Perhaps you missed the story about a Naperville, Illinois elementary school where third-grade teacher, Nicholas Cosme, a 25-year-old man who “paints his nails like a woman does—and is teaching eight-year-old boys” in his class at Elmwood Elementary School to do likewise. According to the DuPage Policy Journal, he has asked his students for their pronouns, “suggesting the boys … might ask him to refer to them as ‘she.’” To top off his lesson, he read to his young students the picture book My Shadow is Pink, in which “a young boy who likes to wear dresses inspires his father to also wear a dress.”

No ideological grooming going on here. Move along.

In response to a parent complaint, the school issued a statement to the DuPage Policy Journal defending Cosme’s actions because they “align to Naperville 203’s efforts to cultivate a culture of inclusion that values the dignity and uniqueness of each individual.”

So, in the service of “inclusion” will Elmwood Elementary School introduce young children to polyamory? Zoophilia? Genetic Sexual Attraction? Kink? If not, why not?

What about parents who believe cross-dressing undermines the dignity of boys and men? How does Elmwood Elementary include representations of those people?

Perhaps you missed the story from Paterson Elementary School in Fleming Island, Florida, where last January, parents Wendell and Maria Perez were called from their 12-year-old daughter’s school following her second suicide attempt in two days. The parents were told that she attempted to hang herself in a school bathroom over her “gender identity crisis,” and that they weren’t notified earlier because of their Catholic faith, which the school rightly surmised would have led them not to affirm her gender confusion. The parents also learned that school counselor Destiney Washington had been secretly meeting with their daughter for months and facilitating her social transition at school.

Subsequently, the Perez’s found proper counseling for their daughter. Her sexual confusion resolved, she accepts her sex, and she no longer experiences suicidal ideation. The parents are now suing the district.

Florida father Wendell Perez tells the state surgeon general that Clay County District Schools secretly "transitioned" his 12-year-old daughter without his knowledge and "affirmed" a male name and pronouns, which contributed to her attempted suicide in a school bathroom. pic.twitter.com/VY8Le9KqCi

— Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ (@realchrisrufo) August 23, 2022

Perhaps you also missed the news story from Richard J Kinsella Magnet School in Hartford, Connecticut about 77-year-old school nurse Kathleen Cataford who was suspended for a personal Facebook post that Superintendent Leslie Torres-Rodriguez described in a letter to the entire school community as “inappropriate,” “harmful,” “hateful,” and “inconsistent with what we stand for.” Here’s the allegedly hateful post:

Buyer beware. Investigate the school system curriculum … CT is a very socially liberal, gender confused state … As a public school nurse, I have an 11 yo female student on puberty blockers and a dozen students identifying as non-binary, all but two keeping this a secret from their parents with the help of teachers, SSW [social service worker] and administration.

Teachers and SSW are spending 37.5 hours a week influencing your children, not necessarily teaching [your] children what YOU think is being taught. Children are introduced to this confusion in kindergarten by the school SW [social worker] who ‘teaches’ social and emotional regulation and school expectations.

Science tells us that a child’s brain continues development into the early 20’s, hence laws prohibiting alcohol, tobacco, vaping and cannibis. But it’s ok to inject hormones into confused prepubescent children and perform genital mutilating surgery on adolescents! How incongruent is that thinking!

Which part of this is inappropriate? Is it inappropriate to expose publicly that teachers, social service workers, and administrators are conspiring to keep secrets from parents?

Which part is harmful? Is it harmful to warn parents that teachers are doing far more than teach the subject for which they were hired to teach? Is it harmful to point out the inconsistency in allowing prepubescent children and teens to make irreversible, life-altering decisions before the decision-making parts of their brains are fully developed?

Which part is hateful? Is calling the mutilation of children’s genitalia “genital mutilating surgery” hateful or true? If Torres-Rodriguez would spend some time reading the tragic accounts of detransitioners, she might find such a description true and accurate. If she has a tidbit of courage—which seems unlikely—she might even change her de facto policy of supporting social, chemical, and, presumably, surgical efforts to conceal children’s sex.

I will grant Torres-Rodriguez one point: the ideas expressed by Kathleen Cataford are very likely inconsistent with what district leaders stand for. They stand for deceit, hubris, and ignorance.

Let’s try two brief thought experiments:

1.) Let’s imagine that one day a Jewish girl from an Orthodox family decides to identify as Muslim. She changes her name to Aayat, which means “verses in the Quran.” At school, she tells her counselor and teachers that she wants to be referred to by this name because it reflects her authentic identity. She also requests a place to pray Dhuhr at its specified time near noon and a place to change into her hijab where there will be no biological boys. Finally, she tells her counselor that her parents would strongly disapprove of her trans-religious identity. In other words, her parents are not “safe.” Therefore, she wants the school to keep her trans-religious identity secret from her parents.

2.) A high school girl from a strict Muslim home converts to America’s civil religion: atheism. A long-time fan of actress Ellen/Elliot Page, she changes her name to Elliot. She changes from her hijab at school into typical American clothes, including shorts, short skirts, and figure-hugging tank tops. She changes into gym clothes in the presence of boys who pretend to be girls and use the girls’ locker room—a practice to which Muslim parents would strenuously object. She shares restrooms with those same boys. She requests that all staff (and peers) refer to her as “Elliot” and conceal their duplicity from her parents who would be shocked and angry with their daughter’s choices.

Some questions:

Would schools honor the requests of these girls?

Would parents object to schools accommodating such requests?

Since some schools today provide “transition closets” outfitted with gender-specific clothing for “trans”-identifying students to change into while at school, would schools provide “transition closets” for trans-religionists, replete with attire to match their new religious identities while concealing them from their parents?

There was once a time in American public schools when teachers served in loco parentis—in place of the parents. That is, schools assumed some parental “rights, responsibilities, and liabilities” during the time minor children attended school. Those rights and responsibilities were assumed to be delegated by parents to schoolteachers and administrators to ensure “student safety and supervision” while at school.

The doctrine of in loco parentis has morphed as teachers have expanded the areas of children’s lives over which they assume dominion, as teachers have grown in social and political power, and as they have redefined “safety” in accordance with their dogmatic sex/gender ideology.

Now teachers believe they have a right to “educate” the “whole child” which means teachers believe that the minds, hearts, bodies, and wills of other people’s children belong to them—the social constructionist “educators.” These presumptuous dogmatists believe they have dominion over what material may, should, and must be presented to children, including material that espouses—not objective facts—but arguable assumptions.

Jeff Berger-White, an English teacher at Deerfield High School in Deerfield, Illinois, who fifteen years ago was teaching the obscene play Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes until the community found out and whose wife, Juliet Berger-White, is an activist for “trans”-cultism, offers a glimpse into the hubris of teachers today.

In addition to teaching an obscene pro-homosexual/pro-“trans” play, Berger-White once claimed in the local press that it is the job of English teachers to challenge the emotions and morals of students, a claim that likely would surprise many parents.

More recently, in a Character Strong podcast about testing metrics, Berger-White made some revelatory claims:

I think school boards, I think administrators want something easy and quantifiable. They want to be able to say to their constituents, “Look, their reading scores have gone up. Look, the math scores have gone up.” But, um, what about our humanity? What about teaching empathy? What about teaching in this moment … the anti-racism movements across the country. …? I think all those things are essential and vital.

Were English, math, science, social studies, world languages, and P.E. teachers hired to teach empathy and “anti-racism”? Is that what parents expect them to teach? Is empathy—that is, identifying with someone and feeling what he feels—always good? Should teachers be teaching other people’s children to put themselves in the minds and hearts of people who experience disordered desires?

It is unclear what Berger-White means by “humanity,” but for many, affirming false, destructive ideas, as Berger-White does, erodes rather than cultivates our humanity.

Perhaps Berger-White should limit the scope of his endeavors to teaching students to communicate civilly and leave their emotional and moral development to their parents and those who share their parents’ beliefs and values.

And that would include parental views on what Berger-White and other leftists refer to as “anti-racism.” Parents might like to know if Berger-White is referring to the arguable critical race theory-derived ideas that racists like Ibram X. Kendi, Robin DiAngelo, Kimberle Crenshaw, Nikole Hannah-Jones, and Glenn Singleton profit so handsomely from promoting? If so, many taxpayers would heartily disagree that public school teachers should be teaching “anti-racism.”

While many parents value expertise, knowledge, and wisdom in their children’s teachers, Berger-White values “authenticity”—whatever that is:

I think we as educators need to be authentic. We all have a kind of classroom persona, but the closer our personas can come to our authentic selves, the better. And if we can find opportunities to share what moves us, what delights us, what saddens us, all the better. Because we model that, our young people see the adults in front of them every day. … When students trust us to be good … shepherds … they’re more likely to buy in.

All that palaver sounds admirable, but here’s the rub. What moves, delights, and saddens Berger-White may be things that do not move, delight, and sadden many parents. And those parents likely don’t want Berger-White socially constructing his preferences in their children.  C.S. Lewis argues that children must be trained to love that which is worthy of love and hate that which is contemptible. I suspect that C.S. Lewis and Jeff Berger-White might be moved, delighted, and saddened by very different phenomena.

