. By contrast, education in the past was equated with book knowledge, and that knowledge was acquired only by hard work. Young Moses Hoge was noted for fastening a book to his plow as he worked the fields. He would plow a furrow, stop and read a page, and then ponder the contents as he plowed the next furrow.6 David Caldwell, as a student, would sit near an open window and study into the late hours of the night. Then he would fold his arms on the table, lay his head down, and sleep until morning.7 James Henley Thornwell, who was given to studying fourteen hours a day, commented on his own need to improve his speaking and writing skills:

Language was my great difficulty in early life. I had no natural command of words. I undertook to remedy the defect by committing to memory large portions of the New Testament, the Psalms, and much of the Prophets, also whole dramas of Shakespeare, and a great part of Milton's Paradise Lost; so that you might start me at any line in any drama or book, and I would go through to the end.8

As a young teacher, Thornwell continued his study habits:

I have commenced regularly with Xenophon's works, and intend to read them carefully. I shall then take up Thucydides, Herodotus, and Demosthenes. After mastering these I shall pass on to the philosophers and poets. In Latin I am going regularly through Cicero's writings. I read them by double translations; that is, I first translate them into English and then retranslate them into Latin. In German I am perusing Goethe's works. My life, you can plainly see, is not a life of idleness.9

After Thornwell committed his life to Christ, he entered the ministry and became one of the greatest Presbyterian ministers and theologians ever produced in America.

Professor Clyde Wilson has described the curriculum and its purposes in the University of North Carolina in the middle of the 1800s. He said:

The college curriculum consisted chiefly of Latin, Greek, and pure mathematics, with smaller amounts of modern languages, chemistry, geology, physics, botany, zoology, metaphysics, logic, rhetoric, political economy, and constitutional and international law. More than half of a student's time in four years was spent in languages ancient and modern; three-fifths in the languages and pure mathematics together. The intent of these studies was to develop the powers of reason, analysis, and perspective, and by familiarity with the classical republics to inspire an understanding and love of American institutions. The curriculum also reflected a highly verbal and personalized society in which fixed status and institutional rigidity had not robbed words of their power to persuade and move.10

This ability to use reason, analysis, and perspective comes from reading. Neil Postman said, "From Erasmus in the sixteenth century to Elizabeth Eisenstein in the twentieth, almost every scholar who has grappled with the question of what reading does to one's habits of mind has concluded that the process encourages rationality; the sequential, propositional character of the written word fosters what Walter Ong calls the 'analytical management of knowledge.'"11 In Classical Christian education, this intellectual ability is cultivated in order to understand and implement the Scriptures. Susan Alder has stated that education in Colonial America was Christian not only in teaching the doctrines of the Christian faith, but in defining all reality by precepts and principles laid out in the Bible. As historian Clinton Rossiter has said, "The colonial mind was thoroughly Christian in its approach to education, philosophy, and social theory...."12

The importance of the Bible in education can be seen in an ironically prophetic defense of the use of the Bible in public schools given by Benjamin Rush in 1786. Rush said:

I do not mean to exclude books of history, poetry, or even fables from our schools. They may and should be read frequently by our young people, but if the Bible is made to give way to them altogether, I foresee that it will be read in a short time only in churches and in a few years will probably be found only in the offices of magistrates and in courts of justice.13

Many other examples could be given of the nature of Classical Christian education as it existed in America from our colonial beginnings to about the 1900s. Very obviously, the academic standards were high, the worldview was Christian, and the results were amazing. But what is the message for us? Some would object to this discussion and point out that not all Americans received the level of education described above and that not all American students were James Henley Thornwells in inclination and ability. This is true; likewise, not all basketball players today are Michael Jordans, but that should not cause us to lower the basketball goals to five feet high. The example of educated men of the 1700s and 1800s is daunting. How can we teach in such a way to achieve this when the teachers today do not have the Classical Christian training of the past? The answer is that we cannot achieve the same results....in one generation. We must be future oriented, and we must begin with what we have.

We have the Bible, so we can teach theology. We have books--centuries' accumulation of books at affordable prices. While we may begin with language restrictions, since few are trained in Latin and Greek today, we can master the great works of literature, history, and theology either written or translated into English.

Another objection might be: Why this type of education? Why not something more relevant, more modern, more accommodating to a non-literate, non-theological age? Classical Christian education is not designed to fit the student for our times. It is designed to transform the student to God's times (Romans 12:2). It is designed to produce an student with the mental discipline and ability to read an in-depth book (even one with more than one hundred pages), write discerning, thoughtful essays on the book, present lectures or debates on the contents of the book, and evaluate its contents in light of the Christian worldview. "Paces," multiple choice questions, computer games, and entertaining films cannot accomplish these results. Classical Christian education is "word-oriented." It can and has produced workmen who can rightly divide the Word of God and who do not need to be ashamed to confront and unmask the idols of our age.

FOOTNOTES

*Ben House is a pastor of Grace Covenant Church in Texarkana, AR and the administrator of Veritas School.

1 Rousas J. Rushdoony, The Messianic Character of American Education, (Philipsburg: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Co., 1963)

2 See Gene Edward Veith, Jr., Postmodern Times: A Christian Guide to Contemporary Thought and Culture, (Wheaton: Crossway Books, 1994).

3 Christopher Dawson, The Crisis of Western Education, (Steubenville, Ohio: Franciscan University Press, 1989) pp. 8-9.

4 Henry Alexander White, Southern Presbyterian Leaders, (New York: Neale Publishing Company, 1911) pp. 59-60. [Soon to be reprinted.]

5 Jack P. Maddex, Jr., "Waddell, Moses," Encyclopedia of Religion in the South, edited by Samuel S. Hill (Macon: Mercer University Press, 1984) p. 819.

6 White, Ibid. p. 193.

7 Ibid. p. 96.

8 Ibid. pp. 309-310.

9 Ibid.

10 Clyd N. Wilson, Carolina Cavalier: The Life and Times of James Johnson Pettigrew, (Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 1990), p. 15.

11 Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business, (New York: Penguin Books, 1985), p. 15.

12 Susan Alder, "Education in America," in Public Education and Indoctrination (Irvington-on-Hudson: Foundation for Economic Education, 1993). Alder quoted Rossiter from Clinton Rossiter, Seedtime of the Republic: The Origin of the American Tradition of Political Liberty (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1953), p. 119.

13 Benjamin Rush. "Thoughts Upon the Mode of Education Proper in a Republic" from American Political Writing during the Founding Era, 1760-1805, Volume 1, p. 684, edited by Charles S. Hyneman and Donald S. Lutz (Indianapolis: Liberty Press, 1983) Certainly, Rush would be shocked at the exclusion of the Scriptures from modern courts of justice!

---

We fill our day with schooling at the hands of government drones obeying the god of curriculum, we soak in our daily bath of newspaper and television and radio, garnish the whole mess with cinema and home movies and computer games, but conversation and study at home and with believers in the local assembly is so rare that it could be regarded as a special occasion. What chance does one hour of sunday school stand against 40 hours or mind-numbing bell-punctuated brainwashing?

Schools Are Religious
Schools are Religious

Schools Are Religious

by Robert R. Booth
Originally posted on Covenant Media Foundation
Statement on offsite articles

Religion directs and controls our lives. It is not a question of whether people are religious, it is only a matter of which religion a person serves. This religious orientation is often not acknowledged in our day, yet God's creatures cannot escape this fundamental truth of their nature. They may worship false gods, or they may worship the true God, but they will worship someone or something. Someone's religion controls every school. Every religion vies for power and control of our culture.

One of the most useful tools in the quest for this power over the lives of men is found in the educational system. Kenneth Galbraith regards it as the successor to land and capital as the most important determinant of who controls whom. George Orwell observed in his novel, 1984, "Who controls the past controls the future; who controls the present controls the past." Understanding that whoever has power over the mind has power over the culture, Orwell had one of his characters declare, "The Party is not interested in the overt act: The thought is all we care about. We do not merely destroy our enemies; we change them." This is an excellent explanation for the increased centralization of government education. By the time the Roman Empire ended, its extensive system of local public schools was firmly under the control of the emperors. In our day we see the control of education being placed more and more into the hands of the government.

It was the purpose, from the beginning, for the government schools in the United Stated to be a moral and social force. One of the founders of compulsory public schools was Horace Mann. He saw the goals of public education as promoting the socialization of diverse peoples. Mann made the following prediction concerning the future of public education:

The common school [public school] is the institution which can receive and train up children in the elements of all good knowledge and of virtue before they are subjected to the alienating competitions of life. This institution is the greatest discovery ever made by man: we repeat it, the common school is the greatest discovery ever made by man. In two grand , characteristic attributes, it is supereminent over all others: first in its universality, for it is capacious enough to receive and cherish in its paternal bosom every child that comes into the world: and second, in the timeliness of the aid it proffers, - its early, seasonable supplies of counsel and guidance making security antedate danger. Other social organizations are curative and remedial: this is a preventative and an antidote. They come to deal diseases and wounds; this, to make the physical and moral frame invulnerable to them. Let the common school be expanded to its capabilities, let it be worked with the efficiency of which it is susceptible, and nine-tenths of the crimes in the penal code would become obsolete; the long catalogue of human ills would be abridged; men would walk more safely by day; every pillow would be more inviolable by night; property, life, and character held by stronger tenure; all rational hopes respecting the future brightened. [Common School Journal, Vol. 3, No. 1, Jan., 1841, p. 15.]

The perfectibility of men by way of universal and compulsory government education promised the naive a utopian future. "Give us your children and we will repair the world." This clearly proclaims the religious goals of modern humanism and the government schools.

