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What You Can't Teach
The Illusion of Neutrality
November 2004
"Fascism is a religion. The 20th Century will be known in history as the century of Fascism."
- Benito Mussolini
A friend of mine told me about an observation he had made recently about the education system. He noted that modern-day college had all but replaced old-fashioned apprenticeship. Before
education went mainstream, children learned most of what they needed to know
from their parents. As the sons worked alongside the father, the skills of the
trade became instilled in them as well as the family's values
- everything from sense of pride and accomplishment to ethical practices.
If there's one thing I'd like my children to take with them, it's my values,
beliefs, and ethics. That's gotten a bit harder than it used to be.
Today, I'd be competing for a hold on
my childrens' values, and might run the risk of losing that fight.
As a parent, you may consider that the battle over values isn't even an issue
of making thought-provoking arguments, but rather an irrational conditioning instilled in your children.
Everyone's a nonconformist today and they all nonconform in the same way.
They have immediate, pre-determined responses to explain convictions they feel
very strongly about but have no idea why. Our kids are no longer interested
in hearing our lectures, learning from our wisdom, or even reasoning with us.
It doesn't feel good being on the wrong end of having Stepford children.
Learning Intelligence
Much of who we are as individuals - the knowledge and
wisdom we base decisions on - go back to our education.
Let's face it, when we
pop out of the womb, our minds are pretty much blank and our intelligence grows
based on only what we're
later taught. The only thing we're really born with is a sense of a creator,
and a lot of questions. As we begin to learn, we form intelligence about all
the issues surrounding us.
There are two steps to developing intelligence -
obtaining information and then processing it. We process the information we learn by free and
independent thinking which helps us weigh their value.
Unfortunately, free and independent thinking has led to many burned at the
stake
throughout history and so the whole idea of thinking is a bit passe. It's much
easier to find someone who simply believes what they're told than it is to find
someone who believes what they know.
A good example of this is dead painters. I'm not particularly intelligent about dead painters as I find them about as interesting as pavement. I only know
about da Vinci because someone else taught me about him - I certainly wasn't there with him,
and so I accept most of the facts I receive about him blindly because I've no reason to dispute them.
If someone were to tell me
that da Vinci wasn't a painter, I've already been conditioned to
respond with doubt and disbelief, rather than intrigue. I may insult this
person's intelligence even though I really have no intelligence of my own.
And I've done all of this without requiring any actual thought on the subject,
only conditioning.
Society tells us that free-thinking is obsolete and, by experience, we know that
most people are willing to accept pretty much whatever they're told (unless it conflicts with something they've already learned)
.
It only makes sense then that if you can manipulate the information
available to an individual before they've learned it, you can control many
of their decisions. Knowledge is power, and many
prefer the general population had little of it.
Case in point, evolution is the hot topic in schools. Teaching evolution isn't
so much the problem as not teaching any opposing views alongside it. Evolution has become the chosen propaganda, the Nigerian spam, of modern science and
is the perfect example of how an irrational set of facts can be so easily instilled in
a student when there's nothing to stimulate thought. The
fact that it is called the theory of evolution doesn't stop it from
being taught as fact, nor does it make it any more politically correct to call
it by its name - a theory. In spite of the fact that only a minority of the
population accepts its shaky claims, which have been all but abandoned
by many other countries as unscientific, successful efforts have
been made in America over the past several decades to remove any
other possible views from schools that may challenge the theory (which
ironically is considered religion by many). While we insist we "trust the
scientists" for our curriculum, there has been a century-long debate in
scientific circiels about evolution. From St. George Mivart in 1871 to
present day, our own scientists are having trouble with the theory:
"Scientists, like everybody else, base most of their opinions on the
word of other people. Of the great majority who accept Darwinism, most
(though not all) do so based on authority. Also, and unfortunately, too often
criticisms have been dismissed by the scientific community for fear of giving
ammunition to creationists. It is ironic that in the name of protecting
science, trenchant scientific criticism of natural selection has been
brushed aside."
- Michael Behe, Professor of Biochemistry at Lehigh University
Thought Sanctioned
The past ten years in particular have
been given to a heightened controversy about basic fundamental truths we've now
erased.