Further, many parents do not view as “good shepherds” adults who share obscene material with minors on the public dime, who teach minors to “empathize” with those who embrace homosexual and “trans” identities, and who teach Kendi’s racist ideas.

Dogmatists like those found in Hartford, Fleming Island, Naperville, and Deerfield schools base much of their social constructionist activities on appeals to “safety” as redefined by them. They believe that “safety” is shaped by their arguable sexual ideology. A person or idea is “safe” if and only if it aligns with the unproven assumptions of leftist sex/gender ideology.

If an idea is deemed unsafe according to the nebulous criteria schools use and never share, then propagandists feel justified in banning it from the classroom, the library, and locker room usage policy. If a person is deemed unsafe, leftist activists who identify as teachers feel self-righteously justified in either firing them, muzzling them, marginalizing them, or, in the case of parents, deceiving them.

Parents, get your kids out of public schools, pronto. And churches, help make that possible.

For 42 years American school children have been subject to a barrage of misinformation about our American history. This has helped cause many of them to hate America. And virtually every day we read about the results.

For example, there’s a curriculum clash in one of our nation’s most conservative states. On Friday, Gary Bauer reported that the Oklahoma Board of Education decided to downgrade the Tulsa Public School District’s accreditation. This is because in Tulsa, they’re still teaching Marxist critical race theory—which is now against the law in the Sooner State.

Oklahoma’s Secretary of Education is Ryan Walters, who told Fox News: “What we’ve got to do is go back to teaching our history and ensuring that every young person has the ability to be successful and be inspired by our history.”

He added, “We’re the greatest country in the history of the world, and our kids need to know that.”

But how will children in Oklahoma, and all the other states, learn to appreciate our country when so many have been brainwashed with a false view for so long?

“Howard Zinn died in 2010, but [his book] A People’s History of the United States lives on and carries the rhetoric of past decades of leftist politics forward with it.” So writes Dr. Mary Grabar, author of the book, Debunking Howard Zinn: Exposing the Fake History That Turned a Generation against America (2019).

Grabar is a resident fellow at the Alexander Hamilton Institute for the Study of Western Civilization and is the founder of Dissident Prof Education Project, Inc. She has taught at the college level for two decades, including at Emory University.

Grabar describes the late Howard Zinn, the American history professor who would’ve turned 100 this year, as a “communist propagandist.”

In her book, Grabar observes, “Zinn’s pervasive influence is a national tragedy, especially considering just how distorted, manipulative, and plain dishonest A People’s History of the United States is.”

Zinn’s work has been widely read by many who assume it is truthful. Indeed, A People’s History remains among the most widely-assigned history textbooks in America. But Zinn was a self-described Marxist, and author Daniel Flynn once described him as an “unreconstructed, anti-American Marxist,” whose book was a “cartoon anti-history.”

Grabar quotes many reputable historians who similarly find Zinn’s historical standards sub-par.

I spoke with Dr. Grabar for a radio segment on Zinn and his influence. She told me, “I don’t think there’s another book on American history that has sold as many copies as Howard Zinn’s has. It has been in constant publication since 1980 when it first came out…. His view of American history…has become the dominant one.”

I asked her if there is a link between Zinn’s teachings and the mobs in the streets tearing down historical statues related to American history. She answered “Absolutely.” She noted that readers of Zinn tend to “get this very jaundiced picture of the founders, of Christopher Columbus. These people are presented as enslavers, committing genocide.”

For example, in her chapter, “Columbus Bad, Indians Good,” Grabar states, “Zinn was instrumental in the sea change that has transformed Columbus from the discoverer of America into the genocidal villain whose murder and enslavement of the Indians is the original sin that makes America a crime.”

Zinn leaves out such facts as the explorer’s log entry for October 12, 1492: “I warned my men to take nothing from the people without giving something in exchange.”

Graber told me: “It’s all done through lies about American history. Very little of it is accurate, so there’s this false picture of the people we have justly honored.”

Graber continued, “We have generations of people who have grown up disillusioned with this country—thinking there is something better off on the horizon. And what they think is better is socialism.” And Zinn deserves a great deal of the credit—or rather, blame—for that.

This is all astounding when you think about it. Zinn was a propagandist for the Communists, who were guilty of far worse atrocities than the men and women who founded America. The records are not comparable.

A couple of disillusioned former communists summarized the legacy of seven decades of the atheistic U.S.S.R. in one phrase: “tens of millions of corpses.” And yet Zinn continues to poison the minds of millions of Americans against our country.

This reminds me of the famous quip from Ronald Reagan: “The trouble with our Liberal friends is not that they’re ignorant; it’s just that they know so much that isn’t so.”

What is America in its essence? Very simply this: self-rule under God. Both of those phrases are necessary for a free and prosperous future for our country. May God spare us from the propagandists who withhold that information from present and future generations.

This article was originally published at JerryNewcombe.com.

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom,
it was the age of foolishness. … it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness.”

With regard to public schools and sexuality, this is the worst of times. It is an age of incomprehensible and destructive foolishness. It is a season of darkness into which America has been plunged by sexual anarchists like Maia Kobabe whose creepy adult comic book graphic memoir continues to divide communities.

For those unfamiliar with Kobabe’s book Gender Queer: A Memoir, click here to see images that librarians in public school and community libraries all across the country believe are appropriate for preteens and teens to see and for taxpayers to be forced to subsidize.

In obscene images, Kobabe, who has a lesbian aunt and a sister who dates a woman who pretends to be a man, tells the disturbing story of her journey to her disordered “identity” as a genderqueer, asexual person.

In January 2022, two courageous middle school teachers in Community United School District 200 (CUSD 200) in Wheaton, Illinois filed a “Request for Reconsideration of Media” in which they rightly assert that Kobabe’s memoir Gender Queer is “pornographic” and “vulgar” and doesn’t belong in the district’s high school libraries.

Assistant Superintendent of Administrative Services Charles Kyle selected ten staff members to serve on a committee to evaluate the book challenge. The two middle school teachers shared their reasons for the book challenge with the committee, which was composed of Craig Lawrence, John Disanza, Kristin Diaz, Laine Pehta, Melissa Murphy, Traci Burnham, Matt Biscan, and Erica Valenti, after which the committee met twice and then presented their recommendation to retain the obscene book. Some Wheaton taxpayers should find out the vote of each of these CUSD 200 employees.

In their excellent presentation, middle school teachers Brian Wiewiaro and John Ferguson made clear that their opposition to Gender Queer was not born of book-banning impulses or bigotry:

To be clear, we are not here to remove every book that might possibly be the slightest bit objectionable. We are not here to remove every book with LGBTQ+ themes or characters. This is not the beginning of some crusade to empty our libraries. This is also not a fight against a specific group of people. We have both taught many students throughout our careers, some of whom are LGBTQ+ students. We value all students and welcome them into our classrooms.

They also pointed out that the CUSD 200 Board of Education policy says,

Students are prohibited from … accessing at school any publication that is socially inappropriate or inappropriate due to maturity level of the students, including but not limited to material that is obscene, pornographic, or pervasively lewd and vulgar, contains indecent and vulgar language.

Wiewiora and Ferguson posed several questions to the committee, including these:

• Would you be comfortable posting these images in our high schools? On the district web page? At a Board meeting? In your own office?

• If these images had been drawn by a student for a class project, would they be appropriate?

Apparently, the committee members are comfortable with making available to other people’s minor children a book with drawings depicting strap-on dildos and dialogue about tasting one’s own vaginal secretions. If so, then students should be free to draw such pictures in art class and write such dialogue in English papers.

Either those committee members are ignorant or they’re too cowardly to stand for truth in a tyrannical public school culture rife with systemic leftist bigotry.

But it gets worse. The book challenge then moved on to the board of education where six of the seven board members voted to retain Gender Queer. Here are some of the rationalizations offered by adults who lack the courage, wisdom, and intelligence to serve in any school leadership position.

First up was Brad Paulsen who said this:

One of the data points I’ve heard recently, um, that I believe is true—I haven’t validated this, but I’ve seen it in a couple different locations—that 70 percent of our LGBTQ youth are more likely to commit suicide. And so, I thought about the consequences of our vote on those students and those members of our community. And so, I … I kind of asked myself, you know, depending on our vote, can we just help one person, one student that’s going through this, and if we can, that makes me feel good. And so, with those, um, with that thinking and all the conversations we had, when I vote, I’m going to say yes.

I kid you not, Paulsen said that.

Maybe the fact that I’m not a statistician explains why I have no idea what “70 percent of LGBTQ youth are more likely to commit suicide” means. Perhaps at the next board meeting, Paulsen could explain to his community exactly what it means. That should give him ample time to validate the data point he cited.

And perhaps at the next board meeting, he could answer these questions:

Since he used this data point as justification for retaining Gender Queer, should he have “validated” it?

Does he have conclusive, research-based evidence for his bizarre contention that reading Gender Queer will prevent suicides of “LGBTQ” youth?

Since many young adults are detransitioning; telling their tragic stories of suffering and regret; and blaming social media, doctors, and schools for affirming their “trans” identities, should school libraries request from publishing companies books that tell those stories? Wouldn’t Paulsen feel good if one person could be spared such suffering by reading them?