Even though the most enthusiastic opposition to any blending of religion and education comes from the supporters of government schools, no school of any kind can maintain such separation. Value-free education is a contradiction of terms, and any hierarchy of values constitutes a religious system. John Dewy, another public school guru from the past, supported public schools as "religious in substance" but in a way that did not come "at the expense of a state-consciousness." He recognized that Christianity placed limits on the loyalty that one could have towards the state, but that the new religion of the schools did not.

Author Herbert Schlossberg observes that education is a series of religious acts partly because the power of assumption is so great. Assumptions are even more powerful than assertions because they bypass a persons critical faculty and thereby create prejudice. Government education assumes God to be irrelevant to the educational process when, in fact, "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge" (Proverbs 1:7). Such false assumptions by the government schools can then be combined with arguments that prove the truth of what is false. These false assumptions are particularly beguiling because they appeal to one of our worst instincts - the desire to be fashionable or at least to avoid being associated with the unfashionable or unpopular (Idols for Destruction, 1983, p. 210).

The assumptions of modern government education concerning the nature of man, the function of the state, the nature of truth, and so on, are such as to inculcate a set of presuppositions into our children that cannot escape being called religious. As Christians, we cannot allow our children to be sacrificed to this modern-day Molech we call public schools. This is a form of idolatry that many have thoughtlessly entered into. Can you imagine the ancient, faithful Jews taking their children to be taught by the Levites on the Sabbath and then handing those same children over to be educated by Canaanite schools the rest of the week? Remember, it is not a matter of whether our children will be taught religion in school; it is only a matter of which religion they will be taught.

---

[micah719]

An interesting debate about whether Christian offspring should be delivered up to godless public schooling. My own take on it is....no, let the system be starved of victims. Good luck finding a place on the planet where government does not insist on compelling you to billet their human resources of the future under your roof but prohibit you from raising them. May The Lord curse the childsnatchers of forced schooling.


Debate
Debated Issue:

It is Morally Permissible to Educate
Our Children in the Public Schools?

by Doug Wilson & Robert Simonds
Originally posted on Antithesis
Statement on offsite articles

Issue and Interchange

The goal of this regular feature is to provide our readers with opposing arguments on topics pertinent to the Christian life. We hope to encourage the reader to focus on the arguments involved in each position rather than on personal factors.

The authors selected for the respective sides in the debate are outspoken supporters of their viewpoints.

Douglas Wilson opens the debate by arguing that Scripture forbids Christians to educate their children in public schools. Mr. Wilson, M.A. (philosophy; University of Idaho), is a teaching elder of Community Evangelical Fellowship, Moscow, Idaho, and author of numerous published essays and books, including the forthcoming Turning Point series text on education, Recovering the Lost Tools of Learning (Crossway Books).

Taking an opposing position is Dr. Robert Simonds Th.D., president and founder of the National Association of Christian Educators and Citizens for Excellence in Education. Dr. Simonds served on President Reagan's "Forum to Implement the National Commission on Excellence in Education Report: A Nation at Risk" and is the Southern California Chairman of the National Association of Evangelicals.

The burden of proof in the interchange is placed on the person opening the discussion, and so Douglas Wilson will open and close the interchange.

Wilson: Scripture Forbids Us to Educate Our Children in the Public Schools

Is a Christian education something which Christian parents are morally obligated to provide for their children? In what follows, I argue the affirmative and seek to place the ground of this obligation in the plain reading of Scripture. For if a prohibition or requirement is not based on Scripture, there is obviously no true moral obligation involved.

As Christians, we must begin with the assumption that there is no area of life where Biblical principles are irrelevant. So even though the Bible does not directly address every problem in the modern world with our terminology (including the public schools), nevertheless, the Scriptures do address the problem directly. God has revealed in His Word how He wants us to rear and educate our children.

To ensure that we are talking about the same thing, I will begin with a definition of "public schools." For the purpose of my discussion here, a public school is an officially agnostic, tax-supported institution of education for dependent children. Frankly, quite aside from the following arguments, I believe any Christian who grants this definition will immediately concede that a strong case has already been made. And anyone who denies the definition will have trouble with his case because the definition is so obviously descriptive of what we call the public schools here in America.

There are a series of arguments on the necessity of Christian education that can be made from Scripture. They are:

1. Christian parents are morally obligated to keep their children out of public schools because the Scriptures expressly require a non-agnostic form of education. Consider this passage in Deuteronomy on the instruction of children.

"Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one! You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your might. And these words which I command you today shall be in your heart; you shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you rise up. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates" (Dt. 6:4-9).

It is important to remember that this required instruction in the law was not limited to "spiritual truth." It involved agriculture, economics, history, sex education, etc. -- what we call education. The Biblical mentality is not compartmentalized into two distinct areas of thought: secular and sacred. All of life is under the authority of God's revealed Word, and children were to be taught in terms of this comprehensive authority all the time.

The same mentality about the instruction of children can be seen in the New Testament: "Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. `Honor your father and mother,' which is the first commandment with a promise: `that it may be well with you and you may live long on the earth.' And you, fathers, do not provoke your children to wrath, but bring them up in the training and admonition of the Lord" (Eph. 6:1-4).

Notice that in the Deuter-onomy passage the requirement is that children live in an environment pervaded by Scripture. A thorough and Biblical instruction can only be provided successfully if it is happening all the time. Teaching in terms of God's Word must occur when walking, driving, sitting, and when lying down. Nothing could be clearer -- God wants the children of His people to live in an environment conditioned by His Word. In Ephesians, we see the same thing, although stated less directly. Children are to be brought up in something; that something is the Word of God.

Pose the question another way. What area of life has God declared to be neutral, in which it is permissible to ignore Him, and His Word, while we instruct our children? The answer is that there is no such neutral zone.

2. Christian parents are morally obligated to keep their children out of the public schools because of the requirements of the greatest commandment. Jesus requires His people to love the Lord their God with all their minds (Mt. 22:37). This means that the command to be teaching your children all the time must not to be interpreted as simply applying to religious instruction, set off by itself in an airtight compartment. If our children are not taught to think like Christians when they study math, history, or science, then they are not obeying the command to love God with all their minds. And if they are not obeying the command, the parents are held responsible. This is because parents are responsible to instruct their children in what God requires of them. And it must be remembered that Jesus taught us that this is the greatest command. It is clear that God's people, and their children, are required to love the Lord their God with all their brains. This involves more than a general acquaintance with David, Goliath, Samson, Noah, et al. Sunday School once a week will not get this job done. Nor will family devotions do for a few minutes each night.

This second argument is obviously related to the first argument presented above, although there is a difference of emphasis. Deuteronomy 6 requires instruction in all of God's standards, all of the time. The greatest commandment requires the child to receive and love this instruction with all his mind. Because parents are responsible for bringing up children in such a way that they will obey the requirements placed on them by God, it is obvious that the education they provide for their children must teach them to love God in all subjects.

3. Christian parents are morally obligated to keep their children out of the public schools because God expects parents to provide for, and protect, their children. It is truly odd that one of the most common charges made against parents who provide a Christian education for their children is that they are "sheltering" them. O tempora! O mores! What is our nation coming to? Parents sheltering children!

Because pluralism (with regard to worldviews) is a false theology (it is institutional agnosticism), Christian parents are required to protect their children from this lie. Because the public schools are an established institution, required by law to teach and practice agnosticism, Christian parents are obligated to protect children from exposure to this false teaching. The principle is acknowledged by all Christians; it is simply not applied to the issue of public education by some. I cannot imagine us having this debate about Christian kids in Vacation Bible Schools run by the Jehovah's Witnesses. So why do we treat agnosticism as a preferable heresy?

Christianity is not the only worldview that pervades all subjects; false teaching is also pervasive. If a Christian parent attempts to neutralize the false teaching, it means he has to spend many hours every night countering what the children learned that day in school. This is impossible because the parent doesn't know exactly what the children learned that day. And the children themselves have not been equipped to come back and report on what was unbiblical in what they heard. This makes responsible oversight extremely difficult, and I would argue, impossible. The only alternative is a private Christian education, which a Christian parent can provide, or monitor.

Christian parents are morally obligated to keep their children out of the public schools because sending children into an intellectual, ethical and religious war zone without adequate training and preparation is a violation of charity. In a physical war, we know that a country is desperate when they send their children to fight. In the same way, the saints in this country are in pretty sad shape. We send our kids off to be warriors, instead of training them to be warriors.

My children are being educated privately. They are being trained to hold and apply a Christian worldview. I am not trying to keep them from encounters with those who hate God; I am trying to train them and prepare them for it. We don't send adults to the mission field without training and preparation. During that time of training, they must be protected. What makes us think that sending unequipped seven-year olds off to be "salt and light" in an officially agnostic institution, without training and preparation, is consistent with charity?

Means for such preparation exist; such preparation is called a Christian education. Once such an education has been provided by the parents, and if the child is truly equipped, he may then be sent into the world. If the parents have done their job, the young adult will be more than a match for anything he meets.

4. Christian parents are morally obligated to keep their children out of the public schools because of the declared intellectual goal assigned to the Church in Scripture. Paul says, "For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal but mighty in God for pulling down strongholds, casting down arguments and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ...(II Cor. 10:4-5).

Question: Are there any strongholds in the public school system against the knowledge of God? Any such rebellious arguments? Is there any high thing that exalts itself in defiance of God? Our goal as Christians must therefore be to pull them all down. Christians who content themselves, in the educational sphere, with anything less than absolute obedience to the Lord Jesus Christ are compromising this goal given to us in Scripture.

