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Posts tagged: public school

My New Hero…Gresham Machen-"Don’t give Your Children to the Bureaucrats"

I have discovered a new hero of sorts…Gresham Machen, (1881-1937) theologian and Christian warrior.

He saw it coming, long before it came.

“Machen is one of many prominent American defenders of political liberty and economic freedom who have been largely forgotten by a people intent on abandoning its heritage of freedom.”

“Long before the federal Department of Education was finally created in the 1970s, efforts had been made to establish it in the 1920s. Machen vigorously opposed those efforts in published letters, essays in national magazines, speaking engagements, and in an appearance before a joint Congressional committee. There, Machen warned against government control over young people: “If you give the bureaucrats the children, you might as well give them everything else as well.”

A national department of education was not the only government intrusion into education which drew Machen’s opposition. The “Lusk Laws” of New York which would have compelled private schools to obtain state licenses, and Nebraska’s Language Law (ruled unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court) which prohibited teaching a foreign language to any pre-9th grade student, were both cited by Machen as examples of improper but not unexpected government interference in the learning process. While not opposing locally operated public schools per se, Machen set forth his position regarding school and state in no uncertain terms:

“Place the lives of children in their formative years, despite the convictions of their parents, under the intimate control of experts appointed by the state, force them to attend schools where the higher aspirations of humanity are crushed out, and where the mind is filled with the materialism of the day, and it is difficult to see how even the remnants of liberty can subsist.” -Machen

Excerpt from FREEMAN

Tags: public school

family/parenting, public school | Word Warrior | March 2, 2009 9:57 am | Comments (7)

They’ve Banned Tag–Yes, the Game–Because Kids Were Chasing Each Other

Love Glenn Beck…can’t help it. Yeah, I know he’s Mormon. He’s also smart, he’s got a backbone and a brain. A rarity among media-types these days. I’ve copied and pasted a few of my favorite pieces from him for posts here and there. I’m so glad he’s still allowed on prime time television.

This radio show transcript is just too funny, and sad, all at the same time. The last paragraph is the best.

GLENN: Colorado schools have banned tag on its playgrounds. I’m having a hard time with this one. For as evil as I think tag is, you know, I worked tirelessly to make sure we didn’t do dodge ball. Dodge ball, they are throwing a ball at you. How are you expected to survive, you know? Red Rover, Red Rover, send so-and-so right over? I was never picked. It lowered my self-esteem. I mean, he was always the last guy. Red Rover, Red Rover, send anybody but Glenn over. Can you check in the classroom, see if there’s anybody doing their homework. Where’s Arnold? Can you call Arnold’s mom, see if he can come out to play because we definitely don’t want anybody — we don’t want anybody named Glenn to come right over. Oh, it’s tragic. So hopefully we can get Red Rover, Red Rover banned as well.

A Colorado school has banned tag because some children complained that they were being chased.

Just a second. I’m sorry. I just want to — they’re playing tag. Tag, tag, tag… tag, and they were being chased. Well, what will they think of next? Now kids are chasing each other during tag. My gosh, what’s next. One of the assistant principals of the Discovery Canyon school — may I ask, please tell me, Colorado, that’s called Discovery Canyon that that’s the town or the area? It’s not like, hi, welcome to Discovery Canyon School; you can discover all kinds of things. Doesn’t that just sound politically correct?

She says that the running games will still be allowed as long as you don’t chase each other. May I ask you a question? When you were in the third grade, isn’t that pretty much what you did all day? When you would go out and you’d play on the playground, you’d chase each other? Right now Cheyenne just learned how to walk and every day I look down at my — I look down at my webcam and for, like, an hour all they’re doing around the house is chasing each other around our — we have this enormous coffee table in our living room, and all they’re doing is chasing each other around the coffee table. That’s what happens with kids. That’s what they do. And I don’t know if you’ve missed the — well, I haven’t seen tag’s rules in quite some time, but isn’t that it? They chase you? You try to outrun them so you’re not it and then when you are it, you chase somebody?

Here’s an idea. Kids, if you don’t want to be chased, stop running. Then they’ll tag you. Then you chase them! That way they can have their attorneys call your parents and sue you for chasing them as opposed to your attorneys suing them for chasing you. It’s incredible.