What if reading Gender Queer harms one person? What if reading it exacerbates confusion or contributes to a decision that has permanent and lifelong consequences and which they may later regret? Would the harm done to one such teen be sufficient justification for removing Gender Queer from the high school library?

Will Wheaton high schools purchase other books that include graphic depictions of and dialogue about sex toys and sex acts? Could those books include photos rather than cartoon drawings as long as someone could argue that one person may be helped by reading them? Would Paulsen et al. support the purchase of a memoir that depicts a woman’s journey to becoming a consensual non-monogamist, replete with graphic images of her sexual journey with multiple people? If not, why not?

(As a related aside, do any of the Wheaton high schools carry Abigail Shrier’s important and compelling book titled Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters?)

Board member Susan Booton followed Paulsen and began by asserting her “deep thinker” bona fides, by which she meant that she self-identifies as a deep thinker. The evidence, however, suggests the opposite.

She echoed Paulsen by saying that “the LGBTQ community struggles with suicide and harm to self at a much higher rate than our cisgender peers.” What she seems not to have thought deeply about is whether an obscene memoir carried in a public school library will reduce self-harm.

Booton claims the district must “honor all stories.” Does that include the stories of other underrepresented groups, like zoophiles? If not, why not? They too are marginalized and shamed.

Booton defers to the judgment of “professional librarians” who choose the books for the district’s book collections. She seems to believe that a degree in library science confers on them some special knowledge about and expertise in making moral judgments about obscenity.

What Booton doesn’t share is how the library book collection game is rigged.

Librarians create what are called “Collection Development Policies” that recommend, for example, purchasing books that are “positively reviewed” by at least two “professionally recognized review journals.” Surprise, surprise, the professionally recognized review journals are controlled by leftists who either don’t review or review negatively conservative books.

In addition, publishing companies gatekeep at an even earlier de facto censorship stage. Publishing companies won’t publish books written from a conservative perspective on sexuality, so there are none to be reviewed. Leftists can ban books with carefree abandon because their banning is concealed from the public. Can’t be accused of banning books when you don’t purchase them.

Deep thinker Booton doesn’t see how “removing this book helps” the mental health “crisis that we’re facing in this—in our world.” While helping mental health crises is a noble endeavor, is it the task of public school English teachers and librarians? Does Boone wonder why, during this unprecedented time of approval and even celebration of homosexuality and cross-sex impersonation, “LGBTQ” adolescents are suffering so tremendously? Why aren’t conservative kids whose beliefs and feelings are mocked and scorned in schools and the culture at large experiencing such high rates of suicide? Does the troubling degree of suffering experienced by “LGBTQ” youth not lead Booton to ask hard questions on whether “progressive” sexuality dogma is harming kids?

In addition to assuming without proving that Gender Queer may help one “LGBTQ” teen, board member David Long believes that strap-on dildo sex and vagina-tasting scenes are acceptable as long as they’re brief. Wiser adults would argue that no matter how brief, the presence of scenes so repugnant and controversial render a text unsuitable in schools funded by taxpayers.

The board chair, Ms. Chris Crabtree concluded by making the inane argument that the book should remain in district libraries in order to show that “this board cares about kids, it cares about the LGBTQ+ community.”

Choosing to remove one book because of egregiously obscene drawings and dialogue that violate school policy means the school doesn’t care about the LGBTQ+ community? Is the board so myopic and uncreative that they are unable to find other ways to show students they care?

Moreover, does caring require affirmation of all student feelings, beliefs, and volitional acts? Is it the business of public school leaders to affirm arguable ontological and moral assumptions on controversial topics?

Board member Rob Hanlon emoted about love, loneliness, shame, and isolation, implying that the removal of Gender Queer will increase loneliness, shame, and isolation, and keeping it will increase love for “LGBTQ” students. What a bunch of hooey.

There’s a lot of hooey spouted by school leaders struggling mightily to defend the indefensible. They cite prizes awarded to obscene books by leftist organizations as just justification for purchasing, recommending, and teaching garbage to kids. They also cite the lousy decisions of other schools to purchase, recommend, and teach garbage to kids as the reason to follow suit.  Let’s call that the lemming defense.

What was notably missing in all the claptrap was any discussion about the virtue of modesty and whether this book may further erode what little remains of respect for modesty in our coarse, unsafe culture.

Reminder to school boards, administrators, and teachers: Teachers are public servants hired to teach math, science, literature, world languages, social studies, and P.E. They are not hired to butt in to the emotional, moral, and psychological lives of other people’s children.

Earlier this spring, a group of concerned parents and taxpayers in the U-46 school district assembled to discuss their collective concerns about the state of public education and the overarching impact on students and the community. Now organized under the moniker Parents and Taxpayers for Children in U-46 (PTC) their mission is to engage, educate and empower parents, students, teachers and taxpayers to not just push back on a system that is failing their children but to create meaningful change in public education.

They’ve done a deep dive into what’s going on in our schools, and as a result, they are rejecting the progressive, non-evidence-based programs that have supplanted reading, STEM+, and high-value vocational training. Proof of the district’s failure to educate their children is here. The data have been sourced directly from the Illinois State Board of Education. Data for 2020-21 has been omitted so as not to distract from the fact that Illinois schools were failing long before the COVID mitigation policies.

Wirepoints has also sounded the alarm in their recent indictment of public education. Their report is here.

We can no longer ignore the crisis. Proficiency rates in the single digits and social promotion through grade 12 has left 70% of kids without the education required to advance into higher education, including technical/vocational schools, nor compete in the 21^st century workplace and economy.

Employers and industry leaders lament the significant skills gap in math, reading and essential soft skills in the workforce indicating that our schools are failing our children’s basic educational needs.

The Wall Street Journal reported on a higher correlation between school performance and home values. This impacts the net wealth of families for whom their home is often their single largest asset.

The sum effect of these issues is economic disaster for communities around the state. These failures predict the end to a civil and prosperous society. This is likely the greatest civil rights movement of today. The time to take action is now. Our kids cannot wait any longer.

To help understand the issues and get equipped for the challenge, Parents and Taxpayers for Children in U-46 is hosting a “Back to School Picnic” on Sunday, August 21^st at 2:00pm. The event is free, but registration is required by Ticket Leap. Click here to view the invitation. For those who would like to volunteer to help with this event, you can find opportunities to lend a hand here.

If you know of a friend or family member you think might benefit from attending, or who may want to get involved, please share this information with them. We can’t do this alone.

IFI Editor’s note: It’s refreshing to see determined parents do whatever it takes to protect their children from the godless indoctrination rampant in public education. We hope that others will be inspired to do the same in their children’s school districts. Or better yet, we hope those parents who are able will decide to teach their children, thereby instilling in them their own values.  

There are countless reasons for all parents to immediately protect their children from government schools, as quickly as possible. Here are our top reasons:

1. INDOCTRINATION: The public schools are indoctrinating American children with dangerous propaganda and ideologies, with the goal of turning them against God, Church, Family, Country, Morality, and more. While this problem has gotten worse over the decades, this has been true since the government began taking over education under the leadership of Utopians including Robert Owen, Horace Mann and John Dewey.

2. DUMBING DOWN: The public schools are dumbing down American children with quack methodology and pedagogy, with the goal of leaving them handicapped when it comes to reading, writing, and reasoning. This sounds like a fantastic claim, but it is well documented in books such as Crimes of the Educators. The federal government’s data show that over 2/3 of 8th graders are not even proficient in any core subject.

3.  SEXUALIZING CHILDREN: The public schools are sexualizing American children with radical sex education, including flagrant promotion of homosexuality, fornication, gender confusion, and more. This indoctrination of children has its roots in the pseudo-scientific quackery of Alfred Kinsey, the “sex researcher” responsible for the rape and sexual torture of thousands of children and babies. These abominations should have no place in a school classroom. Some schools have even been caught actively normalizing pedophilia. The risk of sexual abuse in schools is high and getting higher, too: CSE Video. View this resource: COMPREHENSIVE SEX EDUCATION: 15 HARMFUL EFFECTS ON CHILDREN
   
   ALERT: CSE is in some form is now being offered directly in public schools in 35 states and increasingly online. Please watch this short 6 minute video What is Comprehensive Sexuality Education and Get Out Now! What Are “Sexual Rights”? Watch this video.

4. DATA MINING & PROFILING STUDENTS: Schools are now compiling more data on students than even parents have, creating detailed profiles on each child. These intrusive dossiers include information on children’s mental health, attitudes, psychological make up, bio-metric data, academic performance, home life, and much more. The data is also used to help manipulate children’s views. The government has no business knowing this information or manipulating children with it!

5. INMATES OF GOVERNMENT SCHOOLS: Children in private schools and homeschooling do much better than inmates of government “schools” academically and socially, research shows. These alternative environments typically provide a much better education, a safer experience, and less extremism and indoctrination masquerading as schooling.

6. GLOBALIST PROPAGANDA: The United Nations and in particular the UN Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) are increasingly invading public-school classrooms with globalist propaganda. This illegitimate interference in the lives and education of American children is wrong for so many reasons. The dictators club should NOT decide what or how U.S. students learn.