I know of no Christian reformers of public education who have vowed that they will settle for nothing less than explicitly Christian public schools. Christian reformers generally would settle for a piece of the action, or a "say" in the great pluralistic discussion. Thus, they do not have conquest, which is the goal of II Cor. 10:4-5, in mind.

Pluralism is an attempt to make everyone leave everyone else alone; it seeks to make evangelism an offense. But if Christianity is an evangelistic religion, and it is, then pluralism is an attempt to make Christianity an offense. Christians who agree to the truce which pluralism attempts to impose are being unfaithful to the mission of the Church.

But what if some Christians do adopt such a goal of "conquest," i.e. they want the public schools to become tax-supported Christian schools? Then their attempts should be resisted for a different reason; God does not assign educational responsibilities to the civil magistrates, even if the magistrates are godly. It is not their job.

5. Christian parents are morally obligated to keep their children out of the public schools because not to do so subsidizes a lie. Every time the public school doors open, they declare their independence from God in all things. They, officially and on the record, claim the right to teach all their subjects without any submission to God and His Word. Christians who send their children to such schools are subsidizing, with their children as the payment, this particular lie, which we have already discussed.

If every Christian parent pulled their children out of the public school system, that school system, along with the lie, would collapse. I mean, the public schools would collapse if only the Southern Baptists pulled out. This means that Christians are keeping an institution dedicated to false teaching in existence.

In summary, I have argued that Christian education is not a luxury, or an option. It is part of Christian discipleship for those who have been blessed with children. Christian education is a necessity because the Bible requires non-agnostic education, because the greatest command includes loving God with all our intellectual capacity, because Christian parents should protect their children from lies, because the goal of the Christian church must be nothing less than intellectual conquest, and because this officially agnostic institution depends for its continued existence on the attendance of professing Christians.

Simonds: It is Permissible to Educate Our Children in Public Schools

A Biblical definition of morality would be: to know right from wrong and to do what is right. For the Christian, the Bible is the only infallible book of right and wrong. It is also the Bible which guides a true Christian in "how" to do what is deemed to be absolutely right -- or moral.

It is my belief that parents can (not necessarily should) morally send their children to public schools. I have five children. All have gone through our public schools (one is still in the seventh grade) from Kindergarten through medical school. They have been outstanding witnesses and evangelists through school. All are walking with Christ. All adore Jesus and live from their Bibles daily. They are all grown (except our darling little twelve-year-old tag-along) and established in Christian professions or ministry. How did this happen, when according to my learned brother Doug Wilson (whom I deeply respect and largely agree with), I have been committing sin by sending them to public schools? Granted, what works for one Christian family may not be recommended for all, and granted that what works is not necessarily right (bribes work, but the Bible says they are not right). So let us analyze the reasoning and morality of the thesis and antithesis.

First, there are basically three ways to educate your child: (1) Home Schooling -- and this is the only clearly explicit method of educating children mentioned in Scripture; (2) Christian (or other private) schooling -- which in our day and age of corrupt public schools, is still the second most preferred method of educating our children; (3) Public schools --which is the least desirable of the three options but most used.

Therefore, I would argue for the only purely scriptural method of educating our children to be home schooling. Not only do you control the curriculum, the reading materials, and the moral and spiritual worldviews your child would learn, but you control the pedagogy (methods) used to teach them.

Naturally a home school is a "Christian school," but that is not the environment implied in Mr. Wilson's thesis. Therefore, if we hold to a strict Biblical directive, home schooling, by Mr. Wilson's own definition, would be the only option. However, while contending only for Christian schools, he skips over the only purely Biblical option -- home schooling -- which severely undercuts his general rationale.

The Christian school is the more practical option for most Christian parents, because of many parents' feelings of inadequacy for handling home schooling or perhaps both parents may be working.

In any case, parents still have the primary responsibility for educating their children -- whether at home, in Christian schools, or public schools. As good as Christian schools are, generally, we constantly find many using atheistic public school materials and even textbooks. Children are not necessarily safe there. Some home schooling is the only true safeguard.

After all our promotion of Christian schools to Christian parents, only ten percent of our church children attend Christian schools. Ninety percent of all church children today attend public schools. Of 44,000,000 K-12 children, only ten percent attend private schools and only five percent of those go to Christian schools (2.5 million), according to the U.S. Department of Education.

Statistics do not prove that something is right or wrong, but they point out where we are. Public schools are most used because they are free, convenient and (mistakenly) trusted. Christian schools are less used by Christians because of cost, inconvenience, and lack of information.

Let us analyze our brother's rationale, which would leave Christians who choose to send their children to public schools with a very big guilt trip. Not that guilt is not proper concerning sin. But to imply or explicitly state that it is immoral to send a child to public school may indicate an unscriptural attitude of judgment in an area of choice for Christians.

Now a brief look at Doug Wilson's rationale. First, Mr. Wilson defines public schools as "an officially agnostic, tax-supported institution of education for dependent children." And he rests the greatest weight of his argument on this presupposition and says, "any Christian who grants this definition will immediately concede...." Please note that this statement is inaccurate. That then weakens his entire thesis. Officially, public schools exist "to provide education to all America's children. The schools must remain neutral on teaching `of' religion, but not be inhibited in the teaching `about' religion."

In most cases, teachers try hard to follow this dictum. Of course, not always -- and we hear more about those who don't than those who do.

Secondly, the author says the "Scriptures expressly require a non-agnostic form of education." Agreed! But the Scriptures do not explicitly say where the theistic (Godly) education must come from. Obviously, though, the Bible makes it clear that it must come from the Christian home. The Scriptures admonish us to train up our own child -- not someone else's child. The schools may "teach" a child -- only a parent can "train" up a child. Teaching is only the first half of training. Teaching may cover the "about" portion of religious training, but training is the second and higher plane of indoctrinating a child into an automatic response action.

A pilot may be taught how to fly an A-15 jet fighter airplane. But if he is not trained before flying it he will surely die. Even so, Christians must learn the difference between teaching and training.

Every parent must accept the moral responsibility to teach and "train-up" their own children in their own home -- no matter where they may attend day school -- public or private. To do otherwise would not fulfill God's law. We would miss the mark. It would then be sin and not moral.

It should be pointed out that Daniel grew up in an environment of a hedonistic, occultic culture -- Babylon. His home training completely protected him. Mr. Wilson argues that parents can't help their children at night because they don't know exactly what their children learned that day. Really? Why not? We question our own children thoroughly. We read every single text and reading assignment. We provide them with overview, Scriptural truth, and point out errors. Christian parents' real moral obligation is to be available to help them as "you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down and when you rise up" (Deut. 6:8-9). Those are all done in the home.

In II Corinthians 10:4-5, we have a call to Christians to bring down the strongholds of the enemy -- not by keeping our kids out -- but by exercising good citizenship and being "salt" and "light" in our schools. We should be taking the entire system back to the control of Christian parents, not abdicating our moral and spiritual obligation to protect our own children and all of America's 44,000,000 K-12 students.

We have been copping-out for thirty years now. And what has it gotten us? From 1979-89, one third of all church children have dropped out of church -- largely because of an atheistic, no-value system in our public schools. Now that makes a great point for Mr. Wilson's thesis to put our children in Christian schools, right? Wrong. Why?

Because Christians are not putting them in Christian schools, in spite of our urging them to do so. Why not take another approach to this dilemma and make our public schools and our children's education the number one priority in every church. We could elect a majority of school board members in every one of America's 15,700 school districts.

Christian parents could then control all curriculum, textbooks, reading, teaching, and administration in just three short years. A dream? Hardly. We are already doing it by organizing a Citizens for Excellence in Education chapter in all 15,700 districts. The only thing stopping us from complete victory is a lack of funding. It can be done if we believe in God.

Why aren't all churches jumping in and making this total victory possible? Because we are still holding on to this archaic philosophy that it is immoral to send your children to public schools -- or even to be involved with public schools. Thank God that is changing. We have 75,000 Christian parents now involved with over 600 chapters and 1500 school districts now under local Christian influence.

And shouldn't Christian parents be trained to protect their children from bad education, no matter if it's in public or Christian schools? I could write a nice little book just on first hand counseling I've done with Christian parents with children in Christian schools, whose children have been taught everything from "values clarification" (no values -- all things are relative), to the occult -- and even child molestation. Are all Christian schools safe? Certainly not. Is a Christian "immoral" to send his child to those Christian schools? No! They should work to correct the problem, not run away and hide. This is true also in the public schools.

If it is "immoral" to send our child to a public school, then we must ask ourselves some very serious question. Is it "immoral" for a Christian to work for a secular company -- an ungodly and worldly bunch? Is it immoral for a Christian to vote for a person who is not a thoroughly born again, godly, Christian? Do we opt for the lesser of two evils or do nothing and thereby often choose the most evil of all? Shall we never use public facilities of any kind which are financed by taxes or run by civil authorities? Shall we stop paying taxes which are subsidizing public schools?

Our dear brother says that when we send our children to public schools we are subsidizing evil by our own taxes. But do you not pay those taxes whether you use the schools or not? Does not a Christian who pays taxes for his child's education get double-taxed when he must pay for his child's Christian school education? Is that good stewardship? Is it justice? No!

Mr. Wilson calls Christians to conquest: "The goal of the Christian church must be nothing less than intellectual conquest." I agree! Then why should we try to put a guilt trip on Christians as "immoral" for doing exactly that -- teaching their children to "conquer" evil in their own lives and resist the world's sins. If that kind of Christian reasoning long endures, you will see the demise of the church in our nation in just two more generations. May our loving Lord and Savior Jesus Christ help us all to be rational, accurate, loving, patient, and kind to one another. How I love God's dear people! May we all commit ourselves to loving all innocent children who need our love, hard work, and victories in their behalf. Selah!