Two parents have complained about the ban on tag but most parents and children didn’t object, the assistant principal said. Yeah. You know why? That’s because they’re all dead now. They’re all just, their souls have been sucked out of them. They just might as well, they’re in their house now and they see on the news… “Oh, looks like they’ve banned tag” and they’re just sitting in their living room, of course we ban tag; I mean, why not ban tag. Kids are being chased. Honey, do we have anything in the house that I can overdose on?

I mean, that’s what’s happening to us! We’re not complaining anymore because we know it won’t make a difference! We’re sheep. Banning tag.

Tags: public school

family/parenting, political, public school | Word Warrior | February 23, 2009 9:57 pm | Comments (37)

Kindergarten Marriage Games

This is one of those posts where I’ll likely get scolded about being “over the top” and making too big a deal of little things.

But if you’ve read long, you know one of my theories is that BIG things come from LITTLE things, specifically our inability to see the subtle dangers of something before it’s bigger than we can handle.

Maybe this isn’t one of those things, maybe it is. But, I wanted to make the point.

An article in our local newspaper sported a “Blending Consonants Marriage Ceremony”. Adorable little kindergarten children, decked out in suits and white wedding gowns, were “married” as consonants…an attempt to make reading creative and fun. A judge (one I happen to know) was present to perform the ceremonies.

Now, I know, it’s so cute, and I’ll hand it to them, very creative. Still, it bothered me. One line from the article read, “B married R to make brakes in case they wanted to stop the marriage”.

Not sure if that meant “stop the marriage before it starts”, or just stop it whenever they wanted to…I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt, but if it’s the latter, I would take serious issue with it.

I guess overall, it’s the flippancy of taking a sacred, serious covenant institution and making a game of it that bothers me most. Not even taking into account the “romancing” of kindergartners. (Yes, they mentioned “romance” and “celebrating at Valentine’s Day” in connection with the game–would love to know if B kissed his bride R.)

In a culture that is so desperately in need of a return to taking marriage vows seriously, a culture where children grow up thinking marriage is just a game that one can can play over and over and then bail out of the real thing at will, I just wonder if these “innocent” activities are not well-thought out…that’s all.

Bottom line? We need to think more, and more carefully, about the little things that have big implications.

Tags: public school

public school | Word Warrior | February 22, 2009 12:05 pm | Comments (30)

Gatto: State Controlled Consciousness (Public School)

I think I’ve posted this video before, but it’s worth posting again. If you are hesitant to believe that the original model of public school began with a dangerous agenda, J.T. Gatto details the proof and origin of that agenda.

Interestingly, though his book and this interview took place years ago, we can see all the more clearly the truth of his claims in our current system.

Remember the post the other day about “doing away with traditional family ideals”? This was the very intent from the beginning–”family structure is a hindrance to a Utopian society and children have to be separated from it”.

PLESE listen, ponder then pass it on–don’t be afraid!

Tags: public school

family/parenting, homeschooling, public school | Word Warrior | February 11, 2009 1:22 pm | Comments (4)

The New Dumbness–Gatto and Public School

“Ordinary people send their children to school to get smart, but what modern schooling teaches is dumbness.”

I realize it’s quite possible you get tired of my posting about public school. But if you asked me to narrow down our social problems to ONE thing, I would probably owe the bulk, or at least the beginning of it to the mass public school crisis.

Crisis? Yes. As readers have proven before, most people don’t see the public school system as a *bad* thing and certainly not a crisis. This is part of the plan. “They” tell us it’s wonderful and we believe them and send our children there. The frightening results of the terrorist lifestyle begins as they “teach” their small children to think a certain way; so it is here…”whoever controls the children controls the culture”.

(And please don’t take my passion against public school as a personal insult; I have wonderful friends and family with children in the system; I’m not *against you*…the very reason I address it is because I’m FOR you! I ache to see Christians understand the dilemma and begin discipling their children.)

“Old-fashioned dumbness used to be simple ignorance; now it is transformed from ignorance into permanent mathematical categories of relative stupidity like “gifted and talented,” “mainstream,” “special ed.” Categories in which learning is rationed for the good of a system of order. Dumb people are no longer merely ignorant. Now they are indoctrinated, their minds conditioned with substantial doses of commercially prepared disinformation dispensed for tranquilizing purposes.” JTG

With all that’s going on in our nation, it has caused me to reflect even deeper about “how we got here”. There are no easy answers, of course. And no one answer. But I keep going back to the fact that we created a group of people who willinging accepted a socialist agenda. We have just said “yes” to a socialist government.

