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Education
"Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it"
(Proverbs 22:6)

"And all thy children shall be taught of the LORD; and great shall be the peace of thy children" (Isaiah 54:13)

"In the past 125 years, social engineers have sought to keep [Western] life under tight control.
Compulsory schooling is a deliberate effort to establish intellectual, economic, and political conformity
so that society can be managed efficiently by a technocratic elite"

"Parents have a prior tight to choose the kind of education that shall be given to their children"
[UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) Article 26]


Quotations
 and Miscellaneous Information

Compulsory Schooling   |   Dumbing Us Down   |   UNESCO   |   A New Education For a New Global Society

Rousseau to Summerhill to Barrowford   |   Humanism, Secularism   |   Values Clarification, Situation Ethics, Moral Relativism

Junk Science, Environmental, Ecological, Multicultural, Multifaith Studies, Holistic Education   |   Harry Potter and the New Education

Primary Schooling, Literacy, Dyslexia   |   Islam   |   Sex Education   |   The New School Discipline   |   History   |   Opus Dei   |   Universities and Higher Education

Homeschooling   |   Homeschooling ~ What About Socialisation?   |   Training Up Children - State or Parents?   |   Salt and Light 

Education: Articles   |   Education: Websites, Reading, Materials   |   Education: Some Scriptures   |   PC: Education and Academia

 

 

Compulsory Schooling


"Two institutions at present control our children's lives: television and schooling, in that order. Both of these reduce the real world of wisdom, fortitude, temperance, and justice to a never-ending, nonstop abstraction. In centuries past, the time of childhood and adolescence would have been occupied in real work, real charity, real adventures, and the realistic search for mentors who might teach what you really wanted to learn. A great deal of time was spent in community pursuits, practising affection, meeting and studying every level of the community, learning how to make a home, and dozens of other talks necessary to becoming a whole man or woman"
[John Taylor Gatto, Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling, p.25].


"Networks like schools are not communities in the same way that school training is not education. By preempting 50% of the total time of the young, by locking young people up with young people exactly their own age, by ringing bells to start and stop work, by asking people to think about the same thing at the same time in the same way, by grading people the way we grade vegetables - and in a dozen other vile and stupid ways - network schools steal the vitality of communities and replace it with an ugly piece of mechanism. Nobody survives these places with his humanity intact, not kids, not teachers, not administrators, and not parents"
[John Taylor Gatto, Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling, p.51].


"It is absurd and anti-life to be part of a system that compels you to sit in confinement with people of exactly the same age and social class. That system effectively cuts you off from the immense diversity of life and the synergy of variety; indeed, it cuts you off from your own past and future, sealing you in a continuous present much the same way television does. It is absurd and anti-life to move from cell to cell at the sound of a gong for every day of your natural youth in an institution that allows you no privacy and even follows you into the sanctuary of your home, demanding that you do its 'homework'. 'How will they learn to read?' you ask, and my answer is ... When children are given whole lives instead of age-graded ones in cellblocks they learn to read, write, and do arithmetic with ease, if those things make sense in the kind of life that unfolds around them"
[John Taylor Gatto, Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling, p.24].


"By preventing a free market in education, a handful of social engineers, backed by the industries that profit from compulsory schooling - teacher colleges, textbook publishers, materials suppliers, and others - has ensured that most of our children will not have an education, even though they may be thoroughly schooled"
[John Taylor Gatto, Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling, p.85].


"[T]he cult of anointed expertise ... has poisoned every aspect of our liberties. ... once ... every sane person knew how to build a shelter, grow food, and entertain one another. Now we have been rendered permanent children. It's the architects of forced schooling who are responsible for that"
[John Taylor Gatto, Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling, p.100].

 

Dumbing Us Down


"[S]chools are not failing. On the contrary, they are spectacularly successful in doing precisely what they are intended to do, and what they have been intended to do since their inception. ... the unlikeliest kids kept demonstrating to me at random moments so many of the hallmarks of human excellence - insight, wisdom, justice, resourcefulness, courage, originality ... that I began to wonder, reluctantly, whether it was possible that being in school itself was what was dumbing them down. Was it possible I had been hired not to enlarge children's power, but to diminish it? That seemed crazy on the face of it, but slowly I began to realize that the bells and the confinement, the crazy sequences, the age-segregation, the lack of privacy, the constant surveillance, and all the rest of the national curriculum of schooling were designed exactly as if someone had set out to prevent children from learning how to think and act, to coax them into addiction and dependent behavior"
[John Taylor Gatto, Dumbing Us Down - The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling, pp.xx, xxxiii-xxxiv].


"These are the things you pay me to teach":
(1) Confusion. 'Everything I teach is out of context. I teach the unrelating of everything' (p. 2)
(2) Class position. "That's the real lesson of any rigged competition like school. You come to know your place' (p. 3)
(3) Indifference. 'Indeed, the lesson of bells is that no work is worth finishing, so why care too deeply about anything? (p. 6)
(4) Emotional dependency. 'By stars and red checks, smiles and frowns, prizes, honors, and disgraces, I teach kids to surrender their will to the predestined chain of command' (p. 7)
(5) Intellectual dependency. 'Of the millions of things of value to study, I decide what few we have time for, or actually it is decided by my faceless employers.... Curiosity has no important place in my work, only conformity* (p. 8). Gatto says this is 'the most important lesson, that we must wait for other people, better trained than ourselves, to make the meanings of our lives' (p. 8)
(6) Provisional self-esteem. 'The lesson of report cards, grades and tests is that children should not trust themselves or their parents but should rely on the evaluation of certified officials. People need to be told what they are worth' (p. 11)
(7) One can't hide. Surveillance is an ancient imperative, espoused by certain influential thinkers (such as Plato, Augustine, Calvin, Bacon, and Hobbes). All these childless men ... discovered the same thing: children must be closely watched if you want to keep a society under tight central control' (pp. 11-12)"
[Ron Miller, quoting/summarising John Taylor Gatto, source].


"Here is the crux of Gatto's critique: in the past 125 years, social engineers have sought to keep American life under tight central control. Compulsory schooling is a deliberate effort to establish intellectual, economic, and political conformity so that society can be managed efficiently by a technocratic elite"
[Ron Miller, source].
 

"I see the plans to expand grammar schools in Kent have been strangled by lawyers, as I always thought they would be. But why are we still messing about with this? Thousands of parents want new grammar schools, all over the country. The only thing that prevents this is a brief, easily repealed clause in David Blunkett's 1998 School Standards Act. But there's no sign of that. The new So-Called Conservative majority is more interested in relaxing the laws against foxhunting, which is obviously so much more urgent than a good education for children whose parents aren't rich"
[Peter Hitchens, Mail on Sunday, 12 July 2015].
 
 

UN Educational, Social and Scientific Organization (UNESCO)


"[S]ince the world today is in the process of becoming one, and since a major arm of UNESCO must be to help in the speedy and satisfactory realization of this process ... UNESCO must pay special attention to international education - to education as a function of a world society"
[Julian Huxley, First Director-General of UNESCO, UNESCO: Its Purpose and Its Philosophy, p.29-30].


"The task before UNESCO ... is single. The task is to help the emergence of a single world culture with its own philosophy and background of ideas and with its own broad purpose. This is opportune, since this the first time in history that the scaffolding and the mechanisms for world unification have become available and also the first time that man has had the means ... of laying a world-wide foundation for the minimum physical welfare of the entire human species. And it is necessary, for at the moment, two opposing philosophies of life confront each other from the West and from the East. ...
You may categorize the two philosophies as two super-nationalisms, or as individualism versus collectivism; or as the American versus the Russian way of life, or as capitalism versus communism, or as Christianity versus Marxism.  Can these opposites be reconciled, this antithesis be resolved in a higher synthesis? I believe not only that this can happen, but that, through the inexorable dialectic of evolution, it must happen. ... In pursuing this aim, we must eschew dogma - whether it be theological dogma or Marxist dogma. ... East and West will not agree on a basis of the future if they merely hurl at each other the fixed ideas of the past. For that is what dogmas are - the crystallizations of some dominant system of thought of a particular epoch. A dogma may of course crystallize tried and valid experience; but if it be dogma, it does so in a way which is rigid, uncompromising and intolerant. ... If we are to achieve progress, we must learn to uncrystalize our dogmas" [Julian Huxley, First Director-General of UNESCO, UNESCO: Its Purpose and Its Philosophy, p.61].


"UNESCO’s 'lifelong learning', now being implemented through Goals 2000, takes education far beyond the boundaries of the classroom. Its goal is socialization and preparation for a global workforce. Everyone - in homes, schools, and workplace – must be mentally prepared to participate in the consensus process. In the name of 'unity' and 'community', people of all ages must help form new values, challenge contrary beliefs, report non-compliant friends and relatives, and oppose all other obstacles to compromise, 'common ground' and 'mental health'"
[source].


"In the education arena, the goal ... is to socialize students fit for the global community. The planned change is incremental and permanent, not temporary. It is part of UNESCO's program for lifelong learning"
[source].


"'Promoting tolerance' is key to the paradigm shift from biblical to earth-centered beliefs and values. The 1995 UNESCO Declaration on Tolerance, signed by member states, defines tolerance as 'respect, acceptance and appreciation' of the world's diverse cultures and lifestyles - an attitude that 'involves the rejection of dogmatism and absolutism'. It is 'not only a moral duty, it is also a political and legal requirement'. Since 'intolerance is a global threat', UNESCO demands an international 'response to this global challenge, including effective countermeasures'. ... Intolerance implies resistance to the new global values and solidarity, it is a threat to the implementation of the whole UN plan. Therefore intolerance must be quenched, while 'tolerance promotion and the shaping of attitudes should take place in schools and universities... at home and in the workplace. The solution ... is the consensus process, also called conflict resolution, Hegelian dialectics, and the Delphi Technique. To unify people who embrace opposing values, the public must be engaged in 'participatory' dialogues. Led by trained facilitators, these dialogues produce the collective thinking which prods participants beyond the old truths into the ambiguous realm of imagination and evolving truths. The ground rules demand that everyone participate and find 'common ground'. They forbid dissent and argument, no matter how unsound the 'scientific' evidence used to back the preplanned consensus. 'Adversarial processes' must be replaced with 'collaborative approaches to resolving conflicts' through education, information and communications' until people, bonded by a shared purpose' learn to comply. ... It's already happening ... Young and old are being trained to blend their values, adapt their beliefs, think as a group, and conform to the new standards. ... following the Pied Piper into a new world order whose architects may sound wise and compassionate, but are neither rational, factual, honest or tolerant"
[source].


