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Thinking About Homeschooling? The 2021 ICHE Conference is This Weekend!

Parents across the state and nation have had enough of the COVID-19 lockdowns and the cancellation of numerous conferences and other events. Thankfully, it looks like we are slowly getting back to normal. That said, some public school districts are still planning on limited in-person class time in the fall of 2021. Additionally, the Illinois State Board of Education and the Illinois Department of Public Health will also continue to require that students wear masks in schools.

But that’s not the worst of it.

Parents and grandparents have serious concerns about the deficiencies of public schools, including academic failings and the teaching of corrupt propaganda. Just this past month, state lawmakers mandated the teaching of “comprehensive” and “age appropriate” sex education that will begin in kindergarten. And in a sign of pure lunacy, state lawmakers overwhelming approved legislation to mandate taxpayer funding of menstrual hygiene products in all bathrooms in every government school building in Illinois. Yes, that includes boys’ bathrooms (4th grade and above).

The time has come to seriously explore Christ-centered educational opportunities for your children.

The annual Illinois Christian Home Educators’ conference is an excellent opportunity for parents and grandparents to explore the great option of homeschooling. A review of the event website (check it out for yourself here) reveals a broad lineup of speakers and subjects. Topics range from the practical to the inspirational to the philosophical. 

Kirk Smith, Executive Director of ICHE points out that “there is no ‘one size fits all’ approach with homeschooling. At the ICHE conference, you will be able to hear a variety of approaches and be able to tailor your school experience to what best fits your values and priorities as a family.”

The ICHE Family Conference will be taking place this weekend: June 3-6 at Olivet Nazarene University.

Homeschool veterans agree on the centrality of home education in passing on their faith and values. “Homeschooling is really an extension of parenting. It’s the opportunity to teach and disciple our children with a degree of intention unmatched by other options,” writes Jonathan Lewis. “So if you want to be a better homeschooler—or a better parent—be sure to check out the ICHE Family Conference!”

As a veteran homeschool father myself, I agree with Kirk Smith who acknowledges that “so many dads and moms want to do parenting right but lack examples and resources. The conference will give them both.” This conference has been a tremendous blessing to my wife and me. I cannot recommend it highly enough.

So if you want to be a better homeschooler—or a better parent—be sure to check out the ICHE Family Conference! Check it out HERE.




Dumb Things Dems Said in Sex Ed Floor Debate

Don’t let the word “debate” in the term “floor debate” fool you. Floor debates in Springfield are no more debates than transwomen are women. There is no cross-examination or rebuttal, for which most of our lawmakers must be deeply thankful in that they couldn’t argue their way out of an imaginary paper bag—at least not using logic and evidence.

Floor debates in Springfield are occasions for bill sponsors and supporters—almost always Democrats—to pontificate and for opponents to try to point out flaws that are promptly ignored by Democrats no matter how reasonable and justified. A floor debate in Springfield for Democrat-sponsored bills is a tale told by idiots, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing but more government restriction of liberty, more government spending, and more moral chaos.

For an example, let’s look briefly at last Friday’s floor debate preceding the vote in the Illinois House on the pernicious sex ed bill that now awaits Governor J.B. Pritzker’s signature. According to the bill’s chief sponsor, State Representative Camille Lilly (D-Chicago), the bill was socially constructed by three far left organizations—”Advocates for Youth, SIECUS and the Answer”—all of which are dedicated to normalizing abortion, early sexual experimentation, and sexual deviance. It is noteworthy that this bill is so perverse and troubling that even Illinois Democrats were barely able to scrape together the 60 votes needed to pass it.

Before looking at the “debate,” here’s a reminder of what lawmakers in Springfield think government employees should be exposing other people’s children to.

If signed into law, this bill will require all personal health and safety lessons in Illinois public schools—including charter schools—to teach children in grades K-2 about unmarried moms and dads and families led by homosexual couples. These very young children will also be expected to define “gender identity’’—a euphemism for the disordered desire to be the opposite sex.

Government employees will demand that children ages 8-11 explain, describe, and define masturbation, homosexuality, bisexuality, cross-sex impersonation, the use of hormone blockers for children who pretend to be the sex they aren’t, and “gender expansiveness”—a socially constructed leftist term.

Then in grades 6-8, government employees will instruct other people’s children in the ways of oral and anal sex; the “methods of contraception that are available without a prescription”; the “many methods of short- and long-term contraception that are safe and effective and … how to access them”; and the meaning of intersex, queer, twospirit, asexual, and pansexual. And, of course, leftists have snuck in some critical race theory, so 11–14-year-olds will be taught as objective and true the socially constructed theory of “intersectionality.”

To ensure that religious Illinois school children graduate from high school ashamed of and detesting the faith of their mothers and fathers, government employees will teach them about the evils of what leftists call “homophobia” and “transphobia.” In the Upside Down where leftists live and move and have their being, the true belief that homosexual acts and cross-dressing undermine the image of God imprinted on all humans constitutes irrational hatred.

State Representative Avery Bourne (R-Raymond) was able to get Lilly to admit that this law—like the ever-shifting moral beliefs of leftists—is fluid. If the bill becomes law, it will forever be tied to the National Sex Education Standards which change as progressivism affirms additional forms of sexual perversion. Bourne’s question elicited this shocking confession from the hapless Lilly:

As the National Sex Education Standards are updated, the State Board of Education shall update these learning standards.

All the ideas related to sexuality just mentioned are socially constructed leftist terms embedded with leftist assumptions. All the terms tossed about with absolutist certainty by Democrats to justify the indoctrination of other people’s children, including “age-appropriate,” “developmentally appropriate,” and “culturally appropriate,” are defined by leftists using criteria established by leftists.

Virtually no theologically orthodox Christian believes it is “culturally appropriate” for their 5-8- year-olds to be taught anything about homosexuality or “trans”-cultic beliefs and practices. SB 818’s supporters like to emphasize the sop they’re tossing to conservatives: Any parent may opt their child out of perversion-positive training.

Doesn’t sound very inclusive to me. In addition, conservatives still have to pay for perversion-positive “personal health and safety” training.

Curiously, in the floor “debate,” the issue of moral development never arose. It’s clear that moral assumptions/conclusions are embedded in the National Sex Education Standards with which this law requires all health and safety curricula selected by schools to align. How do I know that moral conclusions are embedded in these standards?

I know because these “standards” do not require schools to teach about, for example, polyamory, zoophilia, or infantilism—all forms of “identity” for some people. Even though these are forms of identity, Springfield Democrats don’t—yet –require that Illinois schools affirm them. The reason is that not enough Democrats—yet—believe these forms of identity are moral. Currently, Democrats believe homosexual and cross-sex identities should be normalized via taxpayer-funded schools because Democrats have concluded they are morally acceptable.

Remember what this bill requires as I quote some of the dumb things Democrats said about it in their fatuous floor speechifying, starting with the foolish sponsor of the bill, Camille Lilly:

Under SB818 … the materials and instruction must be age and developmentally appropriate, medically accurate, correct, complete, culturally appropriate, inclusive. … SB818 is not a mandate. Under SB818 parents, guardians and others will still be able to review the materials used by schools. Parents are still able to opt out, and local control applies to the selection of courses and materials and the curriculum. In addition to reducing stigma, SB818 would result in creating and the creation of learning standards that reflect the diversity of all students here in the state of Illinois.

Some brief thoughts about Lilly’s claims:

  • SB 818 is not age-, developmentally, or culturally appropriate. The claims by leftist sexperts do not change reality.
  • If by “correct” Lilly means “conforming to truth” or “proper,” she is incorrect.
  • Clearly, materials and instruction will not be “complete” because the NSES do not include any information about polyamory, zoophilia, infantilism, sadomasochism, or any other paraphilias. I wonder if Camille Lilly et al. hate polyamorists, zoophiles, infantilists, and sadomasochists.
  • SB 818 is a mandate in that no school may teach anything on personal health and safety in grades K-5 unless the materials they choose align with the age-, developmentally, culturally, and morally inappropriate leftist National Sex Education Standards.
  • Lilly should explain which stigmas she seeks to reduce because this bill stigmatizes the moral views of many Illinoisans.

State Representative Delia Ramirez (D-Chicago) asked Lilly if it were true that the Illinois State Board of Education and the Illinois Association of School Boards are “neutral on the bill,” to which Lilly responded “Yes.” Then in an amusing and obvious manipulation of rhetoric, Ramirez changed the word “neutral,” saying, “So, educators don’t oppose the bill.” Well, it’s equally correct to say, “So, educators don’t support the bill.”

It would be interesting to poll anonymously all K-5 teachers in the state, asking if they are in favor of being required to teach about homosexuality, bisexuality, co-habitation, masturbation, cross-sex impersonation, hormone-blockers, and gender expansiveness in personal health and safety lessons.

And we should ask if they think there should be a law prohibiting all teaching on personal health and safety unless it includes those topics. No discussions of healthy eating permitted unless they’re accompanied by affirming discussions of cross-dressing, hormone-blocking, and self-pleasuring.

State Representative Maurice West (D-Rockford) apparently derives his hearty support for requiring public school teachers to instruct 5-year-olds in the intricacies of masturbation and 11-year-olds about anal sex from TLC’s programs about hoarders and obese people:

We view television shows on TLC like Hoarders, My 600-Pound Life, just for example, where they often recall their childhood experience with shame, emptiness, guilt, confusion from their dealings with that word: sex. This legislation’s primary focus is not about the birds and the bees. It’s about equipping our children with age-appropriate conversations about how they can be empowered within themselves.

Well, West is right on one thing: This bill is definitely not about the birds and the bees.

Maybe, just maybe, it’s not the job of education majors to sexually “empower” other people’s children with the pagan sexual beliefs of regressives.

Two questions for West and all leftists:

1.) Since when did it become the task, pedagogical obligation, or right of public school teachers to solve all societal ills?

2.) Are there any pedagogical, ethical, moral, emotional, or psychological problems potentially created by introducing sexual imagery, ideas, and beliefs to other people’s children who have never been abused or shamed and whose parents have successfully protected them from ideas they—the parents—believe are age-, developmentally, culturally, and morally inappropriate?

In case parents don’t yet realize it, this newest bill is centrally about normalizing homosexuality and “trans”-cultic beliefs and practices. In yet another statement made with a voice quivering with faux-emotion, lesbian activist with a burnt soul, State Representative Kelly Cassidy, made that clear:

For far too long, LGBTQ youth were either invisible or expressly stigmatized. And I remember that. It burned into my soul. …  I remember that. … And as a kid who didn’t understand why I didn’t fit in, who couldn’t define why I felt different, and whose parents were not an option to go to, I wish I had had a teacher I could turn to. I wish I had had a curriculum that didn’t call me unnatural.

The presumptuous Cassidy demands that public schools affirm her arguable belief that homosexuality is natural, and if parents disagree, Cassidy wants the state to come in between them and their children.

State Representative Ann Williams (D-Chicago) made this boneheaded statement:

[I]t’s hard to imagine why anyone would think our children should not learn about sex education in school, but rather should refer to the internet or Google to determine what sex is or what their questions are and get them answered there. Right now, if you Google any of these terms related to sex education, you’re going to get a lot more explicit information than anything would be provided in a curriculum.

Phew. I guess Illinois parents should thank Democrats. At least curricula aligned with leftist standards won’t be as bad as what kids can find on the Internet.

It’s unfortunate that Williams suffers from such a dearth of imagination. It’s true, many people don’t think children should learn about sex in public schools. Here’s something else that may surprise the unimaginative Williams. Many people don’t think children should be learning about sex in co-ed classes in public schools. They believe that talking about menstruation and nocturnal emissions in co-ed classes can be embarrassing, inhibit discussions, and undermine the virtue of modesty.

Poor Williams suffers too from an inability to reason logically. Suggesting that there exists only the choice between public schools and the Internet is a classic example of the fallacy of the false dilemma. In addition to leftist-controlled public schools and the Internet, there are parents, grandparents, churches, libraries, and bookstores that can and do educate children on sex. It is not the business of the government to step in and expose all children to assumption-riddled claims about sexuality because some parents are derelict in their responsibilities.

Here’s a modest proposal: Rather than devouring the hearts and minds of other people’s little ones, how about schools offer two classes in personal health and safety—a perversion-positive class and a truly age-appropriate class. The class descriptions should include all materials used, the name of all organizations that constructed the materials, all the standards employed by those organizations, and all the criteria used to determine what constitutes age-, developmental, and cultural appropriateness. Let parents opt-in to whichever class they want or none at all. And allow teachers to choose which class they want to teach. With their deep commitments to diversity, inclusivity, cultural sensitivity, and choice, leftists should love this modest proposal.

Take ACTION: Click HERE to send a message to Gov. Pritzker’s administrative staff to urge him to VETO SB 818 as a terrible overreach of government. Impressionable students in public schools should not be exposed to body- and soul-destroying messages that promote leftist beliefs about sexuality.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/Dumb-Things-Dems-Said-in-Sex-Ed-Floor-Debate.mp3





El Apetito Insaciable de los Legisladores de Illinois por Sexualizar a los Niños de Otras Personas

La manifestación más reciente del horripilante deseo de los izquierdistas de Springfield de normalizar la desviación en los niños es la ridículamente llamada, “Ley Para Mantener a los Jóvenes Seguros y Saludables” (SB 818), un proyecto de ley compuesto enteramente por creencias izquierdistas, socialmente construidas de legisladores izquierdistas, ayudados e instigados por izquierdistas y por organizaciones pro-aborto y “LGBTQ.”

