“Another war, World War II, changed everything again. As men went off to war, women came out of the home and into the factories and mills. In 1945, the soldiers, sailors, and airmen came home and, on the GI Bill of Rights, swelled the number of college students. The increasingly complex post-war world demanded more advanced training. Adult education programs expanded. We also started hearing calls for educational reform as the college prep role of public schools began to increase in importance.
“When the Soviet Union beat America into space with the launch of Sputnik in 1957, the cause of reform took on real weight, producing an overnight clamor. More math! More science! Back to basics! More advanced curriculum for all students. Help America catch the Russians by reforming the schools. The FEDERAL role in education began to mushroom.
“Then came the 1960s, with a broad context of social concerns and changes–civil rights, integrated schools, special education, increased job opportunities for women, nutrition, ‘latch-key’ children, and questions about America’s role in the world, against the backdrop of the Vietnam war. The teaching force changed, seeking a greater voice in the system (often unsuccessfully); and students changed, having grown up in a television-dominated world” (Shift in Focus, Op. Cit., pp. 7-8).
Horace Mann, Father of American Education
The First Wave:
Parents Challenge False Philosophies and Anti-God Concepts
With all these changes in society, many parents felt uneasy about the anti-family, anti-God focus that was beginning to permeate the educational system. As a result, an upsurge in private schools and home tutoring developed.
The first wave of home schooling families were those who were extremely concerned with what they called “false doctrines” that were being introduced into the classroom. They were upset with the introduction of Humanism, Communistic ideas, evolution, and other Godless ideas.
Leaders began warning parents that many of the changes in education were being encouraged and at times even financed by individuals and governments hostile to the
American dream. For example, it was during this time that a grass-roots movement swept the country against the tactics of Communism. According to the Communists themselves, they had set 45 major goals pertaining to the weakening of America that they wanted introduced as part of school curricula. A summary of those 45 goals appears in the 1961 best-selling book, The Naked Communist, by W. Cleon Skousen. They are:
1. U.S. acceptance of coexistence as the only alternative to atomic war.
2. U.S. willingness to capitulate in preference to engaging in atomic war.
3. Develop the illusion that total disarmament by the United States would be a demonstration of moral strength.
4. Permit free trade between all nations regardless of Communist affiliation and regardless of whether or not items could be used for war.
5. Extension of long-term loans to Russia and Soviet Satellites.
6. Provide American aid to all nations regardless of Communist domination.
7. Grant recognition of Red China; admission of Red China to the UN.
8. Set up East and West Germany as separate states in spite of Khrushchev’s promise in 1955 to settle the Germany question by free elections under supervision of the UN.
9. Prolong the conference to ban atomic tests because the U.S. has agreed to suspend tests as long as negotiations are in progress.
10. Allow all Soviet satellites individual representation in the UN.
11. Promote the UN as the only hope for mankind. If its charter is rewritten, demand that it be set up as a one-world government with its own independent armed forces. (Some Communist leaders believe the world can be taken over as easily by the UN as by Moscow. Sometimes these two centers compete with each other….)
12. Resist any attempt to outlaw the Communist Party.
13. Do away with all loyalty oaths.
14. Continue giving Russia access to the U.S. Patent Office.
15. Capture one or both of the political parties in the United States.
16. Use technical decisions of the courts to weaken basic American institutions by claiming their activities violate civil rights.
17. Get control of the schools. Use them as transmission belts for socialism and current Communist propaganda. Soften the curriculum. Get control of teachers’ associations. Put the party line in textbooks.
18. Gain control of all student newspapers.
19. Use student riots to foment public protests against programs or organizations which are under Communist attack.
20. Infiltrate the press. Get control of book-review assignments, editorial writing, policy-making positions.
21. Gain control of key positions in radio, TV and motion pictures.
22. Continue discrediting American culture by degrading all forms of artistic expression. An American Communist cell was told to “eliminate all good sculpture from parks and buildings, substitute shapeless, awkward and meaningless forms.”
23. Control art critics and directors of art museums. “Our plan is to promote ugliness, repulsive, meaningless art.”
24. Eliminate all laws governing obscenity by calling them “censorship” and a violation of free speech and free press.
25. Break down cultural standards of morality by promoting pornography and obscenity in books, magazines, motion pictures, radio and TV.