Questions have been posed by today's culture - questions we used to know the
answer to, but somehow were erased from our memories. Questions like
"Does a marriage have to be between one man and one woman?" and "Is
abstinence the best way to prevent contracting sexually transmitted diseases?"
used to have answers considered common knowledge until they were snuffed out of the next version of the human race by a new reich of
school board "advocates". What do these issues all have in common? Their common
sense originates from someone's value system. When we erased the value system
in America, we seem to have also stripped out common sense.
What you can't teach today are any truths derived from "religious", or specifically Biblical, sources which may conflict with the secular point of view. The
problem, however, is that secularism (a sense of neutrality in values) seems
more like an illusion when you get to the heart of secular beliefs.
What's marketed as neutral in the classroom has turned out
to smell more like atheism. The omission of Christian values has left many of
these questions being answered differently - questions which can only be
answered with values belonging to someone. The removal of the Christian view
seems to have only left the secular (athetistic) view, which is just as much of a religious view (and one in the minority). Leaving only this one authoritative view to be taught in
the classroom has frighteningly also removed the thought provoking stimulii
that taught children to think for themselves about these topics in the first
place, taking away their inclination and freedom to disagree.
After all, if what you're being taught is passed
off as an authoritative truth, what motivation have you got to be suspect of the
information?
Many fellow Christians are surprised when they hear that I think evolution should be presented to our kids.
The only way to ensure that some level of thinking occurs is to
present at least two conflicting views. After all, without a decision to process, no conviction is
ever formed. Very few make it beyond seeing the holes in any theory or science
simply because they've been taught to accept what they're taught at face value.
In fact, when given the opportunity to challenge evolution, many discredit it
easily.
Choosing one option over another builds faith, whereas providing only one
option merely programs.
Convictions based on programming are far more fragile than true faith.
The Bible says to know who you believe, and in order to do that
you also have to know who you don't believe. Regardless of which side
of the fence you're on with such issues, if you don't at least understand
why you believe what you do, you'll never truly believe in anything.
Two Fox News articles. Cause and effect?
A Decrease in Wisdom
As
"religious values" slowly made their way out the door of classrooms, it seems
as if much of the practical knowledge and common sense they were tied to
has gone with it. Today,
religious values are treated as a disease - anything that even remotely
touches them are tained and must be thrown into the fire. The combination of
removing values and knowledge has had a rather unfortunate side-effect
in that students are being taught that it is inappropriate to think
about these topics, and
therefore it is only appropriate to think about what the institution tells you
that you may think about. It leaves the sense that there is something
wrong with you if you don't accept your programming. Or perhaps it could be put better to say that
we are teaching our children that thought must be sanctioned. At any
rate, common sense and values seem to have a cosmic connection. It's impossible
to eliminate the sanctity of marriage between a man and a woman unless you also eliminate the common
sense that if everyone were homosexual tomorrow, the entire human race would
end in one generation...but you're not allowed to teach that knowledge in school. Similarly, school history classes fail to mention the government institution
of marriage being instated for the purpose of procreation and public health.
The effort to remove many Christian values from school has taken its toll,
and our children today are clearly less informed than the previous generation.
In fact, most kids today are less inclined to think for themselves at all, but
instead just recall information they've stored on gray matter floppies.
Ask any typical high-schooler what the age of the Earth is. They'll have a
rather quick answer of something on the order of billions of years. Now ask them
why they believe that. They won't really know, it's just what they were
always taught. They've based their whole belief about the subject on information
they never challenged or confirmed on their own, just read in schoolbooks. Now ask someone who has been
taught both creation and evolution and regardless of what side of the fence
they sit on,
their answer is certain to be backed up with arguments about their conclusions.
What has happened to the belief that we should
challenge science and prove things for ourselves? It must have, at some point,
become too controversial or inconvenient to challenge science, because it is
now sanctioned as inappropriate...
but isn't challenging science the only thing that separates good science
from bad science?
So our children now are taught what to think, rather than how to think, and
independent thinking is no longer the fad. In fact, it's not good science to
think for yourself anymore nor to challenge what someone else thinks. Every
asinine theory ever devised can now be passed of as fact, and thanks to modern
society, without the inconvenience of establishing proof - what a promising
generation we're raising up!
Who's Values Are They?