7.  REMOVING PARENTS RIGHTS TO THEIR OWN CHILDREN: Government schools are increasingly infringing on parental rights. This attack on the family unit and fundamental rights has become so extreme that schools are helping underage girls get abortions without parental consent and helping children to get “sex changes” behind their parents’ back.

8. EDUCATION IS NOT THE RESPONSIBILITY OF GOVERNMENT: The Bible speaks a great deal about education, and nowhere is there ever any suggestion that this is a proper responsibility of government. Instead, the Bible clearly places the primary responsibility over education on the parents. Scripture is filled with insight on these questions, and many biblical scholars and theologians have argued that it is sinful for parents to hand their children over to godless, anti-Christian government schools for indoctrination.

9. TEACHING FAKE HISTORY AND PSEUDO-SCIENCE: The government schools are teaching children fake history that is calculated to make them hate their country, their heritage, America’s Founding Fathers, and the biblical principles upon which America was founded. They are also teaching pseudo-science calculated to have them reject God and His Word, and to embrace secularism, evolutionary beliefs, and the man-made global-warming hypothesis. Comprehensive reviews of the textbooks and resources being used nationwide in public schools reveal extreme bias and blatant dishonesty that are not acceptable under any circumstances.

10. RADICAL LABOR UNIONS: Radical labor unions seeking to crush freedom, Christianity, and Americanism such as the National Education Association have an iron grip over the schools and the teaching profession. These groups bully teachers and parents, fund extremist politicians, undermine good education, reward failure, and are radicalizing schools. Just recently, the NEA went into a partnership with extremist homosexual group “Human Rights Campaign,” which is currently leading the war to destroy religious liberty in America. The partnership calls on teachers to embrace gender confusion, ask students what pronouns they prefer, and more.

11. EPIDEMIC OF VIOLENCE, SUICIDE AND MORE: There is an epidemic of violence, depression, suicide, self-harm, murder, fornication, gangs, and drug use in the schools that is killing our children at alarming rates. Some of the leading contributors to this tragedy are the false and dangerous teachings that saturate public schools today, and the anti-Christian worldview they underpin.

12. PARENTS HAVE NO CONTROL: Holy Scripture and/or religious tradition assign the education of children to the family with assistance from the Church or religious community, not to government at any level. Many texts and long church tradition support this.

13. NO DISCIPLESHIP: For Christians the Great Commission commands K-12 Christian education in Matt 28:20. The Church for 2,000 years has based all their education. preaching  and teaching programs on this text along with many others. No exceptions. To be successful the Church is self-propagating and carrying out its mission: it must obey the Great Commission.

14. LACK OF MORALITY: A fresh obedience in K-12 Christian education can be a key to the revival of our children, families, churches and culture. This is God’s way to renew and revive His people, build strong children and families,  and our culture.

15. SOCIALIST AGENDA: Free-Market vs. K-12 State sponsored is the best educational and economic model. Public education is socialism in education and everything in society that works well operates on a free-market model. Conservatives and Christians reject socialism in other arenas like medical care, business  and should apply the same model to K-12 Education. If the power of the state controls the curriculum, personnel, teacher education, funding  and subjects  taught, this allows for the emergence of such Marxists as Howard Zinn and his PEOPLES HISTORY OF US to become dominant in history instruction. Evolution as a religious system and fake science  is forced on children too.

16. CREATIVE THINKING LIMITED: Destruction of academic disciplines, liberal arts, sciences  is accomplished by K-12 public education and this model does not allow the talented and gifted children to develop fully but drives all down to the lowest common denominator. Coercive power of the state will not allow any internal correction. Creativity is stifled. This makes K-12 education a factory model and under control of industry. Some call this the education/industrial complex.

17. GOVERNMENT CONTROLLED: Private or free-market and Christian education was the original American model until 1840’s under Horace Mann. For over 200 years we had no state-controlled public education. We birthed a free and prosperous nation on back of Private and mostly Christian education.

18. FORCED VACCINATION IN PUBLIC SCHOOLS: Public schools require that all students be vaccinated with dozens of shots, including Gardasil which purports to guard against sexuality transmitted diseases. It is well-documented that vaccines carry the potential irreversible risks that can include permanent paralysis, autism, retardation or death. Many are made with cells from aborted babies. If your child is injured by vaccinations, the pharmaceutical companies lobbied Congress and are now “immune” from prosecution and civil liability. Important medical decisions should be made by parents in consultation with doctors, NOT by government bureaucrats and schools. Please do your own research.

19. SAFETY OF CHILD AT RISK: There is talk about eliminating School-security policing from campuses proposed by the Teacher’s Union. This will be a great threat to an already fragile environment and even more reason to exit the public schools.

20. BLACK LIVES MATTER CURRICULUM:  Marxist indoctrination under the guise of “Black Lives Matter” propaganda has infiltrated government schools across America, even as the founders of the group admit publicly that they are “trained Marxists” and that they are consulting with “ancestor spirits.” This indoctrination in public schools includes teaching children “Critical Race Theory,” “white privilege,” “intersectionality,” and hatred of America, Christianity, the nuclear family, and more. BLM teacher training programs are even teaching teachers to involve children in necromancy and summoning spirits, all of which is strictly forbidden by the Bible. Meanwhile, the 1619 Project, which teaches that everything about America must be viewed through the lens of slavery, is forcing a blatantly fraudulent view of U.S. history that is designed to undermine the nation. This is all beyond unacceptable.

Visit PublicSchoolExit.com, founded by Alex Newman and other leaders, for more resources to help you get your children out today.

“One more thing is of vital importance; children must have books, living books.
The best is not too good for them; anything less than the best is not good enough.
And if it is needful to exercise economy, let go everything that belongs to soft and
luxurious living before letting go the duty of supplying the books, and the frequent
changes of books, which are necessary for the constant stimulation of the child’s intellectual life.”
~Charlotte Mason~

In Part II, The Art of Nourishing a Child’s Mind, it was established that the mind is capable of dealing with only one kind of food; it lives, grows and is nourished upon ideas and THAT is where we, the educators, can be of most use as we provide a rich cultural, natural and spiritual environment to be the brain food of our children or grandchildren. Also explored was the idea of letting children encounter art and music without needless interference. The same is true when it comes to “serving up” culture in the form of literature for our children.

Cultural Category Continued:

Literature is a unique form of culture in the homeschool. Whereas art and music might fall more into the enrichment category, literature (or books) can form the foundation of much of a student’s education. And while art and music lend themselves more easily to finding those that are worthy, books are another matter. They are, of course, at the heart of any educational environment, but especially the homeschool one. And while one’s mind automatically goes to “textbook” when thinking about schooling, Charlotte Mason had another idea when it came to books suitable for the child’s education. Textbooks, to her, were as dry as sawdust for they often contain endless facts and are written with the single goal of concisely communicating information. We can all relate to the experience of trying to keep our focus as we power through them. Miss Mason herself communicated:

“[The children] will plod on obediently over any of the hundreds of dry-as-dust volumes issued by the publishers under the heading of ‘School Books,’ or of ‘Education.’ Theykeep all such books in the outer court and allow them no access to their minds.”

Why are these school books banished to the outer court of their minds? Because they are dull, lifeless, lacking in what could make them living – ideas! What an unappetizing way to nourish young minds. It can be likened to nourishing their bodies with dry bread and water. We do our best to present food that is not only nourishing but also appealing. The same principle should be applied when nourishing their minds. And Miss Mason’s solution to mind nourishment  was ‘living books”:

“A book may be long or short, old or new, easy or hard, written by a great man or a lesser man, and yet be the living book which finds its way to the mind of a young reader”

And that is the key–that the material finds its way into the mind becoming “food for thought,” reflection, and nourishment.

To further define: a living book is one which provides a connection between the reader and the thinking of another person. The end result is that the reader gets in touch with the author’s mind. The Bible is a prime example of this for as each individual reads the “living word of God”, they are put in touch with the mind of God himself.

Living books are often found in those whose authors are sharing not only knowledge about a subject (the facts and nothing but the facts), but also their interest and passion.

To evaluate if a book is a living book apply these questions:

-is it written by one author who has a passion for the subject?

-is it written in narrative form, reading like the author is telling you a story,

  OR

-is it conversational in tone, like the author is sitting across the table from you and having a chat?

-is it well-written, not using choppy, twaddly sentences?

-does it touch your emotions and fire your imagination — can you picture what the author is saying in your mind’s eye?

-does it contain ideas, not just dry facts? Are there ideas in it that will feed your mind and heart, shape who you are as a person, and often spark ideas of your own?

While not all of the above criteria must be met, if you find a book that does meet most of it, let the children be the deciding factor.  Try it out on them with the “one-page test” as suggested by Karen Andreola in the Charlotte Mason Companion.

“Start reading [the book] aloud to your children and look for signs that it is opening the doors of their minds. Stop at the end of the first or second page. You will know you have found a living book if you hear them plead, “Read me more!”

Those are indeed words sought after by a home educator! A living book has been found! The task for the parent (or educator) then becomes one of finding these books and either reading them aloud to the child(ren) or ensuring there is quiet time and space for them to read to themselves. Again, being mindful of the same approach one takes when exploring art or music–not to serve it up as a lesson, but to offer it up as a feast to be enjoyed!

