Rought Draft Of Finished Product — Christians & Government Schools

Thou shalt have no other gods before me
– God

“Every child entering school at the age of five is insane because he comes to school with certain allegiances to our founding fathers, toward our elected officials, toward his parents, toward a belief in a supernatural being, and toward the sovereignty of this nation as a separate entity. It’s up to you as teachers to make all these sick children well–by creating the international child of the future.”

Psychiatrist Chester M. Pierce,
Addressing 1973 Childhood International Education Seminar

Similar quotes coming from sundry other people influential in the realm of government education, as that which is cited by Pierce, could be reproduced many times over, and yet despite this clearly stated intent to reprogram children, Christians continue to send their children to government schools. Some Christians tend to think that their local schools are different because the teachers there are “nice” and maybe even “smart.” What they fail to realize is that “nice” and “smart” is always used in service of the reprogramming of children – often times without the nice and smart teacher being themselves self-conscious of the malevolent design of government schooling. The most effective reprogramming is that reprogramming that is done with a smile on the teachers face. The Christian community has to realize that the Christian teachers in the school system where they are sending their children have yoked themselves to a system that is at war with Biblical Christianity, and that the Christianity of those teachers is either a Christianity that is in abeyance or is a Christianity that has been reinterpreted to fit the mold of the humanistic agenda of the government schools in which they are employed. A Biblical Christian teacher who taught their subject matter from a Biblical Christian worldview in a humanistic school system would be fired in weeks if not days. My friends the government schools are not populated by the kind of Christians that can help your children think God’s thoughts after him.

Government schools are committed to the religion of humanism where man considered either in the individual or the collective is the god of the system. This is so true that government schools really ought to be considered churches. Just as Christian churches are charged with teaching children to think as Christians through catechesis so the government schools are charged with teaching children to think as humanists through their lessons. In the Church of humanism the teachers are the ministers. In the church of humanism the curriculum in the schools is the equivalent to the catechism in the church of Christianity. In the church of humanism there are high holy days that the adherents celebrate just as Christian churches have their own high holy days that they celebrate. In the churches of humanism people can be expelled for sinning against humanistic rules of political correctness just as in Christian churches people can be excommunicated for sins against the Christian faith. All the dynamics that one finds in Christian churches and in the Christian faith are all present in government schools. Government schools are the temples of humanism where the initiates are indoctrinated in the ways of a false religion. Don’t let anyone tell you that Americans don’t have an established religion.

Let’s briefly take a look at some of these claims and see if we can find evidence from those who are associated with government education to see if the claims hold.

When considering whether Government schools are committed to the religion of Humanism we read from Charles Potter, a former honorary President of the National Education Association,

“Education is thus a most powerful ally of humanism, and every American school is a school of humanism. What can a theistic Sunday school’s meeting for an hour once a week and teaching only a fraction of the children do to stem the tide of the five-day program of humanistic teaching?” (Charles F. Potter, “Humanism: A New Religion” 1930)

When considering whether teachers are the ministers of humanism we learn from Humanist John Dunphy,

“I am convinced that the battle for humankind’s future must be waged and won in the public school classroom by teachers that correctly perceive their role as proselytizers of a new faith: a religion of humanity that recognizes and respects the spark of what theologians call divinity in every human being… The classroom must and will become an arena of conflict between the old and new. These teachers must embody the same selfless dedication as the most rabid fundamentalist preachers, for they will be ministers of another sort, utilizing the 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 universities.”

Now when we combine Dunphy’s quote with a quote from the father of Outcome Based Education, Benjamin Bloom, we begin to see that Dunphy’s vision fits well within the vision of those who are “shaping” public eduation,

“By educational objectives, we mean explicit formulations of the ways in which students are expected to be changed by the educative process. That is, the ways in which they will change in their thinking, their feelings, and their actions.”