26. Present homo-sexuality, degeneracy and promiscuity as “normal, natural, healthy.”
27. Infiltrate the churches and replace revealed religion with “social” religion. Discredit the Bible and emphasize the need for intellectual maturity which does not need a “religious crutch.”
28. Eliminate prayer or any phase of religious expression in the schools on the ground that it violates the principle of “separation of church and state.”
29. Discredit the American Constitution by calling it inadequate, old-fashioned, out of step with modern needs, a hindrance to cooperation between nations on a world-wide basis.
30. Discredit the American founding fathers. Present them as selfish aristocrats who had no concern for the “common man.”
31. Belittle all forms of American culture and discourage the teaching of American history on the ground that it was only a minor part of “the big picture.” Give more emphasis to Russian history since the Communists took over.
32. Support any socialist movement to give centralized control over any part of the culture–education, social agencies, welfare programs, mental health clinics, etc.
33. Eliminate all laws or procedures which interfere with the operation of the Communist apparatus.
34. Eliminate the House Committee on Un-American Activities.
35. Discredit and eventually dismantle the FBI.
36. Infiltrate and gain control of more unions.
37. Infiltrate and gain control of big business.
38. Transfer some of the powers of arrest from the police to social agencies. Treat all behavioral problems as psychiatric disorders which no one but psychiatrists can understand or treat.
39. Dominate the psychiatric profession and use mental health laws as a means of gaining coercive control over those who oppose Communist goals.
40. Discredit the family as an institution. Encourage promiscuity and easy divorce.
41. Emphasize the need to raise children away from the negative influence of parents. Attribute prejudices, mental blocks and retarding of children to suppressive influence of parents.
42. Create the impression that violence and insurrection are legitimate aspects of the American tradition; that students and special-interest groups should rise up and use “united force” to solve economic, political or social problems.
43. Overthrow all colonial governments before native populations are ready for self-government.
44. Internationalize the Panama Canal.
45. Repeal the Connally Reservations so the U.S. cannot prevent the World Court from seizing jurisdiction over domestic problems. Give the World Court jurisdiction over nations and individuals alike.
(See The Naked Communist, published by The Reviewer, Salt Lake City, UT, 1961, pp. 259-262)
It is noteworthy to mention that, as of this writing (2005), every one of these 45 Communist goals have been met. Back in the 1960s, it seemed ludicrous that such goals could ever be accomplished. In fact, most Americans were made to believe that Communism actually died when the Soviet Union and the Berlin Wall fell. However, Communism simply camouflaged itself until its insidious tentacles have reached into the very fiber of domestic life in America. Although America seems to be doomed, later on in this report we shall see that there is reason to have great hope. Meanwhile, we continue our historical background of how education got so far off track:
The 1960s also brought a cry for “social” changes necessary for “modern times.” Soon parents began hearing unfamiliar phrases and titles under the concepts of “progressive education” such as values clarification, child rights, free speech, do your own thing, my fair share, new math, and police actions.
Exotic grooming and dress styles were described as the “in thing.” Deviant sexual practices were explained away as “acceptable alternate life styles.” Secular Humanism was touted as the NEW HOPE of the world. Any challenge from the parents was shrugged off as an obvious example of the “generation gap.” Standards of the past were called “obsolete, non-progressive and restrictive” to child development.
In the name of “progress,” the social scientists argued against the necessity and importance–or even the right–of parents and teachers to have traditional Judeo-Christian values taught in the schools.
To ensure the secular approach to public education, prayer and Bible reading have been eliminated from most public schools. Stories with moral lessons disappeared from textbooks. In effect, the teaching of spiritual values and morality were eliminated from the responsibility of the schools altogether.
Frantic parents first tried to become involved with their children’s education in the public system, but found it almost impossible to permeate the barriers professional educators defensively built around the system.
Much of this wall between parents and schooling was excused because professionals said that parents were “untrained” for modern education. A “generation gap” theme created an additional chasm between many families and the classroom. It was as though the educational planners did not want parents to know what was going on inside those halls of learning.
