It is simple: good people don’t commit murder. Murderers do! Multiple mass shootings over the last few years, and especially recently, have caused a great sense of frustration among citizens, yet the only message coming from some politicians is about reducing the number of guns in society. They never address the fundamental issue which is that guns in the hands of good people never cause a problem, and in fact often save lives. Yet law abiding citizens are always the target of Leftists’ gun control laws.
Americans have always had an abundance of firearms. Guns are not the problem. People willing to commit violent crimes is! The problem of mass shootings in America will not be corrected with changes in the laws, but rather with changes in hearts.
The multiple shootings of young people which have occurred over the last few years are worse than tragic. But sadly, they are the logical consequence of a society in denial regarding mankind’s sinfulness and in rejection of God’s authority. From the first murder recorded in Genesis 4 to the recent rampage on the campus of Michigan State University, every one of these killings is a direct assault upon God the Creator and a rejection of His command not to commit murder.
It is irrational to think that we can pick and choose which of God’s commandments we obey and which we flout. Why would we expect young people to selectively obey God’s 6th commandment when we collectively scorn them all? Why should young people listen to anything our leaders say when those leaders lie, cheat, steal, and advocate for the killing of the unborn and euthanasia for the elderly? The left has ridiculed America’s founders, the Bible, God, and everyone who promotes historic Judeo-Christian virtues. They then wring their hands in faux dismay when people violate those same virtues. C.S. Lewis got it right when he wrote, “We make men without chests and expect from them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honor and are shocked to find traitors in our midst.”
We could expand on his point: We deny truth exists yet get angry when people lie. We mock integrity and are overwhelmed by crime. We say “follow your heart” but are then appalled by people’s selfishness. We scorn God and are surprised by the violence and chaos of a godless society.
Do the Leftists who promote expanded drug use, defunding the police, removing God and the Bible from culture, who trash America’s history and replace science with woke nonsense, not understand what they are doing? Are they well-intentioned but mistaken? Sadly, no! They know exactly what they are doing and why! Their goal is not a better culture with healthier, happier citizens but rather a godless society that becomes so chaotic the citizens plead with them to take control and bring order even if it means totalitarianism.
But we know better because we know God, we love the truth, and we understand how it all ends! Psalm 2 addresses leaders and citizens who think they can free themselves from God’s principles and cast off his sovereign lordship, “He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh: The Lord shall have them in derision. . . .” And ultimately, He will “dash them in pieces like a potter’s vessel.”
We who love God do not fight this battle with the weapons of men, but with truth. While battles rage on, the ultimate victory has already been won. Jesus Christ won it over 2000 years ago with his death on the cross, and His resurrection!
It would be quite humorous, if it weren’t so ironic, to witness Leftists, who hold such power in American culture, pose as martyrs claiming to “speak truth to power!” No, at the moment it is Christians, who are the butt of comedians’ late-night jokes, who are mocked and scorned on every hand, who are sued for living their convictions, who are speaking “truth to power.” Every forum of public discourse and power is dominated by the left. Government, education, the Media, Arts, Hollywood, Big Tech, business associations and more are firmly controlled by Leftists. It is a testimony to the power of truth that these Leftist powerbrokers are doing everything they can to silence the few dissenting voices that remain, even as those voices have virtually no cultural power! It may also be evidence that these Leftists know, in spite of their protestations otherwise, that truth is not on their side!
What are we who love and proclaim truth to do? We must not yield an inch. We must make no apology for the truth. We must shun the methods of the Left. We must live and act with grace. Scriptures are not merely poetic when they proclaim, “the righteous are bold as a lion,” but “the wicked flee when no one pursues,” (Prov. 28:1).
Jesus Christ told His disciples that they are “the salt of the earth.” Salt has many beneficial uses, one of which is to inhibit decay. No one can deny that America is in the state of moral decay pushed by the Left. However, because of our resistance to this decay, we are hated. Our presence, words, and actions are irritants and even obstacles to the decadence being promoted by influential God-hating Americans. In contrast to the “men without chests” being created by the Left, Christians reflect the eternal principles and authority of the God who has redeemed us. So, if we are to inhibit the decay of our culture, in practical terms, how are we to do that? We cannot change people’s hearts. God, alone, does that work. But we can and must proclaim the message of the Gospel and live so as to represent Christ well. The Apostle Paul told his young protégé, Timothy, to “. . .reprove, rebuke and exhort. . . .” all who would hear him. These things do not make a person popular, but they do make him faithful and most effective in confronting the decay that is the ongoing result of Adam’s sin.
If you are a born-again Christian, you, too are “the salt of the earth” and have the grave responsibility to oppose the direction of our culture. You cannot shrug it off as belonging to someone else. The immorality, violence, and victimization of children we are witnessing is not an accident but the intentional repudiation of God, the Bible, and righteousness, and God has called no one to be spectators of the conflict! We all have a high calling on our life! You can’t afford to sit this out.
The confused and addicted all around us do not need “support” or agreement from us to be happy. They will only be happy when they come to agreement with God, repent of their sin, and trust His grace and forgiveness.
This is truly the message of hope every person on earth needs!
Fetus vs. Baby
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If anything G. K. Chesterton wrote is worth quoting once, it’s worth quoting twice. In our recent discussion about the theological and political significance of words, I quoted Chesterton as saying thus:
“If you’re not going to argue about words, what are you going to argue about? Are you
going to convey your meaning to me by moving your ears? The Church and the heresies
always used to fight about words, because they are the only thing worth fighting about.”
And as we’ve seen in the world of academia, the Left has recognized that words are the battleground of the mind and advanced into the fray with weapons swinging. Journalism is not far behind.
The Associated Press Stylebook, a preeminent reference guide for English grammar and journalistic principles and style—used by both educators and journalists—has chosen some eyebrow-raising guidelines for how reporters ought to address the topic of abortion in their reports. These guidelines show us, on a much more subtle level, how fiddling with words is fiddling with minds. Let’s look at one specific example in detail: the difference between “unborn baby” and “fetus.” (While this article won’t be using direct quotes from the AP Stylebook, the full text of the abortion topical guide can be accessed here.)
When referring to a baby before he is born, reporters are warned that terms such as “fetus” or “unborn baby” have been politicized by both sides of the issue (pro-life advocates argue that “fetus” devalues a human life, and pro-abortion-access advocates argue that “unborn child” equates abortion with murder). Therefore, the AP counsels us, we are to write with appropriate clarity and sensitivity. But the AP then provides a little more detail about what “appropriate” means.
“Fetus” is preferred in many instances (especially in scientific and medical contexts) when we are discussing a baby after 10 weeks of the mother’s pregnancy. “Embryo” is the appropriate term for a baby up to 10 weeks of the mother’s pregnancy. So when are we allowed to use “unborn baby?” Ahh, that’s a term that we to be used when “fetus” would seem too clinical for the context. E.g., “Sarah loved her unborn fetus more than anyone else in the world” sounds quite weird. So while the AP doesn’t explicitly say so, the examples they provide us seem to indicate what they think is “appropriate:” use the more clinical terms “fetus” and “embryo” in most cases, except for when they sound too clinical for the context, such as a mother loving her unborn baby. Saying “fetus” in such contexts doesn’t evoke the proper emotional reaction.
Yet that’s the whole point! The reason pro-life advocates insist on using the term “murder of an unborn baby” is precisely because saying “demise of a fetus” sounds too clinical! It doesn’t evoke the proper emotional reaction. Think of the difference between saying “the underdeveloped hominoid life form was severed with a sharp dividing instrument” and saying “the little girl was beheaded with an axe.” The more clinical our language, the less we feel natural emotional responses, which is why the abortion industry insists on “terminating pregnancies” instead of “dismembering unborn babies.”
The AP is onto the right principle: we ought to use “unborn baby” when omitting to do so wouldn’t evoke the right emotional response. However, the AP isn’t applying this principle evenly—they recognize the beauty of maternal affection but not the horror of abortion. By writing a topical guide that suggests we use “embryo” and “fetus” as our default terms when writing about abortion, they are suggesting we “clinicalize” a topic that is anything but clinical.
The AP also presents a few other eyebrow-raising guidelines, such as:
• Use “anti-abortion” instead of “pro-life,”
• Use “abortion-rights” instead of “pro-choice,” and
• Use “anti-abortion counseling center” instead of “crisis pregnancy center.”
Yet again, we have stumbled onto the vocabular battlefield and found pairs of competing words fighting over the same subject. And yet again, the difference lies not in the subject we are referring to (we’re talking about the same clinics and procedures either way); the difference lies in the connotations we pin onto it. We might be tempted to give way and just use the politically correct vocabulary, consoling ourselves in our heart of hearts that “we’re referring to the same thing either way,” but we’re not using the same connotations either way. And thus, in the end, we really aren’t meaning the same thing either way.
“Happy holidays” technically refers to the same time of year as does “Merry Christmas”—but removes Christ from the picture. “Transgender” technically refers to the same condition as the phrase “someone who is confused about their sex”—but acquiesces to the lie that sex is mutable. And “termination of a fetus” technically refers to the same procedure as “murder of an unborn baby”—but implies nothing more than a clinical separation of cells, rather than the horrific death by dismemberment or poisoning it really is. Just like “happy holidays” allows us to talk about Christmas without mentioning Christ, this connotation swap allows us to talk about murder without mentioning its horror. It further cements the idea that abortion is benign, first into our vocabularies, and then into our minds. When a whole generation can grow up talking about Christmas without thinking about Christ, or talking about abortion without thinking about murder, the vocabular battle will finally have been won.
And that world will be a scary place.
