Category: Government Schools

“In honor of R. C. Sproul Jr’s upcoming London debate with Robert Reich on homeschooling I thought I would re-post a couple of exchanges I had two years ago with the honorable Dr. Reich.”

“If parents can control every aspect of the kids’ education, shield them from exposure to things that the parents deem sinful or objectionable, screen in only things which accord with their convictions, and not allow them exposure to the world of democracy, well the children grow up then basically in the own image of their parents, servile to their own parents’ beliefs.”

Robert ‘The Fourth’ Reich
Ph.D. Education “Expert”

This quote comes from a recent radio conversation roundtable on home schooling of which Reich was a part. The first thing that should jump out and strangle the reader is the understanding on Reich’s part that educations purpose is to insure that children are not allowed to grow up in their parent’s image. For Reich the only time that a child is allowed to embrace their parent’s image is if the parent’s image is the same as the schools to which they are sending them. Reich’s problem is not that children grow up in their parent’s image. Reich’s problem is that some children don’t grow up into his image, which he believes all parents should share and which is inculcated in the government schools.

Second what should be noticed is the covenantal character of this quote. Reich’s desire is the production of a uniform product, which can be achieved at the local educational factory, where conformity to the religion of humanism is the manufactured product. Reich’s desire is to mass-produce little adults (children) who will think in ways consistent with his statist ambitions and in the image of their Father in Washington. One must see through Reich’s euphemistic ‘world of democracy’ to understand the desire behind that phrase is to create a covenantal unity that is based on non-Christian thinking.

Third, note the incipient disdain that Reich has for parents. If children share their parent’s convictions then those poor children have become servile to their parents beliefs. Oh, the horror of it all that children would grow up to live lives with beliefs consistent with their parents. Surely, this is child abuse of the most grotesque nature. Also note the implicit disaster that Reich finds in parents actually taking parenting seriously. How dare parents shield out that which is sinful or objectionable while at the same time screening in that which is pure, noble, just or of good report. The contempt and disdain for home schooling parents that Reich has is the reason that many people like me become like snarling junkyard dogs in the presence of these people. They can have my children when they pry them from my cold dead fingers.

Fourth, such a quote should forever disabuse Christians from thinking that the schools are happy places of neutrality that have nothing to do with religion but are ‘only about education.’ Reich, in that quote, has told us that the intent of government education is to separate the worldview of children from the worldview of their parents. Let us speak plainly. If you as a Christian send your children to government schools the government school is going to work to subtly sanitize from your children’s thinking the idea of a personal Creator God to whom we are responsible and to whom we must give an account and replace Him with notions of ‘World of Democracy’. Now, the only reason a Christian parent wouldn’t find that particularly threatening is if they themselves weren’t particularly Christian, or if they didn’t yet understand the stakes.

Fifth, let us not delude ourselves into thinking that Reich’s mindset isn’t reflective of most of the epistemologically self-conscious educational establishment in America. America’s schools, by design, are geared to steal America’s children from America’s parents by rewiring them from the wiring they might otherwise get in the home and in good churches.

Sixth, and finally, as Christians we must be named vigilant and not take our home schooling freedoms for granted. Reich’s quote serves to reveal that the success of home schooling will not go unchallenged. I would contend that the State cannot forever allow home schooling to mushroom. If I were a Statist I would see home schooling, by epistemologically self-conscious Christians, to be an incredible threat to my dominion. If I were a Statist I would prioritize the destruction of the home schooling movement realizing what a threat that a citizenry of critically thinking people would be to my agenda. If I am smart enough to figure out that threat then you can rest assured that many people in the statist educational establishment are aware of the threat that home schooling is.

“Christianity must be a present element of all the training at all times, or else it is not a true and valuable education. The human spirit is a monad, a single unit, spiritual substance, having facilities and susceptibilities for different modifications, but no parts. Hence, when it is educated, it is educated as a unit. The moral judgments and acts of the soul all involve an exercise of reason; so that it is impossible to separate the ethical and intellectual functions. The nature of responsibility is such that there can be no neutrality… between duty and sin. It follows that any training which attempts to be non-Christian is therefore anti-Christian. God is the rightful, supreme master and owner of all reasonable creatures, and their nearest and highest duties are to him. Hence to train a soul away from him is robbery of God. He has not, indeed, committed to the State the duty of leading souls to him as its appropriate task. This is committed to the family and to His church. To educate the mind without purifying the heart is but `to place a sharp sword in the hand of a madman.’ Practically few do recognize and obey conscience except those who recognize the authority of the Bible. There can be, therefore, no true education without moral culture, and no true moral culture without Christianity.”