Wilson Responds

It is a distinct pleasure to debate with a Christian gentleman. I trust that in the exchange which follows I will be able to express myself as graciously as Dr. Simonds. I am afraid, however, that all the graciousness in the world will not be able to paper over the fundamental difference here. And, because this is a debate, to the differences we go!

First, Dr. Simonds contends that I skipped over the only purely Biblical option, which he identifies as home-schooling. The reason I skipped over that was because it was not the subject of the debate. (I also skipped over the dissolution of the monasteries under Henry VIII.) It is true that nowhere in my piece do I say anything about home-schools vs. private Christian institutions. The debate between them is important, but it is primarily pedagogical, not ethical. All my arguments were geared to whether Christian children should be in public schools, and they are arguments with which both home schoolers and Christian school advocates can readily agree.

Dr. Simonds also pointed out that not all Christian schools are good. "Children are not necessarily safe there." This is quite true, but it is also not the subject of the debate. The question is not whether it is morally required to send your child to any and every institution bearing the name Christian school.

Closer to the heart of the debate, Dr. Simonds challenges my definition of the public schools. The part of my definition he appears to question is the claim that public schools are "officially agnostic." He says, "Please note that this statement is inaccurate." He then goes on to say, "The schools must remain neutral on the teaching `of' religion, but not 'about' religion." He then goes on to argue that a "non-agnostic" form of education can be provided by godly parents as a result of a combination of the base education provided at school, mixed with the particular doctrines and beliefs of the parents at home. The picture that comes to my mind is the one of how paints are mixed at a paint store. The base paint is neutral, and various colors are added to suit the customer. Only in this case the customers mix in their own colors at home.

Now if the schools must remain neutral on the teaching of religion, how is this not official agnosticism? They are allowed to teach about religion, true, but does this include the permission to say which one is right? Or is that a detail? And where does Scripture allow us to believe that truth can be learned this way, with a certain percentage of basic, neutral facts, which are then mixed with the truths of Christianity? The Bible teaches that all truth is God's truth, and none of it is neutral. There is no such thing as neutrality.

On a personal note, I was frankly impressed when Dr. Simonds said that he and his wife read every single assignment. It is good that he and his wife discuss with theirkids what they heard during the day. And apparently the degree of their commitment is reflected in the character of their children; we all rejoice that they are walking with the Lord. But I have direct experience with this sort of thing too; I am one of four children, all of whom went all the way through the public schools system, and all of whom are still Christians. Whenever I was taught something which I understood to be in conflict with the faith of my parents, I rejected the lie. But the key phrase here is which I understood. There were many lies which got by my childish defenses. I am now thirty-seven, and I am still unlearning my public school education.

Dr. Simonds agreed with an application of II Cor. 10:4-5 to education, but said that Christian parents ought to be taking control of the entire public school system, instead of abandoning it. But this creates two questions: First, why should we have to do all this if it is possible to provide a godly education for our kids by combining Christian ed at home with neutral ed received during the day? If it is true that "in most cases teachers try hard" to follow the dictum that requires the public schools to be neutral in the teaching of religion, and Dr. Simonds says that it is, then why do we have to take over anything? Why do we not simply concentrate on mixing in our own colors at home?

Secondly, if we answer this call to conquest, do we take the schools back in order to make them explicitly Christian, or do we take them back because the secularists cannot be trusted to keep them neutral, while we Christians can keep them neutral?

If the former, then are we not formally establishing the Christian religion in a tax-funded institution? Are we not requiring the non-Christians to pay for the propagation of a faith they do not believe? And is this not doing unto them what we do not like done unto us? Is Dr. Simonds making this a debate between advocates of different kinds of Christian education, i.e. tax-supported vs. privately-financed?

And if it is the latter option, I would ask for the Scriptural imperative which requires us to fight to maintain a neutral institution, with a mission to propagate neutral facts.

Dr. Simonds then says that 33% of all church children have dropped out of church, largely because, he says, of the atheistic no-value system in our public schools. He then offers this argument, which I frankly find quite baffling. But perhaps I have misunderstood. He says, "Now that makes a great point for Mr. Wilson's thesis, to put our children in Christian schools, right? Wrong. Why? Because Christians are not putting them in Christian schools in spite of our urging them to do so." Let us apply this argument elsewhere. People who smoke 22 packs of Turkish cigarettes a day are dropping like flies. Mr. Wilson has urged them to quit. Now if they do not quit, and they continue to assume room temperature, can we reason from this that they ought not to quit? I don't think so.

He then argues that if churches made the public schools a high priority, we could elect Christians to school boards all over the country. We could then control "all curriculum, textbooks, reading, teaching and administration in just three short years." Again, control to what purpose? Explicitly Christian public schools? Or schools run by Christians to be neutral?

The hindrance, he says, to this conquest of the public schools is that we "are still holding onto this archaic philosophy" that it is immoral to send your children to public schools. Now even if what I argue here is wrong, it is hardly archaic. The Christian school movement in America is very young, and the home school movement is even younger. Those Christian parents whose kids are in the public schools are the current establishment; the reformation, the change, comes from those parents seeking to provide a Christian education.

Dr. Simonds concludes by asking whether, given my reasoning, it is immoral for a Christian to be in the world, rubbing shoulders with all the pagans out there. The biblical answer to this is that we are supposed to be in the world (see for example 1 Corinthians 5:9-10). But we must be constantly vigilant to see that the world stays out of us, and we must take particular care to keep the world out of our children. We must train our children to go into the world; we must not help the world go into our children.

At one point in his conclusion, I am afraid Dr. Simonds misinterpreted my argument. He says, "Our dear brother says when we send our children to public schools we are subsidizing evil by our taxes." What I said was, "Christians who send their children to such schools are subsidizing, with their children as the payment, this particular lie..." About half my property taxes go to support the public school system, and I submissively pay those taxes; they are God's chastisement. I am biblically allowed to pay this tax, because Caesar's image is on what I send them. But God's image is on my children, and I am forbidden to render them to Caesar (Matt. 22:21).

In conclusion, I appreciate the tone of Dr. Simonds' arguments. I am grateful for his commitment to his children. I am glad that we can agree that atheistic no-value education is harmful to children. But after that point, we part company. I believe that all the education of Christian children should be thoroughly, consistently, and explicitly Christian, and that it should be financed voluntarily by Christians. In contrast, Dr. Simonds believes part of the education need not be explicitly Christian, and that Christian parents should provide the Christianity at home.

Simonds Responds

The argument that it is immoral to educate a child in public schools certainly has the high moral ground of Scripture, when evaluating the immorality children are exposed to in our public schools today.

However, we must be careful to keep our thinking clear and unclouded by our own beautiful Christian prejudices. Public schools are, at present, such an immoral and academically bankrupt system that we would find it difficult to recommend the public schools as a solution to educating our own or our nation's children. I have never recommended that anyone send their children to public schools. However, ninety percent of our church children still go to public schools.

We must clearly differentiate between an immoral school system and an immoral parent. Nothing could be more immoral or academically and politically bankrupt than our college and university system today. However, please observe how many of our Christian college professors and even our pastors have received a good portion of their education in these secular institutions of corruption. Are they all immoral because of it? The truth is, sadly, that you are "distinguished" if your degrees are secular.

Most of our Christian colleges and day schools accept and honor secular degrees over Christian college degrees, sad as that may be. The Christian colleges urge all Christians to send their children to them for a Christian education. But do they only hire professors with Christian college degrees? Hardly. They are almost an exception in some Christian colleges and day schools. So we are not too consistent in our argument for "only" Christian school education.

A hundred years ago education was for the soul and character of a child. George Roche's A World Without Heroes describes the need to educate Christian heroes who rise above their conditions to transcend even selflessness. Those were the days! Today we are struggling to produce literate graduates among our general student population.

Real education, with Scriptural morality, will civilize the "fallen nature" of man's proclivities. It will not save it or transform it. That is quite personal and individual. We must get back to this in the public schools. We can. Almost everyone you talk to wants to return to a fundamentally cohesive value-system based on the Christian (Biblical) ethic. Those controlling the system do not.

Francis Schaeffer and other solid Christian thinkers advocate that Christians infiltrate all areas of our culture and society -- the arts, education, and government. They believe in Christ's gospel of salting the earth and the power of light to dispel darkness. We and our children can do this, together, as God directs.

I'm not saying that Christian schools are a cop-out. I advocate them to all parents. If your children are in public schools, however immoral the system, neither you nor your children are made immoral by going there. You can change them and completely turn them around.

We do not advocate making Christian schools out of our public schools. We do advocate restoring our Western culture of traditional values (Christian) and academic excellence to our public schools. All 44,000,000 K-12 children will be evangelized by this process of morally civilizing the human spirit to a receptive plane of moral consciousness capable of receiving the incredible experience of "faith" -- producing the new birth in Christ Jesus. I call this "Impact Evangelism."

Our public schools are an old world institution relying on a "consensus" of values. That consensus is now lost in the fragmented public arena. The withdrawal of Christian influence has allowed every cult, religion, and philosophy that is foreign to our faith and culture to flood in. Christians have abdicated their mandate to be salt and light. We must not "sacrifice" our children -- we must nurture and train them in our homes, while they receive their formal education.

We have slowly merged into a Christian ghetto mentality. Blacks cry out for all black schools and colleges; gays and feminists want to rewrite the curriculum; Christians want their Christian agenda. In a word -- fragmentation is now a reality.