All Education is Religious
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Written by Max Lyons
“Beware lest anyone cheat you through philosophy and empty deceit, according to the tradition of men, according to the basic principles of the world, and not according to Christ.” Colossians 2:8
This teaching examines the issue of so called “neutrality” in education. Many believe that subjects taught in schools such as math, history, science, and English, are “neutral,” having nothing to do with religion, theology or a person’s worldview. If this is true, some say, let parents and preachers instruct in religion, and the government schools teach just the facts of basic school subjects. The reality is that there is no such thing as neutrality.
Presuppositions, assumptions and underlying principles proceed from a worldview. If they are not Biblical, then they are humanist, socialist, new age, Islamic or some other worldview. As Biblical thinking Christians we must be committed to our children receiving an education based on the truth of God’s Word. Non-Christians don’t send their children to church for an hour each Sunday to learn the Biblical worldview, so why do Christians send their children to government schools for 30 hours per week to learn a humanist/socialist worldview?
Teach the Children:
1.) All truth is God’s truth, including truth regarding math, history, science, art, music, philosophy, psychology and more.
2.) “It is easier to learn what is right, than to unlearn what is wrong.” Noah Webster
3.) Teachers, parents, pastors and all of us should be careful to only speak truth to others, not half-truths or lies.
March 6th Online Presentation
If you would like to learn more, there will be an online presentation titled Education is inherently religious, are Public Schools violating the “Wall?” at 8 PM on Monday, March 6th.
This teaching examines the issue of “neutrality” in education. Many believe that subjects taught in public schools: ex: math, history, science, and English, are “neutral,” having nothing to do with religion, theology or a person’s worldview. If this is true, some say, let parents and preachers instruct in religion, and the government schools teach just the facts of basic school subjects. Let’s examine this assertion.
“Cease, my son, to hear the instruction that causeth to err from the words of knowledge.” Proverbs 19:27
Federal Lawmakers File Bill to Shut Down U.S. Department of Education
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A coalition of Republican lawmakers led by U.S. Congressman Thomas Massie (R-KY) introduced legislation to shut down the U.S. Department of Education, arguing that there is no constitutional authority for the controversial bureaucracy to exist. Top Republicans from Reagan to Trump have called for such a move but it has remained elusive thus far.
The bill, dubbed “H.R. 899 – To terminate the Department of Education,” is just one sentence long: “The Department of Education shall terminate on December 31, 2023.” If approved, the federal agency would have to cease operations prior to next year, with control reverting to states and local communities.
The liberty-minded Kentucky lawmaker, who announced the move on Twitter on February 14, has been a longtime champion of ending federal involvement in education. “Unelected bureaucrats in Washington, D.C. should not be in charge of our children’s intellectual and moral development,” the congressman said when he filed the same bill in the previous Congress.
“States and local communities are best positioned to shape curricula that meet the needs of their students,” he said. “Schools should be accountable. Parents have the right to choose the most appropriate educational opportunity for their children, including home school, public school, or private school.”
Massie expanded on his views in an interview with this writer shortly after Trump’s election. Noting that the outfit was established by unpopular President Jimmy Carter as a “re-election tactic, as a ploy,” Massie said his own legislation was originally a response to constituents concerned about federal indoctrination of their children under then-Education Secretary Betsy DeVos.
Seizing on the opportunity, Massie filed the bill, putting liberals in the very awkward position of having to defend the Trump administration’s involvement in the education of children if they wanted to keep the department. “The left understands that this is where you win or lose — in the schools and in the teaching of the children,” Massie said.
Other lawmakers who joined Massie by co-sponsoring the bill include the influential former U.S. House Freedom Caucus Chairman U.S. Representative Andy Biggs. Also co-sponsors are U.S. Representatives Mary Miller of Illinois, Russ Fulcher of Idaho, Georgia’s Mike Collins, Lauren Boebert from Colorado, Dan Bishop of North Carolina, and Chip Roy of Texas.
The Department of Education has been a key player in the dumbing down and radicalization of public education across the nation. Whistleblowers such as the late Charlotte Iserbyt, who served as senior education adviser in the Reagan administration, warned that it was filled with subversives working to dumb down Americans and undermine the principles the nation was founded on.
U.S. Parents Involved in Education, a national grassroots group working to end all federal involvement in education, celebrated the bill. “Now more than ever, parents and other freedom-loving Americans see the nefarious influence of USED and want to end its unconstitutional authority over education,” said USPIE President Sheri Few, praising Massie for his persistence on this key issue.
Shutting down the department would represent a “first, big step,” said Few. However, there are other agencies unconstitutionally meddling in education as well, she warned, adding that USPIE has a blueprint with five steps to fully get the feds out of education. Considering the atmosphere in D.C., USPIE is currently working on a plan for states to extricate themselves from Fed Ed on their own, she added.
Take ACTION:Click HERE to send an email to your U.S. Representative encouraging him/her to co-sponsor H.R. 899. Remind your representative that unelected federal bureaucrats are too far removed to understand or dictate policies for local school districts in Illinois. They should not be in charge of our children’s intellectual and moral development. Local school boards, elected by local voters, are best equipped to determine education policy.
More, you may want to point out that reducing the size of the federal government may help let taxpayers keep more of their hard-earned money.
Words Matter
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Have you noticed that contemporary America fights a lot about words? If you’re a teacher, you could get fired for using female pronouns to refer to a male student identifying as female. You’re addressing the same student either way; the problem is using the wrong word to address that student. If you’re in academia, you might publish lists of politically incorrect words, together with lodes of sanitized synonyms to be used instead, e.g. “denylist” instead of the “racial” “blacklist.” You’re communicating the same concept either way; the problem is using the wrong word to communicate that concept.
Why is the Left bound and determined to force us to use their vocabulary? Aren’t we all talking about the same things, whether we say “transgenderism” or “gender dysphoria,” “homosexual union” or “homosexual marriage,” “happy holidays” or “merry Christmas?” Let’s take a brief overview of the biblical theology of language, shall we? I think we’ll uncover the very important answer.
Throughout history, words have always been central to God’s interactions with humans. God spoke creation into existence with words (Genesis 1:3). God communicated His commands to man with words (Genesis 2:16–17). Because humans wanted to build a tower to glorify themselves,, God divided the human race into nations by dividing their languages (Genesis 11:6-9). God communicated His covenant and law through words (Exodus 20:1–17). God rebuked His people through the words of the prophets (Hosea 6:4–5). Then, in the fullness of time, the Word became flesh and dwelt among us (John 1:14). And His word is powerful, effective, and sharper than a double-edged sword (Hebrews 4:12). And we know all this because God chose to communicate His truths to us through 31,102 verses of Scripture—all enshrined in words.
As creatures created in the image of God, God allowed us to share in His ability to communicate using words. Our capacity for language allows us to communicate with God and with each other, and is therefore one of the most fundamental prerequisites for one of the most fundamental human callings: relationship with God and each other (Genesis 3:8). Our ability to speak is also a necessary tool for fulfilling basic parts of the Christian life, such as singing praises to God (Psalm 150:1–6), preaching the Word (2 Timothy 4:1–2), or sharing the gospel (Mark 16:15). And our capability to use words is a powerful tool for shaping the lives of others, whether it be fathers teaching their children as they walk along the road (Deuteronomy 6:6–7), or preachers impacting the lives of the unsaved (Acts 2:37).
The ability to marshal the world-changing forces of language elevates us above the animals but also imposes on us a level of responsibility that animals do not have: the obligation to align our words with truth. (We don’t prosecute dogs for perjury.) The same God who gave us the ability to speak gave us instruction on how to speak. Our words must accurately describe reality (Leviticus 19:11). Our words must build each other up (1 Thessalonians 5:11). As a matter of fact, we must be slow to even use words in the first place (James 1:19).
But all these restrictions on language don’t demean its importance; they emphasize it. Since the tongue is so dangerous (James 3:6), we are ever more obligated to use it to honor the Lord (James 3:9–12). And Christians throughout the centuries have used the gift of language to fill the world with God’s truth as they translate His word into languages around the world, teach and encourage each other, and fight heresies and tyrannies. Wherever Christian language goes, lives are changed. Which is why the enemy hates it, and that is why he has declared war on words.
Words—those pesky things that we are commanded to use truthfully—are implicit truth claims, and the choice between one word and another, even to refer to the same person or thing, is often the difference between a truth and a lie. When we refer to someone as “she,” we make the implicit statement, “that person is female.” If that person is in reality male, then we have just lied, and we are acquiescing to those who are endeavoring to shape the world in accordance with lies. If we refer to homosexual unions as “homosexual marriages,” we are making a claim about marriage: it is a term that can appropriately be used to refer to other types of unions besides the one-man-one-woman-for-life union as which God defines it. We shouldn’t be calling marriage something that God doesn’t.
“If you’re not going to argue about words, what are you going to argue about? Are you going to convey your meaning to me by moving your ears? The Church and the heresies always used to fight about words, because they are the only thing worth fighting about.”
The Left is now fighting every day for our lexicon. If only we, the people of the Word, would fight equally hard for it. Be bold: say “merry Christmas,” use biologically correct pronouns, and label gender and sexual confusion as the frauds they are. It is worth losing your popularity or even your job, because what our words bow to is what we bow to. This is why the martyrs refused to deny Christ or to stop preaching His gospel—doing so would be submitting their words to the intimidation of evil. As Peter and John said to the Pharisees who commanded them not to speak in the name of Jesus (Acts 4:19, NIV), “Judge for yourselves whether it is right in God’s sight to obey you rather than God.”
What About Poor Children? (Christian Education Solution)
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The safest place for children to be is at home with loving parents. As it stands, well over 90 percent of all parents send their children away from them for over 10,800 seat hours K-12 to be instructed by people they barely know. Fifty-eight percent of all working parents send their preschoolers to daycare where they are watched all day by people they barely know. As has been reported, sexual abuse of children in daycares and government schools is rampant!
