"An Ugly Piece of Mechanism"

"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, spinninglobe.net/lesschool.htm].

"Dumbing Us 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, p. xii, quoted in spinninglobe.net/dumbingrev.htm].

"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, spinninglobe.net/dumbingrev.htm].

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 crossroad.to/text/articles/zerotol.html].

"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" [brusselsjournal.com/node/1389].

"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 crossroad.to/text/articles/mc9-24-98.html].

"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 theforbiddenknowledge.com/hardtruth/newworldindex.htm].

"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. It's like a malicious person lifting a photograph from the developing chemicals too early, then pronouncing the photographer incompetent. ... 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 the United States 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. ... 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 like schools are deadly. Think for a minute, by definition individuality, family, and community are 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, spinninglobe.net/lesschool.htm].

"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" [cuttingedge.org/news/n1383.cfm].

"Our situation today is remarkably similar to the one Paul faced two thousand years ago. Society erects alters 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].

United Nations 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].

"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'" [crossroad.to/text/articles/Harry9-99.html].

"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" [crossroad.to/articles2/MovieMagic.htm].

"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].

Humanism

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 creationontheweb.com/content/view/3830/].

Evolution and Creation

"[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].

Liberalism, Marxism, and Communism

"You can't make Socialists out of individualists - children who know how to think for themselves spoil the harmony of the collective society which is coming, where everyone is interdependent" [John Dewey, Fabian Socialist founder of public education in America, quoted in Gena Suarez, What About Public School?].

"Nearly three-quarters of faculty members of U.S. colleges and universities describe themselves as liberals, and at elite schools, the proportion is 87 percent (7/05 Baptist Watchman). ... Business Week in 1981 said over 10,000 Marxist professors were teaching in U.S. colleges and universities" [The Calvary Contender, Sept-Oct 2005].

Funding for the New Education for the New World Order

" [M]oney went to promote John Dewey, Marxism, a One-World-Government agenda, and Socialism. The foundations (principally the Rockefeller and Carnegie) stimulated two-thirds of the total endowment funding of all institutions of higher learning in America during the first third of [the] 20th century" [theforbiddenknowledge.com/hardtruth/antiamericangroupspt2.htm].

The Purpose of Multicultural and Multifaith / Environmental and Ecological Education

"[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].

"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].

"'Diversity missionaries' are being sent into [UK state] schools to teach children about bigotry, while teachers have to monitor incidents of alleged racial harassment.  Those schools that don't report any cases are told to put up posters raising awareness of racism.  So if their pupils aren't aware of what bigotry is, they soon will be.  Yet another pathetic example of an insidious grievance industry seeking out intolerance where there is none" [Amanda Platell, Daily Mail, 31 October 2009].

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 crossroad.to/text/articles/Harry9-99.html].

"[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" [crossroad.to/text/articles/Harry9-99.html].

"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" [crossroad.to/text/articles/Harry9-99.html].

"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" [crossroad.to/text/articles/Harry9-99.html].

"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" [crossroad.to/articles2/MovieMagic.htm].

"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'" [crossroad.to/articles2/MovieMagic.htm].

The Purpose of 'Holistic' Education

"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.}].

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, spinninglobe.net/9assumptions.htm].

"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].

"If you're going to send your kids to Caesar, you're going to get Romans back" [Ron Gleason, quoted in creationontheweb.com/content/view/6001/].

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?].

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