Even better is to spend time together with all ages feasting on the same book. The benefit of shared books is that each child takes from it what they are able and ready to take. The advantage then to the homeschooling family is one living book can serve to meet the needs of all ages. As with the art and music, there is no right or wrong way to react to the book, no “thing” the child is meant to get, no need to “access” if something was gotten. The child, whatever the age, gleans something via the mind they have been blessed with. They leave the reading of the book with “food for thought” and, unless they are constantly being bombarded with noise (shows streaming incessantly on their devices or rushing about from one planned activity to another), their mind can turn over the ideas and thoughts–they can think. The mind is the instrument of their education. They are learning in Charlotte Mason’s gentle way.

What’s more, the parent has freed themselves up from needing to have all the answers and has paved the way for life-long self-education, and that is a worthy goal indeed!

“The teacher who allows his scholars the freedom of the city of books is at liberty to be their guide, philosopher and friend; and is no longer the mere instrument of forcible intellectual feeding.”

In my next installment, we will explore applying the gentle art of learning in the natural and spiritual categories.

Massive new federal tax funding and grants announced by the Biden administration for “full-service community schools” and “mental health” schemes will accelerate the transformation of what passes for “education” in America — and not in a good way. Basically, parents and families are being sidelined and replaced as government becomes mommy, daddy, and even “god.”

Among other concerns expressed by critics is the fact that the federally funded “full-service community schools” clearly aim to displace parents and church, while making government schools the center of community life. The controversial institutions are taking over everything from mental and dental “health” to nutrition and “community service” under the guise of “helping.”

As explained by the U.S. Department of Education, these federally funded “schools” seek to “meet the social, emotional, physical and mental health, and academic needs of students” by providing “wraparound services.” In other words, they would be more accurately referred to as “parental replacement centers.”

Parents and families are in the crosshairs of the “full-service community schools,” too. Indeed, all over the federal documents on these institutions are references to “family services,” “adult education,” “parent education,” and more. Various federal agencies have referred to parents as “equal partners” with government in the raising of children. But parents are increasingly being made junior partners.

Instead of parents shaping and controlling the government schools, the government schools are moving to shape and control parents, as federal documents show. Those parents who resist or refuse may face escalating “interventions” by government, up to termination of their parental rights by federally funded “child welfare” bureaucrats.

“These grants will help community schools provide quality wraparound services to students and their families, from access to health care and nutritional assistance, to tutoring and enrichment opportunities, to mental health supports and violence prevention programs,” the U.S. Department of Education said. Again, note the reference to “wraparound services” for “families.”

The growing barrage of federal “mental health” schemes, meanwhile, represent a massive subsidy to Big Pharma that will see countless additional young people diagnosed with “mental illness.” In addition to overmedicating children with quack labels and providing highly intrusive “services” to families, the grants aim to “diversify” schools’ “mental health professional workforce,” according to administration officials.

To implement Biden’s controversial “national mental health strategy,” which primarily targets school children and their families, the administration is asking Congress for over $125 billion over the next ten years. State governments will add billions more. For perspective, the annual GDP of Vermont is a mere $36 billion.

As federally funded and federally controlled government schools continue to displace family and religion in community life, the feds are becoming increasingly open about the agenda. Consider the U.S. Centers for Disease Control’s promotion of the “Whole School, Whole Community, Whole Child” (WSCC) model advertised on the CDC’s website.

As the Biden administration has also made abundantly clear, much of the “health” and “mental health” tax money being showered on state and local governments for “education” will be used to promote and normalize gender confusion. In fact, the administration has practically declared war on families, communities, and states that seek to protect children from the agenda.

The Biden administration’s further weaponization of “schools” against family, church, and America must be resisted and opposed at every level. Aside from being blatantly unconstitutional, these schemes represent an all-out assault on every institution outside of government — the very essence of Marxism, tyranny and slavery.

Families must protect their children from these abuses by removing them from government schools. State and local governments, meanwhile, must stand in the gap for families by declining the grotesque federal bribes and the chains attached to them. Liberty, family and civilization depend on stopping this assault.

This article was originally published at FreedomProject.com.

Business leaders are tasked with developing and executing strategies that lead to desired results, namely, to maximize shareholder value in a manner that is honest, moral, and upright. Successful businesses measure their performance in myriad ways and use these results to implement changes, if needed, to achieve desired results. The ethos of the business world is defined by accurate measurement of results, high performance and achievement, continuous improvement, and maintaining a competitive edge. This high-performance orientation in American businesses has resulted in the U.S. being the largest, most successful economy in the world. Why is this not the case for the Illinois public school system?

The facts available to measure the performance of Illinois public schools reveal alarming and ongoing under-performance.  The 2021 academic proficiency results are in, and Illinois public schools have gone from bad to worse. More important, the Illinois public school system knows the proficiency scores across the state but does nothing to address the root causes of poor performance. This failure constitutes performance-arrogance–not performance-orientation–which defies logic. Only in the public school system can one find such poor results on the key metrics of performance without ever seeing meaningful efforts to improve.

Statewide average proficiency scores at the 11th grade level for 2021 are shown below. Proficiency, in this case, means that a student scored at either “proficient” or “above proficient” based on standardized test scores.

On a statewide average basis, Illinois public school students are not even at the 50th percentile of proficiency in the three subject areas tested. It seems statistically impossible to be this bad.

In the business world, if only 1 percent of a workforce were proficient at their job, that business would be wiped out by competitors who operated more effectively. Competition in business leads to high performance. Illinois’ public school system has few competitors and, therefore, little pressure to perform. As a result, it continues to underperform, producing students who are not academically ready to compete in the real world.

Unbelievably, the graduation rate for Illinois public schools in 2021 was 87 percent. A system that cannot come close to even average proficiency levels in three core subjects, graduates almost all those same students! In business we say that “facts are friendly and made-up facts are friendlier.”

Made-up facts give the appearance of performance when in fact they are misleading and should be ignored if improvement is desired. The graduation rate in Illinois public schools is a doozy of a made-up fact. The proficiency scores prove students are not performing at grade-level, so it is clear that the graduation rate is a result of “social-promotion,” where schools push students to the next level regardless of their mastery of material.

The days of admitting and addressing failure are gone in our public school system.

In addition to very poor academic performance, curricula are woke, Marxist, sexualized, and anti-American. The dumbing down of curricula continues as Common Core, the 1619 Project, inappropriate sexual education, and critical race theory (CRT) rule the day.

Grammar, classic literature, true American history, and civics are just some of the important topics removed from public schools today. Our schools have become leftist indoctrination centers where children are inculcated with a worldview antithetical to their parents’ worldview and a biblical worldview.

The Illinois public school system is broken and beyond repair. Any business that consistently demonstrated results as poor as Illinois public schools do would see a purging of leadership, management, and employees. Expecting improved results from a broken system is a fool’s game, but in Illinois it’s the only game in town. The status quo is maintained by entrenched left-wing politicians and unions scratching each other’s backs; bloated education bureaucracies taking huge amounts of money away from actual education; and shocking educator compensation/benefits schemes no one in business can afford or would tolerate for such poor performance.

Businesses seek people with the ability to collaborate, think critically, communicate effectively, and demonstrate creative problem-solving. Exceptional performers in business not only have a well-trained mind, but they also possess strong moral character, an ability to self-govern, and compassion. People like this more often emerge from home education programs and authentic biblically based private schools.

The public school system also produces some highly capable people who are able to overcome some of the huge systemic problems endemic to public schools–people who are able to thrive in a highly competitive global economy. But American businesses no longer count on the public education system to do its job. Instead, we now see businesses in the U.S. hiring people from other countries with excellent education systems to do jobs requiring high skill.

The future of America and the businesses so vital to our country are not going to be able to depend on an army of woke, Marxist-leaning, poorly educated people to achieve great ends. We need godly, well-educated, wise people who love liberty and this country. This is not what Illinois public schools are producing. Tragically, government schools don’t even strive to produce these kinds of students. It is time to exit Illinois public schools and pursue a growing number of vastly better options.

A prominent organization that accredits hundreds of elite private schools across America has joined forces with a fringe leftwing organization that promotes transgenderism and even castration of children. The news is fueling concern among critics even as millions of families flee government schools over similar indoctrination of children in tax-funded “education.”

According to documents and media reports about the scandal, the National Association of Independent Schools (NAIS), which accredits almost 2,000 private schools in the United States and beyond, hosted a “professional development” conference in partnership with the pro-transgender group Gender Spectrum. These schools teach many of America’s future elites.

Among other goals, the conference was aimed at teaching school staff and leaders how to address “the increasing gender diversity across the K-12 experience,” the NAIS said. Of course, no mention was made of the fact that the increase in “gender diversity” among children is due almost exclusively to the indoctrination of school children by groomers.

The costly professional development conference was aimed at teachers, school leaders, administrators, curriculum developers, and other “education” professionals from the NAIS network. The NAIS tried to justify the scheme as producing more “well-being” on campus.

“Schools that implement gender-inclusive practices support their commitment to diversity and enhance a climate of campus well-being,” NAIS said in announcing the scheme, without offering any evidence that brainwashing children with gender confusion would enhance anything other than confusion among children.