SB 818 requeriría que todas las escuelas públicas, incluidas las escuelas autónomas, alineen la enseñanza en los grados K-5 sobre “salud y seguridad personal” con los “Estándares Nacionales de Educación Sexual,” que también son construcciones sociales de izquierdistas liberales. Y requeriría que toda la educación sexual de los grados superiores se alineara con esos mismos “estándares.” Por lo tanto, para entender qué se les enseñaría exactamente a los niños de Illinois, los residentes de Illinois deben leer, no solo el proyecto de ley, sino también los Estándares Nacionales de Educación Sexual, lo cual yo hice para ahorrarles tiempo a nuestros lectores.

El proyecto de ley también requiere que todos los materiales presentados a los estudiantes de K-5 en las unidades de salud y seguridad sean “apropiados para la edad y el desarrollo” y “culturalmente apropiados.” Más sobre eso en breve.

Cuando la senadora estatal Sue Rezin (R-Morris) le preguntó al senador estatal Ram Villivalam (D-Chicago), patrocinador del proyecto de ley, por “el desglose de lo que se debe enseñar en segundo, quinto y octavo grado,” respondió,

En los grados más pequeños, como desde el kindergarten hasta el segundo, la atención se centra en la seguridad personal, en lo que significa ser un buen amigo y en poder hablar con los padres y adultos de confianza cuando alguien quiere que hagas algo que te hace sentir incómodo o inseguro.

Se le olvidó mencionar que dado que su proyecto de ley requeriría que todas las escuelas públicas que brindan unidades de “salud y seguridad personal” en los grados K-2 alineen el contenido con los “Estándares Nacionales de Educación Sexual,” para el final del segundo grado, se espera que los estudiantes puedan “Definir el género, la identidad de género y los estereotipos de roles de género” y cómo esas convenciones basadas en el sexo “pueden limitar el comportamiento.”

También se espera que “Identifiquen diferentes tipos de familias (por ejemplo, … que cohabitan … [y] del mismo sexo …).”

Este es el “desglose” que Villivalam proporcionó para los grados 3-5:

En los grados 3 a 5, la instrucción continúa cubriendo las relaciones saludables y la seguridad, pero también profundiza en lo que los niños de esas edades están experimentando, como los cambios físicos, sociales y emocionales relacionados con la pubertad.

Suena bastante inocente, excepto que convenientemente omitió la siguiente información, que proviene directamente de los Estándares Nacionales de Educación Sexual para “salud y seguridad personal integral,”

En los grados 3-5, los Estándares Nacionales de Educación Sexual y, por lo tanto, el proyecto de ley de Villivalam, requerirían que los niños y niñas en clases mixtas,

  • “Expliquen el desarrollo sexual humano común, incluida … la masturbación.”
  • “Describan el … papel potencial de los bloqueadores hormonales en los jóvenes que se identifican como transgénero.”
  • “Distingan entre el sexo asignado al nacer y la identidad de género y expliquen cómo pueden o no diferir.”
  • “Definan y expliquen las diferencias entre cisgénero, transgénero, género no binario, género expansivo e identidad de género.”
  • “Expliquen que la expresión de género y la identidad de género existen a lo largo de un espectro”.
  • “Definan orientación sexual.”
  • “Distingan entre orientación sexual e identidad de género.”

Muchos padres alegan que no es el papel de los “educadores,” empleados por el gobierno, enseñar a los niños de 8 a 11 años de otras personas sobre la masturbación, sobre los bloqueadores hormonales para los niños que se identifican con el sexo cruzado o la expansión de género.

Recuerde, si se aprueba esta ley, ninguna escuela podrá proporcionar cualquier enseñanza en los grados K-5 sobre salud y seguridad personal a menos que incluya la información que se acaba de describir.

En 2020, Villivalam intentó aprobar la Ley REACH, que habría requerido que todas las escuelas públicas, incluidas las escuelas autónomas, enseñaran “educación sexual integral” en los grados K-12. El proyecto de ley fracasó, por lo que el diablillo tramposo lo reajustó de tal manera que puso material desordenado e inapropiado para la edad ante ojos pequeños inocentes. Lo hizo al exigir en SB 818 que toda la enseñanza de “salud y seguridad personal” se alineara con los desviados Estándares Nacionales de Educación Sexual. Muy astuto, de hecho.

Villivalam luego ofreció esta nocion general esquelética de la enseñanza de los grados 6-12 en respuesta a la pregunta de Rezin:

Luego, en los grados 6 al 12, la educación sobre salud sexual se basa en lecciones anteriores para continuar las discusiones sobre seguridad personal, relaciones saludables, identidad y comienza a incorporar información relacionada con la salud sexual.

Bueeennnoooo, eso es algo así como lo que requerirían los Estándares Nacionales de Educación Sexual con los que las escuelas tendrán que alinearse. Intentaré poner un poco de carne en esos huesos esqueléticos.

En los grados 6-8,

  • A los estudiantes se les debe enseñar sobre las condiciones intersexuales.
  • Ellos deben “Analizar cómo los compañeros, la familia y las identidades que se cruzan de una persona pueden influir en las actitudes, creencias y expectativas sobre el género, la identidad de género, los roles de género y la expresión de género.
  • Los estudiantes de secundaria deben “recordar la definición de orientación sexual y explicar que la mayoría de las personas tienen una orientación sexual.”
  • Ellos deben “Definir … bisexual, lesbiana, gay, queer, bisexual, asexual, pansexual.”
  • Ellos deben “Definir sexo vaginal, oral y anal.”
  • Ellos deben “Explicar que hay muchos métodos anticonceptivos a corto y largo plazo que son seguros y efectivos y describir cómo acceder a ellos.”
  • Ellos deben “Enumerar al menos cuatro métodos anticonceptivos que están disponibles sin receta (por ejemplo, … condones, anticoncepción de emergencia, retiro)”
  • Ellos deben “Describir … las opciones durante el embarazo, incluso … el aborto.”

En los grados 9-10,

Los estudiantes deben “Definir la justicia reproductiva y explicar su historia y cómo se relaciona con la salud sexual.”

En los grados 11-12, los estudiantes deben

  • “Explicar cómo el apoyo de los compañeros, las familias, las escuelas y las comunidades puede mejorar la salud y el bienestar de una persona en lo que respecta a la identidad de género y la expresión de género” y la “orientación sexual.”
  • Los estudiantes deben “Analizar” cómo “la homofobia, la transfobia, el racismo, la discapacidad, el clasismo” pueden “influir en las decisiones relacionadas con los comportamientos sexuales.”

Defensora de este pernicioso proyecto de ley, la senadora estatal Linda Holmes (D-Aurora) pontificó tontamente en el debate en el Senado de Illinois:

Creo que lo que estamos haciendo cuando enseñamos a nuestros hijos, de nuevo, educación sexual médicamente precisa y apropiada para la edad, los estamos armando con conocimientos. Y no sé cuándo eso ha sido algo malo. (Vea la grabación de video del debate del Senado de Illinois.)

Cuando se busca adoctrinar a los niños con el dogma de la sexualidad izquierdista, los izquierdistas parlotean sobre “idoneidad para la edad” y “idoneidad cultural” como si esos términos describieran algunos criterios universales, trascendentes y objetivos en lugar de “normas” izquierdistas impuestas y construidas socialmente. Ambos términos se utilizan para incluir ideas que los izquierdistas aman y excluir (es decir, censurar) todas las ideas que los izquierdistas odian.

Algunos legisladores tenaces deberían exigirles a los izquierdistas definiciones específicas para esos términos. Deben exigir saber quién construyó exactamente los criterios que definen “apropiado para la edad”, “apropiado para el desarrollo” y “culturalmente apropiado.” Deben preguntarse si los criterios apropiados para la edad son objetivos e indiscutiblemente verdaderos o subjetivos y discutibles.

Holmes afirma que no sabe cuándo el conocimiento ha sido algo malo. ¿No ha leído a Frankenstein? ¿No ha oído hablar de la investigación sobre la “ganancia de función?”

Si el conocimiento nunca es algo malo, ¿por qué no enseñar a los niños sobre el poliamor, la zoofilia o las perversiones?

Oh, espera, lo sé. Esas formas particulares de desviación sexual no son apropiadas para la edad, el desarrollo y la cultura–de acuerdo con misteriosos criterios izquierdistas.

Mientras que los conservadores se ocupan de descartar el incrementalismo de los izquierdistas en Springfield, los izquierdistas en Springfield se ocupan de imponer gradualmente su ética loca, creencias desordenadas y sexualidad desviada con la determinación de autoritarios arrogantes en todas partes.

** ACTUALIZACIÓN: La Cámara de Representantes de Illinois aprobó esta propuesta sumamente controvertida por un voto partidista de 60 a 48 el viernes por la tarde (28 de mayo de 2021). Se enviará al gobernador JB Pritzker para su consideración. (Vea la grabación de video del debate de la Cámara de Representantes de Illinois.)

Tome ACCIÓN: Haga clic AQUÍ para enviar un mensaje al personal administrativo del gobernador Pritzker para instarlo al VETO de SB 818, la cual es una terrible extralimitación del gobierno. Los estudiantes impresionables en las escuelas públicas no deben ser expuestos a mensajes que destruyen el cuerpo y el alma y que promueven las creencias de la izquierda sobre la sexualidad.

También puede llamar a la Oficina del Gobernador en Springfield al (217) 782-06830 o en Chicago al (312) 814-2121.




Illinois Lawmakers’ Insatiable Appetite for Sexualizing Other People’s Children

Lea este artículo en español

The newest manifestation of the creepy desire of Springfield leftists to normalize deviance in children is the laughably named, “Keeping Youth Safe and Healthy Act” (SB 818)—a bill composed entirely of socially constructed leftist beliefs from leftist lawmakers aided and abetted by leftist pro-abortion and “LGBTQ” organizations.

SB 818 would require all public schools—including charter schools—to align teaching in grades K-5 on “personal health and safety” with “National Sex Education Standards,”  which too are leftist social constructions. And it would require all upper grade sex education to align with those same “standards.” Therefore, in order to understand what exactly Illinois children would be taught, Illinoisans must read—not just the bill—but also the National Sex Education Standards, which I did to save our readers time.

The bill also requires that all materials presented to K-5 students in health and safety units be “age and developmentally appropriate” and “culturally appropriate.” More on that shortly.

When the bill’s sponsor State Senator Ram Villivalam (D-Chicago) was asked by State Senator Sue Rezin (R-Morris) for “the breakdown of what’s to be taught for second grade, fifth grade and eighth grade,” he responded,

In younger grades like kindergarten through second, the focus is on personal safety, what it means to be a good friend, and being able to talk to parents and trusted adults when someone wants you to do something that makes you feel uncomfortable or unsafe.

He forgot to mention that since his bill would require all public schools that provide “personal health and safety” units in grades K-2 to align content with the “National Sex Education Standards,” by the end of second grade, students will be expected to “Define gender, gender identity, and gender-role stereotypes” and how those sex-based conventions “may limit behavior.”

They will also be expected to “Identify different kinds of families (e.g., … cohabitating … [and] same-gender …).”

This is the “breakdown” Villivalam provided for grades 3-5:

In grades 3 to 5, instruction continues to cover healthy relationships and safety, but also delves into what children at those ages are experiencing like the physical, social and emotional changes related to puberty.

Sounds innocent enough, except he conveniently omitted the following information, which comes straight from the National Sex Education Standards for “comprehensive personal health and safety.”

In grades 3-5, the National Sex Education Standards–and therefore Villivalam’s bill–would require boys and girls in co-ed settings to,

  • “Explain common human sexual development including … masturbation.”
  • “Describe the … potential role of hormone blockers on young people who identify as transgender.”
  • “Distinguish between sex assigned at birth and gender identity and explain how they may or may not differ.”
  • “Define and explain differences between cisgender, transgender, gender nonbinary, gender expansive, and gender identity.”
  • “Explain that gender expression and gender identity exist along a spectrum.”
  • “Define sexual orientation.”
  • “Differentiate between sexual orientation and gender identity.”

Many parents would argue that it is not the role of government-employed “educators” to teach other people’s 8-11-year-old children about masturbation, hormone blockers for cross-sex identifying children, or gender expansiveness.

Remember, if this law passes, no school would be able to provide any teaching in grades k-5 on personal health and safety unless it included the information just outlined.

In 2020, Villivalam tried to pass the REACH Act, which would have required all public schools, including charter schools, to teach “comprehensive sex ed” in grades K-12. The bill failed, so that tricksy little devil rejiggered it in such a way as to get disordered, age-inappropriate material before innocent little eyes. He did that by requiring in SB 818 all “personal health and safety” teaching to align with the deviant National Sex Education Standards. Very cunning, indeed.