Can we restore to our public schools this Western culture of Judeo-Christian core values as that base of all positive productive education? The answer is a resounding, Yes! We are doing it. Many of our school districts are now coming closer to our ideal for education. To do less would be aiding in the demise of our Western (Christian) culture. Every Christian parent should be involved in this process -- not only to protect their own children (our number one priority) but to affect our entire society. The same is true for all Biblically based churches. Ironically, the non-Biblically based churches are the ones most involved. May God awaken and unify all evangelicals to "faith" not "fear." We can conquer the forces of evil and save our church children. But we must believe God. "For the wicked shall not rule the godly, lest the godly be forced to do wrong" (Ps. 125:3).

Christians today are condemned enough by the world. Let's not perpetuate the spirit of condemnation to one another by saying that we are immoral to send our children to public schools. Let us say that our public schools are immoral -- not parents (Christian or non-Christian) who send their children there. It is not immoral to send a child to public school, but it may not be the wisest thing to do, if another alternative is available.

We are all "in" the world (society), but we are urged in Scripture to be not "of" the world. Our children must learn that and live it. We must train them in that daily, in our homes, no matter where they go to school.

In summary, let me congratulate my brother colleague for his commitment to Biblical education for all children -- especially all Christian children. It would be more comfortable for me to be debating his side of the issue. But, nothing so important is simple.

My hope is that we Christians will be charitable to each other's views and totally committed to restoring good education to our public schools. It's the largest mission field in the world today. What a great victory it will be to win them back to Christian control (it only takes three out of five school board members to control an entire local system).

For that very large majority of Christians (ninety percent of all Christian families) who have their children in public schools, I would suggest: (1) Home school your children if you feel competent, both parents do not work, and you want the safest method for your children's education; (2) Put your children in a private school if it is available and you can afford it. But monitor everything carefully; (3) Keep your children in a public school, but go over every assignment and textbook, pointing out errors or misleading information. Train them in Christ's way at home and in church. Spend more time than most with your children. Keep your conscience clear! Walk in holiness. In His light may the joy of faith overcome your fears. Pray for every church to open a Christian school, if possible. Pray for God's blessing on all innocent children. Pray that men of God will weep for our fallen nation.

Wilson's Concluding Remarks

As much as I appreciate the gracious manner in which my brother has conducted himself in debate, I cannot say that he has effectively engaged with my arguments. Nevertheless, he did clearly answer one of my questions. With the reader's kind permission, I will respond to that answer in some detail; in the second part of this essay, I will make a series of brief responses to other miscellaneous points.

Dr. Simonds was clear that he did not advocate making the public schools into Christian schools, but rather that he was advocating a return to the traditional values of our Western culture, along with a return to academic excellence. To this proposal, I have a series of questions and responses.

First, where does the Bible tell us to fight to reestablish Western culture or traditional values? Obviously, the Bible is silent when it comes to any such mission. If II Cor. 10:4-5 contains our marching orders, and we agree it does, then we must note that every thought is to be brought into submission to Christ. We are commanded to bring nothing into submission to Western culture. In the Great Commission, we were not commanded to go into all the earth and make Aristotelian-Platonic-Judeo-Christians, baptizing them in the name of art, music and literature.

So, again, if we go into the public schools, and fight for certain "core values" do we do so as Christians, or as plain and ordinary Decent Folks? And what are these core values? Do they include the greatest commandment, i.e. that we love the true God with everything we have? If so, then we are fighting for tax-subsidized Christian schools. If not, then we have abandoned the core of our core values. I believe this dilemma illustrates a central problem in our debate; some of our definitions are not the same. I would argue that "core values" are those which are at the core of Biblical revelation. Dr. Simonds appears to be arguing that Christians should understand "core values" as those which Christians share with decent non-Christians.

Secondly, even if the reintroduction of traditional values were our mission, how is it possible to fight for the fruit without fighting for the tree? The Western culture which Dr. Simonds rightly wants to protect did not arise in our midst ex nihilo. It was the result of an explicit affirmation of Christianity proper. I have no problem with Dr. Simonds' desire to protect our great heritage; we part company on the appropriate means to that end. The tree is the Lord Jesus Christ, and not a traditional morality which is consistent in a general way with Christian morality.

Thirdly, how is it possible to think that such a civilizing of the public school kids is a precursor to evangelism? I am afraid that Dr. Simonds has it backwards. Evangelism results in civilization, and not the other way around. Dr. Simonds' words are worth studying closely. "...children will be evangelized by this process of morally civilizing the human spirit to a receptive plane of moral consciousness capable of receiving the incredible experience of 'faith' -- producing the new birth in Christ Jesus." But moral instruction of this kind will not prepare the ground for saving faith. Even if successful, it is more likely to produce self-righteous moralism than a realization of sinfulness, and need for a Savior. The Bible teaches that sinners are dead in their trespasses and sins. Civilizing "improvements" do not prepare a corpse for life any more than make-up applied by an undertaker prepares a man for the resurrection.

And now for some brief scattershot: Dr. Simonds concedes that the current moral tone in the public schools is horrendous, but this is not what makes them dangerous. I would object just as strongly to officially agnostic public schools which maintained high standards of discipline. We must never forget that prostitutes are closer to the kingdom of God than theologians; this is because prostitutes know they have a problem. It is easier to be misled by a false Savior before he has fallen on his face. In the same way, it was easier to be misled by public education before the fruit of the lie became so evident, as it has in the last few years. Public education in America in the past had high standards of discipline, etc. Consequently, more Christians were deceived at that time than are deceived now. The public schools then were more of a threat to the Christian faith.

My colleague appears to agree with David Hume that one cannot derive ought from is. In his second response, he acknowledges that statistics "do not prove something right or wrong, but they point out where we are." Nevertheless, Dr. Simonds appears to be trying to make some point with such statistics; they keep coming up. In his last response, he says, "However, ninety percent of our church children still go to public schools." I am quite prepared to grant the figure. But this simply means that we have persuaded a tithe, and have a lot of work before us.

Dr. Simonds says this: "Let us say our public schools are immoral -- not parents...who send their children there." But if the schools are immoral, then does no responsibility fall on parents who continue to send their kids? And if our goal is to turn things around, is it right to expose our children to such immorality in the meantime?

And lastly, congratulating the reader on his sight of land, I would argue that to say Christian parents are morally obligated to provide a Christian education for their children is not necessarily to perpetuate a "spirit of condemnation." I have argued my case without a legalistic spirit; my desire is to help parents with their awesome responsibilities, not to weigh them down with extraneous guilt. But to those parents who are working through this crucial issue, I say this: If these arguments are Biblical, then it is necessary to obey them. If not, then it is necessary to answer them.

[micah719]

If I could step back in time, one of the places I'd go is to an "English" class in 1985; I'd plant the fearsome Boot of Micah (tm) into a certain flabby God-less communist posterior masquerading as teacher such that the lardbag of wind landed outside the school grounds. Then I'd quickly go back to 1978 and kidnap Mrs Gollum (no kidding, that was her name and no, she was a lovely and strict old-school Grammar Gramma) and put her in charge of that class rather than retiring.

No idea where the rest of my classmates ended up, or where that comsymp scum is nowadays, but if we'd had some proper education instead of that red indoctrination things might surely be different. Of course, at the same time it would have been necessary to turf out the commie Geography teacher, the commie German teacher, and the commie Maths teacher. I think the Science teacher was ok, he was ex military and hated by the rest of the staff and most of the students but we got on like a houseful-of-commies on fire.

One last thing....you might not know this, but I object strongly to socialism in any form, and especially when it tries to slither into church, school and home. The town dump, jail and cemetary are more suitable places for that sort of thing.


posted in full from:
Trivium Pursuit: The Transformation of Classical Education

The Transformation of Classical Education

by Harvey and Laurie Bluedorn. Copyright April, 2001. Revised August 2001. All rights reserved.

And be not conformed to this world; but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God. (Romans 122)
What is Classical Education?

Is Classical Education reading Homer and Plato, or Caesar and Cicero? Many classical educators would say yes – reading such literature is an essential part of a classical education. But, does an unbridled focus upon classical – Greek and Roman – literature lead us toward Christ?

We define a Classical Education differently. We pursue a classical model and a classical method for education – namely, the Trivium – but we have only an incidental interest in the classical humanist literature. We do not want to pursue these three tools of learning – classical languages, skill in thinking, and skill in communication – so that we can really read Homer and really think like Aristotle and really speak like Demosthenes. As Christians, we want to learn languages, logic, and rhetoric so that we can really read, and think, and speak – period! We want to master these useful tools, but we do not want to use these tools as the ancient Greeks and Romans used them. They used these tools to serve everything except the true and living God. We want to use them to serve nothing but the true and living God. The Greeks and Romans took these tools and used them to pursue their own purposes. We are only reclaiming what is rightfully the inheritance of the godly, cleaning them up, and turning them back to serve our Lord. The Scriptures contain everything we need to test every word of man, and to convert what is redeemable to godly use. Before we can use anything – including classical literature – we must sift it through the critical screen of the Scriptures.
What Do We Mean by "Classical?"