However, we realize we live in a fallen world and not every family feels they have the luxury of living on one income and homeschooling their own children. For those who desire to do so, I have provided a practical roadmap in my book, Answers for Homeschooling: Top 25 Questions Critics Ask, to show parents that it can be done. In fact, my own mother (who dropped out of high school in 9th grade) successfully homeschooled my five sisters and myself in the 1970s and ‘80s before it was even legal. So I know that “where there is a will, there is a way.”
But rather than merely calling people to an ideal, sometimes we need to help provide a pathway for them. Let me share a couple inspirational stories that may provide some food-for-thought that others can implement to help those who aren’t as far along on the journey towards taking full responsibility for the upbringing of their own children.
A Detroit Pastor with a Vision
For many years a friend of mine, a Baptist pastor in Detroit, successfully ran a daycare as an outreach of his church. They excluded members of their church from using it, teaching them it was their job to raise their own children. But this pastor and his staff were concerned about the rampant sexual abuse of children that frequently takes place in such institutions, and they wanted an alternative where children would be truly safe.
They pretty much exclusively reached non-Christians who were low-income parents and many immigrants who barely spoke English. The parents had to sign a contract stating they knew the children would be taught the Bible and taught about Jesus (even the Muslim children).
Dr. Gary Elfner (the pastor) also had a Christian day school for K-12 and an umbrella program for homeschoolers. He would tell the parents every day when they would drop their children off at daycare, “It’s not our job to raise your children; it’s your job. We just want them to have a safe place to be until you figure out a plan to raise them yourself.”
When the children became school age, they found corporations and members of the church willing to pay for scholarships for children who were going to government schools to have a safer option in the Christian school. But everyday Dr. Elfner would tell the parents as they dropped off their children, “it isn’t our job to educate your child. It’s your job. We just want them to be safe until you find a way to do that. And when you are ready, we will teach you how to homeschool and we’ll help you through our homeschool program.”
This pastor discipled his own congregation to homeschool their own kids and take responsibility for them, but he also wanted to provide a safe haven for inner city children who were being abandoned to the State. He shared the gospel with the parents they served and even had parenting seminars to teach them what good parenting looks like. He was a great man of God who truly understood that we as Christians can’t be part of the solution if we are a part of the problem. He always said his goal was to eventually work himself out of a job because he hoped the parents he worked with would eventually become Christians and disciple their own children.
A Nashville Mom with Compassion
Another great story is of a homeschooling mom I know in Nashville, TN. She raised one son who grew up and moved away from home leaving his mom, now an empty-nester, with an open future for her own life. Her husband was still working, and they didn’t need a second income, so she prayed about what God would have her do with her time.
At that time, a young lady in their small church became pregnant even though she wasn’t married. She was probably still in her late teens, but she decided to give the baby life instead of choosing an abortion as so many others have. As a teen mom, she desired to provide for her son and give him the best future she could. She found a standard job making a standard income working from 9:00 am to 5:00 pm each day. My friend felt God tugging on her heart. She knew how traumatized children could often be in institutional day cares where they are often harmed by other children, ignored by overwhelmed staff, and sometimes sexually abused by those entrusted with their care.
So, she approached the young mother and asked if she would be open to letting her son stay with her each day when she went to work. The young lady had grown to know and trust this godly, older Christian woman and agreed. So, five days a week, my friend ended up sharing Christ’s love with this young child who literally grew up more in her house than his own mother’s. It wasn’t perfect, but it was so much better than a standard daycare facility. He always had one-on-one care.
When the boy reached compulsory attendance age, the mother enrolled him in a local Christian school that would allow distance learning, and my friend took on the responsibility of “homeschooling” him as well.
The bond between these two women is so strong and the love displayed among the three is so precious. My friend is careful to not replace the mother. She always respects the mother’s wishes and points the boy back to his mom. “You’ll need to ask your mother if she is okay with you doing that.” It’s such an amazing thing to watch what happens when real people get involved in real lives and decide to “love one more” (as my former pastor is fond of saying). Rather than expecting the government to take care of “people like that,” maybe we should pray and ask God what He would have us do. Societal problems are not solved by government programs. If anything, they usually make the problem worse. Real change comes about when people care. And no amount of tax money will ever substitute for people who care.
UN Pushing New Age Spirituality on Schoolchildren With SEL, Neuroscience
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Weaponizing public schools for sinister purposes, an obscure United Nations institute is quietly working to transform education worldwide to impose radical political and spiritual values and beliefs on children. It is all happening under the guise of “social-emotional learning,” or SEL, a scheme hatched at a New Age organization whose founder and namesake was a follower of Lucifer Publishing Company chief Alice Bailey.
The organization in question, part of the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), is known as the Mahatma Gandhi Institute of Education for Peace and Sustainable Development, or UNESCO MGIEP for short. Dominated by pagans, communists, New Agers, and fringe psychiatrists, the India-based UN institute has global reach, boasting that it guides education policy worldwide. Even a brief perusal of its website and reports reveals serious cause for alarm.
At first glance, those unfamiliar with the manipulation of language used by New Agers and communists may not even notice the warning signs. For instance, the organization publicly claims it is merely working to give children “kinder brains” through its programs so the world can be more peaceful and “sustainable.” But in reality, the institute is a key vehicle for injecting occult “spirituality” into classrooms worldwide, as called for in Chapter 36 of the UN’s Agenda 21 global plan for “sustainable development.”
Like SEL promoters in the United States, where the controversial indoctrination tools were invented and developed, the UN outfit argues that children need this sort of emotional manipulation to form healthy relationships and regulate their emotions. Proponents never explain how children regulated their emotions or developed healthy relationships prior to SEL. But in any case, it is all just cover for something much darker.
In a very revealing video posted on the organization’s homepage, numerous red flags can be observed. One of the books that flashes by, for example, is “Blinded by Faith.” When one of the students in the video logs on to her “virtual platform,” her options are “climate change and ethics,” “math in life,” and “migration and conflict.” Upon clicking the math option, one of the three sub-options is “carbon footprint.”
At the end of the short video, the UN institute sums up its aims: “Changing mindsets,” “Challenging norms,” and “Transforming education for humanity.” And the desire to transform education to change mindsets comes through very clearly. On its webpage, for instance, the outfit touts the “mass mobilisation of youth towards sustainable development” as something that is “central” to its mission, even saying it “aims to mobilize the world’s youth” to achieve the UN’s tyrannical Agenda 2030 scheme — much more on that later.
The individuals involved also give the agenda away. Consider, for example, that the institute was launched by scandal-plagued UNESCO boss Irina Bokova. Before joining the UN, Bokova served as a high-ranking official in the mass-murdering Communist regime in Bulgaria. The New Americanexposed Bokova’s history of extremism in a series of articles years ago when she was being groomed for even higher office.
She is hardly the only known and unrepentant communist who has been instrumental in the UN’s “education” outfit. Another, Roza Otunbayeva, served as minister of foreign affairs and deputy head of government for the mass-murdering Soviet Kyrgyz Republic before serving as president of the Soviet National Commission of UNESCO and then taking a leadership role at the UNESCO MGIEP.
Numerous pagans and New Age religious leaders have also been instrumental in the creation and governing of the UN outfit. Consider the late Dr. Karan Singh, an Indian politician and advocate of global spirituality who served as the chair of the UNESCO MGIEP governing board. His connections to occult one-world “spirituality” and barbaric population-control schemes are well known.
One of Singh’s key posts, for instance, was serving as co-chair of the highly controversial World Commission on Global Consciousness and Spirituality, a front for global New Age “spirituality.” While there, he served alongside former UN Assistant Secretary-General Robert Muller, the “father of global education,” creator of the UN’s “World Core Curriculum,” and a self-proclaimed disciple of New Age occultist leader Alice Bailey.
Dr. Singh, who led the UNESCO MGIEP before his death, was also a key speaker at the 12th World Confluence of Humanity, Power, and Spirituality, which claims that its logo, “through its different representations, serves humanity by making them aware that the final aim for all human beings is the path to enlightenment.” Contrast that with the Westminster Catechism’s biblical argument that the chief end of man is to “glorify God and enjoy Him forever.” In an interview, Singh said, “in my mind, the significance of these [global spirituality] conferences is simply this, that we realize the essential unity of all religions.”
Occult New Age spirituality is not Singh’s only claim to fame. Interestingly, he served as “Minister of Family Planning” during the brutal forced sterilization campaigns undertaken by Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi under the guise of “family planning.” The barbaric policy, backed by the UN Population Fund and the World Bank, involuntarily sterilized millions of poor and lower-caste Indians — about 15 times more people than the National Socialist (Nazi) regime in Germany sterilized. Thousands of victims were killed by the “procedure.”
Another leading advocate of UN-backed global spirituality with close ties to the population-control agenda is Azza Karam, the head of Religions for Peace. The global alliance of self-proclaimed religious leaders ranging from self-styled Christians to full-blown pagans is funded by the UN, the U.S. State Department, billionaire globalist George Soros, the Rockefeller clan, and more. Prior to taking over as secretary-general of the outfit, Karam worked at the ruthless population-control agency UN Population Fund (UNFPA), infamous for cooperating on forced abortions and other atrocities with the mass-murdering Chinese Communist regime in enforcing its barbaric one-child policy.
