My Night At The Graduation Ceremony

Values clarification in Government schools asserts that each student must decide for themselves what their values are or will be. The student is taught to be the sovereign creator of their values. Via whatever form of values clarification that the Government schools use, and by whatever means (computers are often used for this programming), children are taught to establish values through exercises which are comparatively innocent and non-threatening. In these beginning exercises the wee student ranks or compares items based on personal preference. Short lists are made of their preferred food, sport, or vacation for example. The goal here is get the student accustomed to revealing themselves so that later revelations about their values on matters not benign will allow teachers to coax, often via peer pressure, students whose values are not approved to choose the pre-determined values, and to choose those pre-determined values in such a way that they see themselves as the ones doing the choosing.

This stage of drawing the student out via benign matters works to make the student comfortable in sharing. Once they are comfortable in revealing truths about themselves they are then presented, over time, with a series of moral dilemmas, asking them if they agree strongly, somewhat agree, somewhat disagree, disagree strongly, and to forth. The questions that are now asked are not about their favorite game, or their favorite meal. The questions now asked move from personal preference to ethics. Questions like,

Should children have the right not to accompany their parents to church?
Should homework be abolished?
Should teens be free to engage in sex before marriage?
Is euthanasia a good idea?

Children are malleable and when a few children give answers that are not in accord with the carefully crafted majority report those children are subject to the public scrutiny that puts them out of lock step and so are subtly pressured to surrender their convictions that are not in keeping with the majority report. All of this is just Skinnerian behavoristic conditioning. The student has been conditioned quite without themselves realizing they have been conditioned. Instead what they believe is that they themselves were the sovereign creator of their values. Such values clarification thus leads to the prioritization of the self in the mind of the student, though the controller understands that the real priority always was upon the conditioner.

In 1999, the year that the class of 2012 began their schooling as Kindergartners, in an address at the US Naval Academy, Dr Gerald L. Atkinson, CDR USN (Ret), gave a background briefing on the Frankfurt School, reminding his audience that it was the ‘foot soldiers’ of the Frankfurt School who introduced the ‘sensitivity training’ techniques used in public schools over the past 30 years (and now employed by the US military to educate the troops about ‘sexual harassment’). During ‘sensitivity’ training teachers were told not to teach but to ‘facilitate.’ Classrooms became centres of self-examination where children talked about their own subjective feelings. This technique was designed to convince children they were the sole authority in their own lives. In point of fact though, the conditioners were the authority in their lives.

All of that is necessary background for the observation I wanted to make when I started. Friday Night I attended a High School graduation and the word “self” was used repeatedly in the student speeches. Repeatedly the students were told, “Listen to your self,” “Follow your better self,” and “Be your best self.” In these speeches the students were a crystal clear reflection of the religion they had been indoctrinated in since they were 5 years old. The students were triumphing the cult of self that had been drilled into them via values clarification programming. This observation is not to say that the children were’t nice or polite children. I’m sure most of them are. It is not to say that they weren’t intelligent or talented. I’m sure many of them are. It is only to say that they have been programmed into a false religion.

One of the main student speakers spoke about words and whose words we should really pay attention. I was screaming in my mind the whole time she was leading up to her crescendo with, “We should really pay attention to God’s words in Scripture,” but when she hit her crescendo we discovered we should really listen to ourselves.

Of course this values clarification also teaches the idea that there is no such thing as absolute truth. If values are only what we choose or what we prefer then the notion that there is absolute truth is a-priori ruled out. As a result we get comments like the one I was tossed recently when speaking with a 20 something year old about objective definitions of family. She informed me along the way, “You’re idea of family works for you and my idea of family works for me.” This is just this young lady repeating the relativism that is inherent to values clarification.

The values clarification programming technique is used to pound into their heads, between the ages of 5-18, that they are autonomous individuals who are the source of their values. This is why this kind of education is rightly called “Humanism.” Any education process that leaves students (Humans all of them) thinking that the autonomous self is the source of all valuation is a educational process where the god that has been owned is themselves. Any educational process that begins with the assumption that no God can be allowed into the conversation about values, in the name of some deluded notion of “neutrality,” is a educational process that ends up with the best students on Graduation night parroting the party line about the importance of self and the need to listen to the self.