We choose to limit our meaning of "classical" to include only what is of good form and lasting value (= classical), and which conforms to a Biblical standard within a Biblical worldview (= Christian). We must carefully sift everything which is classical in the humanist sense through the critical screen of the Scriptures, and we must give whatever passes that screening a new meaning within the Biblical worldview. So, by "classical," we do not mean all culture and literature of ancient times, or of mediaeval times, or of renaissance times, or even of colonial American times. We do not want to revive some previous period of supposed glory. We are not bound to the classical humanist literature or tradition. We focus instead upon what – out of all of these cultures and times – is redeemable for Christ. We want to sort through the rubble and redeem only what we can bring into conformity to Christian order and under the rule of God’s law.
A Biblical Model for Education

If we are to transform classical education in order to make it serve Christ, then we need to follow the principles of a Biblical model for education, which include
1. All true education must begin with the Word of God.

And that from a child thou hast known the holy scriptures, . . . All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable . . . That the man of God may be perfect, throughly furnished unto all good works. (Second Timothy 315-17)

God’s Word is a sufficient guide for all things necessary in life. God’s word opens our eyes to the correct way to view the world, and teaches us principles which direct how we should live in the real world. It tells us the proper order of things and the proper relationship between things. It gives us truths to establish our knowledge, values to guide our understanding, and goals to direct our wisdom. Therefore, knowledge of the Scriptures is of first importance. An education which does not give first place to the Word of God, does not measure up to the standard of God’s Word.
2. God has given the family sole jurisdiction over the education of children at home.

Therefore shall ye lay up these my words in your heart and in your soul . . . . And ye shall teach them [to] your children, speaking of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, when thou liest down, and when thou risest up. (Deuteronomy 1118,19; compare 49,10; 64-9)

And, ye fathers, provoke not your children to wrath; but bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. (Ephesians 64)

The father is ultimately responsible for his children’s education. Working with his wife, and with whomever else he may choose to employ in his service, he directs their education toward godly goals. The primary role in determining a child’s educational success is not played by the curriculum, nor by the school, nor by the teacher, nor even by the mother, but by the father. Our modern culture is under an educational curse.

And he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse. (Malachi 46)
3. The goal of education is to fully prepare a child for adult life.

Train up a child in the way he should go; and when he is old, he will not depart from it. (Proverbs 226)

According as his divine power hath given unto us all things that pertain unto life and godliness . . . . (Second Peter 13)

There is more to education than academics. A complete education should prepare a child for mature adult life. All elements of education should work toward preparing sons to make a livelihood and to be husbands and fathers, and toward preparing daughters to be wives and mothers and to manage their households. True education will build a genuine family-oriented culture upon the foundation of God’s word.
4. The ultimate goal of education is holiness – to teach separation to God in order to serve Him.

And ye shall be holy unto me; for I the Lord am holy, and have severed you from other people, that ye should be mine. (Leviticus 2026)

For God hath not called us unto uncleanness, but unto holiness. (First Thessalonians 47)

All education is essentially religious. When state educators leave God out of every subject, and they teach the social perfectibility of man, they thereby inculcate the religion of atheistic humanism, and they separate children for the service of society through the state. When Christian educators relate every subject to God, and they teach the redemption of the world in Christ alone, they thereby inculcate the religion of Biblical reality, and they separate children for the service of God through Christ. Any education which is truly Biblical will teach children how to distinguish good from evil, truth from falsehood, right from wrong, and holy from unholy.

And that ye may put difference between holy and unholy, and between unclean and clean; (Leviticus 1010)

But strong meat belongeth to them that are of full age, even those who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil. (Hebrews 514)
Why Do Christian Parents Want to Follow a Classical Style for Education?

1. Academics. Certainly some parents are attracted to a classical style of education because of the academic achievement it promises. They want their children to have all of the advantages which come from knowing the classical languages (Latin and Greek), from knowing how to think (Logic), and from knowing how to communicate (Rhetoric). They have high standards for their children’s education. Much of this flows from a sincere desire to give their children the tools to excel for the glory of God.

2. Results. Children who have the basic tools of learning – the Trivium – are able to move forward and master any area of learning on their own. Whatever our goals may be, the classical style of education lays the broadest and most solid foundation for achieving them. Parents recognize how teaching their children to teach themselves will free their children to better serve God in the world.

3. Methodology. The best reason for choosing a classical style of schooling is simply because this is the natural model and method for education – which God wrote into reality. So what if the Greeks and Romans used it to serve their ungodly purposes? We simply take it back, clean it up, and use it to serve God in the way which He originally designed. The classical style of education has been successful for thousands of years because it conforms to the created order of things. It works well because it matches reality. If we ever learned anything, then we learned it by the Trivium method – whether we knew it or not. But it is always better to know what we are doing, and that’s what Teaching the Trivium is all about.
Don’t Try This at Home

If we try to follow a classroom model in our homeschool – dragging in the desks and chalkboard, conforming to a one-size-fits-all scope-and-sequence method, following a rigid bell-ringer schedule, and the like – we may buckle under the burden. That kind of schooling does not fit well in a homeschool environment. Rare is the pair of parents who have the time and the talents to bear such burdens. It will truly test our determination to homeschool. The great strength and advantage of homeschooling is that it releases us from the burdens of the classroom and invites us into the natural schooling environment of one-on-one tutoring in our own home.

Homeschoolers are raising a generation of custom-built children – no factory models here. We want to keep it that way. The classical model and method for education leaves plenty of room for the several different approaches to homeschooling – from Charlotte Mason to Konos. The goal of a classical style of Homeschooling is to tutor children in those skills which will make them able to teach themselves whatever they need to learn throughout their life. Our purpose is to show you that you can homeschool in a classical style with a Christian vision, and without buckling under the burden.

This article is based upon Chapter One of the new book, Teaching the Trivium: Christian Homeschooling in a Classical Style, by Harvey and Laurie Bluedor

[micah719]

Gatto has explained that the roots of the sabotage go much further back, but this article fleshes out some of the more recent "advances" in turning students into Winstons. Not Churchills, the 1984 kind of Winston, though not as thoughtful and enterprising or successful. We've been had.

posted in full from:
Subversion of Education in America
The Subversion of Education in America: Lesson #1
By Alan Caruba

I'll bet you think that the problems with our nation's schools are a fairly recent phenomenon. Wrong. It dates backs to the 1960's. Those that have implemented the subversion of our educational system have sought to fly well below the radar of public awareness, depending on stealth and duplicity to achieve the wreckage that has already stunted the lives of thousands who have passed through it.

No other topic has evoked as much email as did our weekly "Warning Signs" commentary, "Indoctrination, Not Education." Good. Time to wake up America!

In this and three other commentaries, I will walk you through the history of the problem with the help of an extraordinary book, "The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America" by Charlotte Thomson Iserbyt. The facts I will share with you are found in a fat compendium of research by this former senior official with the US Department of Education who discovered the mother lode, copied it, and fled. She is one of AmericaÕs unsung heroes.

As Iserbyt points out, in the 1960's "American education would henceforth concern itself with the importance of the group rather than with the importance of the individual." The purpose of education would shift to focus on the studentÕs emotional health, rather than academic learning. Remember the 1960's? Sex, drugs and rock'n roll? Drop out, tune in, and turn on? Just about everything that is wrong with America today had its genesis in this pathetic decade of youthful self-indulgence."

In 1965, there were two major federal initiatives developed with funding from The Elementary and Secondary Education Act passed that year. One was the 1965-1969 Behavioral Science Teacher Education Program and the other was the publication by the government of "Pacesetters in Innovation", a 584-page catalogue of behavior modification programs to be used by the schools.

Let me repeat that: a catalogue of behavior modification programs! We're not talking of programs to teach students anything. We are talking about programs to indoctrinate children passing through the system to believe in values contrary to those on which this nation was based.

In brief, the intention was to create a generation or two of Americans who would accept the United Nations, not the United States, as their new "nation", a global nation, one-world government. The last thing the conspirators wanted was a nation of individuals who could or would actually think for themselves. This is how we ended up with Bill Clinton, the classic student achiever of the 1960's.

Iserbyt writes that, "In 1960, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization's Convention Against Discrimination was signed in Paris. This convention laid the groundwork for control of American education, both public and private, by UN agencies and agents."

Now connect the dots. In 1960, "Soviet Education Programs: Foundations, Curriculums, Teacher Preparation" was published under the auspices of the US Department of Health, Education and Welfare. It was the blueprint for the US school-to-work restructuring that would take place and it would rely on the "Pavlovian conditioned reflex theory." The mastermind of mind control and conditioning was a psychologist, Dr. B.F. Skinner who was the guru of the mess that passes for education in America today.

Though hard to believe even now, the US adopted the Soviet Communist approach to education. In 1961, Rep. John M. Ashbrook tried to alert Congress to what was happening. Citing a document published by the Department of Health, Education and Welfare called "A Federal Education Agency for the Future, " he called the new education programs "a blueprint for complete domination and direction of our schools from Washington. Guess what? He was right.

That is why the educational reform this nation really needs is the complete elimination of the US Department of Education. It won't happen. For the same reason we are now only learning that those "Red baiters" of the 1950's were right to assert the Department of State was shot through with Communists, no one in 2001 is going to believe that the US Department of Education is modeled on Communist theories.

The Subversion of Education in America: Lesson #2
By Alan Caruba

Just how did education in America turn from being a system that imparts knowledge to one that uses behavior modification techniques to influence the attitudes and beliefs of those passing through it?

To achieve this, beginning in the 1960's, the perpetrators of the subversion have employed deception to achieve their goals. Earlier this month, a New Jersey daily newspaper ran an editorial, "Let board members speak", noting that members of a local school board had been restricted from speaking to the press to avoid "confusion" about the board's programs and objectives. "But this isn't about 'confusion'," said the editorial. "It's about control", adding "And it is insulting to the public and the idea of open local government."