The NAIS’ Inclusive Schools Network Initiative was described by the outfit as “a yearlong professional development program that will help build a network of support and ongoing capacity-building among independent schools as they address the instructional, institutional, and social-emotional challenges and opportunities of gender-inclusive practice.”

According to the announcement, topics covered include “dimensions of gender, key terminology, and the spectrum framework for gender,” “making a case for gender education in schools,” a “train-the-trainer curriculum to support institutional development and change,” a “legal webinar and advisory designed for independent schools,” a “workshop” exploring “gender at the intersection of race, power, and identity,” and much more.

The Gender Spectrum group is more than a little controversial. One of its “partners” listed on its website is Align Surgical Associates, a group of quacks who specialize in the surgical mutilation of genitals under the guise of performing “sex changes.”

The Gender Spectrum group has also hosted seminars promoting double mastectomies for confused girls, “vaginoplasty” surgery, and “facial” surgery as part of its “Gender Affirming Surgery Series.” There are growing calls nationwide to formally criminalize the mutilation of children.

The premise underlying much of this is the claim, echoed by NAIS in its announcements, that “gender nonconforming” students were being “teased” or “bullied” by other children. In reality, it is students who reject the gender-bending propaganda who are mercilessly terrorized and abused.

The NAIS has been exposed even recently promoting similar transgender lunacy in the schools it works with. In fact, earlier this year, the organization was exposed peddling the “gender unicorn” as part of the NAIS “queer-inclusive” curriculum targeting children at age four.

The scandal surrounding NAIS, which primarily deals with non-religious private schools, comes as more and more Christian schools move toward “woke” policies as well. In fact, Christian education leaders have been sounding the alarm about major accreditation organizations for Christian schools, too.

Simply removing children from government indoctrination centers posing as “schools” is no guarantee that they will get a decent education — or be protected from dangerous brainwashing. In fact, as the NAIS showed, due diligence is absolutely essential.

This article was originally published by Freedom Project Media.

The National Education Association’s (NEA) annual convention took place last week in Chicago. It opened with a theatrical speech act by NEA president, Rebecca (Becky) Pringle who has no dearth of pride in the “amazing accomplishments” of the NEA members. Pringle cited as inspiration for world transformation—not systemically oppressed persons of color like Thomas Sowell, Carol Swain, or Glenn Loury—but communist and former Black Panther who studied under Herbert Marcuse, Angela Davis:

We must share [the] view Professor Davis holds dear whether it is a mind, a heart, a school, a community, or our world, transformation is always possible, change is always possible, NEA, because of you. [wild applause for themselves]

Of the many troubling things Pringle emoted, this may be the most troubling:

NEA, you are answering my call to lead a movement that unites, not just our members, but this entire nation, to reclaim public education as a common good, as the foundation of this democracy, and then transform it into something it was never designed to be—a racially and socially just and equitable system that prepares every student, every student, EVERY STUDENT, EVERY ONE TO SUCCEED IN THIS DIVERSE AND INTERDEPENDENT WORLD!

Yes, she was cacophonously shouting about the NEA’s goal to transform public education into something it was never designed to be.

Precisely how are “socially just and equitable” defined and by whom? How does the NEA propose to achieve their socially constructed goal?

The NEA plans to achieve that goal by using taxpayer funded schools with captive audiences to promote sexual perversity, sexual confusion, science denial, the slaughter of the unborn, compulsory language mandates, censorship of ideas they hate, and the destruction of the nuclear family. That’s how.

Pringle went on to bemoan recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions:

… [T]he rights many of us have spent a lifetime fighting to secure are being stripped away in our lifetimes.

… we’ve known since 2016, since that fateful election, that this day would come—that we would feel the effects of a radicalized Supreme Court, issuing decisions that do not reflect the views or the values of America.

We knew that the ground had shifted and the stage had been set to move us further away from the promise of America for all Americans, from decisions on school prayer that attack religious freedom to vouchers that threaten the right to a universal public education to the long-term devastating impact of the Supreme Court’s decision to hijack the fundamental freedom to decide for ourselves when and how to have a family.

The U.S. Supreme Court that overturned Roe v. Wade—a decision that even leftist law professors have long acknowledged had no grounding in the Constitution—is “radical” but the U.S. Supreme Court that overturned marriage for the whole country was not?

Allowing more powerful, more privileged “pregnant persons” the legal right to have powerless, non-privileged humans killed constitutes the “promise of America”? And here I thought the promise of America was to recognize that all men are created equal and endowed by our Creator with the unalienable right to life. Has Pringle read any books on history, civics, or government other than Howard Zinn’s People’s History of America and the 1619 Project?

Allowing a coach the freedom to choose to pray silently on a football field after a game constitutes an attack on religious freedom?

Providing school vouchers that help give impoverished families a tiny bit of freedom to choose where and how their children are educated constitutes threatening the right to a universal public education?

What Pringle and her thought-control collaborators don’t want is for moms and dads who must work two jobs in order to make ends meet to be allowed to choose not to have their children indoctrinated by leftists who want to turn public education into something it was never intended to be.

Pringle then began shrieking:

As we have for decades, we will fight tirelessly for the right to choose. We will never stop. We will fight unceasingly for the rights of our LGBTQ plus students and educators. We will say gay. We will say trans. We will use the words that validate our students and their families–words that encourage them to walk in their authenticity, to love themselves fully, to become who they are meant to be! 

What if walking in their authenticity includes sadomasochism, polyamory, infantilism, or any other of the myriad paraphilias that delight fallen humans? Will Pringle encourage those students to love themselves fully and become who they are meant to be?

Who exactly intends people to be “gay” or “cross-sex” impersonators, and how does Pringle know that’s how some people are meant to be? Is it the mere presence of persistent, unchosen desire that tells Pringle how someone or something intended those people to be? Do all unchosen, powerful, persistent desires have to be affirmed, in order for humans to fully love themselves?

Pringle’s proclamations “We will say gay. We will say trans,” are an allusion to the Florida law that prohibits teachers from initiating conversations about homosexuality and cross-sex impersonation in grades K-3. Pringle has announced defiantly that creepy members of the NEA should violate Florida law in order to impose their socially constructed assumptions about sexuality on other people’s 5–9-year-olds.

Funny how leftists, who now treat the appointments of Brett Kavanaugh, Neil Gorsuch, and Amy Coney Barrett as an outrage and insult to the Democratic process, were never exercised when, according to Politico,

Democrats almost exclusively named federal judges and Supreme Court justices for decades. … Of the 22 open Supreme Court seats between 1933 and 1968, 17 were filled by Democratic presidents. And Eisenhower’s five nominees included Earl Warren and William Brennan, two future progressive icons.

Pringle believes that the NEA’s ideological world domination goals are thwarted by unceasing attacks:

We have weathered countless attacks on our profession, on us. We have become exhausted by the demands created by a crippling educator shortage. We have felt our voices grow hoarse from demanding professional pay and the respect we deserve.

Maybe the NEA has something to do with the crippling educator shortage.

Maybe liberty-loving young people don’t want to enter the teaching profession because it is controlled by leftists who demand ideological conformity from faculty, who demand that teachers promote sexual deviance and ideas derived from critical theory, and who disrespect parental rights and transparency.

Maybe veteran teachers are dropping out for the same reasons.

Maybe teachers young and old don’t want to be forced to be vaccinated. Maybe conservative teachers young and old are tired of being “attacked” by taxpayers for the inappropriate decisions leftist teachers make and which dissenting educators are not free to criticize.

Maybe leftist “educators” are getting paid too much and are getting all the respect they deserve.

Maybe teachers or those considering the teaching profession don’t support the commitment of the NEA to profile

the largest 25 organizations “that are actively working to diminish a student’s right to honesty in education, freedom of sexual and gender identity, and teacher autonomy.”

Maybe they object to the NEA’s plan to “spend more than $47 million to elect friendly candidates …, pro-labor judges, lobby for or against legislation, and support state and local affiliates in ballot measure campaigns.”

Maybe they object to the NEA’s decision to “publicly stand in defense of abortion and reproductive rights and encourage members to participate in activities including rallies and demonstrations, lobbying and political campaigns, educational events, and other actions to support the right to abortion.”

The self-important Pringle arrogantly declares to the NEA members the importance of the NEA’s work:

You understand that our work is fundamental to this nation. You have accepted the profound trust that has been placed in us. 

No, the work of the NEA is not fundamental to this nation. In reality, the NEA’s work is fundamental to no one and nothing but leftist ideologues—their beliefs, their systems, and their socio-political agenda.

No leftist event would be complete without an attack on the 2^nd Amendment, and Pringle did not disappoint. She claimed to have “listened to the stories of young people who experience gun violence in their communities every day,” but Pringle never mentioned that virtually every mass killer in America’s history has come from a broken, dysfunctional family. Leftists can’t say that because they are committed to the lie that all family structures serve children equally.

The NEA’s work contributes to the slaughter of the unborn; to a false understanding of sexual differentiation, sexual ethics, marriage, and family; to an imbalanced/erroneous view of history; to the dismantling of democratic institutions; to the erosion of liberty, tolerance, ideological diversity, and civility. The NEA is destroying public education, disrespects parental rights, and foments division. The NEA is plucking out all the threads that hold society together. 