Even the namesake of UNESCO MGIEP, Gandhi, had views on religion that were deeply troubling to orthodox believers in any religion, including his own Hindu paganism, which he said “I certainly prize above all other religions.” Despite his reputation as a peace-loving activist, as described in an exposé published by The New American headlined Gandhi Reconsidered: When Paganism Met Progressivism, Gandhi was also notoriously racist against Africans. He apparently picked up this view while living in South Africa as he agitated for war against the native Zulus, describing Indians as “undoubtedly infinitely superior to the [derogatory term for Africans].” He also famously referred to fascist dictator Benito Mussolini as a “superman” and Adolf Hitler as “my friend.”
Another member of UNESCO MGIEP’s governing board is Dr. Richard Davidson, who is affiliated with everything from the fascist Great Reset-promoting World Economic Forum to New Age occultism. Perhaps even more important is that he co-authored a book with Daniel Goleman of CASEL, the premier outfit promoting highly sophisticated psychological manipulation and conditioning of children using social-emotional learning (SEL). CASEL admitted on its website that the whole idea for SEL came from the Fetzer Institute, an occult New Age organization founded by a disciple of Lucifer Publishing’s Alice Bailey.
The New American has done extensive work exposing social-emotional learning. Under the guise of helping children learn “social” and “emotional” skills, SEL represents the latest frontier in scientific indoctrination. In fact, SEL’s own proponents readily admit that the scheme aims to help children develop the “correct” attitudes on controversial issues including sexuality, “racial justice,” migration, abortion, global citizenship, environmentalism, and more. Perhaps even more important, though, is the nexus with New Age “spirituality” that is incompatible with biblical views and teachings.
One of the disturbing elements that becomes obvious just by scratching the surface is that the same organizations and individuals promoting New Age global spirituality are also those promoting SEL and occult “mindfulness” schemes in public schools. One critic who has researched this phenomenon told The New American that “global citizenship education” may be seen by its advocates as a necessary element for global spirituality, “a means to an end” rather than an objective in and of itself.
Also troubling is that those peddling this agenda are openly weaponizing “neuroscience” along with education to create the type of person they want, displaying the values and beliefs they want, without regard to parents, families, or even the individuals being manipulated. While described as a “kinder brain” and “prosocial behavior,” this admittedly involves the use of education for “transforming, shaping, [and] rewiring” the minds of children entrusted to “educators.”
All of this is presented by the UN as positive and without risk, even though freedom and even free will are never mentioned, continued the researcher, who did not want to be identified. “They are also very open about the way the adolescent brain is structured and view this vulnerable age as a particular opportunity for transformation,” the critic pointed out, highlighting a variety of documents such as MGIEP’s “Global Citizenship Curriculum” designed for children aged 12 through 14 based on “understanding the neuroscience and psychology of how an adolescent brain learns.”
Writing in the foreword of the MGIEP’s 2020 “Rethinking Learning” document, Buddhist monk Matthieu Ricard offers some alarming insight into what is really going on at the intersection of SEL and spirituality. “One of the groundbreaking developments in neuroscience has been to show that any form of training changes the brain and, consequently, our ways of being,” wrote the Buddhist cleric. “Our brains remain pliant throughout life but are particularly malleable during young age.”
“Over the last twenty years, scientists and meditators have collaborated to advance new fields of research such as contemplative neuroscience, mindfulness-based stress reduction and mindfulness-based cognitive therapy,” he added, with “mindfulness” referring to a Buddhist practice with deep connections to the occult that is now widespread in American schools. “Various kinds of interventions for cultivating these basic human qualities in young children have been designed, tested and evaluated, such as the ‘kindness curriculum’ devised at the Center for Healthy Minds by a team guided by neuroscientist Richard Davidson.”
In a piece for the MGIEP publication Blue Dot headlined “Rewiring the Brain to Be Future Ready,” the UN outfit offers more details on this. “Mindfulness is known as one process that can intentionally rewire a reactive neural circuitry into one that chooses kind and wise responses,” the article declares. “Our children are active changemakers who can help us grow up and become a more conscious, aware and mindful society.” The UN frequently refers to children under its tutelage as “agents of change” and “changemakers,” including in the UN’s Agenda 2030 “Sustainable Development Goals” (SDGs).
Indeed, even officially, a key focus of the India-based UN “education” institute is achieving Agenda 2030 “Sustainable Development Goal 4.7,” a subsection of one of the global organization’s 17 SDGs. Taken together, the goals — dubbed the “masterplan for humanity” by the head of the UN General Assembly in 2015 when it was being adopted — are a roadmap toward global technocratic government, complete with international wealth redistribution and tyranny.
Goal 4.7 calls for ensuring, by 2030, that “all learners acquire knowledge and skills needed to promote sustainable development, including among others through education for sustainable development and sustainable lifestyles, human rights, gender equality, promotion of a culture of peace and non-violence, global citizenship, and appreciation of cultural diversity and of culture’s contribution to sustainable development.”
In other words, every child on the planet must be so indoctrinated that he or she will submit to the UN’s perverse “masterplan for humanity.” Breaking down those elements further, it is clear that this indoctrination is incompatible with Christianity, Western civilization, patriotism, the nuclear family, and a genuine understanding of God-given rights as enshrined by America’s Founding Fathers in the Declaration of Independence and U.S. Constitution. And notice, it applies to “all learners,” potentially even roping in adults. Religious leaders around the world funded by the UN have rallied around the UN scheme.
Of course, Agenda 2030 actually builds on the 1992 UN scheme known as Agenda 21, signed by George H.W. Bush for the U.S. government. In Chapter 36, the UN claims “education” is “indispensable” for “changing people’s attitudes.” The document calls on governments to inject sustainability propaganda into all subjects. And perhaps most troubling of all, it demands that “spirituality” become a key component of what passes for education — and not any “spirituality” that Christians of any denomination would recognize. Again, the UN’s own “World Core Curriculum” was based on the teachings of the founder of Lucifer Publishing and the “Ascended Master” spiritual entity she claimed to be communicating with.
As these UN-backed ideas get produced and developed in institutions such as UNESCO’s MGIEP, they are then injected into classrooms worldwide through a complex network of organizations. This includes government agencies, teachers unions, (mostly tax-funded) nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), universities, foundations, and more. It happens with help from tax-funded grants and “free” educational materials offered to schools and governments, and is incorporated into curricula, textbooks, teacher training programs, and other means. This is how the “global” vision gets down to the local school your children or grandchildren might attend.
The emerging use of neuroscience and SEL to promote New Age pagan spirituality, “woke” values, and “global citizenship” to children around the world is beyond dangerous. The UN is even working to bring artificial intelligence into the process of indoctrinating and fundamentally transforming the minds of future generations — for more on this see the 2019 UN meeting in Beijing on using AI in education. Families who value their children, their faith, their nations, their liberties, and their God must sever all ties with the system, before it is too late.
This article was originally published at TheNewAmerican.com.
The Cost of School Vouchers: Sky-High Inflation
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Written by Robert Bortins
It’s Economics 101: costs increase when the government floods the private sector with money.
Those who don’t know history are doomed to repeat it. Starting with the Higher Education Act of 1965, the government has subsidized the cost of college with the promise that more people would be able to afford higher education. Instead, college tuition and textbook costs have far outpaced inflation. Likewise, the medical field has seen a significant increase in cost versus inflation with various subsidies, while life expectancy has actually decreased in the United States. So the cost of college has skyrocketed, and who can afford health care these days? Clearly, dumping money into a problem won’t just fix it.
Demand-side economics causes inflation because subsidies increase demand and demand increases general price levels and debt. The more the government subsidizes health care and college education, the greater the cost to the user. That’s why health care and college are less affordable now than they were before government intervention.
Conservative Republicans have wisely recognized this basic economic principle throughout Joe Biden’s and the Democrats’ wild spending spree, but they’re courting a similar problem with school vouchers. And make no mistake: school vouchers will do the same for K–12 education and related services as subsidies for health care and college by supersizing inflation.
How do I know this? As the CEO of a company that cultivates homeschool community leaders and develops homeschool curricula and educational products, let me assure you that my company would directly benefit from the influx of government cash. We would be able to immediately increase our prices by 100 percent or more on many of our product offerings and bring other high-priced and high-margin education products to the market. When given money you didn’t earn, you tend to spend it. Competitors would raise their prices, too, because, hey, who wouldn’t? This has been done in every subsidized industry since the dawn of time. School vouchers are a capitalist’s dream. Yes, I would benefit from school vouchers, but school vouchers would hurt the people I want to support.
A hike in the price of education would take a couple of years to materialize, but it would materialize, believe me. Here’s why. Take a private school that has room for one hundred students. If one hundred more families suddenly can afford tuition and other costs, it doesn’t mean that the school has the space for those students. It doesn’t mean it has the land to build more space–that space is expensive! Instead, the administration will simply increase tuition. If a hundred families that can now afford $8000 in tuition suddenly get “free money” from the government, then the administration has every incentive to raise the tuition to $8000 plus the amount of the “free money” given in the form of a universal voucher.
The misguided hope—and hope makes for poor policy, misguided or not—is that by creating greater demand for services, more providers will step up. However, those providers will have one simple goal: to make money. Like the private school in our hypothetical scenario, they will have every incentive to milk every last dollar out of the state as they can. Even if those institutions are ostensibly non-profit, they will make money. Investors will buy land and develop it and then rent it back to the non-profit. Normally, this sort of deal would require an arm’s length transaction; however, a collusive transaction is easy to arrange, merely requiring good (or, rather, bad) legal advice and lax enforcement by the state. Furthermore, non-profits also pay employees who exchange time for pay and personal profit. Subsidies encourage lavish salaries and other unreasonable forms of compensation.
In short, government subsidies increase the likelihood of corruption, and corruption feeds back into inflation as the corrupt drain the public coffers and demand ever more.