"UNESCO has identified 8 theses it must dedicate itself to in their so-called Decade of Education:

  • Sustainable Urbanization;

  • Sustainable Consumption;

  • Peace and Human Security;

  • Rural Development;

  • Cultural Diversity;

  • Gender Equality;

  • Health Promotion;

  • Environment.

"As is typical in any bureaucracy, you may note a considerable amount of duplication in the above themes. For example, Peace and Human Security sounds a lot like the U.N. peacekeeping mission, and its Health Promotion and Gender Equality themes appear to duplicate the missions of other U.N. agencies, like the U.N. Information and Resources on Gender Equality, and the World Health Organization. But duplication of effort and overkill ... has a numbing effect on people, and lends credibility to the message when it is spread from multiple sources at the same time" [Ron Taylor, Agenda 21: Expose of the United Nation’s Sustainability Development Initiative, pp.39-40].

 

A New Education for a New One World Global Society


"A new world is emerging in which the social structures will be of a different shape, the social resources of a different scope and caliber, then anything that history records. It is a new deal - in fact a different game with different cards; and we who are now alive are privileged to witness its beginning, however blind most of us may be to its implications for ourselves and our posterity. And for a new age, a new school!"
[Ross L. Finney, sociologist, 1928].


"A really efficient totalitarian state would be one in which the all-powerful executive of political bosses and their army of managers control a population of slaves who do not have to be coerced because they love their servitude. To make them love it is the task assigned... to ministries of propaganda, newspaper editors and schoolteachers"
[Aldous Huxley, Brave New World, 1932, p. xvii].


"My program for educating youth is hard. Weakness must be hammered away. In my castles of the Teutonic Order a youth will grow up before which the world will tremble. I want a brutal, domineering, fearless, cruel youth. Youth must be all that. It must bear pain. There must be nothing weak and gentle about it. The free, splendid beast of prey must once again flash from its eyes...That is how I will eradicate thousands of years of human domestication...That is how I will create the New Order"
[Adolf Hitler, 1933].


"The major function of the school is the social orientation of the individual. It must seek to give him an understanding of the transition to a new social order"
[William Givens, NEA leader, 1934, quoted at source].


"The problem with entrusting the education of children to the state is ... that instead of parents 'indoctrinating' their children with their own ideological and philosophical beliefs, they will be indoctrinated with those of the state - which is exactly why Hitler banned homeschooling in Germany in 1938"
[source].


"Every child in America [also Britain and Europe] entering school at the age of five is mentally ill because he comes to school with certain allegiances towards ... his parents, toward belief in a supernatural being, ... it is up to you teachers to make all of these sick children well by creating the international child of the future"
[Dr. Pierce, Professor of education and psychiatry, Harvard University {date}].


"The purpose of education and the schools is to change the thoughts, feelings and actions of students"
[Benjamin Bloom, All Our Children Learning, 1981, p.180, quoted at source].


"Fundamental, Bible believing people do not have the right to indoctrinate their children in their religious beliefs because we, the state, are preparing them for ... when America will be part of a one-world global society and their children will not fit in"
[Peter Hoagland, Nebraska State Senator, 1983, quoted at source].


"Schools, I hear it argued, would make better sense and be better value as 9-5 operations or even 9-9 ones, working year-round. We're not a farming community any more, I hear, that we need to give kids time off to tend the crops. This New World Order Schooling would serve dinner, provide evening recreation, offer therapy, medical attention, and a whole range of other services which would convert the institution into a true synthetic family for children - better than the original one for many poor kids, it is said, and this will level the playing field for the sons and daughters of weak families. Yet it appears to me as a schoolteacher that schools are already a major cause of weak families and weak communities. They separate parents and children from vital interaction with each other and from true curiosity about each other's lives. Schools stifle family originality by appropriating the critical time needed for any sound idea of family to develop - then they blame the family for its failure to be a family"
[John Taylor Gatto, Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling, pp.66-67].


"Whatever an education is, it should make you a unique individual, not a conformist; it should furnish you with an original spirit with which to tackle the big challenges; it should allow you to find values that will be your road map through life; it should make you spiritually rich, a person who loves wherever he is, whoever he is with, whatever he is doing; it should teach you what is important, how to live and how to die.  What's gotten in the way of education in [Western nations] is a theory of social engineering that says there is ONE RIGHT WAY to proceed with growing up. That's an Egyptian idea symbolized by the pyramid with an eye on top that's on the other side of George Washington on our one-dollar bill. Everyone a stone defined by his position in the pyramid. This theory has been presented in many different ways but at bottom it signals the world view of minds obsessed with the control of other minds, obsessed by dominance and strategies of intervention to maintain that dominance"
[John Taylor Gatto, Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling, pp.67-68].


"I teach students that they are always watched, that each is under constant surveillance by me and my colleagues. There are no private spaces for children; there is no private time. Class change last exactly three hundred seconds to keep promiscuous fraternization at low levels. Students are encouraged to tattle on each other or even to tattle on their own parents. Of course, I encourage parents to file reports about their own child's waywardness too. A family trained to snitch on itself isn't likely to conceal any dangerous secrets. I assign a type of extended schooling called 'homework', so that the effect of surveillance, if not the surveillance itself, travels into private households, where students might otherwise use free time to learn something unauthorised from a father or mother, by exploration or by apprenticing to some wise person in the neighborhood. ... The meaning of constant surveillance and denial of privacy is that no one can be trusted, that privacy is not legitimate. ... Children must be closely watched if you want to keep a society under tight control"
[John Taylor Gatto, Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling, pp.10-11].


"Schools were designed ... to be instruments for the scientific management of a mass population. Schools are intended to produce, through the application of formulas, formulaic human beings whose behaviour can be predicted and controlled" [John Taylor Gatto, Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling, p.23].


"The conditioning aspect of a public [state] school system is the key reason Karl Marx first advocated such an institution. Do not be deceived: the primary reason for public [state] schools today is to indoctrinate your precious children into the values and attitudes of the coming New World system"
[source].


"Our situation today is remarkably similar to the one Paul faced two thousand years ago. Society erects altars to various gods including naturalism, materialism, and relativism, as well as 'spiritualities' of all kinds. The exclusivity of Christ is looked upon as a scandalous doctrine, and we who advocate the biblical worldview increasingly find that the culture is determined to silence us, all the while exalting the virtues of 'tolerance' and 'open-mindedness'. We can no longer assume others [i.e. public schools] share the Judeo-Christian perspective that has shaped Western society"
[R. C. Sproul, quoted in Bradley Heath, Millstones and Stumbling Blocks: Understanding Education in Post-Christian America].

 

Rousseau --> Summerhill --> Barrowford


"The ideas of Jean Jacques Rousseau or A.S. Neill of Summerhill School fame notwithstanding, [children] are not inherently capable of making wise or sensible decisions, nor - which Rousseau, Neill, and other 'progressives' (the latest being Rachel Tomlinson, headmistress of Barrowford Primary School in Lancashire) refuse[d] to grasp - do young childnre yet have the moral capacity for understanding the difference between right and wrong. Thus they are unable to know what is best for them or what they may or may not do" [Elizabeth McDonald, The Camel's Nose].
 

"I have just said to my 7 year old granddaughter: 'You have just impacted on my emotional wellbeing and emptied my resilience bucket.'  Reply from a blank face: 'What are you talking about granddad?'" [comment at: source].


"Two things strike me about the mumbojumbo being excreted from this school. Firstly, if the children understand or even follow any of the words these ... teachers use then they must be very bright indeed. Secondly, only someone on very strange drugs could make up, expound and implement the claptrap described [here]"   /   "Anyone remember Summerhill?"   /   "My friend, a Deputy Head walked down a corridor with an OFSTED inspector. In the first four classrooms they passed there was order and the teachers were doing their job. In the fifth classroom there was a lot of noise because the weak teacher there could not quieten the kids. Although, at first, the inspector looked disapproving of the first classrooms he cheered up at the last one and said, 'That's what I like to hear! There's something going on in this room.'  There was - chaos"   /   "Ofsted is running a deliberately anti-Christian and anti-traditional regime to encourage national humiliation. The lunatics are in charge of the asylum. Asylum is a good name for the UK"   /   "Donna, who are you to try to talk sense here in this venue? Reality is what we say it is. Constructivist teaching is a Good Thing. Because it demands nothing of the teachers or of the students. (Just make sure that you don't use a doctor who was thus taught)"   /   "All they are doing is helping to breed a generation of egotistical mammy's boys/girls/beings"
[comments at: source].


"Heaven help these kids when the come face to face with the real world. They won't know what hit them"
[comment at: source].

 

Humanism / Secularism


"Humanism remains de facto the established religion of our land, and the public schools are the main vehicle for the promotion of its worldview. As one great Humanist triumphantly declared: Education is thus a most powerful ally of Humanism, and every American public school is a school of Humanism. What can the theistic Sunday-school, meeting for an hour once a week, and teaching only a fraction of the children, do to stem the tide of a five-day program of humanistic teaching?"
[Charles Francis Potter, (Signatory, Humanist Manifesto I, 1930), Humanism: A New Religion, 1930, p.128].


"[W]e believe that the penalty that is now imposed on parents who do not send their children to public schools violates the spirit of the First Amendment, whatever lawyers and judges may decide about the letter. Public schools teach religion too, not a formal, theistic religion, but a set of values and beliefs that constitute a religion in all but name. The present arrangements abridge the religious freedom of parents who do not accept the religion taught by the public schools yet are forced to pay to have their children indoctrinated with it, and to pay still more to have their children escape indoctrination"
[Milton Friedman, 'What's Wrong With Our Schools?' in Free to Choose, 1978/9].


"Many humanist leaders are quite open about using the public schools to proselytize their faith. This might surprise some parents who think the schools are supposed to be free of religious indoctrination, but this quote makes it clear: I am convinced that the battle for humankind’s future must be waged and won in the public school classroom by teachers who correctly perceive their role as the proselytizers of a new faith: a religion of humanity that recognizes and respects the spark of what theologians call divinity in every human being. These teachers must embody the same selfless dedication as the most rabid fundamentalist preachers, for they will be ministers of another sort, utilizing a classroom instead of a pulpit to convey humanist values in whatever subject they teach, regardless of the educational level—preschool day care or large state university. The classroom must and will become an arena of conflict between the old and the new—the rotting corpse of Christianity, together with all its adjacent evils and misery, and the new faith of humanismit will undoubtedly be a long, arduous, painful struggle replete with much sorrow and many tears, but humanism will emerge triumphant. It must if the family of humankind is to survive'"
[J. Dunphy, A Religion for a New Age, The Humanist, Jan.–Feb. 1983, 23, 26 (emphases added), cited by Wendell R. Bird, Origin of the Species Revisited, vol. 2, p.257, quoted in source].