There is nothing "open" about the effort to subvert education in America. It only has that appearance because it takes place at presumably local school boards or in a state education department. Always, the vehicle is a governmental agency. The controlling player, however, is the US Department of Education.

The objective of those who control our educational systems has long been to produce poorly educated, little world citizens, ready to forego the liberties guaranteed by the oldest living Constitution. The system introduced into American schools mirrors the Soviet and Communist Chinese systems that produce a compliant and complacent population.

To achieve this, they have had to dumb-down the students passing through the system. On February 17, 2001, the Los Angeles Times reported that the president of the University of California "wants to eliminate the SAT as a requirement for admission to all eight of the university's undergraduate campuses." What a great way to further dilute all standards for academic achievement!

In January 2001, the Times reported that the University of California kicked out 2,009 students, six percent of last year's freshman class, for failing to master basic math and English skills in their first year of classes. These are skills that should have been mastered in their first twelve years in California schools! It means that the diplomas they received are worthless pieces of paper.

This pattern repeats itself from state to state because it is the educational system that is failing American students. The President's emphasis on testing misses the point entirely!

In the January/February 2001 issue of The American Enterprise, devoted to why some few schools succeed while the majority fail, Karl Zinsmeister writes that "it's extremely interesting how many common traits are shared by the successful schools we profile. A remarkably similar basic formula applies in almost all of these places: high demands on students, strict discipline, a strong and unapologetic moral component, including a respect for religion, an emphasis on teaching intellectual basics, a preference for time-tested books and curricula, clear standards of dress, grooming, and comportment, and an insistence on politeness, respect and courtesy."

Compare that to schools in your area where the way students dress is an offense to decorum, the language they use is replete with profanities, and their chief complaint is that they have too much homework.

President Bush has bought into the Education Establishment's systematic stupification of students. He is not the first President to fall prey to this effort. To learn the facts, you must read The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America Charlotte Thomson Iserbyt.

The President has proposed a five billion-dollar program to help children learn to read. Please! Please, please, will someone explain to me why spending even more money will answer the question of why our schools, soaking up billions a year, are NOT teaching this already?

One need only look at the realities of education in Texas to see why the call for national testing standards is a deception. An excellent article by Jerry Jesness in the November 2000 issue of Reason magazine blows away the hype about the test scores of Texas students. Despite apparent improvements, a closer look at the test scores of basic skills places young Texans in 39th place for SAT scores.

In 1984, the State adopted the Texas Educational Assessment of Minimal Skills that established minimal standards for graduation. The result has been that a considerable amount of time is spent "teaching to the test" in schools throughout Texas. Students are taught strategies to pass the text. For example, the acquisition of real arithmetical skills is sacrificed to methods that include drawing and counting sticks! This is not progress and the test is, essentially, meaningless.

All this was foretold back in the 1970's as the "educrats" continued their efforts to undermine the teaching of basic knowledge. In 1976, Catherine Barrett, then president of the National Education Association, gave a speech in which she said, "First, we will help all of our people understand that school is a concept and not a place. We will not confuse "schooling" with education. The school will be the community, the community the school." This predates Hillary Clinton's "it takes a village" concept, but it reflects a communist view that all of society must be employed to form the views of students. Individualism is bad. Conforming to the group is good.

Barrett went on to say "We will need to recognize that so-called basic skills, which currently represent nearly the total effort in elementary schools, will be taught in one quarter of the present school day. The remaining time will be devoted to what is truly fundamental and basic---time for academic inquiry, time for students to develop their own interests, time for a dialogue between students and teachers, more than a dispenser of information, the teacher will be a conveyor of values, a philosopher. Students will learn to write love letters and lab notes."

You may want to read this again. The then-head of the NEA was talking about turning the school day into one devoted to just about everything other than the teaching of reading, writing and arithmetic. Teachers were, instead, to become "agents of change."

The change incorporated into today's educational programs is intended to change the entire social structure of our society and the values that had made it great. Competition and achievement in the acquisition of basic knowledge and the skills to implement that knowledge are jettisoned in favor of changing attitudes about family, patriotism, religion, and sexuality. Look around you and ask yourself why we now except all forms of "families." Look around you and ask why we live in a cultural environment drenched with sexuality without responsibility. Ask yourself why millions fail to vote. Look at the way the expression of religious values is continually derided.

In 1972, Dr. Chester M. Pierce, MD, of Harvard University wrote an article entitled "Becoming Planetary Citizens: A Quest for Meaning" that appeared in the November issue of Childhood Education. He was concerned that children, by the age of five, "already have a lot of political attitudes", among which were "a tenacious loyalty to his country and its leader." What he wanted was a child who entered kindergarten "with the same kind of loyalty to the earth as to his homeland."

This is a formula for degrading patriotism and loyalty to everything for which this nation stands in favor of creating citizens of the "global government" being pursued by the United Nations and the environmentalism that preaches against the use of the earth's natural resources.

All throughout the 1970's, the Federal government funded these goals. Local educational systems were taken over by programs designed to destroy local control. I do not want President Bush's education proposals to succeed because they reflect the continued subversion of our nationÕs schools by the Department of Education.

The process dates back to the 1960's, continued through the 1970's, and in the following discussion of education in America, we will see how they increased through the 1980's.

The Subversion of Education in America: Lesson #3
By Alan Caruba

This will come as a surprise to you, everything about the nation's educational system does, but Congress back in 1970 recognized that the federal government is supposed to have limited authority when it comes to education. An amended General Education Provisions Act specifically articulated a "Prohibition against Federal Control of Education.

It forbids the federal government from exercising any "direction, supervision, or control over the curriculum, program of instruction, administration or personnel of any education institution, school, or school system, or over the selection of library resources, textbooks, or other printed or published instructional materials by any educational institution or school system."

The loophole through which the subversion of our education system was accomplished was federal funding of "research" and "development."

By the 1980's (see the previous two editions of Warning Signs for a look at the 1960's and 1970's by clicking on the Archives below) the effort to turn schools from places where students actually learn something to places where their values, beliefs, and cognitive skills were determined by "Outcome Based Education", behavior modification programs. The objective of these programs is to turn students in to little citizens of a one-world government where they are mere economic units, not individuals, nor people who give much thought to individual liberty.

Individual liberty was the reason the American Revolution was fought and is the philosophical basis for every word in the US Constitution. A generation or two of Americans who are systematically robbed of any knowledge of this are ripe for an authoritarian takeover.

The father of this movement is Prof. Benjamin Bloom and his book, "All Our Children learning." Published in 1981, it is the bible of OBE. In it he says, "The purpose of education and the schools is to change the thoughts, feelings, and actions of students." No, the purpose of education is to provide students with a sufficient knowledge of basic skills in writing, reading, arithmetic, as well as history and the sciences. Thus prepared, they are likely to be the kind of citizens that will question efforts to deprive this nation of its sovereignty in favor of a world government run out of the United Nations.

It gets worse. Writing in The Effective School Report, Dr. Thomas A. Kelly, Ph.D., stated that "The brain should be used for processing, not storage." This is the view of education that says you prepare students to take a test determined by federal standards of what they should know. The student is merely to process predetermined bits and pieces of information. The best example of this is the rat's maze where the rat learns to follow a specific path to get a piece of cheese.

This is a simplified explanation of why today's children have difficulty acquiring and retaining a body of useful, long-term information such as multiplication tables or who the nation's presidents have been, the 50 States of the Union, when the Civil War was fought, where India can be found on a map, the names of the earth's oceans, et cetera!

The whole movement to utterly change the direction and purpose of our nation's schools picked up momentum in the 1980's and, sorry to say it, it occurred on Ronald Reagan's watch. The harsh truth about the subversion of the nation's schools has not been a Democratic or Republican program. It has occurred no matter who was in office or who controlled Congress. It happened because few politicians were paying any attention to what was really occurring over at the Department of Education.

In her book, "The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America", Charlotte Thompson Iserbyt, says, "The real purpose of this project was to propose a radical redesign of the nation's education system from one based on inputs to one based on outputs." It switched, in other words, from a curriculum of content a student was required to learn, to a series of answers the student was supposed to repeat when tested. Or as Iserbyt explains it, the system turned away "from one oriented toward the learning of academic content to one based on performance of selected skills, necessary for the implementation of school-to-work" The schools, with direction from the DOE and grants from major foundations, as well as input from corporate leaders, were redesigned to produce workers.

Well, what's so bad about that? We need workers. Ask anyone responsible for the management of any size organization, from a local bakery to a major corporation, what their primary problem is and they will tell you it's finding good workers. That is to say, finding people with even the most basic education or skills to perform any job with a minimum of competency. That is the result of the education system that has been foisted on this nation.

Take away their pocket calculators and the newest generation of workers cannot add or subtract. Take away "spell check" on their computers and they are helpless to spell accurately. These are basic skills Americans used to learn in one-room schoolhouses heated with a wood-burning oven. They could also tell you the branches of the US government and a whole lot more than today's graduates.

In the 1980's the DOE says Iserbyt, "effectively transformed the essential character of the nation's public schools from 'teaching'---the most traditional and conservative role of schools---to 'workforce training'---perceived as liberal and 'progressive.'" It is a particular irony that one of Ronald Reagan's campaign platforms was the abolishing of the Department of Education. He was right. He didn't do it.

What, in fact, happened was that control of the schools and their curriculums increasing moved up the decision-making ladder away from local school boards and even state education departments. Administrators and teachers were delighted with this because it eliminated the "meddling" of locally elected and locally responsible school board members.