Universal school vouchers have no track record of success. The one state that has implemented something similar is Arizona, and so far, it appears to have just added to the state’s educational costs, as those outside the system signed up for droves while early numbers indicate that nearly 99 percent of those in government schools opted to remain in them. If the goal was to provide families with choices, then the school voucher program has failed since those choices aren’t dramatically changing in the wake of a new funding mechanism.
What will change are the costs of those choices: they’ll climb sky-high.
Robert Bortins is the CEO of Classical Conversations, Inc., a homeschool program that helps parents cultivate an inquisitive, intellectual child through an intentional, community-based approach. Robert earned a BS in Industrial Engineering from Clemson University in 2006. After graduating, he worked as a management trainee for UPS and as a plant engineer for Easy Gardener. In 2011, he returned to the family business, Classical Conversations, Inc., to develop a marketing program. He was then appointed CEO of the family-owned company in 2012. He and his wife have three children and live in North Carolina.
Institutional Grooming in Illinois
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It has been almost 20 years since it has been documented that children in our schools are in grave danger of being sexually abused by teachers. In 2004, Charol Shakeshaft completed a U.S. Department of Education sponsored study on Educator Sexual Misconduct. The seminal findings showed that 9.6 percent of children in our schools, public and private, are victims of educator sexual misconduct sometime between kindergarten and 12th grade.
Almost nothing has been done about this.
The Chicago Public Schools (CPS), at least, has begun to make some steps toward addressing the imminent threat to children by expanding the CPS Office of Inspector General (OIG) and greatly increasing the capability to investigate abuse allegations. They have had some success.
According to their recently released report, from late 2018 until the end of 2022 the OIG opened a little over 1,700 cases and closed almost 1, 400, leaving 300 plus cases still open. With 30 investigators on their staff, that’s not bad.
What is not so good is only 16 criminal charges wound up being filed against the accused and not all of them were convicted. It is not clear how many were convicted or what sentences they received. Moreover, we don’t even know who they were. In the CPS OIG report they are not named. Incredible.
We also don’t know how many of the accused were fired, lost their license, or merely received some kind of internal discipline. One teacher shared “images from a pornographic website while sharing his screen with students,” supposedly inadvertently. The Board gave him a “Level Three Performance Improvement Plan,” whatever that is. It’s essentially nothing. Why?
It appears that most of the accused are still working for CPS, but who knows?
Reading between the lines of the OIG report, it appears that the CPS administration and the Board have to dance delicately through the contractual minefield set up by the teachers unions to protect all teachers regardless of what they might have done. Why would there be any question about firing a teacher who shows pornography to children, whether it was on purpose or accidentally? That teacher should be gone and any union that stands behind him or her discredits itself.
Historically and even to this day, very little attention has been focused on the predators in our schools. In 2021, Illinois State Representative Michelle Mussman (D-Schaumburg) introduced House Bill 1975, supposedly to address sexual abuse in the schools. That bill requires educating teachers about educator sexual abuse and how to recognize the signs of “grooming.” It is a common practice of child sexual predators to “groom,” or seduce, children over a long period of time. Essentially, the predator will develop an increasingly intimate relationship with the child, introduce secrecy at some point, and eventually sexualize the relationship.
Mussman named the act “Faith’s Law,” after Faith Colson, a former Schaumburg High School Student who had been groomed and sexually exploited by one of her teachers starting in 2001. Based on Dr. Shakeshaft’s study we know that Faith was only one of an estimated 16,000 students in Illinois who were abused by an educator that year.
But what does this bill do to prevent what happened to Faith and 16,000 other Illinois children in 2001? Not much, if anything. The bill requires that teachers be trained to recognize grooming behavior, schools to set up policies to establish better boundaries between teachers and students, and to create a list of sexual abuse response and prevention resources to be made available to the public. The bill also expands grooming beyond electronic activity to include in person and third-party conduct.
This proposal proves that our legislators, including Mussman, simply do not take the protection of childhood innocence seriously, or are too uninformed themselves to fashion a solution.
How could anyone graduate with a childhood education degree and not know what grooming is? There are mountains of published papers on grooming. Everyone even remotely connected to issues of child protection knows that grooming behaviors should be viewed as a giant red flag. Expanding the grooming law does little since you must prove intent to abuse to prosecute. That’s almost impossible until after the abuse occurs.
Libraries already are filled with sexual abuse prevention resources, most of which nobody reads. Just ask your librarian. As for creating policies that establish appropriate boundaries between teacher and student? If this hasn’t already been done in every school the people in charge should be prosecuted for malfeasance.
This law is little more than virtue signaling.
One reason the problem is so large is due the teachers’ unions. They actively protect teachers who are predators. Examples are everywhere of the unions shielding teachers who regularly engage in grooming behaviors. The unions will not let them be fired. Teachers have been known to assign obscene materials to children to read as part of a class assignment and nothing happens to the teacher. Even when caught sexually abusing children the unions often go to bat for them.
Another problem is the obscenity exemption for teachers in Illinois. This allows librarians to provide, and teachers to recommend, highly sexualized and often deranged and perverted books for children to read or study. Providing this kind of material to children is a typical grooming behavior of predators. Such materials are used to begin to sexualize the relationship and to arouse the child. It’s completely legal in Illinois schools.
Senate Bill 818, which was voted for by Mussman and 59 fellow Illinois House Democrats (all Republicans voted against it), makes the grooming problem even worse. It mandates that all schools implement sex education programs – Kindergarten to 12th Grade – which are to be based on the “National Sex Education Standards,” although there is a provision that allows each district to opt out of the standards if they want.
Such a farce. These “standards” were developed by an ad hoc group of sexual progressives. In addition to Planned Parenthood, SIECUS, Answer, and Advocates for Youth, a host of other left leaning sexual activists developed the document.
Those who created the standards believe that every person has a right to experience sexual pleasure from birth to death, that children have a right to experience sexual pleasure whenever and with whomever they want, that purity is a false value, and that children should be encouraged to experiment sexually with same and opposite sex relationships. The standards teach that all sexual activity is good as long as there is mutual consent, disregarding that children cannot legally give consent.
Only a handful of school districts in Illinois opted into the standards. In Chicago they were using the perverse standards even before the law was passed.
The National Sex Education Standards do not call for a class in comprehensive sex ed. No. The standards require that sex ed be infused in every class, that it be part of every subject wherever possible.
These are not standards. This law destroys every remaining sexual standard established over the last two millennia. And it turns every teacher into an accomplice for every predator in our schools. It is institutionalized grooming on a mass scale and neutralizes any possible good, however little, Faith’s Law might have achieved.
Additionally, Stop Educator Sexual Abuse Misconduct & Exploitation (SESAME), an organization that works to stop childhood sexual abuse by teachers and other school employees, disclosed that in 2015, about 3.5 million 8th-11th grade students, or nearly 7% of those surveyed divulged that they had experienced “physical sexual contact from an adult” – most often a teacher or coach. The type of physical contact ranged from “unwanted touching of their body, all the way up to sexual intercourse.”
Even worse, when other types of sexual misconduct are taken into consideration, such as being shown pornography or being subjected to sexually explicit language or exhibitionism the number increases to about 4.5 million children (10 %). SESAME also explains that one child sex offender can have as many as 73 victims in a lifetime.
And now, a report published on Jan. 1 by the Chicago Board of Education’s Office of the Inspector General (OIG), reveals that hundreds of public school students in Chicago were either raped, sexually assaulted or groomed by their teachers during the 2021-2022 school year. The report discloses that a total of 772 investigations into the alleged crimes occurred over the year. Additionally, the OIG was able to close 600 “adult on student” cases with “more than half of the allegations being substantiated.”
But the abuse in Chicago isn’t the only story. The fact that the mainstream media has ignored the findings is also scandalous. As of this time, just a handful of conservative news outlets have covered the story. Perhaps child abuse in America is just not newsworthy anymore.
As sex crimes against children proliferate, the efforts of the sex and gender cult are also growing. What follows is just a tiny sampling of the education-sexualization complex behaving badly:
–Teachers in San Francisco are letting children as young as kindergarteners choose their gender, then helping those same students to “transition” without even informing their parents, as the release of explosive documents by Chris Rufo shows.
–In Madison, WI, school board president Ali Muldrow called out former Gov. Scott Walker for his comments on the now-cancelled drag show at East High School in the state capital. Walker had tweeted, “Let’s be clear: ‘drag shows’ are strip shows. They are wrong. They are particularly wrong at school. They are definitely not ‘family-friendly.’”
–Infuriated at Walker’s common-sense comment, Muldrow fumed, “I am outraged that politicians would risk subjecting children to hatred and violence while desperately seeking attention, inciting fear and misunderstanding. Using children at school to stoke division is not only irresponsible, it’s dangerous.”
–On Nov. 20 in Los Angeles, the “Transgender Day of Remembrance” honors the memory of transgender people whose lives were lost in acts of anti-transgender violence. While this day is acknowledged, Thanksgiving, also in November, isn’t doing well in L.A. schools. A lesson about Thanksgiving created by the district Human Resources, Diversity, and Equity division now stresses that the holiday is evil, because it claims that the Pilgrims stole land from the native inhabitants.
–In eastern California, Steven Llanusa, president of the Claremont Unified School District,held a “naughty” holiday party at his home, which had an open bar for the students who were also treated to the sight of shirtless male dancers and a “dirty Santa.” (At least the pervy school board president had enough sense to resign after being outed.)
–In Springfield, MO, teachers are trained that people are given a “biological sex assigned at birth,” which often conflicts with their “gender identity” and “gender expression.” As Chris Rufo reports, teachers are asked to recognize and affirm identities such as “non-binary,” “gender non-conforming,” “drag queen,” “pansexual,” and “polyamorous,” which is described as having “[ethical], honest, and consensual non-monogamous relationships (i.e. relationships that may include multiple partners).”
