Homeschooling: The Most Effective Way to Change this Nation
Especially around the time of elections, we hear much about the need for Christians to vote. While it is true that Christians take their civil responsibility and vote, voting is not our ONLY civil responsibility. I think that over the past several years, we in the so-called “religious right” have put far too much emphasis on voting, signing petitions, filing legal battles against the ACLU, and have put far to little emphasis on our greater responsibilities. Many Christian conservatives don’t realize this perhaps, but improving one’s own character and lifestyle in conformance to Godly fear is an immeasurably valuable civic responsibility, or at least, it has tremendously valuable civil consequences (and the lack of such action on even this “private” level can have great negative ripple effects upon society as well). Training up a child in the way he should go is also a great civic duty. It’s impacts upon the character quality of our nation are infinity more tremendous and significant than showing up at the voting booths every other year or so. It is not the job of the government to insure a healthy moral or religious climate in a nation, though it is the job of the government to encourage morality and the practice of the Christian religion. It is the job of that nation’s individual citizens to insure such a society by living lives which are consistent with justice and morality. The role of parents in this particular area is especially crucial, since parents play a huge role in determining the morality of the next generation of that nation’s citizens, and therefore, parents in an immeasurable degree, decide the success or failure of that nation.
Right now, I think everyone in this country who is honest and well-informed about our nation’s history, especially our recent history, will agree that our nation is failing. Politically, our nation continues to drift astonishingly far from our lawful footing – from a government of just law to a government of arbitrary law. Socially, our nation continues to spurn the moral traditions that once made it healthy, successful, and happy; whereas the celebrities of America were once renowned for their honor, valor, and honesty, now Americans have no other role models besides well-known drug-addicts, prostitutes, and swindlers. Educationally, our nation has radically changed from producing generations of thinkers, social reformers, and philosophers to producing some of the most illiterate people in the “free world.” Clearly, the American civilization is rapidly declining, tyranny and immorality escalate, and there does not seem to be any major change in this trend.
Although many more Christians have enlisted in the battle, but we are fighting more battles, and the kind of battles we are fighting are relatively small (Please understand that it is not my purpose to negate fighting legal battles or saying that they are of miniature or no effect; all I am saying is that they will not save our nation by themselves – there must be something more). Instead of putting emphasis on fighting to “not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of our minds” according to the Scriptures, we are emphasizing such battles as being able to keep a cross display on public grounds or whether or not a graduate student can say the word “Jesus Christ” in a positive manner. To combat the influences and tyrannical oppression and segregation of radical activist secular humanists, winning such minor victories will not win the war. I think the humanist establishment is very pleased to see us, their opponents wearing ourselves out and expending all of our energies on minor issues that have no great significance in the long run, besides keeping the enemy somewhat at bay by displaying our hostility towards their assaults. The humanist establishment is pleased to know that these small battles are draining so much of our energy, resources, and most importantly: TIME, while we are getting distracted from the real problem. As the late Dr. Francis Schaeffer put it so eloquently and so succinctly in his speech “The Christian Manifesto”: “Christians, in the last 80 years or so, have only been seeing things as bits and pieces which have gradually begun to trouble them and others, instead of understanding that they are the natural outcome of a change from a Christian World View to a Humanistic one; things such as overpermissiveness, pornography, the problem of the public schools, the breakdown of the family, abortion, infanticide (the killing of newborn babies), increased emphasis upon the euthanasia of the old and many, many other things.” Dr. Schaeffer argued winningly that the mass acceptance of the humanist worldview has brought the decline of American civilization, and that only a massive change back to holding a purely Biblical worldview will turn our nation around for the good.
One must now ask the obvious question “How did the overall American worldview change from being strongly Christian and Bible-based to be so quickly and strongly ingrained in humanism?” The answer to that question is simply this. Especially in the mid- to late 19th century, Christians in America began to accept more “liberal” interpretations of the Scriptures, some going so far as to say that Jesus was not God, and other such egregious errors. The head theologians in distinguished seminaries and universities such as Princeton and Yale began to teach a more “humanistic” form of Christianity, a form which centered on the morality of man rather than the holiness of Jesus Christ. The Christian church in America, therefore, was quite vulnerable when Charles Darwin came out with his books The Origin of Species and The Descent of Man in about the 1860s.
Some Christians were so unprepared (since they had rejected the most obvious teachings of Scripture) to answer these attacks of skepticism, that they soon turned their back completely on all educational and rational pursuits (unlike the majority of the 18th century Christians, who flatly rejected the evolutionary postulations of Charles Darwin’s grandfather, Erasmus), concluding that all attempts at science, logic, and other fields of learning would only lead people toward skepticism of the Faith. Furthermore, these Christians still argued that faith in God was still possible, but only through blind faith – that despite what seemed to be evidence against Christianity, believers should still strive to convert others to the Faith. This group of Christians became known as the “Evangelicals,” because they believed that people should still become Christians despite “evidence” against the Bible. Other Christians, who became known as the “Fundamentalists,” argued differently; they maintained that the Bible is literally true and is the complete word of God. They believed that true science and reason corroborate the Bible’s accuracy and that Christians should not be intimidated by the onslaughts of useless skepticism. Unfortunately, but not surprisingly, the “fundamentalists” have been in the majority of American Christian believers and they have been regarded with scorn – labeled as radical extremists by the major media – because of this stand.