When considering the nature of the curriculum as serving the ends of religious humanism we have only to read from Dr. John I. Goodlad, former director of research and development at the Institute for Development of Educational Activities when many years ago he wrote that future curriculum “will be what one might call the humanistic curriculum.” Looking forward to the future Goodlad could say that his humanistic curriculum would “become significantly evident by 1990 or 2000.”

Now in light of this very small sampling of what has been chronicled in many other sources, and in light of the reality that the first commandment forbids us to serve other gods why do Christians send their children to government schools where their children are immersed in learning the covenant ways of a false religion? And having sent their children to government schools why do they become surprised when their children remain consistent with what they’ve learned of the faith of humanism and leave the Christian faith? Part of the reason that we are losing our children in the Church is that by placing them in government schools we are training them to be pagans.

It should be immediately added here that most people who work in and for government schools are not self-conscious about their contribution to building an anti-Christ culture in the way that they are teaching children. Many who work in government schools are Christians in the sense of religious brand identity. The problem is that they have never had the opportunity to probe and examine the presuppositions that inform the material they are teaching and have accepted as their own. In brief, they have coated their anti-Christian belief system with a thin brand coating of Christianity sugar sprinkled with niceness.

Some would object to all of this by positing that education does not need to be specifically Christian since education is not spiritual but rather is only intellectual. The reasoning of these people is that education is not religious but rather is one discipline that falls within a Creational common realm where both Christians and non-Christians can labor together despite significant differences in presuppositions. The reasoning of these folks insists that education is to be done not by the standards of God’s word but rather by the standard of natural law. They insist that God’s word doesn’t teach anything with regards to the disciplines one might expect to find in a liberal arts education. The truths of these disciplines are taught by natural law and are self-evident.

The first problem we would note to this objection is that it seems to be an objection only raised by some Christians. Other adherents of other faith systems understand perfectly well the importance of an education in keeping with their faith. This is why we can find people of other non-Christian faiths insisting on the importance of an education that is in keeping with their faith.

“He alone, who owns the youth, gains the future.”

Adolf Hitler

“Give me your 4 years olds, and in a generation I will build a socialist state.”

Vladimir Lenin

The second problem we would note to this objection is that even if we concede that education doesn’t belong to the spiritual realm of grace the issue still remains what interpretation of the creational realm will be presupposed and taught in the educational process? Education always presupposes some creational order as norm and standard. So even agreeing that education belongs to the Creational common realm, the issue must still be answered, in the midst of many disputes in a pluralistic culture, is which God or gods creational common realm will be assumed as the context in which the various educational disciplines find their meaning. The real issue is what regime’s creation order will be taught. Obviously, if Christians agree that education is a “creational project,” then all Christians should probably also agree that that project will explicitly and implicitly center on the Christian Creator.

A second objection is to insist that public schools do not teach Humanist beliefs any more than they teach any other belief. The schools, so the thinking goes, are simply secular, neither promoting nor demeaning religion. Therefore any calls that insist that Christians should pull their children from government schools are unwarranted. The answer to this objection is simply to observe that as teachers can’t teach from nowhere they must educate according to some perspective, worldview, or philosophical paradigm, all of which are beholden to some kind of religion, descending and originating from some kind of Theology. The labor of this article has been to argue that the worldview of government schools, regardless of any insistence to the contrary, is humanism.

Christians are commanded to set no other God before them. When US Christians, having full knowledge of what government schools are, send their children to US government schools in spite of what they know, they are worshiping at the altar of humanism. There is just no other way to put it. Certainly, as always, there certainly may be those strange times when there are exceptions but as a whole government schools are committed to sanitizing the Christian faith from those who enter their doors.

Many people have given themselves to praying for Reformation and Awakening. Allow me to close by suggesting that if we believe that Christianity results in a regeneration in our thinking it is extraordinarily difficult (though not impossible) to understand how prayers for Reformation and Awakening will be answered in the affirmative as long as Christians continue to poison their children’s minds against Christ by sending their children to US government schools. Certainly, we can say that one sign of Reformation and awakening in the Church will be the movement of Christian parents to remove their covenant seed from government schools, thus taking the first commandment seriously again.