Villivalam then offered this skeletal outline of grade 6-12 teaching in response to Rezin’s question:

Then in 6th through 12th grade, sexual health education builds on previous lessons to continue discussions on personal safety, healthy relationships, identity, and begins to incorporate information related to sexual health.

Weeelll, that’s kinda, sorta what the National Sex Education Standards with which schools will have to align would require. I’ll try to slap some meat on those skeletal bones.

In grades 6-8,

  • Students must be taught about intersex conditions.
  • They must “Analyze how peers, family, and a person’s intersecting identities can influence attitudes, beliefs, and expectations about gender, gender identity, gender roles, and gender expression.
  • Middle schoolers must “Recall the definition of sexual orientation and explain that most people have a sexual orientation.”
  • They must “Define … bisexual, lesbian, gay, queer, twospirit, asexual, pansexual.”
  • They must “Define vaginal, oral, and anal sex.”
  • They must “Explain there are many methods of short- and long-term contraception that are safe and effective and describe how to access them.”
  • They must “List at least four methods of contraception that are available without a prescription (e.g., … condoms, emergency contraception, withdrawal)”
  • They must “Describe … pregnancy options, including … abortion.”

In grades 9-10,

Students must “Define reproductive justice and explain its history and how it relates to sexual health.”

In grades 11-12, students must

  • “Explain how support from peers, families, schools, and communities can improve a person’s health and wellbeing as it relates to gender identity and gender expression” and “sexual orientation.”
  • Students must “Analyze” how “homophobia, transphobia, racism, ableism, classism” can “influence decisions regarding sexual behaviors.”

Supporter of this pernicious bill, State Senator Linda Holmes (D-Aurora) pontificated foolishly in debate on the Illinois Senate floor:

I think what we are doing when we are teaching—again, age-appropriate, medically accurate sex education—to our children, we are arming them with knowledge. And I don’t know when that has ever been a bad thing.  (Watch the video recording of the Illinois Senate debate.)

When seeking to indoctrinate children with leftist sexuality dogma, leftists blather on about “age-appropriateness” and “cultural-appropriateness” as if those terms describe some objective, transcendent, universal criteria rather than socially constructed and imposed leftist “standards.” Both terms are used to include ideas leftists love and exclude (i.e., censor) all ideas leftists hate.

Some steely-spined lawmakers should demand from leftists specific definitions for those terms. They should demand to know who exactly constructed the criteria that define “age-appropriate,” “developmentally appropriate,” and “culturally appropriate.” They should ask if the age-appropriate criteria are objective and inarguably true or subjective and arguable.

Holmes claims she doesn’t know when knowledge has ever been a bad thing. Has she not read Frankenstein? Has she not heard of “gain-of-function” research?

If knowledge is never a bad thing, why not teach children about polyamory, zoophilia, or kink?

Oh, wait, I know. Those particular forms of sexual deviance are not age, developmentally, and culturally appropriate—according to mysterious leftist criteria.

While conservatives busy themselves dismissing the incrementalism of leftists in Springfield, leftists in Springfield busy themselves with incrementally imposing their screwball ethics, disordered beliefs, and deviant sexuality with the determination of arrogant authoritarians everywhere.

**UPDATE: The Illinois House passed this highly controversial proposal by a partisan vote of 60 to 48 on Friday afternoon (May 28, 2021). It will be sent Governor JB Pritzker for his consideration. (Watch the video recording of the Illinois House debate.)

Take ACTION: Click HERE to send a message to Gov. Pritzker’s administrative staff to urge him to VETO SB 818 as a terrible overreach of government. Impressionable students in public schools should not be exposed to body- and soul-destroying messages that promote leftist beliefs about sexuality.

You can also call the Office of the Governor in Springfield at (217) 782-06830 or in Chicago at (312)814-2121.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/SB818_House.mp3


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Click HERE to learn about supporting IFI on a monthly basis.




The Sordid History and Deadly Consequences of ‘Sex Ed’ at School

This article was originally published in April 2020.

Very few people realize that the reason children today are being sexualized at school is because pedophiles sexually abused hundreds of children, then claimed that the victims enjoyed it. That’s a fact, and the documents prove it.

In government schools all across the United States today, young children are literally being encouraged to experiment with fornication, masturbation, sodomy, oral sex, and all manner of sexual activities. It often begins as early as kindergarten and elementary school.

In fact, what passes for contemporary “sex education” in the United States and around the Western world would have been unthinkable just a generation ago—even a few years ago. And believe it or not, it’s getting more and more radical by the day.

In California, a top school district official defended teaching pedophilia to children because it’s one of a number of “different types of sexual orientation” that “have existed in history.”

The consequences of all this sex-ed mania have been devastating, too.

But it wasn’t always this way. And the history of how the United States got here will blow your mind.

The proliferation of “sex education” in American government schools has its roots in the pseudo-scientific quackery of sexual revolutionary Alfred Kinsey.

Hundreds, maybe thousands, of children were allegedly raped, molested, and brutalized, and their experiences recorded under the guise of “science.”

Even before Kinsey unleashed his perversion on an unsuspecting American public, though, communist butchers had experimented with the use of so-called sex education to break down family, culture, traditional morality, and nations. It worked well.

Kinsey’s ‘Research’

Long before Kinsey came on the scene, sex educators say, there was a sort of sex education being taught in schools. But it wasn’t called that. And comparing it with what Kinsey and his fellow sex fiends and perverts would unleash on America would be like comparing alfalfa to meteors.

In the early to mid-1900s, sex education in the United States, often described as “hygiene,” consisted primarily of religious and moral teachings on the subject. The programs also warned children about the horrifying consequences of extramarital and premarital sex—venereal disease, mental scars, the moral and emotional problems, and so on. That was the norm for generations.

The relatively new idea that children must be taught graphic and obscene sex education only emerged seriously in the United States in the middle of the last century. It came from Kinsey, who was financed by the Rockefeller foundations and the American taxpayer.

In his “Kinsey Reports” published in the late 1940s and early 1950s, Kinsey dropped what was described as an “atom bomb” on American society. Widely viewed as perhaps the worst books to have ever been published in America, the “findings” would unleash a wave of perversion and a “sexual revolution” that continues to claim more victims with each day that passes.

One of the elements of his “sex research” involved pedophiles, who sexually abused children while gathering “scientific data,” experts have concluded. Kinsey’s own data show that potentially hundreds of children were raped or molested by one or more pedophiles using a stopwatch to figure out when the children might experience “orgasm.”

About 200 boys under the age of 12 were among the victims.

Table 34 in Kinsey’s report documents, for example, that one 4-year-old boy supposedly endured 26 alleged “orgasms” in a 24-hour period.

Even babies a few months old were repeatedly abused. One 11-month-old baby was reported to have had 14 “orgasms” in a period of 38 minutes, as documented by the child abuser himself and then afterward recorded as Kinsey’s data. Even a 4-month-old baby girl reportedly had an “orgasm.”

However, experts noted that it isn’t even physically possible for children so young to have an orgasm. Instead, Kinsey’s report reveals that one way the “subjects” defined an orgasm in their “partners” was marked by “violent convulsions of the whole body; heavy breathing, groaning, sobbing, or more violent cries, sometimes with an abundance of tears (especially among younger children).” Does that sound like an orgasm? Perhaps to a pedophile seeking to justify his monstrous crimes.

Experts such as Dr. Judith Reisman, the world’s top expert on Kinsey and the author of multiple books on his research, have pointed out that this would be the equivalent of claiming adult-female rape victims enjoyed being raped, as evidenced by their screaming, crying, and convulsing. And yet this is exactly what Kinsey did. And America, tragically misled by Kinsey and his media dupes, believed him. (Editor’s Note: Dr. Reisman passed away in April 2021.)

Why Americans should trust child molesters and rapists for insight into “child sexuality” has never been adequately explained by Kinsey or his disciples. As Reisman put it, why in the world would somebody ask a rapist whether his victim enjoyed it, and then present that to the world as “science” and “evidence” that children enjoy being molested?

“If he would do that to kids, how can you trust anything this psychopath would have to say?” she asked.

Kinsey’s so-called sex research has been widely debunked and ridiculed by other experts as well. Professor of constitutional law Dr. Charles Rice of Notre Dame University, for instance, denounced Kinsey’s work. “Any judge, legislator or other public official who gives credence to that research is guilty of malpractice and dereliction of duty,” he said.

Incredibly, Kinsey even claimed the children enjoyed this abuse, and that sex with adults—even incest—could be beneficial to them. Among other outrages, Kinsey, citing what critics have blasted as his “junk science,” also posited that children are actually “sexual beings” from birth. As such, they must be “educated” in every manner of sexual activity and perversion conceivable.

This radical idea is literally the foundation of all modern sex education today.

Using Pedophiles’ ‘Data’ to Sexualize Children

Based on his fraudulent findings that children experience orgasms from birth, Kinsey declared that children need early, explicit sex education throughout their school lives. He also claimed children should be taught masturbation, homosexual acts, and heterosexual acts. He even claimed sexual abuse of children didn’t produce serious damage to children, which is self-evidently ludicrous.

According to Reisman, Kinsey’s claims and pseudo-science have produced unprecedented levels of child sexual abuse, pedophilia, sexual torture, and more. Laws were changed and repealed based on Kinsey’s fraudulent data, leaving women and children unprotected and sparking a deadly avalanche of sex education that may bury civilization beneath its icy embrace.

In the May 1954 edition of “Sexology,” a “sex science” magazine that styled itself as the “authoritative guide to sex education,” Kinsey is quoted making an astounding claim. After arguing that it was possible to sexually stimulate infants as young as 2 months or 3 months old, Kinsey claimed it was “clear” that “the earlier” children are started on “sex education,” the “more chance they will have” to supposedly “develop adjusted personalities and wholesome attitudes toward sexual behavior.”

By 1958, inner-city public schools serving primarily black children in the District of Columbia became testing grounds for the radical sexual reeducation envisioned by Kinsey and company. This included showing children “explicit” films that featured details of “barnyard animals mating,” “animated drawings of male ejaculation,” and even the use of a torso model with male and female genitalia.

Reisman writes that children as young as 3 years old were targeted for this sort of “education,” according to reports from the now-defunct Sunday Star newspaper.

The effects were predictable. Soaring rates of out-of-wedlock pregnancies, devastation of the family unit, skyrocketing numbers of fatherless homes, an explosion in venereal diseases, surging crime levels, massive increases in mental health problems, and more.

After those “successes,” the Kinsey-inspired sex education began spreading across the United States.

Many of the early sex-education curricula—often under misleading names such as “family life education,” as it was known in Virginia—openly cited Kinsey’s data as the source.

Pedophile advocacy groups such as the North American Man/Boy Love Association (NAMBLA) also have openly recognized the importance of Kinsey’s “research” to their cause.

Long after Kinsey died, his disciples continued to push the idea that these fraudulent findings by child rapists were foundational to the sexualizing of children in public schools. “The specific findings about these children are totally relevant to modern sex education,” former Kinsey Institute boss Dr. John Bancroft told CBS in a televised interview.

The institute had previously included responses to controversies by Bancroft on their website, which, while expressing concerns about the data, confirmed that Kinsey had obtained information on orgasm in children from men who “had been sexually involved with young boys and who had in the process observed their orgasms,” and one man in particular.

SIECUS Is Born

One of Kinsey’s first major speeches was about the supposed need for sexual education for children, explained Reisman, who has worked with the Department of Justice and now serves as a research professor of psychology at Liberty University. But Kinsey claimed only properly trained “experts” could do the teaching.

Thus, in 1964, the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States, now known just as SIECUS, was officially born. These operatives would be Kinsey’s specially trained “sex experts.”

Indeed, the formation of SIECUS was among the most crucial milestones on the road to the ubiquitous sexualizing of America’s children—and the destruction of their innocence and future families.

The organization, which received plenty of money from tax-exempt foundations and American taxpayers, was founded by Dr. Mary Calderone. The highly controversial figure had previously served as the medical director for Planned Parenthood.

In the late 1950s, Calderone went to the Kinsey Institute in Indiana. At a meeting, the group of radical sexual revolutionaries plotted how to advance their cause, and even assigned roles, Reisman told The Epoch Times during a series of interviews. It was decided that SIECUS would handle sex education, with multiple Kinsey Institute representatives serving on the board.

“SIECUS emerged out of the Kinsey Institute after this meeting, where they decided SIECUS should carry out the sex-education that Kinsey envisioned,” Reisman said. “SIECUS was really Kinsey’s arm—and the Kinsey Institute’s arm—into the schools.”

In 1979, despite receiving all sorts of government funding, Calderone compared the task ahead for SIECUS to the “spreading of a ‘new religion,’” according to Reisman. First, Calderone said, adults would have to be converted, so that children could eventually “flourish” and have an understanding that “sexuality” unrestrained by any moral standards was supposedly “healthy.”

SIECUS actually has been rather open about this. In the May–July 1982 SIECUS Report, on page 6, the outfit dropped a bombshell about its links with the Kinsey Institute:

“Few people realize that the great library collection of what is now known as the Kinsey Institute in Bloomington, Indiana was formed very specifically with one major field omitted: sex education,” the report stated, according to Reisman. “This was because it seemed appropriate, not only to the Institute but to its major funding source, the National Institute of Mental Health, to leave this area for SIECUS to fill.”

