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:
"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 humanism … it 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
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
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)
Please
note that the inclusion of any quotation or item on this page does not
imply we would necessarily endorse the source from which the extract is
taken; neither can we necessarily vouch for any other materials by the
same authors,
or any groups or
ministries or websites with which they may associated, or any
periodicals to which they may contribute, or the
beliefs of whatever kind they may hold, or any other aspect of their
work or ministry or position. |
© Elizabeth
McDonald
http://www.bayith.org
bayith@blueyonder.co.uk
|