"[W]e do not understand humanistic education unless we see that it harnesses misplaced religious impulses. Why does non-directive drug and sex education continue unabated in spite of the evidence that it doesn't work to reduce drug use or teen pregnancy? Why don't educators listen when proponents like Rodgers, Maslow, Kohlberg, and Coulson acknowledge that they've changed their minds, that their ideas aren't good educational theory after all? Because humanistic education, in its exaltation of the autonomous self, is an open rejection of any deity. It is a form of rebellion against belief in a transcendent God to whom the self is subject"
[source].


"The protest that process education makes against traditional morality is fundamentally a religious protest"
[William Coulson, quoted at: source].


"Kicking up one's heels and declaring freedom from God is as much a religious act as is submitting to God. The recognition of a religious motive behind humanistic education helps us to understand why it has such a grip on modern education, for religion is the most powerful motive people possess. It explains why proponents cannot see, or acknowledge, the evidence that humanistic education is, quite simply, bad education"
[source].


"The reason [John Dewey]'s educational theory has such wide appeal is that it makes contact with a religious impulse and provides his followers an alternative to Christianity"
[source].

 

'Affective' Curriculum: Values Clarification, Situation Ethics, Moral Relativism

When every man does what is right in his own eyes...


"Death education is part of the Michigan Model, an 'affective' curriculum developed by humanist educators. The affective domain is that part of the school curriculum that deals with the children's values, feelings, self-esteem, and attitudes toward sex, drugs, and death. Its components include values clarification, multiculturalism, globalism, sensitivity training, situational ethics, transcendental meditation, New Age relaxation techniques, Eastern mysticism, group counseling, gender orientation counseling, sex education, drug education, and death education"
[source].


"As most teachers know, there are two ways to teach values, which lead to particular patterns of behaviour. The traditional method is 'values transmission', where the values of responsible adults (families or wider society) are transmitted from one generation to the next. The 'progressive' method is 'values clarification', where youngsters are given information (which may or may not be complete and unbiased) and told to make their own 'informed choices'/'informed decisions'. The key point about 'values clarification' is that there are no right or wrong values. Nor right or wrong decisions. All that matters is that the choice or decision is freely made by the individual concerned"
[source].


"QCA guidelines advocate 'choice' at Key Stage 2. The brain does not finish its development till a person reaches his or her twenties ... and the 'risk-taking' part develops before the 'inhibitory' area ... Children at 7 to 11 are not miniature adults, they are simply incapable of making a reasoned decision. Our duty as adults is to protect them, not to abandon them to make critical life choices when they are many years away from maturity"
[Comment at: source].


"In these curriculums a lot of time and energy are spent exchanging opinions and exploring feelings, but practically no time is spent providing moral guidance or forming character. The virtues are not explained or discussed, no models of good behaviour are provided, no reason is given why a boy or girl should want to be good in the first place. In short, students are given nothing to live by or look up to. They come away with the impression that even the most basic values are matters of dispute. Morality, they are likely to infer, is something you talk about in class but not something you need to do anything about"
[William Kilpatrick, Why Johnny Can't Tell Right From Wrong, p22].


"In one sense the decision-making curriculums have been a roaring success. They were set up to create a nonjudgmental attitude about values, and it worked. ... When teachers carefully preface each discussion with the caution that there are no right or wrong answers, that is the distinct impression students come away with. ... One boy, whose view is representative wrote: 'Moral values cannot be taught and people must learn to use what works for them. ... The essence of civilization is not moral codes but individualism'. ... Who says they don't listen? The irony is that instead of developing their own values, young people seem increasingly at the mercy of peer and media values"
[William Kilpatrick, Why Johnny Can't Tell Right From Wrong, p22].


"How do these programs manage to survive and prosper? Part of the answer is that parents don't know they exist or, if they do know, have only a vague notion of what they entail. Quite often this is a matter of deliberate policy. In one community, when a teacher asked what she should do if parents objected to the new Values Clarification program, she was told by a seminar leader, 'You call it "life skills" and you do it anyway'."
[William Kilpatrick, Why Johnny Can't Tell Right From Wrong, p22].


"Professor Sidney Simon, who created the Values Clarification method, boasted that as a young teacher at Temple University he 'always bootlegged the values stuff under other titles': 'I was assigned to teach Social Studies in the Elementary School, and I taught values clarification. I was assigned Current Trends in American Education. and I taught my trend'."
[William Kilpatrick, Why Johnny Can't Tell Right From Wrong, p23].


"While taxpayers foot the bill for the increasing costs of government education, parents are increasingly shut out of decisions crucial to the molding of their child's mind. Controversial programs designed for 'values clarification' are being performed in government schools that employ 'powerful behavior control techniques and peer pressure to make [a] developing child question his or her individual worth and values', and are designed to disrupt parental oversight in the upbringing of their children, according to Professor of Organizational Behavior, Brent Duncan"
[Understanding Sustainable Development - Agenda 21 - A Guide for Public Officials, Prepared by Freedom 21, Santa Cruz, (no date), p.12].


"[Carl] Rogers was the man most responsible for linking the encounter movement to humanistic psychology. He was the founder of nondirective psychological counseling, in which the therapist or teacher is merely a facilitator who helps the client or pupil get in touch with his own feelings so that he can direct his own decision-making in accordance with his own values. In teaching, this encourages moral subjectivism and pupil rejection of all outside authority"
[source].


"[T]he values clarification approach as a means employed by the school to enable the child to develop morally should be rejected because its moral position is relative. ... values clarification is inadequate because: (1) it fails to distinguish between matters of personal taste and objective moral value; (2) it can be used to justify any ethical position; (3) it has no adequate criteria by which to resolve value conflicts; and (4) it espouses a moral position that is dishonest"
[source].


"[T]he notion of any firm code of morality or ethics is destroyed by educating [children] in the notions that 'there is no ultimate right and wrong', and 'every choice needs to be evaluated on your current feelings, beliefs, and the situation itself'. ... this is absurd for young people just starting out in life with no solid foundation of experience or morality"
[source].


"Under the auspices of the United Nations, education will 'challenge us all to adopt new behaviors and practices', and will focus in holistic, rather than subject-based learning, and an emphasis on values rather than subject matter. UNESCO further notes that education must instill critical thinking among students, which sounds good on the surface, but is actually  a euphemism for 'values clarification'"
[Ron Taylor, Agenda 21: Expose of the United Nation’s Sustainability Development Initiative, pp.40-41].


"Under values clarification, students are taught there is no absolute right or wrong, which inevitably leads to the destruction of morality, the family unit, and our free society. For example, ... students are taught that petty theft of food items is acceptable to alleviate hunger, especially where a poor child steals a food items from a 'wealthy' grocer.  These value clarification lessons often take form in role playing, where a child may play the role of a greedy shopkeeper who physically abuses a child who has been caught stealing a candy bar. The shoplifter is generally portrayed as poor and disadvantaged, while the shopkeeper is wealthy and privilege, Of course, in this role playing scenario, the impressionable minds of 5-8 year old children sides with the thief. In practice, the values learned in this role playing scenario lead to a softening of societal pressures against aberrant behavior, and weaken the structure of a society based on lawful and moral behavior"
[Ron Taylor, Agenda 21: Expose of the United Nation’s Sustainability Development Initiative, p.44].


"Why would the ... government implement values clarification training? And, why would UNESCO and the Agenda 21 program want to redefine the belief systems of children around the world? In my opinion there is only one reason: By destroying the moral fabric of a society they can instill their values and beliefs in their place. ... the new model of education will teach students the values of collectivism and loyalty to the state over family and individual. All I can say is, thank God my kids were homeschooled"
[Ron Taylor, Agenda 21: Expose of the United Nation’s Sustainability Development Initiative, p.42].

 

Junk Science, 'Mother' Earth, Multicultural/Multifaith Studies, Holistic Ed


"[A] leading science journal, the New Scientist, 11 Nov 2006, has published a special article on Home-schooling: '[N]ot all home-school parents have a religious agenda. [Brian Alters of McGill University, Canada says] "There are probably some wonderful home-school parents, some of whom may be evolutionary biologists themselves. But I have a feeling after talking to a lot of home-schoolers that this is a minority ... It's disconcerting, to say the least" he says'.  Notice the contrast? Being a 'religious' home-school parent is set against being a 'wonderful' home-school parent"
[extract from email, received 10 Nov 2006].


"I'm all for a broader education as long as the 'toolbox' subjects of literacy and mathematics are covered thoroughly, because without an easy familiarity with them, the pupil is hamstrung trying to learn any other subject. What I'm against is the skewing of education for political ends and the unquestioned elevation of pseudo sciences to somehow be on a par with real hard science. ... Our children are being taught junk science in our schools. Their heads are being filled with conclusions without ever referencing the facts and figures used to reach those conclusions because, as in the case of the Polar bear and so many other environmental areas, the data simply does not support the conclusions. This isn't science education, it's political indoctrination"
[source].


"Only Warmists Could Pass This A-Level: While Michael Gove tries valiantly to remedy our dysfunctional exam system, he might take a look at some recent papers, such as that set last June for A-level General Studies students by our leading exam body, AQA. Candidates were asked to discuss 11 pages of 'source material' on the subject of climate change. Sources ranged from a report of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to The Guardian, all shamelessly promoting global-warming alarmism. One document from the Met Office solemnly predicted that 'even if global temperatures only rise by 2 degrees C, 30-40 per cent of species could face extinction'. A graph from the US Environmental Protection Agency showed temperatures having soared in the past 100 years by 1.4% - exactly twice the generally accepted figure. The only hint that anyone might question such beliefs was an article by Louise Gray from The Daily Telegraph, which quoted that tireless campaigner for the warmist cause, Bob Ward of the Grantham Institute, dismissing all sceptics as 'a remnant group of dinosaurs' who 'misunderstood the point of science'. If it were still a purpose of education to teach people to examine evidence and think rationally, any bright A-level candidate might have had a field day, showing how all this 'source material' was no more than vacuous, one-sided propaganda. But today one fears they would have been marked down so severely for not coming up with the desired answers that they would have been among the tiny handful of candidates given an unequivocal 'fail'."
[Christopher Booker, Daily Telegraph, 22 September 2012].