The report also revealed that SIECUS applied for a “highly important grant” from the taxpayer-funded National Institute of Mental Health that “was designed to implement a planned role for SIECUS.” This role, according to the same report, was to “become the primary data base for the education for sexuality.”

Today, SIECUS peddles its raunchy sex education all across the nation. For some perspective, the organization’s “National Sexuality Education Standards” call for starting the process in kindergarten, teaching children its values on homosexuality, genitalia, sexual activity, and more.

It brags about this, too. “SIECUS is not a single-issue organization because sex ed, as SIECUS envisions it, connects and addresses a variety of social issues,” the group says on its website. “Sex ed sits at the nexus of many social justice movements—from racial justice and LGBTQ rights to the #MeToo movement.”

The group’s new tagline reveals a great deal, too: “Sex Ed for Social Change.”

In addition to the nexus with the large foundations—and especially those tied to the Rockefeller dynasty—the humanist movement played a role in all this, too. In fact, so significant were the links that SIECUS boss Calderone became “Humanist of the Year” in 1974, continuing the long and well-documented humanist takeover of education in the United States that began with John Dewey, as covered in part 4 of this series.

Planned Parenthood, which today specializes in aborting children by the hundreds of thousands, also has played a key role in sexualizing American children with sex education.

More than a few critics have highlighted the conflict of interest here: On one hand, the tax-funded abortion giant encourages children to fornicate, while on the other, it charges big money to abort the children produced by those children fornicating.

Before Kinsey

Even before Kinsey, subversives had realized the potential horrors that sexualizing children and undermining sexual morés could wreak in society—and they loved it.

In 1919, German homosexual activist Magnus Hirschfeld created the Institute of Sex Research. Among its goals was the promotion of “free love,” masturbation, homosexuality, euthanasia, population control, abortion, feminism, and more. In the United States, this agenda was peddled as a way to fight back against the spread of sexually transmitted disease and poverty.

Communists also played a key role. Prior to the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, Russian communists vigorously promoted perverted sex education and “free love.” However, after realizing that society (and their regime) would collapse if it continued, that was stopped in 1924—at least in Russia, while the “New Soviet Man” was being created.

Outside of the enslaved communist nations, though, Marxists would continue promoting their radical sex revolution in free nations, something that continues to this day.

Bolshevik Deputy Commissar for Education and Culture Gyorgy Lukacs, who assumed his post in Hungary’s Bela Kun regime in 1918, pioneered this strategy in Hungary, with catastrophic results. Upon taking power, Lukacs and his comrades mandated raunchy sex education very similar to what is used today in the United States.

His goal was to obliterate Hungary’s Christian civilization and values on the road to a Marxist Utopia. His tools included mandating puppet shows featuring perverted sex acts to young school children, encouraging promiscuity in sex education, and mocking Christian-style family values at the bedrock of civilization.

While the Bela Kun regime in Hungary didn’t last long, Lukacs became a crucial player in the Frankfurt School, as exposed in part 6 of this series. This group also played a key role in spreading sex education and sexual immorality throughout the West. They did this not just by encouraging sex education, but by deliberately and strategically breaking down traditional values, especially those having to do with sexuality, marriage, monogamy, and family life.

By the early 1900s, the socialist-controlled National Education Association, which was the subject of part 8 in this series, began advocating for “sex hygiene” to be taught in schools as well. The excuse was combating venereal diseases, which of course in the real world have exploded in response to the promiscuity unleashed by widespread sexual liberation.

Another key figure in promoting the idea of sex education was G. Stanley Hall, the progressive who trained Dewey, the architect of today’s “progressive” indoctrination program masquerading as public education. Hall’s pretext for pushing sex education was that some girls believed they could get pregnant by kissing.

Changing Values

Ultimately, sex education was a means to an end: Changing the values of children and undermining the family in order to fundamentally transform society away from a free, Christian civilization and toward a new “Utopia.”

Indeed, in a 1979 report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) headlined “An Analysis of U.S. Sex Education Programs and Evaluation Methods,” researchers revealed that the “goals” of sex education in American schools had become “much more ambitious” than parents realized. Those goals included “the changing of … attitudes and behaviors,” something that the authors acknowledged wouldn’t be supported by many Americans.

Even before that, the United Nations and its U.N. Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), which has been crucial in indoctrinating humanity as documented in part 9 of this series, got on board with the sex education, too. A report on the February 1964 UNESCO-sponsored International Symposium on Health Education, Sex Education and Education for Home and Family Living recommended “sex education [should] begin at the primary school level.”

The document also called for sex ed to be “integrated into the whole curriculum” and argued that “boys and girls should be taught together.” Taking a cue from Kinsey, the U.N., which has always been close to the Rockefeller dynasty that financed Kinsey, called for “anti-dogmatic methods of teaching” to be used, also claiming “moral norms are relative concepts which change with time.”

The “anti-dogmatic” teaching and the moral relativism would be crucial. Thus, all of the sex education has been combined with what is known as “values clarification,” a scheme that UNESCO—an outfit dominated by communists, socialists, and humanists from day one—has encouraged in education for decades.

This subversive process is aimed at having children reject moral absolutes—in sexuality and everything else—by using mental and emotional manipulation.

It works by giving children hypothetical situations in which the ethical solution appears to be doing something that they were taught was wrong. For instance, a common example involves a hypothetical life raft that can only hold eight people, but there are currently nine in it. The students are told who is in the boat—a doctor, an engineer, a nurse, a cop, and so on—then asked who should be sacrificed for the “greater good.”

A better answer than choosing a victim to murder would be for the passengers to take turns swimming alongside the raft, of course. But that would ruin the whole point of the exercise, which is to get children to reject the idea of right and wrong, as well as the teachings of their own parents and pastors.

Combined with the raunchy sex education that encourages an “anything goes” mentality and offers children tantalizing claims about “safe” pleasure with no moral standards and no consequences (babies can be aborted, after all), the result has been absolutely catastrophic.

The Effects

The fruit of all this radical sex education is now clear to see. The institutions of marriage and family are in free-fall. Half of marriages now end in divorce. And even the couples that stay together often struggle, big time.

Birth rates, meanwhile, have plummeted below replacement levels across the West.

Civilization is literally dying amid a cocktail of loveless sex, drug abuse, suicide, despair, venereal disease, pornography, and sexual chaos.

The effects on the individual are horrific, too. “Little brains are not designed to process sexual stimuli of any kind,” said Reisman, adding that sex education is confusing and creates anxiety for any normal child. Indeed, these stimuli rewire their brains to accommodate the “new” information, she said.

It also causes children to mimic the behaviors they are exposed to, leading to addiction to sexual stimuli.

“The addiction to sexual stimuli and acting out leads to depression, identity disorders of various kinds, STDs, mental health problems, emotional distress, anger, loss of academic achievement, and more,” said Reisman, one of the world’s leading academic experts in this field.

“In the past, shocking sex stimuli often confused many kids into assuming they were homosexual,” she added. “Now many youngsters will assume that they are transgender, especially as they are encouraged everywhere they turn, and often by their own very troubled parents.”

The data already show this, with a 2017 study from the University of California–Los Angeles finding that more than one-quarter of Californian children aged 12 through 17 identify as “gender non-conforming” or “androgynous.” In Sweden, where sex education is even more radical and ubiquitous than in the United States, reports indicate that the number of “transgender” children is doubling each year.

“Juvenile mental health as well as physical and sexual health have deteriorated in every measurement of well-being historically identified by our society,” Reisman said, adding that this downward trend continues.

Another expert who has explored the horrific consequences of sex education on children is the late psychoanalyst and medical doctor Dr. Melvin Anchell, who wrote the minority report for President Lyndon Johnson’s Commission on Obscenity and Pornography and also served as an expert witness for the attorney general’s 1985 Commission on Pornography and Obscenity.

Among other concerns, he said these sexual indoctrination programs targeting young children cause “irreparable harm” to their victims that lasts their entire lives.

Anchell, who has a great deal of experience in the field of sex education, documented the damage done to children in books including “Killers of Children: A Psychoanalytic Look At Sex Education” and “What’s Wrong With Sex Education.”

Citing vast amounts of data and evidence, Anchell argued that sexualizing children causes unspeakable and often permanent harm, severely damaging the children’s future marriages, families, relationships, and lives. In some cases, it can even contribute to psychopathy, suicide, mass-murder, and more.

Unwed child-bearing also exploded right around the time sex-education schemes became ubiquitous in the 1960s. The evidence shows children growing up without a father on average do much worse on every metric than children in homes with a mother and a father.

In the black community, consider that only about 15 percent of children were born out of wedlock between 1940 and 1950. By 2008, after 60 years of sex education, almost 3 out of 4 black babies were born to unwed mothers.

Among whites, less than 5 percent of babies were born out of wedlock prior to 1960. By 2008, that exploded to about 30 percent.

Of course, comprehensive sex education is often marketed to the public as a tool for combating unwed teenage pregnancy and STDs. In fact, the data is clear: After the introduction of sex education, STDs and unwed teen pregnancies skyrocketed. Obviously, reducing STDs and unwed pregnancies was never the goal. If it had been, the experiment would have been stopped by the 1960s at the latest—not turbocharged.

Going Forward

Comprehensive sex education in the United States and around the world is becoming progressively more extreme, with tiny children now being exposed to obscenity, perversion, sexualization, LGBT propaganda, and more.

In 2018, UNESCO released “international technical guidance on sexuality education” urging schools to teach children about “sexual pleasure,” masturbation, and “responses to sexual stimulation” before they even turn 10. By 12, the standards call for children to be taught that “non-penetrative sexual behaviors” can be “pleasurable.”

If the epidemic of perversion, sexualization, and grooming of children isn’t brought under control, Reisman warned of “dark” consequences such as “cultural collapse.” Also, Americans can expect a continued crumbling of families, an explosion in crime, far more suicide, escalating government tyranny, even more drug abuse, widespread poverty, and much more.

“‘The Brave New World’ really was never brave,” Reisman said, a reference to Aldous Huxley’s famous book about a future of free sex and total government regimentation of every aspect of life. “We may find ourselves living it.”

Asked why governments and other powerful institutions seem so determined to sexualize children at younger and younger ages, Reisman said it was partly a matter of following the money. “Governments are backed by people and organizations with money, increasingly the pornography industry, pharmaceutical industry, and the Sex Industrial Complex,” she said.

“Big-government advocates nurse mind-numbed subjects to be dependent upon them,” she added. “If they get children early with sex training, the victim child will have limited critical thinking capability, little real education. Government will have willing subjects to regurgitate propagandistic barbarisms—like Social Justice Warriors, college kids/professors, repeatedly screaming the F word at anyone with another thought.”

Solutions

To deal with the existential crisis, Reisman had two main points: Remove children from public school, and open criminal investigations into Kinsey’s sex-education machine.

“Remove children from public schools; return to parents or grandparents the training of their children,” she said. “Parents are the primary educators of their children and need to reclaim that mantle and responsibility.”

Beyond that, she also called for restoring Judeo-Christian moral standards and repealing exemptions to obscenity laws that protect public-school officials who distribute obscene material to children—something that would be a felony in most circumstances.

On top of that, she called on lawmakers to resurrect H.R. 2749 to investigate the Kinsey Institute for any “past and present criminal activity.” The institute has argued that “patient confidentiality” precludes sharing the information, but Reisman and other advocates say it is essential that Americans learn the truth about what happened.

The sex-education craze unleashed by the communists, then given credibility by “Dr.” Kinsey, combined with the “progressive” government takeover of education, have brought family, civilization, and political liberty to the brink of collapse.

It’s time for Americans to seriously address these matters before it all comes crashing down.


The Illinois General Assembly is considering another “comprehensive” sex education bill (SB 818) that so-called “progressives” and their evil allies–Planned Parenthood, the ACLU, and Equality Illinois–are using to indoctrinate children starting in kindergarten. This horrible bill passed earlier this month by a partisan vote of 37 to 18. It is now up for consideration in the Illinois House of Representatives.

Take ACTION: Click HERE to send a message to your state representative to ask him/her to vote against SB 818. Impressionable students in public schools should not be exposed to body- and soul-destroying messages that promote leftist beliefs about sexuality.


This article was originally published by The Epoch Times, and is one report in a series of articles examining the origins of government education in the United States.




Suburban High School Principal Politicizes and Ruins Graduation

This past Saturday May 22,2021, the retiring principal of Glenbard South High School in Glen Ellyn, Illinois decided to ruin the graduation ceremony of seniors by using it to express her political views. Principal Sandra Coughlin led the families and students in the Pledge of Allegiance but notably omitted the words “of the United States of America” and “under God,” generating audible outrage from the attendees and creating division in what should have been a time of unity and joy.

My finely honed powers of deduction lead me to believe she is a leftist. It is leftists who abhor tradition. It is leftists who hate America. It is leftists who reject God. It is leftists who seek to divide. It is leftists who exploit their government-subsidized jobs to advance their own socio-political purposes.  (See Update below.)