The ability to educate, during their formative years, apart from establishing the centrality of God for all truth creates a vacuum where a different establishment of centrality for all truth must be lodged. In government education that new centrality for all truth — that new foundation upon which all ethics are based — is the sovereign malleable self.

Author: jetbrane

I am a Pastor of a small Church in Mid-Michigan who delights in my family, my congregation and my calling. I am postmillennial in my eschatology. Paedo-Calvinist Covenantal in my Christianity Reformed in my Soteriology Presuppositional in my apologetics Familialist in my family theology Agrarian in my regional community social order belief Christianity creates culture and so Christendom in my national social order belief Mythic-Poetic / Grammatical Historical in my Hermeneutic Pre-modern, Medieval, & Feudal before Enlightenment, modernity, & postmodern Reconstructionist / Theonomic in my Worldview One part paleo-conservative / one part micro Libertarian in my politics Systematic and Biblical theology need one another but Systematics has pride of place Some of my favorite authors, Augustine, Turretin, Calvin, Tolkien, Chesterton, Nock, Tozer, Dabney, Bavinck, Wodehouse, Rushdoony, Bahnsen, Schaeffer, C. Van Til, H. Van Til, G. H. Clark, C. Dawson, H. Berman, R. Nash, C. G. Singer, R. Kipling, G. North, J. Edwards, S. Foote, F. Hayek, O. Guiness, J. Witte, M. Rothbard, Clyde Wilson, Mencken, Lasch, Postman, Gatto, T. Boston, Thomas Brooks, Terry Brooks, C. Hodge, J. Calhoun, Llyod-Jones, T. Sowell, A. McClaren, M. Muggeridge, C. F. H. Henry, F. Swarz, M. Henry, G. Marten, P. Schaff, T. S. Elliott, K. Van Hoozer, K. Gentry, etc. My passion is to write in such a way that the Lord Christ might be pleased. It is my hope that people will be challenged to reconsider what are considered the givens of the current culture. Your biggest help to me dear reader will be to often remind me that God is Sovereign and that all that is, is because it pleases him.

3 thoughts on “My Night At The Graduation Ceremony”

  1. You have no idea. You have no idea. That may sound redundant, but I am trying to use it in the ancient Hebrew way of repeating something to give it significance. You have no idea. The school is parent. Students run to their counselors if their friend is talking badly about them….if their parents were “mean” to them last night……if they feel anxious about a test….it’s amazing. (Back in my day, PARENTS took care of these things…talked with their children about these issues, etc). Teachers (who are typically liberal) have free reign to rant for an hour, five days/week, on their “soapbox,’ whether it be the evils of slavery, the evils of homophobia, and the evils of religious people. They are also allowed to talk at length about sexual situations, how to handle them, where they can go to receive free treatment for their STDs, free HIV testing and confidential abortions. In “Psychology” class or “Sociology,” the teachers are able to say what they want about sexuality, proper social structure, proper culture, etc. You would not allow your child to sit under the instruction of Karl Marx or Rob Bell or Adolf Hitler for 7 hours a day. However, parents allow their children to sit under people who are eroding the parents’ values all day long. For 12 years. They “teach” all kind of non-education-related stuff….there are groups for students who want to prevent other students from killing themselves, for students who want to prevent bullying, for students who want to to support lesbian/gay/transgender/queer students, for students who want to give their “expert” knowledge about sex & social issues with their peers, for students who want to put on black history month, and the list goes on and on and on….. They make their own decisions, and are considered to be “experts” in their areas, and this is with no parental involvement. The teachers/sponsors ARE the parents.
    On a side note, did you know that Medicaid helps subsidize a part of the “teaching” of special ed students? Sigh. Parents are merely facilitators….baby-making machines……coaches & teachers & peers are with kids more than parents. It’s deplorable.

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