"So relentless is the [pro-global warming] brainwashing that it percolates throughout the curriculum, so that even exam papers in French, English or religious studies can ask students to explain why the world is dangerously warming up, or why we must build more wind turbines. In 2012, I described an A-level general studies paper set by our leading exam board, AQA, asking for comment on 11 pages of propagandist 'source materials', riddled with basic errors. A mother wrote to tell me how her intelligent son, after getting straight As on all his science papers, used his extensive knowledge of climate science to point out all their absurd distortions. He was given the lowest possible mark, a fail. When his mother paid to have his paper independently assessed, the new examiner conceded that it was 'articulate, well structured', and well-informed. But because it did not parrot the party line, it was still given a fail. I fear this corruption of everything that education and science should stand for has become a much more serious scandal than Mr Gove yet realises"
[Christopher Booker, Daily Telegraph, 12 April 2014].


"[A]n essential element of the new educational process in the United States [also Britain and Europe] is values clarification. ... in order to mold the child into a world citizen, his values must be divorced from those of the 'old order', that is, his parents. ... While secularism has held sway for a number of years in our education system, secularism was meant for one purpose: to do away with the old forms of spiritual values in order to make way for the new. It created a vacuum which will be filled with a new spirituality based on a pantheistic view of nature, and upon self as God"
[Al Dager, Education Reform for the New World Order, Media Spotlight Special Report].


"In the process of bringing children into their self-realisation as God, the World Core Curriculum promotes eastern meditation techniques"
[Al Dager, Education Reform for the New World Order, Media Spotlight Special Report].


"The earth is not dead matter. She is alive. Now begin to speak to the earth as you walk. You can speak out loud, or just talk to her in your mind. Send your love into her with your exhalation. Feel your heart touching upon the heart of the planet. Say to her whatever words come to you: Mother Earth, I love you. Mother Earth, I bless you. May you be healed. May all your creatures be happy. Peace to you, Mother Earth. On behalf of the human race, I ask forgiveness for having injured you. Forgive us, Mother Earth" [US Student Textbook, 'Prayer to the Earth', quoted at:
[source].


"The Gaian hypothesis, absent the spiritual connotations, has now been accepted into mainstream science and renamed the Gaia Theory. It can be found in most environmental science textbooks"
[source].


"We can see the [beginning] of the emphasis on ecology and spiritualism in the new education. ... All [the] members of the Design team for the Global Education Project are strong proponents and activists for globalism and New Age philosophy. ... [T]he true source of education restructuring has nothing to do with education in the academic sense, but education in the philosophical and esoteric sense"
[Al Dager, Education Reform for the New World Order, Media Spotlight Special Report].


"The basis for all education restructuring is 'holistic', that is, viewing life on the planet as interconnected, with no life form having any greater standing than any other life form. This, in turn, is based on the evolutionary view of life. ... It is cosmic humanism: the belief that all life forms are evolving to higher states of consciousness. mankind, though representing the highest mental consciousness on earth, is yet deficient in his attainment of perfection. That is to be overcome through the next stage of evolution which will see the emergence of a new species of human being - a true planetary citizen that is psychologically, spiritually and physically superior to present mankind. The hope for the quantum leap to perfection lies in the upcoming generation - the generation that will usher in the New Age on a global scale. That is why children are to ... develop their own values. ... Holistic education is not merely how a child studies but how the child is studied. It has little to do with academics and everything to do with creating a new species of human being. We learn this from [the New Ager] Alice Bailey ... in her book Education in the New Age"
[Al Dager, Education Reform for the New World Order, Media Spotlight Special Report].


"The time is coming when all children will be studied in the following directions: (1) Astrologically; (2) Psychologically, supplementing the best of modern psychology with a knowledge of the Seven Ray types, which colours Eastern psychology; (3) Medically; (4) Vocationally; (5) Spiritually. By this I mean that the apparent age of the soul [i.e. reincarnation] under consideration will be studied, and the place on the ladder of evolution will be approximately noted; mystical ... tendencies will be considered and their apparent lack noted. ... One of the major functions of those who train the infant minds of the race will be to determine, as early as possible in life, which of the seven determining energies are controlling in each case"
[Alice Bailey, Education in the New Age, {p.}].


"[T]he original copy of the Earth Charter has been placed in a specially constructed Ark of Hope. Placed within the Ark, along with the Earth Charter, were various items called 'Temenos Books' and 'Temenos Earth Masks'. Temenos is a concept adopted by Carl Jung to denote a magic circle, a sacred space where special rules and energies apply. Some of the Temenos Books were created within this magic circle by children, who filled them with visual affirmations for Mother Earth. Fashioned with the 'earth elements', the Temenos Earth Masks were also worn and created by children. The outside of the Ark is covered with images depicting native spirits of fire, earth, air and water. This Ark forms a major part of 'the Earth Charter outreach programme' and visits hundreds of schools and universities around the world each year"
[source].


"[Both the Conservative and Labour parties] quietly allowed the teaching of Christianity as the national religion to disappear (illegally) from hundreds of state schools. Religion is now taught instead as a sort of oddity which other people do, and which you can laugh at provided they are not Muslims, who must be treated with respect in case they get angry. Pupils are now ignorant of the faith that formed their nation, but are force-fed green propaganda, and dangerously bad advice about sex and drugs"
[Peter Hitches, Mail on Sunday, 27 April 2014].


For more on the subject of Environmentalism please see here and here

For more on the subject of Multiculturalism please see also here

 

Harry Potter and the New Education


"Good stories capture the heart, mind, and imagination and are an important way to transmit values"
[Louise Derman-Sparks, Anti-Bias Curriculum: Tools for Empowering Young Children {p.}, quoted in source].


"[T]he stories and books children read in the classroom are usually selected or approved by each state because their message teaches the new global values, and because they provide useful discussion topics for the manipulative consensus process. ... Books such as the Harry Potter series fit, because they reinforce the global and occult perspective"
[source].


"There are many ways to persuade the masses to reject uncompromising Christianity and embrace a changeable blend of all kinds of religions – including a cross-less and universalist perversion of Christianity. Schools do it through books such as the Harry Potter series, through multicultural and environmental education, and by integrating social issues and politically correct ideology into more mundane subjects such as math and science"
[source].


"It's not surprising that Harry has suddenly soared to the peaks of popularity in schools across the country. His story fits right into the international program for multicultural education. The envisioned global community calls for a common set of values which excludes traditional beliefs as intolerant and narrow - just as the Harry Potter books show. The Biblical God simply doesn't fit into his world of wizards, witches, and other gods"
[source].


"Dr. Craig E. Abrahamson, Assistant Professor of Social Work at James Madison University, ... scorns the old factual or didactic learning and calls for the feeling-based, image-rich unconscious learning so popular among today's educational change agents. Storytelling is vital to this process, and few forms of communication transmit stories into the minds more effectively than movies - especially when based on myths created by master storytellers such as J.K. Rowling. ... No wonder educators delight in the Harry Potter movie[s]. ... [They fit] the planned 'reality' that ... UNESCO educators have been seeking for half a century - one that would help establish new values, new beliefs, new lifestyles and new ways of thinking"
[source].


"When an exciting story has distracted the Potter fan from actual reality and bombarded him or her with contrary suggestions and feelings, the subconscious mind seeks a way to reconcile the conflict between the old and the new values. This quest for resolution involves the dialectic (consensus) process. Trained by schools to seek 'common ground' and conform beliefs to the group consensus, the student simply relieves the tension through moral compromise - a basic element of the 'new way of thinking'"
[source].


For more on Harry Potter please see
here.

 

Primary Schooling, Literacy, Dyslexia


"An article on Preschool Learners reveals, '[T]eachers know, and research confirms, that by the end of the year, kindergartners often can read some common sight words. By the end of first grade, children can be expected to possess a reading vocabulary of 300 to 500 words'. What parents are not told is that learning that many words by sight will guarantee that the child will become dyslexic. For a holistic reflex prevents children from automatically seeing the phonetic structure of a word. It is that blockage that causes the condition we call dyslexia"
[source].


"Schools with 'special needs' pupils attract extra funding, so it is hardly surprising one in four boys is now categorised as such. The system is a financial racket that Education Secretary Michael Gove should end. One categorisation of 'special needs' includes children who are unable to read, not because they are intellectually impaired but because they have been badly taught. It's another reason to overhaul teacher training, and pay teachers more to attract better recruits - using money saved from the special needs programme"
[Simon Heffer, Daily Mail, 3 August 2013].


"Despite having little formal education, [my] nannas devoured books, had beautiful handwriting and an immaculate grasp of grammar, which they were determined to pass on to me. [They and my mother] would take turns reading to me from the moment I could sit up in my cot. Mum would spend hours teaching me phonetics - A is for Apple, B is for Ball, C is for Cat, D is for Dwarf, etc. I could recite the alphabet when I was two years old. By the time I went to nursery school, before my fourth birthday, I had the reading age of a much older child. One of the greatest scandals of my lifetime was the abandonment of phonetic teaching by the educational establishment in favour of the trendy 'word recognition' method, which betrayed millions of schoolchildren, condemning them to leave school virtually illiterate. Thanks to my mother and grandmothers, when I started school I had a greater level of literacy than many 16-year-old comprehensive school-leavers in the late 20th and early 21st century. Glib politicians who boasted that their priorities were 'education, education, education', in that order, robbed generations of youngsters of the vital tools of self-expression and comprehension. I was taught how to write 'thank-you' letters before I started school. They didn't mind what I read, either. Books or comics, every printed word was equally valid. Any success I have enjoyed as a journalist, I owe to them"
[Richard Littlejohn, Daily Mail, 10 May 2014].


"[T]he modern student has been betrayed by being denied a valid educational basis, such as the ability to read. Unworkable methods, which enjoy continual support by the educational establishment, such as the look-say (whole language) reading method saddle the student with a mediocre vocabulary and a life long inability to expand their vocabulary, as compared to other students taught first in phonics ... No method for 'learning how to study' exists anywhere within the field of modern education. ... [D]ue to an avoidance of reading, writing and arithmetic, the student fails to develop a high ability in conceptual thinking, abstract conceptualizing, and analytical reasoning"
[source].

 

Islam


"Many teachers like me have to keep quiet about the real nature of Islam of course. To discuss the Islamic trans-Saharan slave trade or the destruction of all the non-Muslim tribes throughout the Saudi Arabian peninsula or the slaughter of 50 million Hindus or the slaughter that took place at Constantinople or the obvious contemporary barbarity of Islam is to invite opprobrium and dismissal. We are all forced to live the lie that 'Islam is a religion of peace'"
[source].