What is uniquely galling is that Coughlin chose to ruin a special family milestone—one made more special this year by the trials suffered by students and their loved ones because of the pandemic and the selfishness of teachers’ unions—in order to get her two worthless cents in. She demonstrated a degree of self-righteousness and self-absorption remarkable even for leftist change-agents who identify as “educators.”

This was not an act of inclusivity or kindness. It was the rhetorical equivalent of giving every American of every race, ethnicity, nation of origin, and religion who loves this country and its principles the middle finger.

It was a brazen insult hurled at everyone in the audience who believes that all men and women are endowed with unalienable rights by their Creator.

It suggests she holds no allegiance to the United States. Enquiring minds wonder if Coughlin would be willing to take the Naturalization Oath of Allegiance that every naturalized citizen takes, which says “I will bear true faith and allegiance to the [United States of America].”

If Coughlin has moral or religious reasons for her unwillingness to lead the Pledge of Allegiance properly, she should have recused herself from the ceremonial duty and asked another Glenbard South administrator to perform the honor. Revising the Pledge to suit her political fancy was an act of presumptuousness and disrespect for students and their loved ones.

Coughlin taught all children present at Saturday’s commencement ceremony an unfortunate lesson about incivility and thanklessness. Parents had no choice but to turn her regrettable example into a teachable moment on how not to abuse power and position.

In choosing this particular moment and this yearwhen classes are over and just one month before she retires—to express her disdain for America and God, she also revealed her cowardice. She performed her act of rebellion and disrespect for every student, every family, and every taxpayer at a time when she will suffer no consequences. It was the ultimate act of contempt: On her way out the door, she insulted those who will now have to subsidize her hefty pension.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/Suburban-High-School-Principal-Politicizes-and-Ruins-Graduation.mp3

**Update**

“Retiring Glenbard South principal Sandra Coughlin has issued an apology and statement saying that due to being “emotional and anxious,” she “accidentally omitted” the words “of the United States of America” and “Under God” when she recited the Pledge of Allegiance at Saturday’ commencement ceremony.

Further, she said, “I would never intentionally disrespect our great country, our flag, nor the men and women who have done so much to protect and defend our freedom.”

She claims that “After 30 years in education, and countless times reciting the Pledge of Allegiance, I lost track and fumbled” those particular words.

IFI hopes this statement is true.


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Click HERE to learn about supporting IFI on a monthly basis.





Cultural Collision: “Comprehensive” Sex Ed Passed in Illinois Senate

Our Springfield snollygosters are working tenaciously to provide Christian parents with a plethora of reasons to abandon government schools in Illinois. On Thursday afternoon (May 20th), the Illinois Senate took up and debated another “comprehensive” sex education bill (SB 818) that so-called “progressives” and their evil allies–Planned Parenthood, the ACLU, and Equality Illinois–are using to indoctrinate children starting in kindergarten.

This bill to corrupt children with leftist humanistic values is sponsored by Illinois State Senator Ram Villivalam (D-Chicago) and passed by a partisan vote of 37 to 18 with four members not voting. It is now up for consideration in the Illinois House, where State Representative Camille Lilly (D-Chicago) is the chief sponsor.

Take ACTION: Click HERE to send a message to your state representative to ask him/her to vote against SB 818. Impressionable students in public schools should not be exposed to body- and soul-destroying messages that promote leftist beliefs about sexuality.

Background

The Illinois Senate debated this controversial legislation for almost an hour on Thursday afternoon. You can watch/listen to the entire debate on the IFI YouTube channel or on our newer Rumble channel. You can also watch the embedded version at the end of this article.

It was encouraging to see five conservative senators rise to question the sponsor and/or criticize the bill. Kudos to Illinois State Senators Sue Rezin (R-Morris), Terri Bryant (R-Murphysboro), Darren Bailey (R-Louisville), Neil Anderson (R-Moline), and Jason Plummer (R-Vandalia) for boldly speaking against this terrible bill.

Regarding the hour-long debate, there are just too many fallacies, outright lies and corrupt intentions to address in one article. Here are just a few of the glaring problems.

State Senator Celina Villanueva (D-Summit), a former sex education teacher, rose to ask the sponsor, “What’s the main goal of this bill?” Senator Villivalam responded:

The main goal is to insure that our youth have the opportunity to be safe and healthy by obtaining and having access to age and developmentally appropriate, medically accurate information and making sure that no one, no one, feels excluded in their classroom. No one feels excluded in their community.

Well, the bill also demands that comprehensive sex education classes be “culturally” appropriate, which the bill defines as follows:

“Culturally appropriate” means affirming culturally diverse individuals, families, and communities in an inclusive, respectful, and effective manner, including materials and instruction that are inclusive of race, ethnicity, language, cultural background, immigration status, religion, disability, gender, gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, and sexual behavior.

Culturally diverse and culturally appropriate? This Planned Parenthood legislation is neither inclusive nor respectful of orthodox Jewish, Christian or Muslim families. What families from these faith traditions deem to be “developmentally appropriate” is wildly different from what Planned Parenthood, the ACLU and Equality Illinois celebrate and promote. This point is further illuminated by the floor statement made by State Senator Patricia Van Pelt (D-Chicago):

In my history, before I came here, I was a preacher, and I preached on a regular basis. When I looked at bills like this it was really, really hard for me to get my hands around it, because it was so contrary to what we teach in church. But this is a law this is not a church. And we are representatives of the people in our district. We are not their preachers. We are not their pastors. We are not the ones that’s gonna make them keep the values right or their morals right. 

I learned by being here that many of the things that we held true in the church was actually hurting our community. And I think not having that knowledge not letting those children have the knowledge about what this is [is not good]

I’m standing in support of this bill as a new Patricia, not the Patricia that came in here. Because the Patricia that came in here would have had a hard time even voting for it, more less standing up and saying ‘yes, these children need to know what’s happening to them.’

State Senator Van Pelt has been in Springfield since 2013, and by her own testimony, it appears she has been thoroughly corrupted by the Springfield swamp. The “new Patricia,” must have a heart of stone because she has repeatedly ignored the Holy Spirit’s promptings to do what is right. The “new Patricia” no longer has a problem upholding sexually corrupt material being taught to children.

It was also disappointing  to hear State Senator Doris Turner (D-Carlinville) assert that “families come in very different sizes and boxes and no one has the right to define what a family is and what a family should consist of.” As with “marriage,” the God of creation ordained family. It is He who has the right to define what a family is and what it is not.

Senators Van Pelt, Turner and many of their colleagues think that “knowledge” will solve the problems caused by a sexualized culture. State Senator Linda Holmes (D-Aurora) even stated on the floor during debate:

I just don’t understand it, I think what we are doing when we are teaching–again, age-appropriate, medically accurate–sex education to our children, we are arming them with knowledge, and I don’t know when that has ever been a bad thing. 

Maybe Senator Holmes doesn’t remember, or maybe she was never taught the creation story. Genesis 2:15-17 tells us:

Then the Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to tend and keep it. And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, “Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.”

Knowledge of evil is not a good thing. It leads to death. Comprehensive sex education as proposed by Planned Parenthood, et al. is evil. Exposing young, innocent and impressionable students to Planned Parenthood’s  view of “age appropriate” material normalizes early and high-risk sexual experimentation.

Perhaps the clearest denunciation of this atrocious bill came from State Senator Darren Bailey who rightly said it will put “perversion into our schools.”

I sat here and I listen to this, and I participate in what I expect to be a prestigious body. And here we are dealing with absolute nonsense of putting perversion into our schools. Yeah, that’s what it is, it’s perversion.

Thank God we still have some state lawmakers in Springfield with the moral clarity and backbone to boldly tell the truth about this insidious agenda to undermine and subvert Judeo-Christian values.

You can watch/listen to the entire 57 minutes here:

More info:

The War on Children [VIDEO]

Stop CSE Tools & Resources

Sign the Online Petition

A Plea to Exit Public Schools ASAP


Please consider supporting the good work of Illinois Family Institute.

Click HERE to learn about supporting IFI on a monthly basis.





Big Brother Schools Using Big Data to Manipulate and Spy on Kids

Using data primarily gathered through the public-education system, Big Brother and the collectivists running the government schools now know more about American children than their own parents do. The awesome powers offered by “Big Data” will blow your mind.

In fact, authorities have vacuumed up so much private information on America’s youth that, according to a U.S. Department of Education report, it’s now possible to predict the “future behavior and interests” of children. It also allows the government to manipulate their thoughts and attitudes like never before.

The data-gathering has become so intrusive and extreme that some critics have even referred to it as the “data-rape” of American children. And this is just the start.

From biometric data and private health care information to academic records, online browsing habits, and mental-health data, government schools and technocratic policymakers across the United States want it all—from “cradle to career” and beyond, as authorities often put it. Thanks to federal grants, they’re getting it, and sharing it.

Hundreds of data points on each child are now being collected and stored in databases accessible by state and federal authorities. Privacy laws and regulations prohibiting the creation of national databases with student information were ignored and pushed aside beginning during the Obama administration, and even earlier.

Through a byzantine combination of public schools, government agencies, social-media companies, crony contractors, testing companies, non-profit organizations, and more, there’s now more data collected on children than anyone could have imagined even just a few short years ago. Many times, the children do not even realize they’re giving their private data to Big Brother—forever.

The tip of the iceberg occasionally becomes visible. Right now, for example, there’s an ongoing lawsuit against the non-profit College Board, currently headed by Common Core architect David Coleman, for allegedly collecting and selling private student data to third parties without the consent of the children or their parents. According to the plaintiffs, numerous laws have been broken.

That is all a big deal, of course. And it’s wrong. But it pales in comparison to the dangers of what Big Government and Big Business are doing right now—and what they have planned for the future.

The Common Core national standards imposed on the United States by the Obama administration, covered in the most recent piece in this series, super-charged the government’s data-harvesting and data-mining operations. After that, the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), which Obama referred to as a “Christmas miracle,” took it even further.

But it has been going on for quite some time. Consider a 2012 “Issue Brief” titled “Enhancing Teaching and Learning Through Educational Data Mining and Learning Analytics.” In the report, the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Educational Technology dropped a bombshell regarding what all this data was going to be used for: Basically, the feds want to make predictions about your children.

In the report, authorities said that “online learning systems” allow the government to “capture streams of fine-grained learner behaviors.” These systems send to a database the “time-stamped student input and behaviors captured as students work within the system,” the document explained.

Authorities then combine that behavioral data with other external information sources, including sensitive personal data held by the school, the district, or the state, according to the report. Then, the information is put to use making predictions and shaping “interventions.”

“A predictive model combines demographic data (from an external student information system) and learning/behavior data from the student learning database to track a student’s progress and make predictions about his or her future behaviors or performance,” the report explains (emphasis added).

The data being collected can also allow the government to peer into the minds of students. “Big data captured from users’ online behaviors enables algorithms to infer the users’ knowledge, intentions, and interests and to create models for predicting future behavior and interest,” the report adds.

Using controversial federally funded “surveys” under the guise of “health,” public schools across the United States have been collecting some of the most intimate data imaginable: political views, religious beliefs, sexual behaviors, sensitive information on parents or the home, private medical information, and much more.

Among the creepiest elements of the data-gathering and data-mining machine is the ability it gives to peer into the innermost thoughts and feelings of students. With access to this data, and the computing power to process it all, government and those connected to it can become nightmarishly powerful—and they will, if nothing is done to stop it, as the people of China are discovering under the “social credit” system.

Consider a 2010 speech to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), also the subject of part 9 in this series, by then-U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan. In it, the Chicago radical celebrated the rapidly expanding data-gathering colossus and the new powers it would unleash.

“More robust data systems and a new generation of assessments can assist teachers and principals to improve their practices and tailor their instruction in ways that were largely unthinkable in the past,” said Duncan, who regularly boasted about using schools to brainwash children with “sustainability” propaganda. “We have advanced data systems that we are constantly improving.”

In the decade since then, those “advanced data systems” have become ever more sophisticated, enabling governments to build unfathomable personal profiles on every public-school student in the United States. Even students in private schools and home schools are now in the cross-hairs of the data-mining machine.

Some of the technological tools that have already been used by the federal government in these areas have sparked grave privacy concerns. In 2013, the U.S. Department of Education released a report titled “Promoting Grit, Tenacity, and Perseverance: Critical Factors for Success in the 21st Century” that became a lightning rod for criticism.

Among other developments, the report included revelations about the sorts of technology being used in some federal programs to gather data on children. One of the tools, for example, was described as a “facial expression camera.” The report said this was used to “detect emotion” and “capture facial expressions,” with the data then processed through software and fed into databases.

Other tools described in the report, which has since been taken off the Education Department’s website, included a “posture analysis seat,” a “pressure mouse,” and a “wireless skin conductance sensor.” All of these existing technologies are used to monitor and collect “physiological response data” that can “examine student frustration.”

“Researchers are exploring how to gather complex affective data and generate meaningful and usable information to feed back to learners, teachers, researchers, and the technology itself,” the report explains, with “affective” data referring to students’ attitudes and feelings, rather than academic or educational abilities. “Connections to neuroscience are also beginning to emerge.”