Robert L.Dabney
Discussions Vol. IV (1870)

While attending the Lansing Tea party, and while listening to reports of other tea parties it became apparent that Americans are hopelessly in love with saying the pledge of allegiance. The irony of hundreds of thousands of Americans gathering to protest government oppression all the while reciting a pledge that was created and legislatively exalted with the express purpose of uniting people to the unitary state was overwhelming. It was like viewing people who gathered to protest their enslavement opening their ceremony with a ritual that sang the praise of chains.

I hate the pledge of allegiance for the following reason,

1.) It was written by a Baptist minister (Francis Bellamy) who identified himself as a Socialist and was even defrocked for preaching that “Jesus was a socialist.”

2.) Francis Bellamy once admitted that one purpose of the pledge was to help achieve the totalitarian (socialist) fantasy that his cousin (Edward Bellamy) once wrote about in one of his novels.

3.) By forcing generations to plight their trough to the Nation State more important bonds of loyalty to family and church were implicitly superseded. As such a civil religion and nation state family were created.

4.) The Constitution does not, and never has taught, that the nation is indivisible.

5.) Between 1892 when the pledge was written until 1942 the pledge was said with the right arm stiffly held out with the right hand palm up. Can you say Hail Caesar? Heil Hitler?

6.) The pledge of allegiance is a paean of praise to the borg Nation State.

Since Americans are apparently hopelessly stuck on sentimental pledges, allow me to suggest a pledge for the next batch of tea parties.

I pledge allegiance to the U.S. Constitution
And to the Constitutional Republic it created
Sovereign states
bound, by a dissoluble compact
committed to limiting the actions of tyrannical government
against all

My oldest daughter is attending the area Community College in order to get her general education requirements out of the way at a very inexpensive price. The ‘educators’ in this place are a hoot and as such she has already had her share of brain dead professional teachers. Now Laura Jane is far far more polite and far far less prickly than her curmudgeon Patriarch but already Laura Jane has had to defend the Old South. She has had to defend the 6th commandment. She has had to defend originalist understandings of the Constitution and much more. Last year Laura Jane went from failing a writing class for her essay on ‘The Problems of Contemporary Churches’ to getting an ‘A’ in the class upon appeal. You see the initial ‘F,’ ironically enough, was for the superior writing quality that clearly expressed the vacuity of the Contemporary Church scene and so convicted the Proffessors on the essay grading committee that were attending area Contemporary ‘Churches.’

The latest brain dead outrage happened this week in her ‘History’ class. The Professor said in class in context of the Scopes Monkey Trial,

“Now I am not trying to convince anybody of anything. I don’t care what you believe in terms of your religion. But I do have to tell you that it is just a fact that the Bible can’t stand up in a court of law. You see the Bible is full of contradictions and that is just the way it is.”

Oh, no … he’s not trying to convince anybody of anything. What a Dunderhead. What a Poltroon. What an Idiot.

Now children, I don’t care what you believe as long as you understand that if you are a Christian you are believing something that no court in the World would ever accept as reasonable or provable. You children can believe whatever you want to believe as long as you’re willing to accept that your belief system is unbelievable by legally recognized methods of acceptance. Go ahead children and believe stupid things and see if I care.

But this isn’t the end. No sirreee Bob. You see, later that week her brain dead math teacher believed that he had to try and one up his brain dead History teacher colleague. The Math teacher said,

“Math is basically made up and it is just by chance that it works out in the world. Most of the people who are writing their Doctorates now in Math are just making it up.”

Math is just made up? 2+2 = 4 only equals 4 because everybody decided and agreed that it would equal 4, and ‘Wow isn’t it fortunate that it ended up working out in the world’?

Not to be outdone the Chemistry teacher this week chimed in with,

“There is more intelligent life out there and the gasses that we are releasing in the atmosphere will notify the intelligent life that is out there that we are here.”

This guy has been watching way to much Star Trek for his own good.

Look, I’m a patient man. I try to give people the benefit of the doubt as much as possible and try to hear what people are saying with a generous amount of charity but this is beyond the pale.

In case anybody wants to know why American children are stupid, I offer these three pieces of evidence that the reason that our children are so stupid is that their teachers are brain dead troglodytes.

And, ‘no’ I don’t think Laura Jane’s school is some kind of notorious exception to the rule.

“I presume the general proposition is undeniable that Congress does not possess the power to appropriate money in the Treasury, raised by taxes on the people of the United States, for the purpose of educating the people of the respective States. It will not be pretended that any such power is to be found among the specific powers granted to Congress nor that “it is necessary and proper for carrying into execution” any one of these powers. Should Congress exercise such a power, this would be to break down the barriers which have been so carefully constructed in the Constitution to separate Federal from State authority. We should then not only “lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts, and excises” for Federal purposes, but for every State purpose which Congress might deem expedient or useful. This would be an actual consolidation of the Federal and State Governments so far as the great taxing and money power is concerned, and constitute a sort of partnership between the two in the Treasury of the United States, equally ruinous to both.”

President James Buchanan
Veto Message To Congress — 1859