The instrument for this was the development of a "Course Goals Collection" completed by the DOE in 1980-81. "The collection consists of fourteen volumes with 15,000 goals covering every major subject taught in the public schools from K-12." Remember that 1970 prohibition on any federal government involvement in instruction? Nobody else did either.

In 1981, 70,000 copies were distributed, despite the fact that only approximately 16,000 school districts existed. And you wonder why every state now has the same goals? With remarkable success, Outcome-Based Education became the way American students were to be trained to believe the same things, have the same values, and to ignore those they were taught at home.

This is important because values are supposed to be the job of parents. Some parents are Catholic. Some parents are Protestant. Some are Jewish or Moslem. Some are liberal and some are conservative. Their values no longer seem to matter. That's why there no longer is a moment of prayer in any school in America. That's why the school day often does not begin with the salute to the flag or a recitation of a pledge of allegiance. Much of the day is spent "teaching to the test" whose standards were determined in Washington, D.C., not by the parents, not by the local school board, not by anyone you know!

How was this achieved? Because, according to a 1981 report by the Office of Educational Research and Improvement, "Federal funds account for approximately ten percent of national expenditures on education. The Federal share of educational research and related activities, however, is ninety percent of the total national investment."

Thus, as Iserbyt notes in her book, "just about everything that goes on in the classrooms of American public schools, with the exception of salaries, school buildings, buses, and the purchase of equipment, is either a direct or indirect result of funding by the U.S. Department of Education as research!"

It should come as no surprise that, by the end of the 1980Õs, writing in the January 25, 1989 issue of Education Week, Chester E. Finn, Jr., the former head of the DOE's research branch, would tell business leaders that he favored a "national curriculum." Flashback to the congressional prohibition on a curriculum determined at the federal level. Consider it null and void. The people in the DOE obviously did.

Little wonder, too, that in 1989, then-President George H. Bush unveiled "America 2000" (now known as "Goals 2000") to the National Governor's Association that virtually set in concrete the whole behavior modification movement that has been foisted on the American education system.

That same year, the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development's Elementary Global Education Framework was announced. Its goals were to create "Human beings whose home is planet earth, who are citizens of a multicultural democratic society in an increasingly interconnected world, and who learn, care, think, choose, and act, to celebrate life on this planet, and to meet the global challenges confronting Humankind."

NO! We are talking about AMERICAN students going to AMERICAN schools in the sovereign nation of the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. We are not sending kids to school to become citizens of the world, programmed to deal with global challenges, i.e., threats to the environment that require we all cut back on the use of energy or pick up the bill to bring developing nations up to speed. That is exactly the game plan of the United Nations and the worldwide conspiracy of socialists masquerading as environmentalists.

That is, however, what is going on in our schools TODAY. That's why President George W. Bush's proposal to throw $5 billion at those schools, presumably to teach a subject, reading, they should already be teaching, is a continuation of the same bad ideas that president's since Eisenhower have been rubber-stamping. And then ignoring.

The Subversion of Education in America: Lesson #4
By Alan Caruba

I have lived my whole life in an affluent, suburban community in Northern New Jersey. When I attended its schools in the 1940's and 1950's, the vast percentage of graduating seniors went onto college. Their parents had migrated from Newark during or just after WWII because the schools had an excellent reputation. Today, they are not much better than those of the inner city.

Here's an excerpt from a letter to the editor in our local weekly. "I understand that our education officials have yet to detail for the public exactly what measures have been taken to ensure that a first-rate education will be provided for students." This stonewalling is endemic to education bureaucrats across the nation. He thinks he's going to get an answer. He won't.

"I was horrified to learn that 34 percent of the eighth grade students in (our) Middle School were found only partially proficient 'the worst grouping' in the 2000 GEPA math section. Simply put, we rank 97th out of 97 schools in this failing category. Further, this dreadful performance has been repeated over the past several years.

"As a homeowner and a taxpayer, I want to know how the district's school budget increased from $51 million five years ago to $70 million today, a 37 percent increase over four years, during which time these poor test scores have not gotten measurably better and our last place ranking has not moved out of the cellar."

Throwing more and more money at our nation's current education system is not the answer. The system is inherently flawed because it is not intended to provide a basic 3R's education.

President Bush proposes to introduce a national educational standard and then test to it, but we already know American students are deficient in all the areas of knowledge the schools are supposed to be teaching. The tests today's students take are more about their values than about any body of knowledge they have acquired. Today's schools are not about educating students. They are about teaching attitudes and values.

If you have been reading my series over the past three commentaries in this series, you already know that the system has been designed to deliberately dumb down students.

The architects of this attack on our nationÕs youth can be found in the US Department of Education. They have adopted psychological methods of conditioning and jettisoned the teaching of information and basic skills. It is called "Outcome-Based Education."

Today's students, as opposed to their grandfather's or even their father's education, are being systematically conditioned to think in "global" terms about humanity, nations, religions, and, of course, the environment. They are conditioned to be citizens, not of the United States, but of the world. That's what you need when you're creating a socialist one-world governmental system and that is exactly what is occurring at the United Nations.

Today's students are taught not to make value judgments about other nations, even if they are authoritarian dictatorships. They may not know where Brazil is on the map, but they "know" all the rain forests are disappearing. They don't know when the Civil War took place or why, but they "know" that all the Founding Fathers were slave-owners. They also "know" that America's history is one of destroying the native Indian nations, taking their land, and exploiting it with farms, mining, and the destruction of whole forests. They cannot tell you what the Bill of Rights is, but they "know" the US is the leading contributor of "greenhouse gases" to the atmosphere, thereby causing global warming. It is a full course of lies.

They haven't a clue about the individualism, sacrifice, daring and innovation that made this nation great, nor its political system, and most certainly not its history.

As Charlotte Thompson Iserbyt writes in her book, The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America, they aren't being "taught the difference between free enterprise and planned economies, i.e., socialism; between 'group thinking' and individual freedom and responsibility."

By the 1990's the decades of effort to overturn an education system that taught specific bodies of information and the skills to use themÑarithmetic, spelling, history, civics, science'had effectively been transformed into today's touchy-feely system. It is a place where a student's feelings of self-esteem are more important than whether they actually know anything other than the specific answers to the test. Thus teachers now "teach to the test" (their paycheck depends on it) rather than provide a broader body of knowledge. It is a place where competition is discouraged as unfair to those less qualified for any reason. It is a place where socialist attitudes and values are the priority, not knowledge.

Given President George W. Bush's enthusiasm for education that is "accountable" and "will leave no child behind", will it surprise anyone that the "America 2000 Plan", written in 1991, was presented to the American people by Lamar Alexander, the Secretary of Education serving his father, President George Herbert Walker Bush?

The "America 2000 Plan" proposed to radically restructure American society, beginning with its schools. It was intended to affect 110,00 public and private schools. When you're trying to create good little socialists, you can't afford to have anyone who is being taught to think independently or asked to incorporate moral and ethical values.

The "voucher" program exists to give the federal government control over private schools because, whoever pays the piper, chooses the tune. Schools that accept voucher students will soon find themselves required to accept federal education regulations as well.

Goals 2000 and School-to-Work programs introduced to transform our schools reflect what Iserbyt describes as "the internationalization of education with exchanges of data systems, curricula, methods, et cetera, all essential for the implementation of the international socialist management and control system being put in place right now."

Everything, including the SAT college entrance tests, has been degraded to mask the dumbing down those who are passing through our schools. Today's SATs permit students to use electronic calculators, ask fewer questions in general and fewer multiple-choice math questions in particular. Reading passages now ask definitions from context and the formerly difficult antonym section, calling for linguistic and intellectual subtleties, has been dropped entirely.

My hometown's parent who could not get any answers from his district's school board could not know that this is repeated across America in school after school. Parents are routinely lied to. Worse, today's parents are often required to put their child put on a regimen of Ritalin, a mind-altering drug. We've got seven million government-approved drug addicts going to school in drug-free zones!

To the individual parent, there seems to be no way to resist the juggernaut of a system that routinely turns out thousands of "educated" morons. Some choose to home-school their children. Others who can afford it send them to private schools. Still others shell out for after-school tutoring services. Why? Because the schools have been "restructured."

President Bush is not providing a solution. He is part of the problem. His father was part of the problem. Presidents going back to Eisenhower have been part of the problem because they failed to see that introducing Soviet-style educational methods'behavior modification to produce good little socialists--into American schools was destined to bring us to this point.

Education is not about national standards and national testing. It's about individual schools in individual school districts, all answerable to their communities and to the parents of the children entrusted to them. It's not about how the child feels, but about how well the child learns. There is pride in learning, but if there are no grades, how does anyone, parent, child or teacher know what, if anything, is being learned?

Congress will probably give President Bush the $5 billion he wants to throw away on failed reading programs, and money for the national educational standards and testing he wants. Previous Congresses have gone along, failing or refusing to see how the educational system has been corrupted. The Republican "Contract with America" and the campaign promise of Ronald Reagan to dismantle the Department of Education had it right. It didn't happen. It is the only hope to reverse the damage and return schools to local control.

Sit down with your child and watch "Jeopardy" together. If neither you, nor your child knows the answer to anything other than the television or film questions, you're in trouble. Now multiply that against an entire population of Americans who don't know the answers either.

END

Permission to republish or reprint this series in whole or in part must be secured via email or other written communication from The National Anxiety Center (acaruba@aol.com) or Box 40, Maplewood, NJ 07040.

The series is Copyrighted by Alan Caruba, 2001. Any use of the series, in whole or in part, must contain attribution to the author, The National Anxiety Center, POB 40, Maplewood, NJ and/or the Center's URL, ANXIETYCENTER.COM.