More recently, a U.S. company called BrainCo developed a headband that measures and collects data on students’ “brainwaves.” BrainCo, which is part funded by Chinese state-owned companies, has already trialed the devices on 10,000 students in China. Back in 2017, the CEO talked of building the “world’s largest database,” which could be analyzed by artificial intelligence to better detect emotions. Some U.S. schools have reportedly tried the devices, too.

In 2017, the federal government funded a project to build a “friendly social robot” to collect highly sensitive psychological data on children. Known as “EMAR,” or Ecological Momentary Assessment Robot, the robot “gathers teen mental health data in a public high school setting,” the National Science Foundation said.

One of the major concerns surrounding all this intrusive data-gathering technology is that it’s being used by government schools and the education establishment to manipulate the thoughts, attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors of children. As the technology advances, it will allow bureaucrats and technocrats to do much more of this in the future, too.

Under new “Social and Emotional Learning” (SEL) programs, which are currently all the rage in educational circles, authorities set goals for various attitudes and values they want children to hold. By testing for these “affective” characteristics, the technology can help determine whether children hold the government-mandated attitudes. If not, the programs then help to develop “interventions” to get the desired attitude inculcated in the child.

As far back as 2016, Education Week revealed that, under the guise of providing “personalized learning experiences,” new technology was aiming at students’ “individual emotions, cognitive processes, ‘mindsets,’ and character and personality traits.” So-called “non-cognitive competencies” were also targets.

That same year, the U.S. Department of Education released a “National Education Technology Plan” peddling “assessments” that measure “non-cognitive competencies” including “attitudes that facilitate functioning well in school, work, and life.” How the feds would determine the correct “attitudes” for children to have was not specified.

The potential for abuse is self-evidently enormous. What if these tools get into the hands of evil-doers? What if they already are in the hands of evil-doers? Do Americans really want unelected bureaucrats at the far-left U.S. Department of Education—where 99.7 percent of 2016 donations to presidential campaigns went to Hillary Clinton—determining what attitudes and values children will hold on controversial issues such as homosexual marriage, immigration, and abortion?

When one realizes that the public education system was literally created by Utopian collectivists to fundamentally transform society, as this series has documented extensively since the first segment, the dangers are obvious and extraordinary.

Indeed, the architects and current leaders of the government-school machine have long been open about their desire to shift the United States away from a liberty-minded Christian society, and toward collectivism and humanism. With these powerful tools, resistance will become increasingly difficult, if not futile, for children held captive by the system.

Another major concern is that all of this data being gathered by schools is being fused with labor and career data. For years, authorities have been openly working on connecting the various “education” databases packed with information gathered on Americans by schools with that collected by other government organs.

Officials are hoping that this enormous amount of data, all brought together in one place, will help them do what previous attempts at central planning have always failed to do: accurately understand the needs of the economy, and then adjust production, employment, consumption, training, and education accordingly.

Then, imagine combining all of that with emerging developments such as artificial intelligence and super computers with unprecedented capabilities, plus all of the data being gathered on Americans by agencies such as the Internal Revenue Service, the National Security Agency, and more. Big Brother will know everything about everyone, literally from “the cradle,” as the Utopians themselves often say.

It’s a recipe for disaster—or even a catastrophe of unprecedented proportions.

Around the world, the U.N. is also leaning heavily on governments to start collecting, sharing, analyzing, using, and weaponizing all sorts of data on children via schools. And more than a few foreign governments—communist China and certain Western European governments, among others—have been more than happy to jump on the bandwagon.

Humanity must resist. Americans, in particular, have the means to effectively resist, if only they can find the will.

Privacy is extremely important to a free society. That’s why America’s Founding Fathers enshrined it in the U.S. Constitution. Without privacy, liberty cannot exist. And without liberty, prosperity and other blessings enjoyed by the people of the United States will end as well.

Americans must demand an end to the Orwellian data-gathering apparatus, and protect their children from it, before it’s too late.


This article was originally published by The Epoch Times, and is one report in a series of articles examining the origins of government education in the United States.




The War on Children

What nation or organization do you suppose is attempting to amass the most influence and power in the world? Could it be China, Russia, North Korea, or the United Nations? Or might it be Planned Parenthood and the International Planned Parenthood Federation who are orchestrating the biggest power grab of all with their push for worldwide Comprehensive Sexuality Education (CSE)?

If you think this sounds like the wildest conspiracy theory ever, or even just a bit far-fetched, watch this video.

No longer content with merely aborting millions of babies every year, Planned Parenthood and IPPF are vigorously promoting an agenda that sexualizes children and threatens their health, champions dangerous gender ideology, subverts the parent-child relationship, and violates parental rights.

Parents and grandparents, this is a crisis! In order to protect our children and grandchildren, we must stand firmly against this destructive evil agenda. It is imperative that we know exactly which government schools, and unfortunately some private schools, have adopted CSE and are brainwashing K-12th grade students. Watching this video documentary by Family Watch International is a good first step.

**View Discretion Advised**

Secondly, legislation pending in Springfield (SB 818) which would  require every school-age child in Illinois public and private schools (including homeschools) to be introduced to homosexuality and cross-sex impersonation through mandatory “comprehensive sex ed.”

Yes, lawmakers doing Planned Parenthood’s bidding want to expand “comprehensive” sexuality indoctrination, which currently starts at sixth grade, to start in kindergarten. Laurie Higgins wrote about these bills back in February. If passed these proposals “will enable leftists to reach deeper into the hearts and minds of impressionable children to shape their feelings and beliefs about sexuality under the viperish guise of protecting children.” Read more HERE and please take action to speak out!

Take ACTION: Click HERE to send a message to your state lawmakers to ask them to vote against SB 818. This radical CSE bill is heartily endorsed by Planned Parenthood of Illinois and by Illinois’ premiere “LBGT” activist organization, Equality Illinois, which should tell you everything you need to know.

Shame on the lawmakers and schools that are willingly promoting this perverse comprehensive sexuality education on other people’s children! Impressionable students in public schools should not be exposed to body- and soul-destroying messages that promote leftist beliefs about sexuality.

More info:

Stop CSE Tools & Resources

Sign the Online Petition


Please consider supporting the good work of Illinois Family Institute.

Click HERE to learn about supporting IFI on a monthly basis.




Common Core, Still in Place, Nationalized Educational Quackery

Perhaps nothing has done more to rouse Americans from their slumber on government education than the so-called Common Core standards, which were quietly imposed on the nation by the leftist Obama administration using tax-funded “bribe” money and arm-twisting. People were furious. Trump called the standards “a total disaster.” But the anger only scratched the surface of the problem.

Despite the public outrage over the dumbed-down standards and the centralization of education in the hands of federally funded elites, the toxic scheme is still firmly entrenched across the United States. Often under new names, the Common Core wreaked havoc on an already dismal education system created by collectivists. The devastation continues, too, as federally funded research on the program has revealed.

The outrage expressed by American voters about this has been intense. In 2014, as the battle was reaching its climax, the annual PDK/Gallup poll on attitudes toward public schools revealed that almost two-thirds of Americans opposed Common Core, while about one-third supported it. President Donald Trump ran on a platform of getting rid of it, seizing on that fury to propel him into the White House.

“Common Core, No Child Left Behind, and Race to the Top are all programs that take decisions away from parents and local school boards,” he said. “These programs allow the progressives in the Department of Education to indoctrinate, not educate, our kids. What they are doing does not fit the American model of governance. I am totally against these programs and the Department of Education. It’s a disaster. We cannot continue to fail our children—the very future of this nation.”

He was right, of course. And it was hardly a mystery why that message resonated with so many. Teachers, parents, and taxpayers were all outraged. Common Core had become politically toxic like nothing before in the history of U.S. public education—and for good reason.

First of all, in flagrant violation of the U.S. Constitution, the scheme centralizes control over education at the national level. Public surveys reveal that just a tiny fringe minority of Americans—about 15 percent—believe that the federal government ought to dictate what is taught in the classroom. The overwhelming majority believe that local, elected school boards should be in charge.

In part 10 of this series on education, the history behind the federal government’s gradual takeover of education was explored. Common Core, then, wasn’t the beginning of the federalization of education, and it almost certainly won’t be the end. In fact, it has often been described as just a “symptom” of the problem, rather than the problem itself.

A Mockery of Education

Another major issue with the standards is that Common Core makes a mockery of real education. To understand just how atrocious the standards are from an educational perspective, consider that the only two subject-matter experts on the Common Core Validation Committee both refused to sign off on the scheme.

Dr. Sandra Stotsky, professor of education emerita at the University of Arkansas, served as the only English-Language Arts expert on the committee. She vehemently rejected it. One of the biggest problems, she said, is that the Common Core “reduces both literary study and the opportunity for kids to develop critical thinking skills.”

Among other concerns, Stotsky blasted the replacement of great literature with Obama’s executive orders and EPA regulations as reading material. The standards “were written hastily by people who didn’t care how poorly written they were,” added the English expert, who is not opposed to national standards, per se, but has testified against Common Core in legislatures across America.

The absurd Common Core “math” standards, meanwhile, have been the subject of endless jokes. But unfortunately, the large-scale handicapping of America’s youth is no laughing matter. The only math expert on the Common Core Validation Committee, Dr. James Milgram of Stanford University, spoke out clearly and forcefully against the standards.

“The Core Mathematics Standards are written to reflect very low expectations,” he said. “They are as non-challenging as possible with extremely serious failings.” Indeed, there are “actual errors” in some of the math, he said, adding that the standards “are neither mathematically correct nor especially clear.”

Even some of the people who worked on writing the standards have spoken out. Dr. Louisa Moats, an internationally renowned reading expert who served as a contributor to the Common Core’s literacy standards, for instance, has been warning that children will not learn to read properly using the national scheme. “My warnings and protests were ignored at the time,” Moats said in an interview.

And yet, despite those warnings and many others from leading experts, the educational establishment—backed by endless supplies of federal tax money and billions from Microsoft billionaire Bill Gates—proceeded to impose it on America anyway. Even under the Trump administration, those same standards remain firmly in place.

Marketed as a way to make Americans “college and career ready,” the opposite would have been closer to reality. The ACT standardized test results released this year, for instance, revealed that college-bound students in the United States are doing worse than they have ever done in the ACT examination’s history.

And just as critics warned, American students—already far dumber and less educated than previous generations—have continued to suffer academically as Common Core accelerated the destruction of education. The latest National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) revealed that more than two-thirds of U.S. eighth-graders are not even proficient in any core subject.

The federal government knows this well, too. In a federally funded study by the Center on Standards, Alignment, Instruction and Learning (C-SAIL) released this year, researchers found results they didn’t expect. In short, the investigation concluded that Common Core produced “significant negative effects” in both English and math. “The magnitude of the negative effects [of Common Core] tend to increase over time,” added Mengli Song, one of the researchers involved.

Other experts have highlighted the indoctrination component, too. Tenured English professor Dr. Duke Pesta, director of FreedomProject Academy and one of the nation’s leading experts on Common Core, has delivered hundreds of speeches about the standards all over the United States that have been viewed millions of times online. And his assessment could hardly be worse.

He told The Epoch Times that one of the goals of Common Core’s creators was to indoctrinate American children into progressive ideology. “Common Core—now re-branded state by state to fool people into thinking it has been removed—is a key part of a broader movement to transform American education,” said Pesta, who hosts the popular education-focused Doctor Duke Show.

“Common Core is more than just weak standards: it is also bound up with the curriculum, pedagogy, teacher training, high-stakes standardized testing, and data gathering so typical of the progressive and statist push to override traditional knowledge-based education with left-wing and socialist ‘social justice’ education,” he said.

“Social justice education transforms public school classrooms into places of radical political advocacy that appropriates the prerogatives of parents and seeks to re-socialize students along progressive lines.”

In his talks, Pesta includes seemingly endless examples of this sort of dangerous indoctrination from Common Core-aligned textbooks and materials. Fake history. Fake science. Social-justice propaganda in math questions. Outrageous “reading” assignments. Virtually every semi-involved parent of a public-school child these days has seen it too.

Common Core Origins

The history of Common Core is deliberately opaque, too. To skirt federal statutes prohibiting direct U.S. government meddling in what is taught at schools, Common Core was officially created at the direction of the federally funded, Washington-based trade groups known as the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO).

Then the Obama administration used “bribe” money, as critics put it, from the so-called stimulus package—all combined with threats and even waivers from the Bush-era “No Child Left Behind” scheme—to force states to accept it. Virtually every state caved. And even in the handful of states that resisted, Common Core has entered through the back door.

Common Core was crafted by “Achieve, Inc.,” an organization controlled by U.S. and global elites whose top leaders had openly advocated abolishing local school districts and nationalizing control of all education. This same group also created the “Next Generation Science Standards” that are so outrageous they don’t even include a reference to the scientific method.

But the road to nationalized and even globalized education didn’t begin with Common Core. In fact, before that was even dreamed up, the federal government used Goals 2000 under President Bill Clinton, followed by President George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind, to help centralize education in the United States.

Before those two schemes, President George H.W. Bush pushed “America 2000,” dubbed “a long-term national strategy” to accomplish “education goals” outlined by Bush. At one of the summits peddling the scheme, Shirley McCune, who worked on the effort with the U.S. Department of Education and the National Education Association (NEA)said it wasn’t just about education, but rather about the “total restructuring of the society.”

