Goals 2000

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On Sat, 24 Aug 1996 20:13:23 -0600 (CST) Elaine Morgan <
>children.  Maybe, we will be the only light that they will see in 
>their life.
>I love these kids!!!  Many of their parents would never be able to 
>afford 
>a private education for them..................and many wouldn't be 
>interested.  I guess what I am trying to say is "Don't forget the 
>little 
>children".  Jesus came to save the lost!  I know he would be the first 
>to 
>open his arms to them.

You have it right Sister!  It is adults like you and other teachers that
need to be in the Public school system so that you can reach the lost
that need to see your light.

Many Christian parents today, however, rationalize that they are sending
their children to public school in order for them to be "missionaries"
to the unsaved children.  However, there are no Biblical examples of children being used as missionaries, but rather adults are always the
missionaries.  This of course means it is important for adult Christians
to become public school teachers and administrators, school board
members, truant officers and social workers.

As far as children are concerned, God commands us, as seen in the
Scripture, to provide our children with a comprehensive education based
on His principles.  Sending our children to public school to "save
souls" while they receive six or more hours of secular brain washing
does not relieve us of our responsibility before God.  Disobeying God by
doing something in the name of God does not justify sin.

For instance in I Samuel 15:1-23, King Saul directly disobeyed God's command to destroy all of the Amaekite animals by sparing the animals and then sacrificing them as sacrifices to the Lord.  God rebuked Saul through
Samuel saying:

"Has the Lord as much delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices, as in
obeying the voice of the Lord?  Behold, to obey is better than
sacrifice, and to heed than the fat of rams.  For rebellion is as the
sin of divination, and insubordination is as iniquity and idolatry."

Are we trying to make a "sacrifice" to God by sending our children to
public schools to "save souls", while disobeying God's commands to us concerning raising our children?  

The public schools are in sad shape.  In America, by God's grace we have
alternatives to sending children to public school.

I will conclude with three quotes which sum up the modern philosophical
crisis in the public school system.

Author Charles Francis Potter, who wrote the book Humanism: A New
Religion, saw humanism rushing into the public school system.

He said, "Education is thus a most powerful ally of humanism, and every
public school is a school of humanism.  What can the theistic Sunday
School, meeting for an hour once a week and teaching only a fraction of
the children, do to stem the tide of a five day program of humanistic
reaching?"

Educational writer Elmer Town declared: "The public schools have a
singular adherence to secular humanism, and defined as a total lifestyle
without reference to or need of God ... the public schools are not neutral, it is anti-Christian.  For a Christian to send his children to the public school is just as consistent as sending them to a Unitarian Sunday
School; they are learning the opposite of what is taught in the Word of
God."

And finally, Robert Thoburn, author and administrator of a large
Christian school, tells us about Satan's big lie:

"Obviously the schools are not Christian.  Just as obviously they are not
neutral.  The Scriptures say that the fear of the Lord is the chief part
of knowledge: but the schools, by omitting all reference to God, give
the pupils the notion that knowledge can be had apart from God.  They
teach in effect that God has no control of history, that there is no
plan of events that God is working out, that God does not foreordain whatsoever came to pass .....

The public schools are not, never were, can never be, neutral. 
Neutrality is impossible.

The big lie of the public schools is that the God of the Bible is
irrelevant.  The textbooks never mention Him.  Everyone assumes that
children do not need to know anything about God, God's law, and God's Word in order to become educated people.  This is Satan's own lie."

How can we relegate our children to their daily lives in an atmosphere of
no God and humanistic philosophies and believe that they are going to
receive a Godly education.  Is it because they spend 4 to 10 hours a
week in church against the 30 or more in public school classrooms?  Do
you spend as much time at home with your child instructing him in the
truth of God's word and wisdom to counteract what he is receiving all
week at school?  I think not.  None of us do.  God has given us
alterantives to Satan's schools in this country.  If you cannot afford a
private school then check out a Godly academic homeschool program.

History is a valuable tutor.  If we can learn from the mistakes of the
past, we can avoid repeating them.  Let us briefly review the critique
of godly men and other scholars of the past who understood the
consequences and warned us about secular, state education.  I will allow
each of them to speak for themselves on this issue.

For instance, Archibald Hodge, pastor and theologian, nearly one hundred
years ago, warned:

I am as sure as I am of the fact of Christ's reign that a comprehensive
and centralized system of national education, separated from religion as
is now commonly proposed, will prove the most appalling enginery for the propagation of anti-Christian and atheistic unbelief, and of anti-social
nihilistic ethics, individual, social and political, which this sin rent
world has ever seen."

Timothy Dwight, president of Yale University from 1795 to 1817, was a man
who followed God.  He, too, understood the importance of Christian education:

"Education ought everywhere to be religious education .... parents are
bound to employ no instructors who will not instruct their children
religiously.  To commit our children to the care of irreligious persons
is to commit lambs to the superintendcy of wolves."