At least Pringle admits two true things:

You have found a way to resist even as you hold on to joy. Creative and courageous, prepared and persistent, you stand in the power of the N-E-A, and the NEA stands in the power that is you [wild applause for themselves].

It is true that the NEA has power—too much power. And it is true that the NEA resists. It resists relinquishing power.

Pringle waxes melodramatic as she focuses—not on the needs of children and their families—but on the weepiness of poor pitiful NEA members:

For over a year I have traveled this nation to listen to the voices of, to learn from and to be inspired by our NEA members. … I’ve listened to educators describe their challenges as tears stream down their cheeks.

Today’s “educators” live and move and have their being in narcissism, narrative, and DEEP FEELINGS, so anecdotes about themselves weeping are even better than self-congratulations.

There was little to inspire truth-seekers in Pringle’s performance, but there was this:

Resistance is the secret of joy.

It’s good to know that Pringle looks favorably on resistance, because finally parents are resisting the efforts of public servants to force their socially constructed views on the nature and morality of cross-sex impersonation, homoeroticism, and human slaughter on all American children.

I hope Pringle realizes that one person’s “attack” on the NEA is another person’s act of resistance—which Pringle believes is the secret of joy.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/The-National-Education-Association-Convention.mp3

“For the mind is capable of dealing with only one kind of food;
it lives, grows and is nourished upon ideas only”
~Charlotte Mason~

In Part I, it was established that as Christians, our starting point for an educational system or approach must be rooted in our Christian worldview. Charlotte Mason’s philosophy of education, securely rooted in such, is built upon the foundation of  “children are born persons.’ This individual personhood of each *child means we approach the child first and foremost from a place of respect for who he is–who God has created him as his own person to be.

Then we approach the education of this child with the understanding that his mind is the instrument of his education and that his education does not produce his mind. In other words, rather than being a container to be filled, the child’s mind, the educational instrument, needs nourishment!

What is the nourishment needed for the mind then? According to Miss Mason, it is ideas, “For the mind is capable of dealing with only one kind of food; it lives, grows and is nourished upon ideas only” and THAT is where we, the educators can be of most use. We can create an environment where ideas are served up daily as the “brain food” necessary for a child’s education.

To best assess what is worthy to be the ideas of brain food in a child’s education, it is helpful to examine what is NOT worthy. A word clearly connected with Mason’s “gentle art of learning” is the word “Twaddle.” In essence, twaddle is ‘that which is dumbed down so children may understand it.’ It is centered on the idea of making it accessible to children, bringing it to their level. It might best be assessed by evaluating whether it is something WE enjoy! If it feels boring and dumb to us, it is likely twaddle. In Mason’s own words:

“Education is a life, that life is sustained on ideas; ideas are of spiritual origin, and God has made us so that we get them chiefly as we convey them to one another, whether by word of mouth, written page, Scripture word, musical symphony, but we must sustain a child’s inner life with ideas as they sustain his body with food.”

Contained within this quote are key categories or areas, if you will, which one can use to create an environment rich in ideas as the basis of employing Charlotte Mason’s gentle art of learning in your home.

These categories are the cultural, natural, and spiritual parts of the educational environment.

Cultural:

Charlotte Mason’s decree is to “let the children at the best of life.” This means enjoying “living experiences”-life on a farm, a day at the beach, the wonders of a library. It also means experiencing firsthand the best mankind has produced in art, music, and books. An excerpt from For the Children’s Sake gives a firsthand account of this:

When I was seven years old, I arrived in a war-torn Europe, straight from the rather sterile niceness of middle­ class mid-America. I was a very average, ordinary little tomboy girl! One afternoon I was taken into the Rijks­ museum, and I walked right up to Rembrandt’s painting, Night Watch. Did the guards smile as a little girl tarried there for a long, long time? Nobody lectured me as to what I was supposed to know or think about this painting. I was not disturbed. I was left alone with Rembrandt. A magical contact! I still remember the paintings I saw in Holland as if I had been there last week instead of thirty-five years ago, when I commented, “If somebody would give me enough paint, I would paint a picture like that!” Adults may have smiled. But I had found a human link with a kindred spirit.

The idea is to let the children encounter artwork without needlessly interfering. We do not need to explain, lecture, point out to them what they should be “getting” from the encounter. Sometimes we experience the art together by talking and noticing the details the child points to, allowing time to discuss, respond, ENJOY! In other words, we trust the instrument of their education – their mind. The mind that God so amazingly created and gifted to each of us.

The same principles can be applied in the area of music culture. With Youtube, Spotify, and Pandora at our fingertips, we can easily put on some Mozart or Brahm’s while doing just about anything. The goal is not to serve it up as a lesson, “Now we are going to learn about Mozart’s music.” Instead, we simply play and enjoy while folding laundry, eating our lunch, playing hide ‘n’ seek around the house on a dreary winter day. We might set an example by making mention of bits and pieces – “that little bit reminds me of the wren we saw flitting about the bird feeder the other day. Does it remind you of anything?” There is no expectation or “must” involved. We do not require an answer. We simply model enjoying the piece.

What’s even better is that as the child is “served up” culture in the form of the great master’s work, literature from across the centuries, and music by the famous and not so famous, these elements begin to work together to bring meaning and understanding from one type of culture to another. In this way, bit by bit, ideas from culture are explored.

“Little by little,” an acorn said,
As it slowly sank in its mossy bed,
“I am improving every day,
Hidden deep in the earth away.”

Little by little, each day it grew;
Little by little, it sipped the dew;
Downward it sent out a thread-like root;
Up in the air sprung a tiny shoot.

Day after day, and year after year,
Little by little the leaves appear;
And the slender branches spread far and wide,
Till the mighty oak is the forest’s pride.

In my next installment, we will finish up the category of culture with a discussion of literature, and then explore the Spiritual and Natural categories.

*Child for the purposes of this series means a person from birth to age 18.

Responding to public scrutiny and government policies cracking down on Chinese Communist Party propaganda and influence in American education, Beijing has been rebranding its infamous “Confucius Institutes” and the subversive programs associated with them. But the rot is still there, according to an explosive new report.

So controversial were these CCP-controlled institutions that then-U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo blasted them for “advancing Beijing’s global propaganda and malign influence campaign on U.S. campuses and K-12 classrooms.” In recent years, with authorities and the public becoming increasingly alarmed, the network appeared to be in retreat.

But according to the new report by the conservative-leaning National Association of Scholars (NAS), about two thirds of the more than 100 colleges and universities where a CCP-backed Confucius Institute shut down already have similar programs with different names. And the programs still have close ties to Beijing.

The NAS report, headlined “After Confucius Institutes: China’s Enduring Influence on American Higher Education,” found that the vast majority of the Confucius Institutes had either been shuttered or were in the process of being closed since the public became aware of what was going on. However, the danger remains acute — and most simply had the programs rebranded.

The institutes, which took root in educational institutions all across the nation, were funded and guided by the CCP, the most murderous organization in human history. According to authorities cited by The Epoch Times, the CCP was even picking the textbooks and sending its minions to America to promote its agenda and spy. The U.S. Senate found that the regime had spent over $150 million on the scheme since 2006.

CCP Politburo member Li Changchun said the institutes were “an important part of China’s overseas propaganda setup.” The vast network is associated with the CCP United Front Work Department, which handles overseas influence operations, according to the U.S.–China Economic and Security Review Commission.

The NAS study found an alarming lack of concern among American educational institutions about the threat. Most that closed their Confucius Institutes, for instance, said the main reason was to replace them with similar programs. Just five universities expressed concerns about the danger of the CCP regime’s influence in U.S. education.

“Five years ago, with Outsourced to China, NAS detailed how the Chinese government uses Confucius Institutes as central nodes in its overseas influence campaign,” said Rachelle Peterson, senior research fellow at NAS and co-author of the After Confucius Institutes report. “Now, we show that despite the demise of Confucius Institutes, colleges and universities have naively signed up for very similar programs under new names.”

Among other recommendations, the NAS called on the federal government to restrict taxpayer funding to colleges that host CCP operations. It also called for more transparency in disclosing foreign money flowing to American universities — especially CCP money. Finally, the conservative-leaning academic network called on policymakers to commission a study on the problem.

With taxpayer-funded “educational” institutions across America blatantly indoctrinating their victims into Marxist ideology without foreign prodding, it is hardly surprising to learn that they are working with the CCP to supercharge it. But this is a major national security risk and there are red flags everywhere. It’s time for policymakers and education officials to put their foot down.

This article was originally published by FreedomProject.com.

It might not be a surprise to many to hear that our public education system is failing. However, it may come as a surprise to hear that it is creating illiteracy. The depths of the problem came to light during the years of the pandemic. Now critics of poorly developed reading curriculums and parents of struggling children are asking why we are not doing a better job teaching students how to read.

Children that started school during the COVID-19 pandemic show disturbing trends in their reading abilities. It is estimated that 1 in 3 students in grades k-3 are not reading at grade level. Although a problem existed before the pandemic, it has worsened over the last few years of online learning. Schools throughout the country assess their students yearly using the Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills (DIBELS). This test was developed by Amplify and given to more than 400,000 students annually. The group then gathers the data to determine how many students are reading at level. Following the pandemic, only 47% of Kindergarteners, 48% of 1st graders, and 51% of 2nd graders are reading at grade level. Although the pandemic has undoubtedly played a role in the decline in literacy, the slow erosion of reading skills is not a new problem.