 

Sex Education


"The anti-marriage campaign has moved up a gear. The Sex Education Forum, paid for by you, is sponsoring a sinister new booklet aimed at 11-year-olds. From refusing to support marriage, the school 'sex educators' have now moved on to declaring that marriage is unnecessary. How long before they are saying it is outdated and actually wrong? When will people grasp that this is not 'sex education' but revolutionary propaganda against the family?"
[Peter Hitchens, Mail on Sunday, 02 March 2005].


"There are those who hate the West and want to destroy it and make it into their own image. ... To undermine the Judeao-Christian legacy the Frankfurt School called for the most negative destructive criticism possible of every sphere of life which would be designed to destabilize society and bring down what they saw as the 'oppressive' order. ... They recommended (among other things): the teaching of sex and homosexuality to children; [and] the breakdown of the family.  If anyone is wondering why the West is embarked upon sexual suicide, much of the answer can be found in the Frankfurt School"
[source].


"So Ed Balls will fine parents who refuse to allow their children to be subjected to sexual liberalism? Well, here are my two responses. 1) Thankfully he will not be in power for very much longer. 2) Let him fine me then. My children are my responsibility, not his, and I will decide what they should be taught, not him. He is an arrogant member of an arrogant government. The sooner they are voted out of office, the better"   /   "Once again this government uses financial coercions in order to impose its illiberal laws which allow the state to control areas of our lives which should remain the parents domain"   /   "Another example of how parental rights have been systematically stripped away. I'd pay the fine. I'd go to jail. No government tells me what sex education my child has when it's against my will and my values"
[Comments at: source].


"Boys in primary schools should be encouraged to try on frocks or join the cheerleading team, a homosexual campaign group has told teachers.  Stonewall, Britain's top homosexual lobby group, has sent a pack to primary school teachers with the backing of a Government agency.  The pack includes a DVD, where a teacher says pupils should be taught to resist the values of their parents and grandparents.  The DVD case features the logo of the Training and Development Agency - a body funded by the Department for Education.  The pack also recommends using pro-homosexual story books for reading in class.  One book, And Tango Makes Three, is about a penguin chick raised by two male penguins.  Another is called The Sissy Duckling and another features two princes who fall in love and live happily ever after as King and King.  The Stonewall teachers' pack suggests getting primary school children to act out the books as school plays"
[The Christian Institute, Newsletter, Spring 2011].


"Lisa Bullivant's daughter was 7 years old when she was exposed to sexually explicit lessons in class.  The school was using a programme called Living and Growing produced by Channel 4 [in the UK].  Mrs Bullivant was horrified at the graphic nature of the material. "I never imagined anyone would show anything like this to little children," she said.  One of the many upsetting remarks made by her daughter after seeing the DVDs was, "I keep thinking about you and Daddy having sex".  Even more disturbing, this little girl was worrying that she herself was expected to have sex.  Mrs Bullivant does not think that the DVD showing sexual intercourse makes it clear that the act is only adults.  Her daughter also asked her, "Is there any other way to have a baby? I don't want to have sex."  The trauma to Mrs Bullivant's daughter has affected both her family life and her marriage.  Every day Mrs Bullivant is living with the aftermath of "Living and Growing", waiting for her child to grow into the information she has been given so prematurely"
[SPUC, Bulletin, Spring 2011].


"When I was 13, I spent my time running round in scruffy shorts and T-shirts, pigtails flying, climbing trees without a care in the world. Boys, yuk! They were best ignored. The closest I got to anything grown-up was my trainer bra. How different it is today, when the modern world destroys girls' innocence at such a young age. Constantly sexualised by TV, pop music, teen magazines and the fashion industry, they are subjected to siren voices at every turn. You might expect, however, that one place they would be safe from such pressures would be in the schoolroom. No longer. As the Mail revealed this week, Department of Education official guidelines - endorsed by Nick Clegg - now state that penetrative and oral sex should be regarded as 'normal' behaviour for 13-year-olds. Many in the teaching profession are rightly appalled by the directives, not least because sex under the age of 16 is a criminal offence. What next? Taking drugs to be sanctioned by teachers? Shoplifting to be deemed 'normal' too? Perhaps the most worrying aspect of this new liberal initiative is that it robs parents of their moral authority. It is surely for a girl's mother and father, not for their teachers or the Government, to decide what is appropriate sexual advice for a girl whose body is barely developed. Research consistently shows that sexual experiences at such a young age can lead to lifelong psychological scars. Isn't that the lesson teachers should be spreading? And at a time when the full horrific legacy of child sex abuse in the Sixties and Seventies is only now coming to light, what sort of message do the new guidelines send out to paedophiles? Just imagine the outrage if a middle-aged pop star dared to describe 13-year-olds having sex as 'normal'. They'd be in the dock faster than you can say Jimmy Savile. So why haven't Mr Clegg and Education Secretary Nicky Morgan been interviewed by police for encouraging illegal underage sex?"
[Amanda Platell, Daily Mail, 08 November 2014].


"The mystery of sex education is that parents put up with it at all. It began about 50 years ago, on the pretext that it would reduce unmarried teen pregnancies and sexual diseases. Every time these problems got worse, the answer was more sex education, more explicit than before. Since then, unmarried pregnancies have become pretty much normal, and sexual diseases - and the 'use' of pornography - are an epidemic. It is only thanks to frantic free handouts of 'morning after' pills and abortion massacre that the number of teenage mothers has finally begun to level off after decades in which it zoomed upwards across the graph paper. In a normal, reasonable society, a failure as big as this would cause a change of mind. Not here. If you try to question sex education, you are screamed at by fanatics. This is because it isn't, and never has been, what it claims to be. Sex education is propaganda for the permissive society. It was invented by the communist George Lukacs, schools commissar during the insane Hungarian Soviet Republic in 1919, to debauch the morals of Christian schoolgirls. It works by breaking taboos and by portraying actions as normal that would once have been seen as wrong. Last week we learned that the Government has officially endorsed material which says sex at 13, 'for those of similar age and developmental ability', is normal. This is, no doubt, a point of view. In a free society, people are entitled to hold it, even if it is rather creepy. But do you want your child's school to endorse it? And how does it square with our incessant frenzied panic about child sex abuse? If we are so keen on the innocence of the young - and I very much think we should be - then surely this sort of radical propaganda is deeply dangerous. We do not give schools this huge power over the minds of the young for such a purpose. How odd it is that we teach 13-year-olds to go forth and multiply, but can't somehow teach them their times tables. Shouldn't it be the other way round?"
[Peter Hitchens, Mail on Sunday, 09 November 2014].


"What exactly, does one tell a five year old about sex?"   /   "That it's how mummy and daddy make babies. Just how parents managed for generations"   /   "Stay away from left wing teachers?"   /   "[T]his is classic Frankfurt School Cultural Marxism, Lukacs did this in Hungary"   /   "Innocence is mocked, that's the problem. Innocence should be a virtue"   /   "We all know there is an agenda here. Certain people in government want to make sure that the first time children learn anything about sex it won't just be about male+female, and it won't just be about 'making babies' - which is where most parents start. And that's why parents are not to be trusted with sex education"   /   "[Y]ou have to understand that in LibLabCon Britain, children don't belong to their parents. Children belong to the state, just like in the Soviet Union and other places east of the Vistula. The parents belong to the state too, so it's their duty to work and be tax-slaves to pay for all those vanity projects our rulers fund from that tax, and to have no time to give to their children, so that those children can be indoctrinated by the state into being the compliant little tax-slaves of the future"
[comments at: source].


"These sick people even tout the excuse that more sex education would have helped empower the Rotherham sex abuse victims"   /   "Isn't there a contradiction here? Social workers and police in Rotherham and elsewhere said they failed to act against men sexually exploiting under age girls because *the girls were making a lifestyle choice*, which implies they believed the girls were fully aware of what happens when sex takes place. So which is it? Were the girls not educated about sex and therefore in need of ever more sex education in school, or were they well aware in which case sex education would have been redundant?"
[comments at: source].


"But the sex education won't be what most normal parents would understand as sex education, it will focus on 'normalising' minority sexual practices and aim to confuse juveniles on their own sexuality (all in the name of fairness) so adding another tool to the liberal progressive box of tricks to undermine and marginalise the desire for normal stable dual sex relationships. Indoctrinate them young and they become putty in the hands of the Fabians - but for the children's own good of course, let's not forget to accompany this social engineering exercise with the stock claim the elite use to excuse the evil they perpetrate"
[comments at: source].


"'Ministers are saying that parents are crying out for better sex education with concerns that children are finding out about sex through pornography and other forms of media'. I could understand parents 'crying out' for better Algebra or Chemistry education if the present curriculum was inferior, but sex education? Is sex so complicated that parents can't teach their children the appropriate information without help from a school teacher? People's infantile reliance on the government is more than a little disturbing"   /   "Yes, but 'parents are crying out for *better* sex education', that's the point. I suspect that if parents are 'crying out for ' anything at all it is an end to the politically correct way of teaching that passes for sex education in schools at the moment"   /   "Schools have no business teaching anything about sex, other than basic human biology. Parents are the ones who should be teaching sexual morality; ... it shouldn't be political ... Parents need to do their job, not abdicate their parental responsibility to strangers"   /   "Increasingly parents are expecting schools to do everything that was once the responsibility of parents, and they are being encouraged in this by governments"
[comments at: source].


"We all know where this is going don't we? First they will bring this in. After 5 years, they will then start 'debating' how our children are soooo much more sexually aware, that the age of consent must come down 'as the right thing to do'. As time goes on it ill be lowered incrementally until it suits our perverted leadership's desires. As well as 'other interested groups' whose culture WE must integrate with. Of course it will never be a problem for our ruling elite ... until it happens to them"
[comments at: source].

 

The New School Discipline


"
The Bad Science of Drugging Boys: A shocking £31million is spent each year on prescriptions for powerful mind-altering drugs given to children with the fictional complaint called ADHD. This should stop immediately, as should the large payments of Disability Living Allowance to many of the families involved.  There is no objective diagnosis for ‘ADHD’, a complaint invented by psychiatrists and drug companies. Its alleged ‘symptoms’ are felt not by supposed patients but by exasperated adults trying to cope with boys (it’s mainly boys) who get too little exercise, sleep and authority, watch too much TV, play too many computer games, eat and drink junk food and are then forced to endure school lessons of crushing boredom conducted by women who don’t understand small boys.  I continue to be amazed all the ‘Bad Science’ gurus have not turned their searchlights on this fantasy"
[source].