In order to truly rid the school system
of all religion, you'd need to start by removing all of the topics that are
"tainted" with Christian values. These would extend to art, science, health,
history, and even literature. Eventually all that would be left would be
basic reading and writing. The next generation would, of course, be comprised
of
millions of people with nothing to read or write about; a society built upon mediocrity void of any purpose
other than to exist. In fact, you can see this today just by standing on the
corner in downtown Boston or Atlanta - examining the different ways in which
people have attempted to establish "status" to justify their existence. The
values we, as a community, bring to our schools are
the salt that motivates our children to change the world. These same values
are the ones our school boards are trying to do away with.
Until a student's entire day consists of only reading and writing, someone's values are
being taught in the public school - someone's religion. If it's not yours,
it's someone else's set of commandments.
When I hear people squawking about religious values taught in school, I have
to wonder what values would we be teaching otherwise? As we begin to
X things out of the ten commandments such as "thou shalt not commit
adultery", it's only our current state of
culture that prevents us from going all the way and removing "thou shalt not
murder" or "thou shalt not bear false witness". In fact, some countries have
already begun pushing on the walls of these. In the UK, it is just about
illegal to assault an intruder in your home - a rapist or murderer has more rights than you, in your own house.
Culture-Tolerated Values
Today, we're left with a set of bruised religious values that appear only
tolerated in the public school system because they
serve the current culture. So in keeping some biblical values, the
opposing agenda keeps the Christians complacent, when in reality the values will
be
extinguished as soon as they no longer serve a purpose in the ever-evolving culture.
Now we're getting closer to the truth - that this is no longer a matter of
"religious values" anymore. It is merely a front to keep parents under
control while eradicating their childrens' right to think. At the end of
the day, it's much easier to keep Americans complacent than to provoke them
anyway.
All of this is done under the guise of "separation of church and state". An
interesting term originally coined in a letter of all things (not the
constitution).
I thought it interesting to note that the term "separation of church and state" doesn't appear
in the constitution anywhere, even though we base legislation on it. In fact, the constitution specifically states
that the government can't infringe on the free exercise of religion - period.
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;
There are no restrictions about whether teachers can choose to teach
from the Bible, or whether students can lead a prayer at a football game. In
fact, it's pretty clear from the first amendment that no laws should be made
for or against religion outside of the guarantee of free exercise it gives us.
The ideal of separation of church and state exists if at all for
the purpose of protecting the church from the government, not the government
from the church. Otherwise you end up with the reason we had our first
revolution, and probably the reason we'll have a second some day.
Conclusion
We know that children ultimately belong to their families, and not a system, but the system
doesn't know this. The system firmly believes that there is no place for values
in today's society, and if you choose to teach your child values, you should
be ashamed enough of them to do it privately in your home. At least this is
how it comes across to the children.
Those paying the taxes that operate the school their child visits are no
longer welcome to instill their values in the now state-owned children.
Civil rights organizations in New York believe that it is their responsibility
to ensure your children grow up believing that your values are just an
opinion, and should not bear any authority in your childrens' lives.
The classroom is now a programming facility, rather than a place of
thought-provoking stimulation. It all sounds very conspiracy-like, doesn't it?
That's because governments and dictatorships have historically used the public school system to indoctrinate children with everything from communist propaganda
to "master race" ideals. A. Schiefan describes the programming of children in
Cambodia:
It was also at night that children sometimes left their camp to go and see their parents. Children doing this were taking an enormous risk, because the Khmer Rouge would execute them if they were caught. Children were not thought of as children during the killing fields era. They had to work extremely long hours like the adults, and were also taught to hate their parents. They were also taught to spy on them as well, and report anything on their own parents to the Khmer Rouge soldiers.
When you've been educated with an agenda, then conditioned to
react to external ideals with hostility, you're no longer free.
Without closely monitoring public school systems and holding them accountable
for any hidden agendas, our children could lose their civil rights
by their inability to think and disagree. The authors of the
declaration of independence
said it best when they wrote, "they are endowed by their Creator
with certain unalienable Rights". When you remove the creator from this country, you also remove the rights that He's endowed us with - namely the right to
life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. As Christian values are
stripped from our childrens' education, we walk a new generation dangerously
close to the line of surrendering their freedoms for the ideals of others.
I, for one, have pulled my children out of the failing public school system. We
homeschool our children, as do many of our friends. It's no surprise that the
children I see coming out of the homeschool community not only score higher
on aptitude tests,
but appear more "awake" than any product of a public school system. It's sad, however,
that being the thinkers they are may run them the risk of being burned at the
stake by the next products of public school.
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