In the late 1970s, Professor Lucy Calkins entered academia at Columbia University’s Teachers College. She would develop a curriculum and teachers of the curriculum for over 40 years. Her reading curriculum is one of the best-selling in the nation, Units of Study. The problem is that researchers have found that it is ineffective for teaching children to read. Calkins has utilized a technique known as “whole word.” In the whole word method, students typically do not use sound or even focus on individual letters in a word. Instead, they use what is called “three cueing.” In this method, they use pictures and cues surrounding the unknown word to “cue” the student to what the word might be. They might try to identify the word by the content of the rest of the sentence. But the system is little more than guessing. The student never learns phonics or the sounding-out of terms.

Researchers have discovered that students need phonics and letter recognition to develop the foundations of reading and that cueing does not necessarily lead to students developing word recognition. Teachers, researchers, and others have criticized the curriculum in the last few years. Ed Reports, a private group assessing curriculum, gave Unit of Studies the lowest review possible and stated that it did not meet expectations.

Another curriculum used widely in the U.S. was developed by Irene Fountas and Gay Su Pinnell. The Fountas and Pinnell system does use some phonics but lacks exercises for the student to practice phonic skills. It also uses some of the whole word techniques. Phonics is only for the teacher to briefly instruct and does not even cover the entire curriculum. Ed Reports also gave the Fountas and Pinnell curriculum the lowest review and stated they did not meet expectations.

Researchers who have studied the way students learn to recognize letters, words, and sounds have stressed the need to instruct phonics. Calkins recently announced that she would be updating her curriculum this summer to include more phonics instruction. However, she had already introduced a text in 2018 that had some phonic in the curriculum. The curriculum still focuses on the whole word method, which has proven ineffective at teaching basic reading skills. Updating a useless methodology will not help our children learn reading skills. 

Before the pandemic, it was estimated that one-fourth of 4th graders were reading significantly below level. Now we have forced students out of the classroom and into virtual learning that was proven ineffective. As a result, public school has failed our children and our communities again. How can we continue to support a system that is obviously designed not to educate but indoctrinate?

During the summer, review your children’s curriculum. Did their school use one of the useless curriculums? Did their school force them to read books more focused on social indoctrination than skill development? If this sounds like your child’s school or curriculum, then perhaps it is time to remove your child from the indoctrination-centered public school system.

As state governments respond to public pressure and work to rein in LGBT extremism in schools, the White House issued an executive order seeking to impose more gender confusion and homosexual activism on school children across the nation and beyond. The effort puts parental rights squarely in the crosshairs.

This executive order represents all-out war being declared by Biden on the traditional family, biological reality and biblical sexual norms, according to critics and analysts. It comes as inflation surges, supply chains collapse, millions of illegal immigrants pour across the open Southern border, and social tensions reach alarming levels.

Perhaps the most dangerous element of the scheme is to declare any effort to stop a child from mutilating his or her body as harmful to the child. The idea is embedded throughout the document, and could result in devastating interventions in families by education officials and even child welfare services. Parents nationwide are already facing such tactics.

Among other school-related policies, the executive order calls on the U.S. Department of Education to establish a “Working Group on LGBTQI+ Students and Families.” The new outfit will be in charge of imposing a broad range of pro-LGBT policies on states, school districts, and educational institutions — including “more access to gender-affirming care.”

According to the White House, the policies promoted by this new homosexual and transgender working group are intended to “promote safe and inclusive learning environments in which all students thrive.” That is, of course, thinly veiled code language for promoting homosexuality and gender confusion at school while demonizing traditional values.

In reality, the students who are truly excluded and unsafe — in many cases even facing bullying from staff — are those who resist or even question the LGBT dogma. Countless children nationwide have reported vicious persecution from school officials and fellow students for refusing to bow before the golden LGBT statue.

Another key element of the executive order targets so-called “conversion therapy,” which is designed to help people — especially young people — struggling with unwanted sexual attraction or gender dysphoria. While Biden has no power to ban it with an edict, his order will encourage states to broadly infringe on free speech, religious liberty, parental rights, and the right of people to seek counseling they want.

Ultimately, one of the goals is to push back against the “more than 300 anti-LGBTQI+ laws” introduced across America that protect school children from indoctrination and protect girls from having to compete in sports against males. The scheme also seeks to curtail state efforts to limit children’s ability to obtain life-altering opposite-sex hormones and surgical mutilation under the guise of “health care.”

“The message of the president’s new order is unambiguous: absolutely zero restrictions on bombarding children with morally degenerate sexual and gender propaganda and then permanently mutilating their genitals will be tolerated in Joe Biden’s America,” wrote Darren Beattie at Revolver.News, calling for Republicans to criminalize the mutilation of children.

The consequences of allowing this war on children to continue butchering countless victims are beyond intolerable. And so, this lawless decree by Biden’s handlers must be exposed and resisted by every American and every political leader at every level of government.

Watch Alex Newman being interviewed by Dr. Duke Pesta here:

This article was originally published by FreedomProject.com.

“Education is an adventure! It’s about people, children, life, reality!” 
Susan Schaeffer Macauley, author of For the Children’s Sake.

As parents, we desire to give our children the best education possible. In today’s culture, it’s becoming more and more difficult to achieve any kind of education through the government schools with their anti-God agenda. Private schooling, while an option for some, is not an option for many. And while it is important to not “get on our high horse” about homeschooling being the only “Christian” option, we do want to celebrate that homeschooling is a very real, desirable, and viable option! Once a family decides to enter the homeschooling arena, however, the choices regarding the method of how to homeschool can be daunting!

I’d like to share a vision of what education can be for your child, in your home, and even in your micro-school. This “method” of education is based first and foremost on a Christian understanding of what it means to be human and on the Christian meaning of life. Second in importance, it is deeply practical and has been proven for over a century in a myriad of educational situations. This method, based on the Philosophy of Education of Charlotte Mason (1842-1923), has been nicknamed “the gentle art of learning,” but its approach is one that rigorously prepares students to first and foremost think and then to be able to articulate those thoughts with clarity. A skill sorely needed in our current culture.

What’s also attractive about the gentle art of learning is that there is no expensive curriculum to buy. Based on the idea of “living books,” nature study, art and music appreciation, and a Christian world-view, one can apply this approach with a library card and access to museums and/or the internet!

If you doubt the validity of this educational method because you simply have not heard of it, that’s actually not all that surprising. Charlotte Mason’s philosophy is built upon a strong Christian base which in and of itself is enough to make it an unpopular approach in secular education. As Christians, our starting point for an educational system or approach must be rooted in our Christian worldview. As persons, our God has established that our education starts from the moment we are first held, talked to, and cuddled. As human beings, we are constantly in a state of learning–from birth to death. With this understanding, it is easy to realize that all of life is an education! Clearly, whether we “homeschool” or not, we as parents are actually the curators of our children’s education.

So what does it mean to be educated? An educated person is not someone who has this or that degree after their name, rather “the truly educated person has only had many doors of interest opened. He knows that life will not be long enough to follow everything fully.” As a parent considering home education, there is relief in that truism. One does not have to check all the boxes and ensure that there are no gaps in the child’s education. Once one realizes your goal is to first of all develop a love of learning in the child and then to equip the child with the skills of being able to think, articulate and compute, confidence and freedom ensue.

While a Charlotte Mason education is built upon the bricks of not *“twaddle” but living books, narration, no homework, short lessons, free afternoons, few lectures, ideas, culture (art, literature, and music), and good habits, it’s foundation is centered in the idea of “children are born persons”.  This truth is a central truth to our interaction with each child.  A child is not a being for us to prune or mold. Rather he is an individual made in the likeness of God, entrusted by God to our care, who thinks, acts, and feels. His value is not in what he will become, but who he is right now. He is not an extension of us to do our bidding, but an individual who must grow to embrace for himself reality and the framework of truth. Our role? To come alongside this individual as he grows in the knowledge of truth. We have something to offer not because we are adults, but because we are also persons who have experienced life and its lessons in possibly the same ways this little person might.

As one approaches a child from the perspective of his individual personhood, one begins from a place of respect for this individual recognizing that one “cannot own him, but only love and serve him and be his friend.” At the heart of this idea is the rejection that each individual is merely a cog to be “educated” to grow up and fit into a mold society may have for him. It is the embracing of the idea of respect for the child’s mind which is not the product of his education, but rather the instrument of it.

“The most prosaic of us comes across evidence of mind in children, and of mind astonishingly alert. Let us consider, in the first two years of life they manage to get through more intellectual effort than any following two years can show.  . . . If we have not proved that a child is born a person with a mind as complete and beautiful as his little body, we can at least show that he always has all the mind he requires for these occasions; that is, that his mind is the instrument of his education and that his education does not produce his mind.”

In the end, as parents, our job then becomes not how to fill this mind, but rather how to nourish it so it can flourish and become all that God intends it to be.

In my next installment, we will look at Charlotte Mason’s answer as to how best to accomplish this momentous task–for our children’s sake!