Not surprisingly, the teachers unions are leading the charge to destroy what has been the norm since Adam and Eve became an item. The National Education Association has issued a “Pronoun Guide,” which instructs teachers,“In English, we have two sets of gendered pronouns: ‘she/her/hers’ and ‘he/him/his’ are pronouns that are attached to a particular gender. We likely all grew up assuming we knew someone’s pronouns just by looking at them, or knowing their gender, but that isn’t the case. In an effort to be more affirming of all, it is important to get out of the habit of assuming pronouns.”
On its website, NEA offers trainings focused on pronoun usage for elementary school teachers, as well as advice on how to “create safer learning spaces for transgender, non-binary and gender non-conforming students.”
The New Jersey chapter of the NEA hosted a “LGBTQIA+ banned books drag queen story hour” at its 2022 convention as a way for educators to “explore and express their intersectional identities.” Drag queens read educators “And Tango Makes Three,” a story of two male penguins who have a baby penguin together, and “Prince & Knight,” a picture book about a prince and knight who fall in love.
It bears mentioning that the sexual obsession in the education world is not limited to government-run schools. Project Veritas released an undercover video during which Joseph Bruno, Dean of Students at Chicago’s tony Francis W. Parker School – a private school that charges over $40,000/year in tuition for upper level students – discussed pride week. “So I’ve been the Dean for four years. During Pride — we do a Pride Week every year — I had our LGBTQ+ Health Center come in [to the classroom]. They were passing around butt-plugs and dildos to my students — talking about queer sex, using lube versus using spit. They’re just, like, passing around dildos and butt-plugs. The kids are just playing with ‘em, looking at ‘em…They’re like, ‘How does this butt-plug work? How do we do – like, how does this work?’ That’s a really cool part of my job.”
Bruno went on to say, “We had a Drag Queen come in — pass out cookies and brownies and do photos.”
The sex and gender cult has also invaded corporate America. At Disney’s theme parks in Anaheim and Orlando, diversity and inclusion manager Vivian Ware explains that Disney made the decision in 2021 to eliminate all mentions of “ladies,” “gentlemen,” “boys,” and “girls” in order to create “that magical moment” for children who do not identify with traditional gender roles.
General Motors donated pro-transgender children’s books to the Gay Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN), an organization that supplies sex- and gender-related material to kindergarten and elementary classrooms. GM also provided a grant to GLSEN to fund the organization’s “Rainbow Library” Program, according to the corporation’s 2021 Social Impact Report. This document explains that the Rainbow Library “provides supportive curriculum materials and book sets that are LGBTQ+ centered, racially diverse, and multicultural to K-12 schools.” The report did not specify how much money was awarded to the pro-transgender organization.
As Dennis Prager points out, a number of countries in Europe are going in a different direction. Switzerland has just announced that as far as the Swiss nation and government are concerned, sex is not “nonbinary.” Sweden’s National Board of Health and Welfare ended the practice of prescribing puberty blockers for minors under age 18. In France, rather than hormone blockers and surgery for young people with gender dysphoria, the National Academy of Medicine has issued a statement advocating “psychosocial support.”
Maybe one day we in the U.S. will wake up, come to our senses and fight back against the sex and gender cult, and do so before any more children are sacrificed.
Critical Race Theory Hide and Seek
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Project Veritas has just released another exposé in which a profiteering propagandist who self-identifies as an “educator” admits that he promotes critical race theory (CRT) to and in public schools by omitting the words “critical race theory.” Yes, Americans really are that gullible.
The racist scamster is Quintin Bostic, a homosexual who works for the Washington D.C.-based Teaching Lab that—according to Bostic—sells CRT-based curricula to school districts, including districts in the state of Georgia, where state law prohibits the teaching of “divisive concepts” related to race, most notably CRT.
In order to circumvent that law, Bostic gleefully admits to omitting the words “critical race theory.” To leftists hell-bent on socially imposing their moral beliefs and socially constructing their new world order, transparency is the enemy.
In the secretly recorded conversation between Bostic and Project Veritas’ undercover journalist, Bostic says,
If you don’t say the words “critical race theory,” you can technically teach it.
He then lightheartedly describes his work ethic:
I would say I’m a good salesman, but I’m also an evil salesman—like so bad.
He further admits that the good people of Georgia are paying for the curriculum his organization sells in violation of state law:
Project Veritas: “So, the state is paying for your curriculum without knowing what’s in it.”
Bostic: “They have no clue. And I’m like, “This is great—this is good!”
Project Veritas asks Bostic how he conceals the fact that the curriculum he sells is based on CRT, to which Bostic replies, “It’s a DEI work.”
Many will recall how leftists mocked conservatives relentlessly in the past few years for claiming CRT was being taught in public schools. As I wrote earlier, these deceitful or ignorant leftists were technically accurate. Public schools were likely not teaching CRT as an academic theory to middle school or high school students. Rather, they were teaching arguable ideas derived from CRT as objective truths and masking the arguable ideas under the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) rubric—an ever-present help to leftists in trouble.
The arrogant Bostic shared that his CRT-polluted curriculum is being taught in at least one kindergarten and that he couldn’t care less if Georgia parents are upset about the illegal use of CRT-based curriculum in their schools.
Like so many leftist activists, Bostic dismisses parents as their children’s teachers:
I hate to say it, but parents are like not teachers.
To emphasize his point, he says parents “are” ignorant.
I don’t at all hate saying this: Bostic is “like” not a teacher. He is a propagandist.
Bostic makes clear that he shares the widely held leftist goal of undermining children’s relationships with their own parents:
And these kids are also pushing against their parents, like, “Mom, that’s not right! You shouldn’t say that!”
Nothing sends a thrill up the legs of leftist “educators” quite like turning other people’s children into activists for leftist causes.
Bostic has other troubling goals not exposed in Project Veritas’ video but available in this interview:
I grew up in a real small town. Um, I was a minority as far as race and sexual orientation. … I also had no one to relate to and to connect with and talk to and to share those same like backgrounds and understanding. And so like with me and my identities, that moment let me realize like [teaching is] more than just opening the book and reading and teaching the standard. It’s you being here in this space and like being present, because as a teacher … you’re that everything for that child eight hours a day 40 hours a week. You are that person for a child who gives them comfort, who gives them love, who gives them passion, who gives them knowledge, who gives them guidance, and you cannot put a price and you cannot put words on that.
Take a moment to absorb Bostic’s claim: He says teachers are “everything” for children “eight hours a day, 40 hours a week.” Many leftists understand the profound affect teachers have on the minds and hearts of children and are exploiting their roles to destroy children.
For parents who believe—rightly—that homoerotic acts are dishonorable acts that put at risk the eternal lives of those who engage in them, the goals of Bostic are evil. No one and no organization that receives funding from the government has a right to promote controversial moral beliefs about sexuality to children.
No matter how many parents object to their children’s public school education being infused with controversial ideas derived from CRT and no matter how strenuously they express their objections, leftists will not stop using taxpayer money to promote those ideas. Increasingly leftists openly admit they seek to indoctrinate other people’s children with leftist views of race (and sexuality) even if doing so disrupts parent-child relationships. They justify their subversive actions as necessary to promote their disordered understanding of what is right, true, and beautiful. And the goal of leftists to indoctrinate children in their leftist ideologies relies on lack of transparency.
Illinois Buzzards Want Your Kids
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There’s a grand act of un-creation taking place all across this nation. Leftists are busy with this ugly business of un-creating decency, order, justice, compassion, and beauty, and children play a central role in this ugly business. To leftists, children are both objects of un-creation and tools for un-creating society. If we want to see with greater clarity the plans leftists have for the nation, there is no better place to examine than Illinois. Let’s hover above Illinois for a few minutes to get a bird’s eye view of this dark project.
Abuse in Chicago Public Schools
On Jan. 1, 2023—a Sunday—the Office of Inspector General (OIG) for the Chicago Board of Education released its annual report on “investigations into allegations of waste, fraud, financial mismanagement and employee misconduct” between July 1, 2021, and June 30, 2022. This year’s report cost taxpayers $6.54 million.
(As a noteworthy aside, the CPS spent $97 million of federal pandemic relief money on “academic recovery + social and emotional learning supports.” Further, CPS plans on spending $430 million more of federal money over the next two years for the same academic, social, and emotional learning problems caused by the refusal of Governor J.B. Pritzker to open schools and the refusal of teachers to teach during the pandemic.)
What is revealed in this report should shock all parents of CPS students and all Illinois taxpayers:
The OIG received 1,825 complaints alleging misconduct, waste, fraud, and financial mismanagement at Chicago Public Schools, including allegations of adult-on-student sexual misconduct.” Of those nearly 2,000 complaints, the OIG opened investigations into fewer than half (39.7%).
Of those 1,825 complaints, 470 were sexual allegations.
Because of a 2018 Chicago Tribuneexposé of sexual abuse in Chicago public schools, the OIG “created a special Sexual Allegations Unit” which “has grown exponentially into a team of more than 30 … staff responsible for handling hundreds of sexual misconduct allegations per year.” The OIG report describes the number of cases as “extraordinarily high case volume.”
The complaints include allegations of sexual grooming, sexual intercourse, sexual assault, sexual touching, and graphic sexual texts.
Since many victims are afraid to report sexual abuse, Illinoisans can justifiably assume that the numbers of adult-on-student sexual misconduct cases are far higher than 470.