"Why 650,000 children are using mind-altering drugs: A powerful stimulant drug, methylphenidate hydrochloride, is being widely taken by British schoolchildren. At the last count, more than 650,000 young people, some very young indeed, were believed to be regular users. This emerged last week from a Parliamentary question. The use of this potent pill has increased four-fold since it first became common in 1999. And its users are taking stronger and stronger doses, as they grow tolerant. The drug has a long list of adverse effects including chest pain, hair loss, palpitations, stunted growth, insomnia, rapid heart rate, skin rashes, dizziness and anxiety. It has been linked to suicide. If those involved were teenagers in nightclubs, and they were buying it from the usual evil dealers, I expect there would be a big media fuss, and rightly so, especially about the three-year-old users. But there isn't, because the other name for methylphenidate hydrochloride is Ritalin, and legions of parents, teachers, doctors and social workers have somehow been persuaded that this powerful mind-altering substance is actually good for children. You and I, meanwhile, are paying for it on the NHS. By the time our sluggish nation realises that this is a horrifying national scandal, the damage will have been done"
[source].


"In the old days, unscrupulous students used to take dangerous, illegal amphetamines to help get them through tough exam revision. Now they use... Ritalin (methylphenidate hydrochloride), the legally prescribed and very potent pill which is increasingly given to children, some of them very young. Would doctors or parents give amphetamines to small boys and girls? Of course not. Why then do they give them a drug that has such similar effects?"
[Peter Hitchens, Mail on Sunday, 11 November 2012].


"Wait long enough and the rest of the world will catch up with everything in this column. For years I've been pointing out that there is no objective, testable evidence at all for the existence of the fake ailment 'ADHD'. Now here comes Dr Richard Saul, one of the US's leading neurologists (that's a real qualification based on hard science), with a new book called ADHD Does Not Exist. Of course it doesn't, but it soothes a lot of bad consciences, triggers a lot of welfare payments and makes a lot of money for the pill manufacturers. So you get into trouble for saying so"
[Peter Hitchens, Mail on Sunday, 12 January 2013].


Barrowford Primary School, Lancashire:


"The first time someone says NO to these coddled kids, will they get put in jail for affecting the kids 'emotional wellbeing'?"   /   "The policies of this school are child abuse"   /   "They are failing to teach those kids about life outside the school. Employers won't shilly-shally about with nonsensical time-wasting to enhance the person's ego when they make a mistake or break company regulations and nor should they be expected to. Thus, these kids as adults will be ill-prepared if being disciplined at work"   /   "'You know I think you are wonderful but your mistaken behaviour shows me that at this moment in time it would be best for you to have some time down the Job Centre. Here is your P45 and don't forget to take your resilience bucket with you'"
[comments at: source].


"I have worked with many children with behavioural problems. The more you appease them the more they behave badly and then other good children feel left out"   /   "Children need to know right from wrong. What we don't need is for the state to be allowed to condone children's bad behaviour so that they run riot in public and grow up thinking anything goes. ... she's 'emptied my resilience bucket' in spades"   /   After one of the kids goes on a rampage with a machine gun will the survivors sit around holding hands and sing kumbaya??"   /   Wonder how this rabid left-winger would have handled the Jamie Bulger killers????"   /   "Children need discipline in their lives. They need to be taught good behaviour, and be punished if they misbehave. They need to be taught to respect other people and they need to be taught reading, writing and arithmetic"   /   " This head[mistress] needs to live in the real world. [She] should get a job in an inner-city school and then try out [her] theories on the children there"   /   "People like this teacher are the reason why we all have to put up with feral children running around screaming all the time"
[comments at: source].


"As an ex-teacher all I can say is UTTER TWADDLE! I once taught at a difficult school in Wythenshawe and initially it was a delight because the head was a tough no nonsense disciplinarian. It was one of the first schools in Manchester to 'suffer' an Ofsted inspection and got a good report. Unfortunately this wonderful female head retired and was followed by another woman who espoused a different philosophy altogether. One of her favourite mantras, amongst many, was 'if the children misbehave it's the teacher's fault for not stimulating them enough!'  Shortly after her arrival I resigned. Nine months later she went on long term sickness due to 'stress'. At the next inspection the school was placed in 'special measures'. What this fool of a head hadn't realised was that without discipline you are stuffed. Trendy left wing rubbish had effectively killed a good school"
[comments at: source].

 

History


"Unfortunately, many educators have little sense of history. In my own experience the two courses most avoided by education majors, whether graduate or undergraduate, are history of education and philosophy of education. Students will do anything to wriggle out of these 'irrelevant' courses, and faculty advisors often aid and abet them in these attempts. Once these students become teachers, they are in a poor position to evaluate new developments in education, or to distinguish fads from genuine educational advances. As a result, education keeps circulating its errors. Failed ideas and theories keep popping up under new names, and no one seems to notice"
[William Kilpatrick, Why Johnny Can't Tell Right From Wrong, p23].


"As Education Secretary, Michael Gove called on schools to stop the trashing of our past. Disastrously, he lost his battle to require the teaching of the landmark personalities and events of British history as part of the national curriculum. Now, we can see that GCSE history, too, is being subverted to provide a vehicle for a politically correct view on history in general and on immigration, in particular"
[source].

 

Opus Dei


"From Mothers' Watch, Volume 3, no 3: 'We became concerned with Opus Dei when we learned their schools had sex ed and that Opus Dei people do not oppose classroom sex education. Many parents have also related their bad experiences with Opus Dei to us. The evidence is mounting. Opus Dei has long been considered more than 'controversial' in Europe. There are many books and articles on Opus Dei that you might benefit from reading:

  • PARENTS GUIDE TO OPUS DEI, Sicut Dixit Press, 305 Madison Ave., NYC, NY 10165

  • BEYOND THE THRESHOLD, a shocking new book by Maria del Carmen Tapia, a former member and personal secretary to Msgr. Escriva [the Roman Catholic founder of Opus Dei], Continuum Publishing Group, 370 Lexington Ave., NYC, NY 10017

  • AGAINST THE GRAIN, magazine by Suzanne Rini will be covering Opus Dei in depth, 3854 Nantasket St., Pittsburgh, PA 15207

"The 'supernumeries' [i.e. married members of Opus Dei] ... are under solemn oath to 'always consult their superiors in regard to professional, social and other questions, even those which do not constitute a matter of a direct vow of obedience' (Article 58). Given that the R.C. church has never renounced its claim to temporal authority, the presence of Opus Dei as a clandestine political, economic and educational power must be taken seriously" [Eric Phelps, email on file, 12 January 2006].

 

Universities


"Under Labour, teenagers were pressurised to go to university regardless of their skills and interests, to meet a grandiose target of putting half of all school-leavers into higher education. Sadly, for many of these youngsters, Tony Blair's hubristic policy has proved a hugely expensive mistake. It left them with huge debts, degrees which were often of limited appeal to employers and, worst of all, no job. So today we applaud Matthew Hancock, the new skills minister, for his common-sense acknowledgment that 'university is not for everyone'. The government must now give its full support to his ambitious plan to introduce apprenticeships which allow young people to go straight from A-levels into professions such as accountancy, advanced engineering and insurance. If Britain is to prosper, it needs to urgently rebuild the tried and tested system of workplace learning which, until Labour wrecked it, had served this country so well for decades"
[Daily Mail Comment, 29 December 2012].


"According to a report by the National Audit Office, the Government is owed a staggering £5.3 billion by graduates who took state loans to go to university, but now can't be traced. This is scandalous. The state should never have gone into the loans business. Instead, the old system should have continued awarding grants to clever, but impecunious students. Much of this missing money funded mediocre students on risibly useless courses. Meanwhile, many clever students have been put off higher education by fear of debt"
[Simon Heffer, Daily Mail, 30 November 2013].


"How can students be expected to pay for their time at university, an increasingly impossible burden? Here's a wise suggestion from a reader, Mrs Sylvia Langley. Offer them the chance to look after the elderly in care homes (or their own homes). In return for doing this, their fees could be reduced or even cancelled altogether. In my view better still, idealistic young people could regain contact with the old, who are rapidly becoming a separate and despised minority, the Untouchables of our time and place"
[Peter Hitchens, Mail on Sunday, 12 July 2015].

 

The bad science of drugging boys
 

A shocking £31million is spent each year on prescriptions for powerful mind-altering drugs given to children with the fictional complaint called ADHD. This should stop immediately, as should the large payments of Disability Living Allowance to many of the families involved.

There is no objective diagnosis for ‘ADHD’, a complaint invented by psychiatrists and drug companies. Its alleged ‘symptoms’ are felt not by supposed patients but by exasperated adults trying to cope with boys (it’s mainly boys) who get too little exercise, sleep and authority, watch too much TV, play too many computer games, eat and drink junk food and are then forced to endure school lessons of crushing boredom conducted by women who don’t understand small boys.
 

I continue to be amazed all the ‘Bad Science’ gurus have not turned their searchlights on this fantasy.



Read more: http://www.mailonsunday.co.uk/debate/article-1278700/PETER-HITCHENS-He-agrees-Nick-Clegg--trouble-Dave-Cameron-disagrees-himself.html#ixzz0o55yohkz
 

The bad science of drugging boys
 

A shocking £31million is spent each year on prescriptions for powerful mind-altering drugs given to children with the fictional complaint called ADHD. This should stop immediately, as should the large payments of Disability Living Allowance to many of the families involved.

There is no objective diagnosis for ‘ADHD’, a complaint invented by psychiatrists and drug companies. Its alleged ‘symptoms’ are felt not by supposed patients but by exasperated adults trying to cope with boys (it’s mainly boys) who get too little exercise, sleep and authority, watch too much TV, play too many computer games, eat and drink junk food and are then forced to endure school lessons of crushing boredom conducted by women who don’t understand small boys.
 

I continue to be amazed all the ‘Bad Science’ gurus have not turned their searchlights on this fantasy.



Read more: http://www.mailonsunday.co.uk/debate/article-1278700/PETER-HITCHENS-He-agrees-Nick-Clegg--trouble-Dave-Cameron-disagrees-himself.html#ixzz0o55yohkz
 

The bad science of drugging boys
 

A shocking £31million is spent each year on prescriptions for powerful mind-altering drugs given to children with the fictional complaint called ADHD. This should stop immediately, as should the large payments of Disability Living Allowance to many of the families involved.