We–formerly hard-working Americans who built a country from the ground up…who believed the government had very little power beyond enforcing the civil law…who believed in personal responsibility–Americans who worked til we dropped and were willing to die so that our grandchildren could have a free place to live, have, in a few short years, become lazy, selfish, immoral idiots who want everything given to us and have such a perverted sense of government and personal responsibility that we’re paying for it like no other nation ever has. Where suffering was once a bedrock of building character, now the constant attempt to escape any hardship has pushed us to kill our own children!

And as long as I know Christians who still don’t understand the seriousness of what the public school system has to do with this, I will keep talking about it. I know I risk upsetting people; but this is one of those “cliff up ahead” that I cannot keep silent about.

If anything else, read, learn, research. At least be open to consider the arguments that exist.

John Taylor Gatto’s “The Underground History of American Education” is probably the most telling work about the public educational system. A public school educator himself for 30 years, he stands as qualified as any to reveal the system’s destructiveness.

His assertion, in a nutshell, is that we have systematically and purposely mass-produced a nation full of dumb people in order to control them. What do you think?

“The individual has no chance to exercise his judgment either on principal questions or on their implication; this leads to the atrophy of a faculty not comfortably exercised under [the best of] conditions…Once personal judgment and critical faculties have disappeared or have atrophied, they will not simply reappear when propaganda is suppressed…years of intellectual and spiritual education would be needed to restore such faculties.”

And just an interesting side note, I’ve heard so many times in an argument against homeschooling that “public school children are given the opportunity to think”…which is directly opposite the observation above.

“A pupil is not above his teacher; but everyone, after he has been fully trained, will be like his teacher.” Luke 6:40

And the main reason I keep talking? I don’t believe the damage to our nation is irreversible. I believe when God’s people begin understanding their crucial responsibility to train and disciple their children in godliness, character and love–take them back from the government, we will begin to see a revolution. And THAT is why I keep talking

Excerpts taken from: The New Dumbness from The Underground History of American Education

Tags: public school

family/parenting, homeschooling, public school | Word Warrior | 8:34 am | Comments (21)

Reason 824 to Get Your Kids Out of Public School

“The Supreme Court unanimously ruled that people have the right to sue schools over sexual discrimination….

And I think what it ultimately will mean is –that schools will pass as a reaction to this [will require] homosexual sensitivity training programs. [T]hey’ll call them ‘no bullying’ laws or ‘sensitivity’ or ‘tolerance’ laws, but actually what it will be are laws that will focus on homosexuality,” he contends. “And anybody who says anything that is negative against homosexuality or in support of traditional morality-which, by the way, discriminates against nontraditional immorality — is going to be subject to these particular laws”

Laying all ethical/moral issues aside, (and there is plenty for Christians to discuss) how can the public school really be a place of academic instruction when they are consumed with petty litigation, walking on eggshells to prevent lawsuits that “easy-money” parents will be waiting to jump at?

Schools continue to fail miserably in their basic responsibilities to teach children and instead grow as a social reform institution whose job is to remove any and all preconceived ideas about family, tradition or truth.

Let me repeat what is happening in case you missed it in the quote: the public school system is basically being forced to be neutral (actually it’s biased to the *other* agendas, but they don’t want us to know that) to the extent that talking about the traditional family will, by default, be *discrimination*. Children are being indoctrinated to believe there is no such thing as a family the way societies have always structured them. Family has been redefined as any group of people who live together??? If that.

I recently had a conversation with a new school teacher, fresh out of college in her first year teaching. She said, very condescendingly to me while shaking her head “no”, “Kelly, the family is dead…it doesn’t exist anymore”. This is what they’re telling the teachers, and that is the message being perpetuated to a new generation.

I’m not even tip-toeing anymore…Christians, get your kids out of public school.

Public Schools are Tolerance Training

“Public school is a place of detention for children placed in the care of teachers who are afraid of the principal, principals who are afraid of the school board, school boards who are afraid of the parents, parents who are afraid of the children, and children who are afraid of nobody.”
-Anonymous

Tags: public school

family/parenting, homeschooling, public school | Word Warrior | February 10, 2009 9:09 am | Comments (9)