Graduation Season

http://www.mott-multi-media.com/samples/HBCCatalogCover.php

“Education… now seems to me perhaps the most authoritarian and dangerous of all the social inventions of mankind. It is the deepest foundation of the modern slave state, in which most people feel themselves to be nothing but producers, consumers, spectators, and ‘fans,’ driven more and more, in all parts of their lives, by greed, envy, and fear. My concern is not to improve ‘education’ but to do away with it, to end the ugly and antihuman business of people-shaping and to allow and help people to shape themselves.”

John Holt — (1923-1985)
American author and educator
Proponent of homeschooling, and pioneer in youth rights theory

Note the photo in the link above. This photo was chosen to serve as the cover of a homeschooling curriculum catalog. It is supposed work within the reader a sense of nostalgia for a more wholesome time.

The idea that education should take place in the shadow of the cross is something we can salute. Having said that though, the picture

1.) Has children gathering in a school. Much of the Christian community believes that the Scriptures teach that parents are responsible for their children’s education. Why would a homeschooling company reinforce the idea of public schooling by using a public school (even if nostalgic) as their photo for their curriculum catalog?

2.) Note the predominance of the flag. It is placed above the shadow of the cross. It is preeminent and is what draws the viewers eye. Of course in flag decorum the highest flag is the flag with the most honor.

3.) Since it is the State, and the humanist agenda it is pushing, which homeschoolers are struggling against, why does the flag have such a prominent place? Is there something of a hint here of wrapping the cross in the flag? Christians need to realize the dangers of reducing Christianity to a civil religion. The Cross is not Red, White, and Blue. Patriotism — love for country — in our current climate might better be represented by having a photo without a flag so prominently displayed.

4.) The danger that the photo might represent is to reinforce in people’s minds the centrality of the State. By combining this version of what might be called “Judeo-Christianity” with homeschooling what might end up being produced by homeschoolers is little homeschool Statists who are better Statists than the pagan children statists created by the Government schools since our homeschool Statists have become convinced that Christianity and Patriotism are two streams that flow together. Let us say it plainly. Our children, in this climate, ought not to be educated unaware of the designs of the current post Christian West as those designs are incarnated in the State. In point of fact, our children should be educated to know why the humanist American state, needs to be resisted.

During this graduation season what might we look for in homeschool graduates?

1.) Your children graduated knowing the words “catechism,” “confession,” or “creed.”

Whether you know it or not you have catechized your child, even if you have done so without a set catechism. The advantage of education your child with a set catechism (Heidelberg, Westminster, etc.) is that they will have a well grounded understanding in their undoubted catholic Christian faith. Children who are not catechized regarding their Christianity are typically (allowing for the occasional exception) not grounded in their faith and are apt to surrender their uninformed Christianity with the first gale wind of an opposing faith system.

2.) Your children know that all education is driven by some faith system consideration and is what it is because of the theology from which it flows.

3.) Your children know that Thomas Jefferson desired as the motto for the seal of this nation, “Rebellion to Tyrants is Obedience to God.”

4.) Your children know that none of our founding documents teach that this nation is “indivisible.”

5.) Your children make a connection between 1 million dead babies every year and the impact that reality should have on their “patriotism.”

6.) Your children are aware of the concept of “States Rights,” and understand that the States were originally intended to serve as check and balance to the Federal government.

7.) Your children are epistemologically self conscious and are on the road to becoming ever more so.

8.) When asked about “Calvin,” your children know the difference between “John Calvin,” and “Calvin Klein.”

First, Calvinism is the purest expression of the Christian faith and even if you disagree with Calvinism your children should be aware of how Calvinism has influenced all of Protestant Christianity.

Even if you dislike Reformed theology a good education would include information about Calvin since Calvin was considered by the world renowed German Historian Leopold Van Ranke to be “virtually the founder of America.” Historian George Bancroft could say of Calvinists, “The fanatic for Calvinism was a fanatic for liberty, and, in the moral warfare for freedom, his creed was his most faithful counselor and his never failing support. The Puritans … planted … the undying principles of Democratic freedom.” Should your child graduate clueless about the principles of Calvinism that informed both our Republican form of government as well as the Christian faith soil out of which that Republican form of government flowered your child is not educated.

9.) Your children were never offered the blue pill

Reality is not what we are fed by the major media outlets in this country. A complete education will make your child aware that if they want the truth they will have to dig beyond the mainstream publishing houses, media networks, and WORLD magazine. Truth can be found but it is not something that will be found without searching for it.

10.) Your children graduated realizing that many more Christians than Jews were slaughtered by 20th Century Tyrants

The biggest manipulation ploy of the second half of the 20th century is the constant reminder of the Jewish deaths during WW II. Those deaths were tragic and yet their numbers pale in comparison with the number of Christians who were slaughtered by Jews as they were key leaders in the Bolshevik revolution. In the Ukraine alone millions upon millions of Christian Kulaks were slaughtered by the Communists. The Christian Armenian were slaughtered by the Turks. The 20th century has been a blood bath for the martyrs of the Christian faith. Your children should know this by the time they hit 18.

11.) Your children realize that Democrats and Republicans are two wings of the same bird of prey.

Both of our major parties are working in concert towards the same end as designed by the New World Order.

When considering contemporary conservatism as embodied by the Republican party both parents and graduating seniors should be familiar with this quote.

This is a party which never conserves anything. Its history has been that it demurs to each aggression of the progressive party, and aims to save its credit by a respectable amount of growling, but always acquiesces at last in the innovation. What was the resisted novelty of yesterday is today one of the accepted principles of conservatism; it is now conservative only in affecting to resist the next innovation, which will tomorrow be forced upon its timidity and will be succeeded by some third revolution; to be denounced and then adopted in its turn. American conservatism is merely the shadow that follows Radicalism as it moves forward towards perdition. It remains behind it, but never retards it, and always advances near its leader. This pretended salt bath utterly lost its savor: wherewith shall it be salted? Its impotency is not hard, indeed, to explain. It is worthless because it is the conservatism of expediency only, and not of sturdy principle. It intends to risk nothing serious for the sake of the truth, and has no idea of being guilty of the folly of martyrdom. It always, when about to enter a protest, very blandly informs the wild beast whose path it essays to stop, that its “bark is worse than its bite,” and that it only means to save its manners by enacting its decent role of resistance. The only practical purpose which it now subserves in American politics is to give enough exercise to Radicalism to keep it “in wind,” and to prevent its becoming pursy and lazy from having nothing to whip. No doubt, after a few years, when women’s suffrage shall have become an accomplished fact, conservatism will tacitly admit it into its creed, and thenceforward plume itself upon its wise firmness in opposing with similar weapons the extreme of baby suffrage; and when that too shall have been won, it will be heard declaring that the integrity of the American Constitution requires at least the refusal of suffrage to asses. There it will assume, with great dignity, its final position.

~~R. L. Dabney. “Women’s Rights Women”

12.) And most important of all your children will know that God is King, and because His Kingdom is Spiritual it is therefore concrete and growing in history, and consequently in Him we live and move and have our being.