Similarly, Noah Webster, echoed this truth:

"In my view, the Christian religion, is the most important and one of the
first things to which all children, under a free government, ought to be
instructed ... No truth is more evident to my mind than that the
Christian religion must be the basis of any government intended to secure the rights and privileges of a free people."

During the reformation, Martin Luther warned us:

"I am afraid that the schools will prove the very gates of hell, unless
they diligently labor in explaining the Holy Scriptures and engraving
them in the heart of the youth."

R.L. Dabney, a reformed preacher and writer during the time of the Civil
War and following noticed that with the growth of public schools, crime
increased.  He also made some very prophetic statements in his book "On
Secular Humanism", describing the inevitable censorship of religion:

"But the result of public education is to bring a larger number of
children into primary schools, and reduce the illiteracy somewhat - which is a great delight to shallow philanthropists.  But the number of
youths well educated above the mere rudiments and especially those
brought under daily Christian training is diminshed.

So, the actual and consistent secularization of education should not be
tolerated.  But nearly all public men and preachers declare that the
public schools are the glory of America.  They are a finality, and in no
even to be surrendered.  We have seen that their complete secularization
is logically inevitable.  Christians must prepare themselves then, for
the following results: all prayers, cathecisms, and Bibles will
ultimately be driven out of the schools.

.... But may parents nevertheless neglect or pervert the power?  Yes, but
does the State never neglect and pervert its powers?  With the lessons of
history to reach the horrible and almost universal abuses of power in the
hands of civil rulers, that question is inconclusive.  In the case of an
unjust or Godless state, the evil would be universal and sweeping. 
There is no doubt that God has deposited the duty in the safest place in
the parents."

Historian Philip Schaff remarked in 1888:

"It is impossible to draw the precise line between moral and religious
education.  Absolute indifference of the schools to morals is
impossible; education must either be moral or immoral, religious or
irreligious ... An education that ignores religion altogether would
raise a heartless and infidel generation of intellectual animals."

Other leaders of the past saw the advent of public schools as a way for
the state to control education nationwide.  For example, free-market economist, John Stuart Mills warned:

"A general state education is a mere contrivance for molding people to be
exactly like one another; and as the mold in which it casts them is that which pleases the predominant power in the government or the will of the majority of the existing generation; in proportion as it is efficient and
successful, it establishes a despotism over the mind, leading by natural
tendency to one over the body."

Hitler said, "Let me control the textbooks, and I will control Germany."

And he did.  Hitler's government also outlawed private education and that
is a trend that we see approaching today as the state contends that
parents do not have the ability to teach their children.

And if the voices of the past are not enough let us listen to a man who was selected as Teacher of the Year in the state of New York recently. 
John Taylor Gatto quit teaching after receiving this award because he
said that he didn't want to "hurt" kids anymore.  In addition he
declared "government schooling ... kills the family by monopolizing the
best times of childhood and be teaching disrespect for home and
parents."  In his acceptance speech of the above award in 1990 he
stated:

"We live in a time of great school crisis.  We rank at the bottom of
nineteen industrial nations in reading, writing and arithmetic.  At the
very bottom.  The world's narcotic economy is based upon our consumption
of this commodity:  If we didn't buy so many powdered dreams the business
would collapse - and schools are an important sales outlet.  Our teenage
suicide rate is the highest in the world and suicidal kids are rich kids
for the most part, not the poor.  In Manhattan 70% of all new marriages
last less than five years.  So something is wrong for sure ....

I don't think that we'll get rid of schools any time soon, certainly not
in my lifetime, but if we're going to change what is rapidly becoming a
disaster of ignorance we need to realize that the school institution
"schools" very well but it does not "educate" - that's inherent in the
design of the thing.  It's not the fault of bad teachers or too little
money spent.  It's just impossible for education and schooling ever to
be the same thing.

The daily misery all around us is, I think, in large measure caused by
the fact that, as Paul Goodman put it thirty years ago, we force our
children to grow up absurd.  Any reform in schooling has to deal with its absurdities.

It is absurd and anti-life to be part of a system that compels you to sit
in confinement with people of exactly the same age and social class. 
That system effectively cuts you off from the immense diversity of life
and the synergy of variety; indeed it cuts you off from your own past
and future, sealing you in a continuous present much the same way
television does ....

Two institutions at present control our children's lives: television and
schooling, in that order; both of these reduce the real world of wisdom,
fortitude, temperance, and justice to a never-ending, non-stop
abstraction.  In centuries past, the time of a child and adolescent
would be spent in real work, real charity, real adventures, and the
realistic search for mentors who might teach you what you really wanted
to learn.  A great deal of time was spent in community pursuits,
practicing affection, meeting and studying every level of the community,
learning how to make a home, and dozens of other tasks necessary to
become a whole man or a whole woman."

Knowing all of this, and we have only touched the surface here, Can we
risk sending our children to a public school?

The choice must be yours.  Ask God for guidance.