“We have moved into a new era,” she said, boasting about the ongoing “human resource development restructuring” taking place. One of the two main functions of schools, McCune said, is “to prepare students not for today’s society, but for a society that’s 20, 30, 40, 50 years down the road.”

“So we have to anticipate what the future is, and then move back and figure out what it is we need to do today,” she said, without explaining what sort of fortune-telling methods might be used. “That’s called anticipatory socialization, or the social-change function of schools.”

Most incredibly, perhaps, she revealed that “what the revolution has been in curriculum is that we no longer are teaching facts to children.” That is because it’s “almost impossible for us to guess the kinds of facts that they will need,” McCune said, without explaining how children would be able to think or have a frame of reference without knowing facts.

In an upcoming piece in this series, the nexus between Common Core and the ongoing globalization of education will be explored in much more depth. Interestingly, the U.N.’s “World Core Curriculum” is based on the teachings of Alice Bailey, the same occultist who inspired McCune, according to former U.N. Assistant Secretary-General Robert Muller, who wrote the U.N.’s global education curriculum.

Separately, another upcoming piece in this series will examine the explosion in data gathering and data-mining by government. It’s impossible to truly understand Common Core and what’s happening in education without understanding the massive amounts of personal information on children being vacuumed up by authorities and the crony companies that work with them.

For now, it’s important that Americans understand a few important facts: Common Core is still very much alive, it’s still handicapping children on an industrial scale; promoters hope to ensnare nongovernment-school children as well, and there are no plans to get rid of it on the horizon. All of that is a documented fact.

But it’s also crucial to realize that Common Core itself is not the problem. Instead, it’s a symptom of the problem that has been explored in the previous 10 parts of this series. It’s merely the next step forward in “fundamentally transforming the United States of America,” as Obama put it.

Getting rid of Common Core would be great. But unfortunately, it will not fix the government education system that’s destroying the United States by destroying the nation’s children. That will require much more fundamental reforms that get to the root of the problem.


This article was originally published by The Epoch Times, and is one report in a series of articles examining the origins of government education in the United States.




Census Bureau: Homeschooling Rate Doubles During Pandemic

A new report out this spring from the U.S. Census Bureau adds more data to what we know about the increase in homeschooling rates during the pandemic.

The report, released in late March, includes data from all 50 states and looks at the changes in the rate of homeschooling between last spring and the start of the new school year in the fall.

“The U.S. Census Bureau’s experimental Household Pulse Survey, the first data source to offer both a national and state-level look at the impact of COVID-19 on homeschooling rates, shows a substantial increase from last spring — when the pandemic took hold — to the start of the 2020-2021 school year,” write Casey Eggleston and Jason Fields, the authors of the report.

A handful of states showed the homeschooling rate virtually flat, and two states even showed slight decreases, but generally speaking, the number of families homeschooling has increased across the country.

(One note on the data: “A clarification was added to the school enrollment question to make sure households were reporting true homeschooling rather than virtual learning through a public or private school,” the report notes. This clarification was added between weeks 1 and 16 of the survey. If anything, this would seem to suggest that the initial homeschooling rates could have been overstated, meaning the rate of increase could be even greater.)

Nationally, the homeschooling rate more than doubled from about 5.4 percent to 11.1 percent.

Here in Illinois, the rate also more than doubled from 2.1 percent to 5.4 percent.

The growth wasn’t limited to specific regions, with some of the largest increases coming in such diverse locales as Alaska, Florida, Vermont, and Oklahoma.

“It’s clear that in an unprecedented environment, families are seeking solutions that will reliably meet their health and safety needs, their childcare needs and the learning and socio-emotional needs of their children,” Eggleston and Fields write.

The report also notes that “Homeschooling rates are increasing across race groups and ethnicities.” The largest increase, however—by a wide margin—came among those who identified in the surveys as Black or African-American, with a five-fold increase (3.3 percent to 16.1 percent). That’s a big change. Imagine if the same level of increase had happened among all groups. We’d be looking at a national homeschooling rate north of 25 percent.

Of course, we know that many of these new homeschoolers opted for home education under stressful circumstances. As such, we could speculate that not all of them were necessarily enthusiastic about the choice. Even so, I think it’s safe to assume that some number of these folks will stick with homeschooling even after the pandemic ceases to be a concern. For some, the pandemic may have been the last nudge needed to push them toward a choice they were already seriously considering.

“From the much-discussed ‘pandemic pods,’ (small groups of students gathering outside a formal school setting for in-person instruction) to a reported influx of parent inquiries about stand-alone virtual schools, private schools and homeschooling organizations, American parents are increasingly open to options beyond the neighborhood school,” the report says.

If you’re looking for silver linings in the midst of all that’s happened in the last year, surely this is a good one to notice. Seeing more families opt out of government schooling and choose home-centered education instead is a welcome development. Lord willing, we’ll see the numbers continue to increase even post-pandemic.

If you’re new to homeschooling in Illinois, be sure to check out Illinois Christian Home Educators, including their upcoming annual conference—which you can attend either in-person or virtually.





Biden Rule Pushes Critical Race Theory on Schools

A new regulation proposed by Joe Biden’s Department of Education would further weaponize federal funding to schools in an effort to promote fraudulent history and more “Critical Race Theory” indoctrination.

The widely condemned “Theory,” designed to encourage racism and division among Americans under the guise of fighting “white privilege,” is already ubiquitous in government schools nationwide. But under Biden’s executive order, federal funding would be prioritized for indoctrination centers that impose it more vigorously.

The proposed new federal regulation, justified under an “executive order” from Joe Biden, would provide financial incentives to government schools that impose “culturally responsive teaching and learning,” according to the text. Analysts widely condemned the phraseology as code for teaching “Critical Race Theory,” or CRT.

The scheme would create new “American History and Civics Education programs” that would offer grants to supposedly “improve” the “quality of American history, civics, and government education.” That will be to help emphasize, among other ideas, the “vital role of diversity in our Nation’s democracy,” the text says, ironically failing to identify America’s actual form of government (a Republic).

In addition, the proposed regulation would create a “National Activities program” to “promote new and existing evidence-based strategies to encourage innovative American history, civics and government, and geography instruction, learning strategies, and professional development activities and programs for teachers, principals, or other school leaders.”

Yet another priority would be to fund projects in schools that “incorporate racially, ethnically, culturally, and linguistically diverse perspectives into teaching and learning,” according to the document. It then goes on to cite “systemic racism” and the New York Times’ debunked 1619 Project as reasons why this is supposedly needed.

“Our Nation deserves an ambitious whole-of-government equity agenda that matches the scale of the opportunities and challenges that we face,” the rule continues, quoting from an illegitimate executive decree issued by Biden purporting to underpin the scheme.

As part of this whole-of-government approach to fundamentally transforming America, “schools across the country are working to incorporate anti-racist practices into teaching and learning,” the Department of Education rule continues before quoting fringe racist activists such as Ibram X Kendi. Anti-racist, of course, is code for racist.

To get the federal money, government schools must have indoctrination programs that “take into account systemic marginalization, biases, inequities, and discriminatory policy and practice in American history,” the rule continues.

In other words, federal funding would begin flowing to new programs that would seek to further re-write U.S. history and civics. And then, it would go to brainwash teachers and “education” officials, for the purpose of ensuring that they indoctrinate their victims with this fraudulent view of America and its history.

Another key component of the rule is teaching children how to identify “misinformation.” However, in reading the text and understanding the extreme left-wing views of the bureaucrats behind them, it is clear that the plan is actually to teach children not to trust information that contradicts the official narrative. If they were truly identifying misinformation, The 1619 Project—debunked by the Times’ own fact checker—could have served as Exhibit A.

Critics are sounding the alarm. “This is the most significant move by the federal government to redefine the nature of state-funded public schools in U.S. history,” warned Kimberly Hermann, general counsel for the public-interest law firm Southeastern Legal Foundation in Atlanta.

In a widely cited analysis published by PJ Media about the proposed rule, she warned of the dangerous implications. “The initial goal is the indoctrination of young minds, but the long view is to aggregate power behind an alien political worldview that fed the dehumanizing machines of the Soviet Union and communist China,” Hermann said.

This Communist Chinese-style weaponization of government schools to teach fake history and racial resentment is going to lead to tragic consequences for individuals, families, and all of society. However, every parent can and must take urgent steps to protect their children now — and that means getting them out of the government’s indoctrination centers immediately.


This article was originally published by FreedomProject.com.




Rise of ‘Fed Ed’ Accelerated Demise of Real Education

The U.S. public school system was collectivist from the start, as this ongoing series on government education has extensively documented. But as the feds got involved, it quickly went from bad to worse, with the slow and steady decline in education turning into a precipitous collapse.

Today, the schools are a disaster, even by the government’s own measures. Consider, for instance, that the latest scores from the federal government’s National Assessment of Educational Progress revealed that more than two-thirds of eighth-graders aren’t proficient in any core subject. It would be hard to do worse.

The U.S. government bears a big part of the blame. And there should be no doubt that it was deliberate.

Because the U.S. Constitution delegated absolutely no power over education to the federal government—and because the 10th Amendment specifically reserves all non-delegated powers to the states or the people—it wasn’t easy for the federal camel’s nose to get under the tent. Indeed, it took almost two centuries for Washington to get seriously involved in public schools.

But communists worked diligently toward that goal for decades. In his 1932 book, “Toward Soviet America,” Communist Party USA leader William Z. Foster boldly outlined the agenda for his fellow revolutionaries. The goal: A U.S. Department of Education that would eventually replace patriotism and Christianity in school with communism and globalism.

“Among the elementary measures the American Soviet government will adopt to further the cultural revolution are the following: the schools, colleges, and universities will be coordinated and grouped under the National Department of Education and its state and local branches,” Foster declared, an idea that was almost unthinkable to Americans of the day.

He also outlined what this anticipated U.S. Department of Education would do once in charge of schools.

“The studies will be revolutionized, being cleansed of religious, patriotic and other features of the bourgeois ideology,” he said. “The students will be taught on the basis of Marxian dialectical materialism, internationalism, and the general ethics of the new Socialist society.”

Of course, it took a long time to make that a reality. But anyone who has studied even briefly what is going on in the federally controlled public schools of America today can see that Foster’s agenda has been thoroughly implemented in every respect, all over the country. Unless dealt with, the disease will likely prove fatal.

Federal Involvement Begins

Aside from a few insignificant offices to collect statistics over the years, and Congress recommending Bibles printed by Robert Aitken of Philadelphia “for use in the schools” in the late 1700s, the feds played virtually no role whatsoever in education in America.

Indeed, it wasn’t until the 1960s, long after the government school system created by collectivists had started destroying traditional education, that the federal government took its first major steps into education.

It began in 1962 and 1963, as documented in this series, with two U.S. Supreme Court rulings declaring that it was somehow a violation of the First Amendment to have prayer or Bible readings in public schools. These lawless opinions, as admitted by one of the justices in his dissent, replaced Christianity at school with the collectivist “religious humanism” of John Dewey, one of the socialist founders of America’s public school system.

Well-educated Americans would have instantly recognized the absurdity of the ruling. After all, when the First Amendment was written and ratified, most of the states had established churches. The idea that this amendment, designed to prevent a national religion, was supposed to prohibit states and communities from having prayer or Bibles in schools, would have been laughed at even in the 1940s or ’50s.

But by the ’60s, public education had already been in place for generations, dumbing down Americans and erasing their understanding of history to the point that such an outlandish anti-constitutional ruling became feasible.

Not long after that rogue court ruling, Congress—almost certainly emboldened by the high court’s flagrant constitutional intrusions into state and local education—launched the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA). Signed by President Lyndon B. Johnson under the guise of “helping” states to “educate” all “disadvantaged” students, this statute opened up the floodgates of federal funding to K-12 public schools.

As the old cliché goes, with federal funding comes federal control. And in exchange for federal taxpayer money, first released under ESEA, schools were forced to accept a growing array of federal regulations. At this point, the feds have effectively nationalized the public school system; globalizing it is the next frontier.

There are more than 100 subsidy programs now in place under the department, which has a budget approaching $100 billion including “discretionary” and “mandatory” spending. Everything from discipline and academic standards to lunches, data collection, and even the gender of textbook writers is now subject to federal intrusion.

Once the camel’s nose was under the tent, it didn’t take long for the entire smelly beast to shove its way in. The relatively new U.S. Department of Education, which has centralized control over education in an unprecedented manner, has also played a crucial role in weaponizing America’s public education system against individual liberty.

Established in 1979 under President Jimmy Carter, the cabinet-level department was basically part of a quid pro quo agreement with the socialist-controlled National Education Association (NEA). The powerful union, which named the socialist and humanist Dewey as its “honorary life president,” was already acting as a sort of national ministry of education.

With the birth of the actual department, it sealed the deal.

By the time the U.S. Department of Education was established, Congress’s investigative committees charged with exposing communists and preventing infiltration of the federal government had long since been disbanded. As such, it’s difficult to determine how many actual communists worked within the department.

But as the Bible says, “by their fruits, ye shall know them.” And the fruit coming from the Department of Education has been rotten to the core from day one.