CPS scores
Apparently, faculty are too busy abusing children to teach them how to read, write, add, and subtract. In September 2022, Wirepointsreported on the abysmal academic performance of CPS:
Student achievement remains badly sub-par at CPS. About 70 percent of CPS students in grades 4, 8, and 11 – and 80 percent or more of its tested black students – aren’t proficient in reading and math. In some schools, reading proficiency is still in the low single digits.
Sex Education Law
Shameful, sub-proficient, and stagnating test scores suggest that Illinois lawmakers—a super-duper majority of whom are leftists—don’t care about educating Illinois children, so where do their interests lie? A recent bill from Illinois Senator Ram Villivalam (Democrat from Chicago of course), points to the educational priorities of Illinois’ leftist ideologues. He proposed a tyrannical amendment to Illinois’ already offensive sex education law.
In 2021, Villivalam sponsored a bill mandating that K-12 schools that offer “health and safety” classes must include indoctrination with leftist gender theories and leftist views of homosexuality. But this bill, which became law, allowed schools to opt out of such indoctrination, which 70 percent of schools did. Can’t have that, thought Big Brother Villivalam.
So, he proposed an amendment during this recent lame duck session to remove the school opt-out option. It didn’t pass during the lame duck session, but mark my words, Big Brother Villivalam will, like the Terminator, be back.
Teachers often defend their teaching about sex by claiming they are “experts,” and by claiming what they teach is “age-appropriate,” so let’s spend a minute discussing purported teacher “expertise” and “age-appropriateness.”
Illinois teachers—including teachers in high performing suburban districts—are rarely “experts” in even the disciplines for which they were hired to teach. Don’t believe me? Ask your children’s teachers if they have advanced degrees, and if they do, ask what field their advanced degrees are in. Relatively few teachers pursue advanced degrees in biology, chemistry, physics, English literature, or history. They don’t, because it’s easier to get an advanced degree—and, thereby, increase their salary—in educational policy as opposed to biology, chemistry, physics, English literature, or history.
If they’re not experts in the field for which they were hired to teach, how are they experts in sexuality? What criteria do they use to establish their sexuality expertise bona fides?
And what criteria do they use to determine the “age-appropriateness” of sex education content. Who established those criteria. So many questions taxpayers never ask.
“Trans” policy
Sex is definitely where the “educational” interests of leftists lie, particularly deviant sexuality. Look no further than the Pritzker family that scurries about the world throwing their money and ample weight behind the effort to promote cross-dressing and child mutilation.
Governor Pritzker’s first cousin, whose transonym is “Jennifer” Pritzker, is the cross-dressing man in woman-face who tried to extort the GOP by proclaiming that if the GOP didn’t toe the line as he toes it in his lady pumps, he would take his money and move to the dark side—which he did.
He and the Pritzker family also use their money to fund university and hospital programs around the world to indoctrinate students into the “trans” cult and to mutilate the healthy bodies of children.
Now that leftists control public education in Illinois, our shameless governor/chief propagandist hopes to further diminish the influence of parents on their own children. In Pritzker’s second inaugural speech, he announced his evil plans: “I propose we go all in for our children and make preschool available to every family throughout the state,” and “let’s focus on making [college] tuition free for every working-class family.”
Get ‘em while they’re young and keep ‘em.
Research has long established that college and university faculty and administrations skew wildly left. Further, research has demonstrated that of those students who self-censor out of fear of repercussions, well over half are conservative. And this is the “learning” environment where Pritzker seeks to send more students and at taxpayer expense. Pritzker wants to cram as much propaganda into the minds of as many young people as possible, and wants you, conservative friends, to pay for this indoctrination.
To mix bird metaphors, Illinois is both a canary in a coal mine and a buzzard in a killing field.
Conservative parents, get your kids out of government killing fields now before the buzzards devour them.
Tyrannical Sex-Education Mandate for K-12th Grade
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In late May of 2021, the Illinois General Assembly rammed through SB 818, a bill to require so-called “comprehensive sex-education” to be taught in public schools in kindergarten through 12th grade. It was signed by Governor J.B. Pritzker and became law on August 20, 2021, despite the hue and cry of parents and grandparents throughout the state. Now, any public school that offers health and safety classes now must teach left-wing sexuality classes to impressionable young students.
The only small bit of good news in the law was that schools had the choice to opt out. Because 70 percent of school districts have chosen to opt out of these new destructive standards, State Senator Ram Villivalam (D-Chicago)–the sponsor of last year’s bill–has just filed new legislation to mandate public schools teach this leftist material next school year with no opt-out permitted for any school!
If passed, this bill will mandate the teaching of material that many families in Illinois consider deviant or inappropriate for their children. The bill’s sponsors falsely claim that the mandated content would be “age and developmentally appropriate,” “medically accurate,” “complete,” “culturally appropriate,” and “inclusive.”
Starting in kindergarten, all schools must teach about “sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression,” and that means teaching leftists views of “sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression.”
What the bill’s sponsors don’t discuss is what criteria will be used to determine, for example, age-appropriateness, medical accuracy, completeness or who will establish those criteria.
Of course, there is no mention of abstinence-only education in this bill.
This bill is anything but “culturally appropriate” for orthodox Jews, Christians, and Muslims, which makes it anything but “inclusive.”
Take ACTION:Click HERE to send a message to your state lawmakers about the immoral and tyrannical nature of this bill (HB 5188). Let them know that this bill ignores the values and beliefs of millions of Illinois households. Teaching children about sexual health is the responsibility of PARENTS. It is parents who should decide what their children will be taught about sexuality and when. It is neither the right nor the responsibility of the government or public schools to do so. Many thousands of parents, grandparents, and concerned citizens voiced opposition to Villivalum’s prior bill, and yet Springfield “progressives” blatantly disregarded their voices. They’re attempting to do the same with his new parental rights-denying bill.
Please join IFI to raise your voice again in opposition to this bill and help us be the voice for our children.
Warning: you are about to encounter an onslaught of politically incorrect words. The following five phrases have been labeled “potentially harmful” by academia at the highest level, so interact with them at your own peril. Ready?
“Stand up meeting.”
“Quadriplegic.”
“Walk-in appointment.”
“Basket case.”
“Sanity check.”
Whew! Did you survive? Good, so did I. But unfortunately, I am not making this up. According to a Stanford University website, it is considered “harmful language” to use the phrase “stand up meeting” to refer to your next brief get-together. Why? Because it is “ableist language that trivializes the experiences of people living with disabilities.”
Just a couple weeks ago, Stanford’s Elimination of Harmful Language Initiative released a13-page list detailing dozens of politically incorrect words and phrases and including a column of substitutes for the forbidden locutions. The Initiative’s purpose is to “eliminate many forms of harmful language, including racist, violent and biased . . . language in Stanford websites and code.” We are told in the list’s preamble that the purpose is to “educate people about the possible impact of the words we use.” It purportedly was neither “attempting to assign levels of harm to the terms on this site” nor “attempting to address all informal uses of language, “but the implication is obvious: this index is a primer on what specific words should be tossed in the waste bin by the Stanford IT community.
While the categories of racist and gender-based language were largely unsurprising, one category caught me off guard: “ableist” language, which is language offensive to or demeaning those suffering from disabilities. While I agree that no one should be mocked for their disabilities, that doesn’t seem to be exactly what Stanford has in mind. Let’s look at a couple examples.
Referring to a “blind study” is harmful because it “unintentionally perpetuates that disability is somehow abnormal or negative, furthering an ableist culture.” The preferred term is “masked study.”
Wait, wait. Are we to care for the needy? Absolutely. Are we to demean their afflictions? Absolutely not. But I’ve never thought I’ve been demeaning blind people when I refer to a blind study, and I guarantee you none of my audience has thought I have been, either. Stanford’s reply might be that I am not necessarily disparaging blind people, but I am instead implying that “disability is somehow abnormal or negative,” because the word “blind” often carries a negative connotation in many other contexts, such as this one. An ironic point to raise for this particular word—since blind studies are supposed to be a positive thing—but there’s a deeper point to raise.
Don’t misinterpret me, but isn’t disability kind of abnormal, and even somewhat negative, by definition? My grandmother needs a walker and/or wheelchair to move around, and I know she’d give a lot to be able to walk like she could when she was twenty. Disability is both abnormal and less-than-ideal, and making that statement is not in any way a disparagement of those who are suffering from it, any more than saying “cancer is horrible” would be a condemnation of those battling it.
Another example: “committed suicide.” This is harmful because it is “ableist language that trivializes the experiences of people living with mental health conditions.” Instead, we are to say “died by suicide.”
I’m not intending to be insensitive toward the awful circumstances of suicide – my own uncle committed suicide from PTSD, and I’ve personally felt the pain of knowing you’ll never see someone again because of a choice he himself made. But, honestly, what’s the difference between saying “committed suicide” and “died by suicide?” The first implies you did something to yourself, while the second implies that you fell victim to something . . . that you did to yourself.
The slight connotative difference disintegrates when we realize that the core term – suicide – is inescapably a self-inflicted tragedy. In the previous paragraph, I wrote, “my own uncle committed suicide,” and I wasn’t trivializing his trauma – I was just telling the truth. And I’ve told many people about his story and have never thought I was trivializing his experience. In my humble opinion, constantly euphemizing the subject to a more benign “died by suicide” is a term that trivializes how horrible his PTSD actually was – a mental condition that led him to willingly inflict death upon himself.
The list goes on and on. Here are Stanford’s explanations for our opening list of political incorrectness:
“Stand up meeting” and “walk in” are “ableist language that [trivialize] the experiences of people living with disabilities.” Preferred language would be “quick meeting” and “drop-in.”
“Quadriplegic” is a “term that generalizes a population of people while also implying that people with disabilities are not capable.” Preferred language would be “person who is paralyzed.”