As an inevitable result of the widespread influence of the “evangelistic” line of thinking, Christians began to rapidly withdraw from the educational sphere. By 1892, Christians withdrew from higher education in America, and handed it over to the government. Of course, the secular humanists, who had been gaining a foothold in government, were all to happy to accept this new change. They had been trying to effect it ever since the early 19th century. It was not long before they were plotting to effect a radical change in the entire educational system of America (this group included activists like John Dewey, a signer of The Humanist Manifesto I — 1933). Below are several quotes from educators who spoke at the annual conferences of the National Educators Association, a huge branch of the humanist globalist movement in America.
“Education has had its share in making men and nations and a world which easily go war-mad. Education must play even a greater part in making men and nations and a world which shall be war-proof. The spirit of the new world order is to be made dominant; the school must lead the way. But exactly how? That is the question. You and I are teachers — educators, to use the broader term; what is our part? How shall we discover it, perceive it clearly, perform it well, and win for ourselves and our profession the crown of wild olive from the hand of history, which is after all the reward most worth seeking? . . . Just what changes must be made in our education to produce men and nations and a world which shall be at least conflagration-proof? The briefest answer is that we must foster a new sense of unity of the world; we must take seriously that splendid resolution passed with enthusiasm by this convention proclaiming a great new aim — World-Citizenship! This, fellow-teachers, is the most momentous action ever taken by the National Education Association; let us rejoice that our profession has at least not fallen short of declaring for the dawn of the new world-order.” — Addresses and Proceedings of the NEA of the US (1917), p. 127 ~Edward O. Sisson, President, State Univ. of Montana, Missoula, Mont. “Education and World-Polity” [emphasis original]
“[I]f the public schools are to occupy in the future a position far more strategic than military establishments, or courts of law, or even legislatures have occupied in the past, it is clear that the institutions that prepare the teachers for the public schools must bear the most serious of all responsibilities in the new world-order.” Addresses & Proceedings of the NEA of the USA (1919), p. 240 “Status of the Critic Teacher” W. C. Bagley, Teachers College, Columbia Univ., NYC, NY
“Above and beyond all other considerations, a federal department is needed to give education the status, the dignity, and the influence that it should have in a great democracy. It is needed to put the seal of the nation’s approval upon the most important enterprise in which the people as a whole can engage. We cannot consistently be a nation in every other collective interest, and still remain in education forty-eight separate and distinct entities. The price that we have paid for our failure to have education adequately reflected in our national life has already been counted up in the heavy toll of illiteracy, limited literacy, health deficiencies, and alienism. National subventions to the states will do much to remedy these national weaknesses; but, taken by themselves, they will be and incomplete solution of the problem. To meet the financial condition there must be in our government a department of education second in significance to no other department, with a chief who is subordinate in rank, prestige, and influence to no official less important than the president himself.” Addresses and Proceedings (1920), p. 456; same speaker
“We are forst to ask ourselves the question: What part shall the American public school take in the new world-order? Our first problem is the determine what the service is which education should render the state. We have long understood that education is intended to preserve and to promote a true devotion to American traditions, but we have been driven by the succession of events to recall to our minds the definition of American ideals. [Goes on to say that the spirit which formed America is making way for an international patriotism. This is blatant revisionism outright, and this view has been pushed on American public school students ever since then.].” (1916), p. 93 “What the Public Schools Can Do Toward the Maintenance of Permanent Peace”, Fannie Fern Andrews, Sec. American School Peace League, Boston, MA [faulty spelling original]
“When an opponent declares, ‘I will not come over to your side,’ I calmly say, ‘Your child belongs to us already…What are you? You will pass on. Your descendants, however, now stand in the new camp. In a short time they will know nothing else but this new community…This new Reich will give its youth to no one, but will itself take youth and give to youth its own education and its own upbringing.” Adolf Hitler, socialist dictator
If these quotes do not make a chill run down through the readers’ spine, then I would suggest you remember where you went to school and what you were indoctrinated believe. (No doubt the answer will be you went to public school and were thoroughly trained to be a “believer” in the government.) That ought to make you shudder.
The activist secular humanists, especially those who are leaders in national public education are not distracted by the “bits and pieces”; they see things on the broader scale, and have seen them in that manner for at least the last century. They know that we Christians may vote and petition till we drop dead, but the humanists know that if we do break through in this generation, our efforts will collapse within the next generation or so, because THEY RAISE OUR CHILDREN. Because the schools are owned and regulated by the federal government, especially the monstrous federal educational bureaucracy proposed in one of the speeches above, the children in those schools are raised to believe that government is all-beneficent, and that to limit the reach of government is a crime against “human progress.”