Whistleblower From Belly of the Beast

From the start, using grants and other means, this unconstitutional behemoth began working to bring all education in the United States under federal control. Worse than that, it worked to systematically dumb down the American people and transform the values of children, according to whistleblower Charlotte Iserbyt, who served as a senior policy adviser on education in the Reagan administration.

All of it was in line with what the mass-murdering Soviet regime was doing. Indeed, from its earliest days, the U.S. Department of Education was involved in helping to “sovietize” the American public school system, Iserbyt told The Epoch Times in an interview. This agenda has been extremely successful in facilitating the disaster now unfolding in America, she explained.

Upon taking up her post at the Department of Education, Iserbyt found documents revealing that public schools in America were introducing Soviet quackery and curricula in the classroom, with help from the major foundations. In response, the patriotic Iserbyt began leaking the official documents to the press in an attempt to blow the whistle and stop the madness. She eventually compiled the smoking-gun evidence in her explosive book, “The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America.”

“When I was there, what I saw, I realized in retrospect, ‘The Nation at Risk’ report was very important,” Iserbyt said, referring to a government report commissioned by Reagan arguing that the U.S. education system threatened America’s future. “They needed that to convince America that we had terrible schools so they could bring in the reforms they wanted.”

Pointing to the Soviet education system and the forces that worked to bring similar schemes to America, Iserbyt is also convinced that communism was the goal. U.S. Secretary of Education Terrel Bell “wanted to put in the communist system,” Iserbyt argued. “I believe he was a communist. If you read in my book the things he said, there is no way to come up with any other conclusion.”

Among other schemes, Iserbyt said Bell was the one responsible for bringing in the methods of “education” advocated by anti-Christian behaviorist B.F. Skinner and Soviet “psychologist” Ivan Pavlov to American schools.

“These Pavlovian and Skinnerian methods destroy free will by treating people like animals to be trained and to give reflexive responses to stimuli,” said Iserbyt. “This is animal training, not education. This is what was being used in communist countries to train and brainwash their populations, not educate them.”

Because of the Department of Education, it’s being used all over America, too.

“Their agenda was to have absolute control of the American population through these changes in teaching and instruction being brought into the schools through the Department of Education,” she continued, pointing to the important role of the Carnegie Endowment in negotiating with the Soviets on education. “So they claimed all these national reforms were needed to change education from what you know in your head, to what you can do, which is Soviet-style workforce training.”

Iserbyt also witnessed how great educators with valuable experience who loved liberty, such as Edward Curran, who led the National Institute of Education at the U.S. Department of Education, were purged and driven out. Meanwhile, collectivists and quacks continued moving quickly up the ranks.

“The political appointees—most of them were rotten,” said Iserbyt.

To impose the radical “reforms” on America, Iserbyt said she witnessed the Department of Education handing out all manner of enormous grants to fund dangerous quackery, data-gathering, and “efforts to transform the values of children away from traditional Americanism” through education.

“I believe these were very abusive toward traditional values,” she said, pointing to her important short publication, “Soviets in the Classroom, America’s Latest Education Fad.”

The Extremism Continues

Today, even with a Republican president in the White House, the Department of Education remains firmly under collectivist control. During the 2016 presidential election, for example, an analysis by The Hill revealed that 99.7 percent of all political spending by Department of Education bureaucrats went to Hillary Clinton—the highest of any federal department.

Even after Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos took up her post, the left-wing extremism from the department continued to spew forth. Indeed, on Feb. 12, 2017, the department’s Twitter account posted a quote by Communist Party USA member W.E.B. Du Bois—with his name misspelled, no less, drawing national ridicule.

Among other absurdities, Du Bois claimed the USSR, led by one of the most brutal and murderous regimes in human history, was the “most hopeful country on earth.” During the darkest depths of the “Great Leap Forward,” Du Bois even held multiple meetings with mass-murdering communist Chinese dictator Mao Zedong, and the two were always pictured with smiles on their faces.

These are some of the people who control U.S. education. Under the previous administration, the department, using “stimulus” money to bribe states into compliance, even imposed Obama-backed national standards on the nation—standards that are aligned with international schemes, too. Common Core will be dealt with in a future article in this series.

With around 4,000 employees, the Education Department’s budget has been ballooning since it was created. And that’s despite President Ronald Reagan promising to abolish it, and President Donald Trump saying on the campaign trail, “If we don’t eliminate it completely, we certainly need to cut its power and reach.”

There’s currently a bill in Congress, H.R. 899, to abolish the department. When asked why the bill was needed, Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), the chief sponsor, replied in an interview, “How much time do you have?”

“The left understands that this is where you win or lose—in the schools and in the teaching of the children,” the Kentucky congressman continued.

Massie also noted that under the current administration, there’s a tremendous opportunity to make abolishing the department a bipartisan endeavor. Liberals and progressives, of course, don’t want Trump in charge of their children’s education, any more than conservatives want Obama or Biden running it.

“Unelected bureaucrats in Washington, D.C. should not be in charge of our children’s intellectual and moral development,” Massie said. “States and local communities are best positioned to shape curricula that meet the needs of their students.”

The group U.S. Parents Involved in Education (USPIE) is working to end all federal involvement in education, too.

“Although this experiment with federal control of local public schools has gone on for half a century now, it has failed,” USPIE President Sheri Few told The Epoch Times. “The U.S. Department of Education has existed because it is about control and not about children.

“We need to stop treating children like guinea pigs in some social engineering laboratory.”

The U.S. Constitution and common sense both demand that the federal government gets out of education. That would be a great step forward. However, as this series has documented, the government education system has been controlled by collectivists from the very beginning. That means getting the feds out, by itself, won’t solve the systemic problems plaguing education in the United States today.

Still, ending all “Fed Ed” may be a decent place to start. And with Trump in the White House, perhaps both sides of the aisle could work together on this, as a first step to much more far-reaching reforms.


This article was originally published by The Epoch Times, and is one report in a series of articles examining the origins of government education in the United States.




A Parable About Christian Education

“Ehud ben Levi! You better get going, the school bus-camel is about to come!”

“But, Mom, why do I have to keep going to the Philistine school?”

“Ehud, you know they have the best Spear and Sword team.”

“But Mom, they only teach us about Dagon, and that our God is nothing special.”

“Ehud, don’t listen to that stuff. You only really need to pay attention when they teach you about math and science. You can also ignore most of their history stuff. You can learn about Torah when you go to Synagogue on Saturday.”

“Now be quick, otherwise you’ll miss the camel. We love you, Ehud. See you tonight around 6.”

Can you imagine such a ridiculous conversation between a mother and son taking place in the days of King David or during other times in Israel’s history?

No doubt, Israel was influenced by her neighbors. She was, after all, located in the heart of the ancient world.

Major trade roads passed through her land, assuring that the latest and greatest fashions and ideas were accessible to most.

And yet, Israel was summoned to live in such a way that the nations would take notice of her.

Positioned in the middle of the nations, she was to not be like the nations.

Consider the clear directions God gave to Israel before she entered the Promised Land.

Deut. 4:6 Therefore be careful to observe them; for this is your wisdom and your understanding in the sight of the peoples who will hear all these statutes, and say, ‘Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people.’

Deut. 4:7-9 “For what great nation is there that has God so near to it, as the LORD our God is to us, for whatever reason we may call upon Him?  8 And what great nation is there that has such statutes and righteous judgments as are in all this law which I set before you this day?  9 Only take heed to yourself, and diligently keep yourself, lest you forget the things your eyes have seen, and lest they depart from your heart all the days of your life. And teach them to your children and your grandchildren… (NKJV)

Would Moses have encouraged young Israelite children to be trained by the Moabites or Ammonites?

Would it have been a good idea for Israelite children to study in the Philistine school system?

Certainly not.

Do we have a greater reason today to make sure our children receive a Christ-centered education than did the parents in ancient Israel?

I believe we do.

To whom much has been given, much shall be required.

If, with the greater understanding we have in Jesus Christ of God’s great plan of salvation, why would we think it acceptable to give our children a non-Christ-centered education?

A lot of discussion concerning education is, not surprisingly, focused on children.

What is the best way to facilitate learning?

What is a safe environment?

What will prepare them best for college, work, etc.?

These questions are not bad in themselves. But, if our focus is merely on our children, we can easily turn our children into idols.

Should not our focus be on the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ? The glory and centrality of Jesus Christ must be the preeminent focus in all of life.

To be a Christian means to be in union with Jesus Christ and entirely devoted to the service of God.

Parents, ask yourself this: Are we providing for our children an education that directs them in the fear and knowledge of Jesus Christ or are our children being taught to bow down to Dagon, Baal, and the other idols that are widely worshipped today?



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Book Banning, Propaganda, and Shaming in Government Schools and Society

While claiming allegiance to “openness,” “diversity,” “inclusivity,” “tolerance,” and “safety,” public schools now ban books, censor ideas, criticize moral and theological beliefs, promote disordered sexuality and anti-white racism, expose students to obscene material, prohibit correct pronoun usage, sexually integrate private spaces, and create criteria for determining “appropriateness” that conveniently allow any material leftists love. It’s a rigged system designed to make conservative kids feel ashamed of their beliefs, which, by leftists’ definition, makes them “unsafe.”

What becomes obscured in discussions of censorship, book-banning, or “selection criteria” in government schools is the egregious offense of using public money to subsidize curricula and activities that undermine many taxpayers’ moral and political beliefs.

Some “progressive” parents and teachers argue that those who don’t want their children taught controversial texts can send their children to private schools, ignoring the fact that “progressives” oppose school vouchers that would make such a choice possible. Perhaps when public funds are being used, those parents and teachers who oppose even minor curricular concessions in order to respect and accommodate the beliefs of all who subsidize public education are the ones who should send their children to or teach in private schools.

The issue of whether taxpayers, even those who have no children in school, should be required to fund the teaching of offensive, controversial, divisive, and destructive material is important. Many Americans rightly believe that obscene texts contribute to the debasement of an already vulgar culture and that leftist texts infused with Critical Race Theory contribute to the anti-American anarchy we see in our streets, neither of which should schools promote.

This does not mean texts must avoid examining the flaws and evil that afflict man. Rather, it means that we should choose texts that look at the presence of ignobility and evil but do so in ways that inspire, edify, chasten, and point us in the direction of truth, beauty, and righteousness.

Books with profuse obscenity and graphic sex and the willingness of educators to teach such material convey the message that such material is benign, a message with which many parents vigorously disagree. And books that promote as true—rather than critically examine—arguable ideas about race, race relations, and American history inculcate rather than educate.

Some argue that resources that depict graphic sexuality, include profane and obscene language, or promote leftist racism will not affect students. But this is an absurd claim particularly coming from “educators” who see themselves as “agents of change.” Teachers who see themselves as change agents base their text selections on whether and how race, gender, class, homosexuality, “trans”-cultism, and American history are depicted in their fervent hope of transforming the ideas, morals, or values of other people’s children, so clearly they believe that words have the power to transform students.

Parents who object to the inclusion of texts on recommended or required reading lists due to obscene language, sexuality, or highly controversial messages are not engaging in some kind of inappropriate censorship. All educators evaluate curricular materials for objectionable content, including language, sexuality, and controversial themes. The irony is that when teachers decide not to select a text due to these elements, they view their choices as an exercise in legitimate decision-making, but when parents engage in it, they are tarred with the label of “censor.”

Every parent should be able to send their child to school confident that their political and moral beliefs will not be challenged by change agents or curricula, especially since this confidence can be secured without compromising the academic enterprise.

Leftist “educators” have arrogated to themselves the right to create text-selection criteria; to define what “safety” means and whose safety matters; to determine which ideas should be included, studied, and tolerated; and to decide which ideas must be excluded, canceled, and stigmatized.

The question is not and never has been “Will we as a society marginalize and stigmatize?” Every society marginalizes and stigmatizes. The question is “What will we as a society marginalize and stigmatize?” And on what basis will we marginalize and stigmatize? Will we marginalize and stigmatize persons, or will we marginalize and stigmatize ideas and the volitional behavior justified by those ideas?

Additionally, what is the means by which we marginalize and stigmatize those ideas? Will we marginalize and stigmatize those ideas by allowing the full and free discussion of them as the Founding Fathers advocated via the First Amendment? Or will we marginalize and stigmatize them by legally prohibiting their expression, by making employment conditional on refraining from expressing them, and by government-sponsored propaganda?

It should be obvious that America is not becoming a more tolerant, less stigmatizing, less shaming culture. Quite the contrary. All that’s changing now is that theologically orthodox Christians and Orthodox Jews are being marginalized, stigmatized, and shamed. And the means by which this new religious discrimination and stigmatization is occurring is through legal prohibitions of speech, ideological compliance standards for employment, and by government-sponsored indoctrination in what used to be schools.

Leftists have ideologically hijacked both curricula and policy, turning schools into mal-education camps. And they’re using taxpayer funds to do it. If conservatives hope to train up their children in the way they should go and to restore our culture, they must get their kids out of government schools. And until they do, they should object tenaciously to every objectionable resource taught.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/2_Book-Banning-Propaganda-and-Shaming-in-Government-Schools-and-Society.mp3