“Basket case . . . originally referred to one who has lost all four limbs and therefore needed to be carried around in a basket.” Preferred language would be “nervous.”
“Sanity check” is a term that “could be offensive to those dealing with mental health issues.” Preferred language would be “confidence check.”
Honestly, have you ever thought any of those things when using any of those words? I hope you sense the confusion of an average English-speaker striving to justify the way language has worked for, well, forever.
It seems to me that many of these “ableist” concerns are a symptom of a broader linguistic-cultural problem: we are afraid of using words to discuss the harsh facts of life openly or frankly. But recognizing that the world is harsh is the very reason we strive to make it better! If disability is not “abnormal or negative” in any way, why does the field of medicine even exist? Why do we develop medications, prosthetics, or therapy for those suffering from disabilities, if those advances are really seeking to eradicate a normal and positive circumstance?
Now, don’t get me wrong in the least. Inspiring disabled men and women from Homer to Helen Keller to Andrea Bocelli have accomplished astounding things, often using their disabilities to touch the world in ways they wouldn’t have been able to otherwise. But who of us, if we were blind but had the choice to receive our sight back, wouldn’t take it? Blindness, like all other sicknesses and maladies, is a result of the Fall, and neither the Fall nor blindness nor deafness nor lameness nor any other disability of the sort was ever “the way it was supposed to be.”
Can God use disability for his glory? Absolutely – ask the Apostle Paul. Can you live an inspiring life as a disabled person? No doubt about it – ask Nick Vujicic. But does that mean we should pretend that disability is normal or that death is trivial? Absolutely not. To do so would be to deny the reality of the Curse and undermine efforts to deal with it. It’s hard to solve a problem while simultaneously attempting to dismiss it.
As a closing thought: A society that edits its very language to avoid facing the harsh facts of physical disability isn’t very far from doing the same thing to avoid facing the harsh facts of spiritual death. Have you ever heard someone refer to sin as “we all make mistakes?” Or seen a “coexist” bumper sticker? Efforts to minimize the seriousness of sin or the stark necessity of Christ as the only way to God contradict the gospel message at a fundamental level. There’s a reason God spends 39 books telling us how horrible sin is before Christ comes on the scene in the New Testament. If we don’t understand the bad news, how will we understand the good news?
Hasidic Schools – A Lesson Regarding School Choice
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The first compulsory attendance laws in America were introduced by Horace Mann in Massachusetts in 1852. This created a shift from what I consider to be true “public schools,” which were open to the public, but controlled by parents in local communities, to “government schools,” which we have had ever since. Today’s schools are funded by the government, regulated, and controlled by the government, and all of the standards are set and enforced by government dictates. By 1900, the U.S. government had an almost complete monopoly on education in our country, as virtually every state in the union had adopted compulsory school laws. If your child did not show up at these schools, you could be prosecuted as truant under these laws.
While most people were compliant and went along with the new government monopoly created by Mann, religious Catholics began looking for a way to give their students a religious education, rather than the “non-sectarian” version offered by the new government model. In 1925, in a U.S. Supreme Court case called, Pierce v. Society of Sisters, Catholics gained legal permission to opt-out of compulsory attendance laws and create their own parochial schools. In this landmark decision, the SCOTUS declared that a child is “no mere creature of the state,” and recognized that parents have a compelling interest in the education and upbringing of their own children.
In 1972, another pivotal case, Wisconsin v. Yoder, opened the door for the Amish to opt-out their children from government schools and form their own Amish schools. This enabled them to hire their own teachers and choose their own (religious) curriculum. In the 1970s, there was an explosion of Christian schools being started by Protestants.
Brave pastors in places like Kansas and Nebraska had begun using the classrooms in their church buildings not merely for religious instruction on Sunday, but to teach subjects like Math, Science and History on Monday through Friday as well. Not knowing they were in violation of Mann’s compulsory attendance laws, many of these pastors found themselves handcuffed and arrested while the doors of the church buildings were chained and padlocked. Thankfully, legal organizations like the Rutherford Institute and Christian Law Association began representing these church schools and winning in court. Publishing houses like ACE School of Tomorrow, Bob Jones Press and A BEKA started creating K-12 curriculum for the Christian school classroom and a new movement was underway.
On the heels of the Christian school movement came the modern-day homeschooling movement which began in 1983 when Homeschool Legal Defense Association (HSLDA) was formed as well as about twenty-six state homeschooling organizations, many of whom created their own homeschooling conferences.
The primary reason all these efforts were made from 1925 through today was to create an alternative system of schooling and education that was not controlled and regulated by the state or federal government. The way the courts have always seen these scenarios is that they are totally separate from, and free from control by, the government because they are privately funded.
With Shekels Come Shackles
There has been a massive push on the part of many conservatives in recent years to create legislation that would enable tax-dollars to “follow the student.” There are many variations of this: ESAs, vouchers, virtual charter schools, and many other public school / private school / homeschool hybrids. The mentality behind this, on the part of some conservatives is, “We pay our taxes, but we aren’t getting any benefit from our tax dollars. We have to pay to educate everyone else’s children, and we should be entitled to get some of our tax money back for the education of our children, even if we choose to send them to a private school or homeschool them.”
This sounds good on paper, but many liberty-minded skeptics of this plan have warned that whatever the government funds it controls. There is no free lunch. If the government pays for the schooling, they can dictate policy regarding how it gets used. Many school choice advocates have derided such views as being mere conspiracy theories and even referred to such theories as being akin to Chicken Little falsely telling his friends “The sky is falling,” when everything was just fine.
Because most states have not yet adopted voucher systems or other such school choice options that fund private schools and homeschools (in fact many state constitutions strictly forbid it), we don’t have a lot of test cases to look at and prove definitively whether such predictions are accurate.
Alberta, Canada and Private School Vouchers
One case we have observed in recent years regarding this matter took place in Alberta, Canada in 2016 where the Canadian government ordered that all private schools in the province that accepted government funds would need to become LGBTQ-complaint (including curriculum compliance and transgender bathroom accommodations) in all their school policies. It turns out almost all private schools DID indeed receive such funds and were susceptible to this order. In Alberta, there is not a separate homeschool exemption (you either homeschool through a private school or directly through the government), so all homeschoolers become impacted by this mandate as well.
Cases like this eventually find their way to courts where judges decide on the constitutionality of such cases, but it demonstrates the intent of government officials to bring private schools (and any homeschooling families connected to them) under their control through the use of tax dollars.
New York’s Hasidic Schools
In New York, there is a system of schools called “yeshivas.” They are institutions for the religious training of Jewish youth. In America, these schools for elementary-age students are called cheder, yeshiva ketana for post bar-mitzvah students and yeshiva gedola for high school students. These schools focus on teach the Talmud (Jewish religious writings) and the Torah (Old Testament scriptures). The intent of these schools is to pass on their religious heritage to the next generation.
For many years these schools operated as a class of private schools separate from the government system. In recent years, however, huge amounts of state funds became available to them, and they readily accepted them. In fact, over the course of four years, these schools received over one billion dollars in government money. This has now opened an investigation of their entire system by the New York government. This situation is likely to go through the courts for some time and it will be interesting to see the outcome.
Standardized Testing
The first regulation that came attached to receiving government funds was a requirement for standardized testing. This did not go well for these schools. Because government schools operate on pre-set government standards, their schools teach to the test. This was one of the objections many had to Common Core standards. The government can create a set of standards that they alone use, encourage employers to reject any students who do not utilize those standards, and penalize students who do not comply with the monopoly.
Regulating the Curriculum
Because the scope and intent of these Hasidic schools are different than the government schools, their students failed to perform well on the standardized tests. This has led to a push from the state government to regulate the curriculum. As a homeschooling parent myself, we often choose to focus on content that is not taught in most government schools (things like Logic, Constitutional Law, the Christian basis for our founding documents, free market enterprise (rather than socialism), ethics, Bible, and many other topics ignored by the government system). My boys are not taught that they can be menstruating persons and my girls are not encouraged to become transgender. We have a completely different approach to education than students in government schools. Our methods and content are radically different. So, it would not surprise me that students taught with different materials, that have a different intent, would fail to do well on a standardized test created by a government school.
I’d love to see government school students tested on their knowledge of the topics taught in our homeschool. Most would completely fail. It is true that most teenagers who attend government schools can list off the top ten rappers and best-selling video games, but few could list ten American presidents or explain the uniqueness of our representative constitutional republic (in fact, most are wrongly taught in government schools that we live in a democracy).
So, which set of standards should be used? The one by the government, or the ones set by private religious schools and homeschools? Most people, even conservatives, would say we should all abide by government standards. I would suggest that is because most Americans have attended government schools and have been brainwashed into believing the government should control education rather than parents. This really is the pivotal issue. No one wants to see students who do not excel academically, but ultimately, that is really a subjective issue. If you believe in forced universal conformity to a set of beliefs and ideologies pushed by the government, you will believe that all students should be forced to learn the same things, in the same way, at the same time as all other children.
If you believe in liberty, you will allow for diversity and freedom for students to be taught in unique ways, even if you personally don’t approve of the methods or content used for those students. I personally, as a Christian, do not agree with Wiccan ideology. But I fully support the right of parents to teach those values to their children if that is their sincere belief. Do I want my tax dollars going to teach Wicca? No, I do not. And most people don’t want their tax dollars going to support Muslim instruction or Christian instruction if they don’t hold to those views. So, what is the solution? All private education should remain truly private. If you pay for your own child’s education out of your own pocket, you can teach whatever you like to your child (or pay a teacher to do so). I can disagree with you, but I’m not going to be a fascist and force you to teach my beliefs, values, and ideologies. I’m not like the government. I believe parents are the best educators for their own children and should decide what they learn and when.