There is no objective diagnosis for ‘ADHD’, a complaint invented by psychiatrists and drug companies. Its alleged ‘symptoms’ are felt not by supposed patients but by exasperated adults trying to cope with boys (it’s mainly boys) who get too little exercise, sleep and authority, watch too much TV, play too many computer games, eat and drink junk food and are then forced to endure school lessons of crushing boredom conducted by women who don’t understand small boys.
 

I continue to be amazed all the ‘Bad Science’ gurus have not turned their searchlights on this fantasy.



Read more: http://www.mailonsunday.co.uk/debate/article-1278700/PETER-HITCHENS-He-agrees-Nick-Clegg--trouble-Dave-Cameron-disagrees-himself.html#ixzz0o55yohkz
 

The bad science of drugging boys
 

A shocking £31million is spent each year on prescriptions for powerful mind-altering drugs given to children with the fictional complaint called ADHD. This should stop immediately, as should the large payments of Disability Living Allowance to many of the families involved.

There is no objective diagnosis for ‘ADHD’, a complaint invented by psychiatrists and drug companies. Its alleged ‘symptoms’ are felt not by supposed patients but by exasperated adults trying to cope with boys (it’s mainly boys) who get too little exercise, sleep and authority, watch too much TV, play too many computer games, eat and drink junk food and are then forced to endure school lessons of crushing boredom conducted by women who don’t understand small boys.
 

I continue to be amazed all the ‘Bad Science’ gurus have not turned their searchlights on this fantasy.



Read more: http://www.mailonsunday.co.uk/debate/article-1278700/PETER-HITCHENS-He-agrees-Nick-Clegg--trouble-Dave-Cameron-disagrees-himself.html#ixzz0o55yohkz
 

The bad science of drugging boys
 

A shocking £31million is spent each year on prescriptions for powerful mind-altering drugs given to children with the fictional complaint called ADHD. This should stop immediately, as should the large payments of Disability Living Allowance to many of the families involved.

There is no objective diagnosis for ‘ADHD’, a complaint invented by psychiatrists and drug companies. Its alleged ‘symptoms’ are felt not by supposed patients but by exasperated adults trying to cope with boys (it’s mainly boys) who get too little exercise, sleep and authority, watch too much TV, play too many computer games, eat and drink junk food and are then forced to endure school lessons of crushing boredom conducted by women who don’t understand small boys.
 

I continue to be amazed all the ‘Bad Science’ gurus have not turned their searchlights on this fantasy.



Read more: http://www.mailonsunday.co.uk/debate/article-1278700/PETER-HITCHENS-He-agrees-Nick-Clegg--trouble-Dave-Cameron-disagrees-himself.html#ixzz0o55yohkz
 

Homeschooling


The following comments are from readers of the article:
Local Authorities Demand Snooping Powers to Crack Down on Unregistered Faith Home Schoolers


"'It's not fair' exclaimed the marxist do-gooder, 'We have a god given monopoly on brainwashing'"


"There hasn't been religion taught in public [state] schools in over 50 years. Maybe that's the problem... All kids are taught nowadays is to pray to the false gods of government"   /   "The government hates competition. Stamp put freedom wherever you can, Councilmen and Women, stamp it out!"   /   "Meanwhile, the imams at mosques openly preach jihad without the government batting an eyelid"   /   "Fascism, plain and simple"


"The state wants to bombard your kid with nonstop LGBT/diversity propaganda, and unwashed brains pose a threat to the agenda. They're paranoid. If they don't intervene now, your kid might grow up to be a cisgendered UKIP supporter. That's unacceptable in the new progressive Britain - tantamount to a hate crime. Your kid needs to learn to be a second class citizen in his own institutions, he needs to learn how to be submissive while foreigners bully him, and he can't do that from home"   /   "So true - take a leaf from the South Africans 'education'. The white children are now so convinced that they are 'privileged' that they spout it forth without a second thought. It's horrific, especially considering that everything there is heavily weighted in favour of black empowerment only. Of course that is further justified by the 'whites are privileged' brainwashing. This is probably already happening here [UK] but parents should be aware of it as a cornerstone tactic towards creating submission and self sacrifice"


"The evil doers want to possess your children. Mind, body and soul"   /   To be taught "the religion of atheism ... Despite denying God, the state invariably acts as a God which must be worshiped. Human life becomes nothing more than the soil in the ground to be trodden under foot if it benefits the state"   /   "Yes, the government did a great job of 'keeping an eye' on the children in Rotherham and the other cities now, didn't they!"


"We are moving from Sweden to England so my son can be home schooled. With very poor schooling in Sweden completely swamped with immigrants my English special needs son is in constant fear of death. I sincerely hope England doesn't go the way of Sweden and ban home schooling altogether as it fears that children might not receive their daily dose of LGBT SJW multicultural liberal propaganda"   /   "Keep your head up ... Ending up in a corner, back against the wall can be the trigger for unleashing massive creativity"   /   "I know how bad Swedish schools are. Most English state schools are terrible, I'm afraid. Good luck with home schooling. Lots of excellent free resources online"


"All good people want is to be left alone by government to live their lives as they see fit. This is their God given right should they be religious or not. The satanic influenced tenth plank to the communist manifesto insists that government has a right to forcibly take your children out of your home 5 days a week and to be re-educated away from a belief in God and the family as the backbone of any worthwhile society and be brainwashed to believe that unquestionable service to the almighty state and to those that control it as the only [acceptable] goals in life. The conscience that God has given us tells us otherwise. People the world over should shield their children from these evil influences by any means necessary or risk losing them. May God help us"


"One of the main arguments of those who are hostile to homeschooling, as the article says, is socialization. When socialization is done as a private matter it is a good matter, but when it is done under the insistence of the state at any level of government it means 'socialist-ization'. They say that peers socialization at government schools is a good influence on children yet [the] most dangerous place for youth is not on the city streets, it is in the schools. Socialization at home with loving parents remains the best influences on children for them to grow up to be good members of society"   /   "Most Home Schoolers do want their children to become part of wider society when they grow up - they just don't want them brainwashed and indoctrinated by Mammonite Multiculturalism in the formative years (0-7), or exposed to peer pressure from Mammonite zombies and their 'smart' (hah hah) phones between 7 and 21"


"Dear Mrs Wrongthink, The 'local council' (which is English for Stasi) will be coming round to make sure that your children are playing with Mohammed, Mohammed and Mohammed in their spare time, and that they are completely familiar with Islam, understand about banned words, triggering and are not being forced to conform to oppressive heterosexual gender concepts. Especially if they conform naturally of their own free will, which is a clear indication of parental negligence. Mr and Mrs Hussein will be your new role models - Mr Hussein can take an extra wife, so better that you move in with them. Their cousins (it's a very close family) are due to come over to the UK just as soon as you are out of your house - Mr Hussein has all the modern things because he doesn't work, so you can leave your house as is. You won't even need to pack a bag - he has spare cloths which will fit you. Your husband is going to prison. Yours Sincerely, Ms K Marx (My pronouns are 'useful' and 'idiot')"


"Headline should read: 'Common Purpose leftist filth are worried that white Christian children being home schooled will not be indoctrinated with the PCMC 'izslime is the answer' mantra and will be able to think independently"   /   "What could possibly be illegal about a [Christian] faith based school? Teaching the subjects necessary to eventually enter College along with learning things the Government abandoned, Faith, can't even begin to be a bad thing."


Quote from the article:
"Around 900 children are currently registered as EHE [elective home education] in Birmingham, a city of 1.1 million people. 'Those numbers have been growing in the last couple of years. We are very interested in finding out the deeper reasons why', said Colin Diamond, executive director for education in Birmingham"


"OK let's see if we can find out what might be going wrong...  (a) 2,000 primary pupils arrested for naughtiness - Telegraph;  (b) 30,000 pupils branded as bigots as teachers log racist and homophobic jibes in playground squabbles - Daily Mail;  (c) 24,000 teachers in state schools are incompetent, admits school watchdog - Daily Mail;  (d) Brightest pupils failed by state comprehensives (Ofsted) - Telegraph;  (e) Britain tumbles 10 places in the world's most important school league table - Daily Mail;  (f) Classrooms have become war zones, battered and threatened, teachers say - Times Online;  (g) Five is too young to get sex education - Telegraph;  (h) Government's neo-Marxist education policy punishes excellence - Telegraph;  (i) Literacy tests for trainee teachers show that those who can't spell, teach - Times Online;  (j) One in five children leave primary school unable to read, write and add up properly - Daily Mail;  (k) School bans children from putting their hands up - Telegraph;  (l) School bans sugar in tea - Telegraph;  (m) Successful schools will be forced to take pupils expelled for violent and disruptive behaviour - Daily Mail;  (n) White working class boys may become 'education underclass' - Daily Express;  (o) Children who say homosexuality is 'wrong' could be viewed as extremist threat - Telegraph.  Should I go on?"


"For half the millions you're going to spend on consultants to come up with some PC bs answer, I will tell you in less than 5 minutes"   /   "If public [state] schools weren't failing our kids so miserably, home schooling wouldn't be necessary... But the fact is parents actually want their kids to have a decent education without all the propaganda and state mandated dogma they pound into their heads"   /   "'elective home education' - 8 syllables. What is with these pompous bureaucrats that they can't write in plain, simple, descriptive English?" HOME SCHOOLING - 3 syllables"


"If the local education authority could be depended upon to (1) Prevent bullying;  (2) Avoid teaching erroneous dogma that homosexual lifestyles are equally valid to heterosexual lifestyles;  (3) Teach the truth about both the good and the bad about the EU, and the various political parties;  (4) Teach history properly instead of asking children to imagine what it would have been like to experience something that happened in the past;  (5) Teach mathematics such that children were numerate on leaving school;  (6) Teach English such that children were literate on leaving school, and understood how to lay out a letter... then perhaps the move to home schooling would not be such a stampede."

 

Homeschooling ~ What About Socialisation?


"Instead of being locked behind school gates in ... an artificial setting characterised by bells, forced silence and age-segregation, homeschoolers frequently extend their everyday classroom to fire departments, hospitals, museums, repair shops, city halls, national parks, churches and colleges, where real community interaction and contacts are made"
[source].


"Dismantling the stereotype that home learners spend their days isolated from society at kitchen tables with workbooks in hand, the National Home Education Research Institute reported that they actually participate in approximately five different social activities outside the home on a regular basis"
[source].


"Researcher Dr. Linda Montgomery found that 78% of high school home learners were employed with paying jobs, while a majority engaged in volunteering and community service"
[source].