When students began to get the idea that there was a “generation gap” between themselves and Mom and Dad, they no longer respected them as guides and counselors, but looked upon them as old-fashioned, and not capable or willing to keep up with the modern times–especially if parents criticized the system. This was one more step towards keeping parental influences out of the classroom so that the children could be taught “the realities of life.”
It wasn’t long before many parents found themselves disrespectfully shoved out of the educational picture.
As alert parents watched with dismay what was happening, they decided to abandon the public educational system altogether, and to teach their children themselves at home, or enroll them in private schools.
Were Parents Justified?
It was as though George Orwell’s terrifying public novel, called 1984 was becoming a reality. His best-selling book, published in 1949, described a totalitarian society of the future: a society that “punishes love, destroys privacy, and distorts the truth.” Orwell also predicted that the government would introduce a new language which he called “newspeak” and which could only be understood by the elite.
Indeed, abandoning the “old” in favor of the “new” was the ultimate goal of the founders of the “modern” system of education. One writer for The Humanist agreed that a war was taking place for the minds of children in the public schools:
“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” (John Dunphy, The Humanist, January/February 1983).
One of the most dismaying comments comes from a Harvard professor, Dr. Pierce, in a written address he delivered to 2,000 teachers in Denver, Colorado in 1973. He declared:
“Every child in America entering school at the age of five is mentally ill because he comes to school with certain allegiances toward our founding fathers, toward our elected officials, toward his parents, toward a belief in a supernatural being, toward the sovereignty of this nation as a separate entity. It’s up to you teachers to make all of these sick children well by creating the international children of the future.”
That same year, Gloria Steinam, editor of Ms. Magazine and leader of the Women’s Liberation movement, told listeners: “By the year 2000 we will, I hope, raise our children to believe in human potential, not God.” At a Houston meeting she boasted, “For the sake of those who wish to live in equal partnership, we have to abolish and reform the institution of marriage,” echoing the Humanist promotion of divorce. The Saturday Review of Education (March 1973)
In the late 1980s, humanist Dr. John Goodland wrote a report for the National Education Agency, arguing that one of their goals is to re-educate children and to turn
them away from the values of their parents. He said:
“Our goal is behavioral change. The majority of our youth still hold to the values of their parents and if we do not re-socialize them to accept change, our society may decay.”
(As quoted by Dr. D. James Kennedy in a sermon entitled “A Godly Education,” delivered to the Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. The quote came from Dr. Goodland’s report entitled “Schooling For the Future.”)
Reverend Donald N. Sills of Fredericksburg Virginia quoted John Dewey as once saying:
“If the public schools can keep children occupied from 7:00 or 7:30 in the morning, throughout the day, with sports after school, and homework in the evening, the parents will have less than an hour a day with their children, and the family’s and Christian church’s influence over them could be broken in about a generation.” (Donald N. Sills, “Crisis in Education–An American Enigma” 1994, p. 1)
As We Sow, So Shall We Reap
The results of this experimental cycle became obvious. Not only was society plagued by the now infamous culture of this era–pock-marked by “hippie” life-styles, flower children, drugs, jungle-beat or ethereal drug music; an acceptance of homosexuality, atheism, anti-religious movements, anti-prayer and draft-dodging attitudes–but also by a radical decline in academic achievement and a high increase in school drop-outs.
The Second Wave:
More Dissatisfied Parents Challenge the Public School System’s Academic Failures
In the 1980s, the American people received a wake-up call. It came in the form of an extensive report on the condition of American education, and was compiled by those who were in the educational system itself. It was called “A Nation at Risk.” In this report, Secretary of Education William Bennett emphatically declared that academically, schools were failing the students in many areas. The shocking report became the battle cry for this second cycle of reform.
Especially shocking was the declaration that a full 25%, one in four, of all adults in America were found to be functionally illiterate. The experimental public educational system of the past had failed drastically, and unless drastic measures were taken, little hope was seen for the future!
Again, concerned parents, fearing for what was NOT being taught in school, joined those who had begun home schooling because of what WAS being taught in the schools. This caused another groundswell in the numbers of home schoolers.
On the heels of the “Nation at Risk” report came studies from every sector of society analyzing student achievements. The results of these studies were equally as shocking as the “Nation at Risk” report. Because of the dismaying statistics, more and more private schools sprang into existence.
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