"The mass socialization conducted within schools has brought about a proliferation of delinquent behavior within this nation's youth, reports education researcher, Dr. Michael Slavinski. He notes that student bodies are increasingly riddled with violence, drugs, promiscuity, emotional disorders, crime, contempt for authority, desperate behavior, illiteracy, and peer dependency"
[source].


"When the Direct Observation Form of the Child Behavior Checklist was administered by education researcher Dr. Larry Shyers to identify 97 problematic behaviors in two groups of children, traditionally schooled students exuded eight times as many antisocial traits than their homeschooled counterparts. This lies in direct contrast to claims by public school advocates that exposure to campus life leads to proper socialization"
[source].


"The Vineyard Adaptive Behaviour Scales test [identifies] mature and well-adapted behavior in children. Home learners ranked in the 84th percentile, compared to publicly [state] schooled students, who were drastically lower in the 23rd"
[source].


"Public [state] schools give your children great socialization. Where else can your kids smoke a joint in the bathroom, meet roaming drug dealers in the schoolyards, be raped or assaulted by violent bullies on the prowl for victims, and join a racial clique that promotes harmony among the students? That's a lot better than the 'bad' socialization of homeschooling that 'isolates' kids from this wonderful interaction with their peers"
[source].


"MYTH:  They won't learn the needed social skills if I teach at home.   FACT:  To the contrary, most homeschooled children learn healthy social skills from parents and Christian friends, not from peers with contrary values. Studies have shown that homeschooled children surpass their peers in public [state] schools in adaptability, cohesion, social adjustment, maturity and leadership; and lower levels in aggressive behaviour, loudness and competitiveness. Homeschooled children tend to go on to occupations which are more entrepreneurial and professional. They tend to be more independently minded [and] more family oriented"
[source].


"In most public [state] schools, children are socialized by their friends and classmates. Their values are formed through the 'critical thinking' strategies used in classrooms ... to free students from traditional moral absolutes so they can 'create their own' values. These tend to reflect the rampant amorality spread by popular movies, music, books, and television"
[source].


"What sold me on homeschooling was a visit from two young girls the daughters of homeschooling friends ... they were polite, modest, confident, thoughtful, natural, and well able to keep up with adult conversation. They showed no sign of the rebellion parents are told to expect from their teenagers. I thought, 'If this is what homeschooling socialization does, I want it for my kids"
[Sarah Leslie, quoted at source].


"[Our children] are free from the teasing, swearing, meanness, and peer pressures they faced a year ago ... And they have plenty of friends. They're involved in baseball, a community chorus, and a drama group. We're getting the good part of socialization and leaving out the bad"
[Nick and Joan Peros, quoted at source].


"We meet once a week with fifteen families ... All follow the same history and science curriculum, and our children do oral presentations. Once a month we go on a field trip together. A year ago, our kids didn't want to leave their old school. ... Now they don't want to go back"
[Anne Peters, quoted at source].

 

Training Up Children ~ State or Parents?


"Nine Assumptions of Schooling:
(1) Social cohesion is not possible through other means than government schooling; school is the main defense against social chaos,
(2) Children cannot learn to tolerate each other unless first socialized by government agents,
(3) The only safe mentors of children are certified experts with government-approved conditioning; children must be protected from the uncertified, including parents,
(4) Compelling children to violate family, cultural and religious norms does not interfere with the development of their intellects or characters,
(5) In order to dilute parental influence, children must be disabused of the notion that mother and father are sovereign in morality or intelligence,
(6) Families should be encouraged to expend concern on the general education of everyone but discouraged from being unduly concerned with their own children's education,
(7) The State has a predominant responsibility for training, morals and beliefs. Children who escape state scrutiny will become immoral,
(8) Children from families with different beliefs, backgrounds and styles must be forced together even if those beliefs violently contradict one another. Robert Frost, the poet, was wrong when he maintained that 'good fences make good neighbours',
(9) Coercion in the name of liberty is a valid use of state power"
[John Taylor Gatto, source].


"The Bible teaches that for a Christian, life is not divided into the secular and the sacred. It is not up to the home and church to train the child in 'spiritual' matters while the school teaches him 'secular' subjects. Such a dualistic approach often leads to conflicts and frustrations in the mind of the child when he hears one philosophy at home and another at school. 'The teacher says,' or 'the coach says,' carries much weight in the mind of the child. The home and church and the school should all be moving in the same direction with the same philosophy and goals. ... The school which your children attends should be an extension of the training program of your home - not the state or federal government. Please keep in mind that the Christian school is not to take the place of the home. The Christian school is designed to help parents fulfil their Christian responsibility 'to train up a child in the way he should go'"
[Paul Kienel, The Christian School, p.62].


"Public [state] schools are not a friend of Christian families; indeed, they are stunting the souls of children and transferring a way of life that is incompatible with the Christian virtues that once shaped generations of American students. It is time for Christian parents to rescue their children from these academically deficient, morally relativistic, and cultural corrosive public schools"
[Bradley Heath, Millstones and Stumbling Blocks: Understanding Education in Post-Christian America].


"The public [state] 'education' system imposes beliefs that are diametrically opposed to the high standards of faith in Jesus Christ.  Christian parents send their children to public [state] schools with the expectation that their children will gain an education.  In truth, what they gain in most cases is indoctrination into the secularist, leftist political agenda.  To add insult to injury, they pay for that indoctrination with ever-increasing taxes.  Yet if any raise a voice of protest they are met with derision and told to keep their morality to themselves.  How often I've heard parents tell me that the response to their protests is that they are the only ones protesting.  This seems to be a standard reply, a tactic designed to quiet opposition and to prevent parents from engaging other parents in concerted efforts to correct any wrongs foisted upon their children.  Even if it were true that only one parent may complain, the complaint should be heard on its own merits, not on how many have voiced it.  If there is a wrong that needs to be righted it should not be allowed to stand because a majority of parents haven't perceived it"
[Al Dager, Media Spotlight, Vol. 30, No. 2].


"[T]he lessons of school prevent children from keeping important appointments with themselves and with their families to learn lessons in self-motivation, perseverance, self-reliance, courage, dignity, and love - and lessons in service to others too, which are among the key lessons of home and community life"
[John Taylor Gatto, Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling, p.19].


"[The school system] needs to stop being a parasite on our working community. ... [It] warehouse[s] children and ask[s] nothing of them in service of the general good. ... we need to make community service a required part of schooling. Besides the experience of acting unselfishly that it will teach, it is the quickest way to give young children real responsibility on the mainstream of life. ... Independent study, community service, adventures and experience, large doses of privacy and solitude, a thousand different apprenticeships - the one day variety or longer ... [and] family as the main engine of education. If we sue schooling to break children away from parents - and make no mistake, that has been the central function of schools ... we're going to continue to have the horror show we have right now. The 'curriculum of family' is at the heart of any good life. We've gotten away from that curriculum - it's time to return to it"
[John Taylor Gatto, Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling, pp.32-33].


"The heart of a defense for the cherished American ideals of privacy, of a man's home being his castle, of variety and individuality lies in the way we bring up our young. Children learn what they live. Put the kid in a class and he will live out his life in an invisible cage, isolated from his chance at community; interrupt the kid with bells and horns all the time and he will learn that nothing is important; force him to plead for the natural right to go to the toilet and he will become a liar and a toady, ridicule him and he will retreat from human association, shame him and he will find a hundred ways to get even. The habits taught in large scale organizations are deadly. Individuality, family, and community, ... are, by definition, expressions of singular organization, never of one-right-way thinking on the grand scale. Private time is absolutely essential if a private identity is going to develop, and private time is equally essential to the development of a code of private values - without which we aren't really individuals at all. Children and families need some relief from government surveillance and intimidation if original expressions belonging to them are to develop. Without these freedom has no meaning
[John Taylor Gatto, Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling, pp.68-69].


"Check out your kids from public school, and don't send them back. Homeschool them. Teach them what you know - Educate them anyway you see fit. Under your watchful eye - let 'em loose in the museums - run in the field of dreams - let 'em fish - play - hunt - write - make movies - create - volunteer - help others - make art - make friends - make war - make up - sew - cook - loaf around - cry - play - build - make music - solve problems - invent themselves over and over. Believe in them, and they will astound you.  But for heaven's sake, keep them out of the clutches of institutional schooling, where they are regarded as "human resource material or human capital" - never as individuals. It's Collectivism, pure and simple"
[source].


"In the only verse in the Hebrew Bible to explain why God chose Abraham, He says: 'I have known him so that he will instruct his children and his household after him to keep the way of the Lord by doing what is right and just.'  Abraham was chosen not to rule an empire, command an army, perform miracles or deliver prophecies, but simply to be a parent. In one of the most famous lines in Judaism, which we say every day and night, Moses commands, 'You shall teach these things repeatedly to your children, speaking of them when you sit in your house or when you walk on the way, when you lie down and when you rise up.'  Parents are to be educators, education is the conversation between the generations, and the first school is the home"
[source].


"As a homeschooling mother, I consistently meet other mothers whose children, prior to homeschooling, were riddled with diseases, stresses, and psychological problems requiring medication. Generally speaking, within a year of good nutritional home cooked food, a loving home environment and homeschooling, these children are completely medication free and flourishing with none of the previous problems present. I find it interesting that usually in countries where you see an attack on the family, you see an attack on homeschooling and this way of life. Jesus knew what he was doing when he advocated for family and mothers staying home, being busy in the home and teaching the children"
[Comment at: source].


"If you're going to send your kids to Caesar, you're going to get Romans back"
[Ron Gleason, quoted in source].

 

Salt and Light


"What's wrong with public [state] school for a Christian kid? I get letters from parents asking me this. Can’t they be salt and light, they say. To me, that’s a crazy question. My answer is that it’s not their time yet. Right now is a time for discipleship. Right now a child is to be trained up in the fear and admonition of the Lord (preferably by the parent!). Right now is a time for family ministry; serve together, not separately. If a parent wants their child to be salt and light, then model that. YOU be salt and light with your child; don’t send them out into the world in your stead"
[Gena Suarez, What About Public School?].

 

 

 

"Never, anywhere in the Holy Bible will you find God giving civil government any authority to rear or direct the rearing of children ...
God told parents, not the government, to 'train up' their children"

(Laura Rogers, Societal Structures vs. Restructuring,
as quoted in Berit Kjos, Brave New Schools, p185)

 

 

 

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© Elizabeth McDonald     http://www.bayith.org     bayith@blueyonder.co.uk