Perhaps this will explain so many individuals over-emphasis on voting. We think that it is up to the government to make sure that America remains a Christian nation; and that by repealing Supreme Court decisions like Brown v. Board of Education (1947) and Roe v. Wade (1973), we will restore order and virtue to society. Don’t get me wrong; Christians should vote (for GOD-fearing men with uncompromising Christian principles), and it is scary when very few Christians vote in elections. Unless Christians take this responsibility seriously, we will see an increase in politicians who will persecute Christians and limit their basic freedoms. We are beginning to see such a thing happening in our nation, which makes this matter all the more urgent. However, we must understand that voting will only change the rulers and current policies, but voting will not change the nation. Politicians may declare all they want to that our nation was established upon Christian principles, but we will not be a Christian nation until Christians (86% of American population) behave and believe like Christians. And this will never happen (the situation will only worsen) if Christians allow a secular-humanist government to give to our children the worst it has to offer of history (revisionism), science (science fiction), literature (crappy fiction which centers mostly on immorality or the occult), grammar and writing (reliant completely upon the opinion of the student), and most dreadful of all, social engineering (the creation of government puppets who will view the taking away of our basic liberties as “necessary” and “for our security” and who will view those who suspect the government’s actions as “conspiracy theorists” and “radical extremists”).
Christians need to raise their children in the fear and admonition of the Lord, but we can’t do that when the public schools are drilling into our children’s’ brains the fear and admonition of the government. Today’s public school system has had over a century of practice to brainwash kids to despise their parents or to look on their elders with a patronizing disrespect. Any and all generation gaps in the past century were accomplished with the major help of the public school system. Yes, parents have and may file lawsuits against bad content in the classroom or the textbooks, but such lawsuits will neither change the rotten system of social engineering, nor make the NEA change their minds about raising up generations of Americans who will surrender their national identity in the name of “world peace” (i. e., a one-world-government that will seek to kill every Christian on the planet in order to enforce a one-world-religion of secular humanism – the Bible prophesies this in the book of Revelation).
Homeschooling, on the other hand, has innumerable advantages to children and to America. It has been demonstrated that homeschooled students receive a far better education than the national average of students (1), (2). There are several reasons for this. The first is obvious: the goal of the parents doing the homeschooling is to give their children a high quality education, rather than to convert them into political robots for future use. Because of this, parents focus on genuine education, not social engineering, and the homeschooled are encouraged to think for themselves and to make new discoveries. The second reason for the success of homeschooling is that parents, who know their children best, are more capable of teaching their children difficult subjects and making abstract subjects real to their children. Hence, the homeschooled have a better understanding of the concepts they memorize, not just knowing what the facts are. Parents also have a way of knowing their child’s strengths and weaknesses, the things that the child can do well and cannot do well. The parent, therefore, is given all the freedom to gear the child’s education toward the abilities of the child. History shows that this kind of education – which has been held to by generations throughout the previous centuries – always works (George Washington, Patrick Henry, Abraham Lincoln, and Thomas Edison received the majority of their education directly from their parents).
The social benefits of homeschooling are equally tremendous as well. Most of the child’s life is spent on some form or another of education, and when this education is in the hands and free reign of the parents, a special parent-child bond is formed, and the child has a greater love and admiration for the parent. Societies are always stable when the bonds between parents are sound. Homeschooled children are also protected from the decadent (for lack of a more repulsive word) culture which is devouring our nation and which is being nurtured in the classroom of the public schools. Homeschooled children are less likely to view immoral and stupid behavior as “normal” or “cool” and are far less likely to be tempted to do stupid or immoral things. Anyone with a head on their shoulders would not have to be convinced that moral children are the hope and security of a healthy nation.
The choice should not be difficult to make for Christian believers in America. In this country, we still have relative freedom, and we certainly have the freedom to school our own children. Some will probably will shrink from the proposition with apprehensions about the cost of homeschooling. Sure; homeschooling is hard work and it costs money and much attention. But there is a heavier cost to pay in paying exorbitantly high taxes to support the rising annual budgets of the schools (those in my area are in the hundreds of millions of dollars) for lousy results: kids who graduate illiterate, have unstable morals, and have learned less then the generation preceding them. If Christians parents really love God and love their children, they will do what it takes to obey God’s commandments and give their children a good education.
It is true that homeschooling is not the only way to combat and protest the new-world-order agenda — there are other alternatives as well. Many churches have their own private schools, which not only shelter children from evil influences but also help the parents of the child to be more involved in their child’s education than they could be if the child were raised in a public school. There is also the option of sending children to other Christian schools, but these are more public and usually provide a less secure environment for the child than in his home or church school. The responsibility of a child’s education rests upon the parents; parents are to obey the clear commands of God and raise their children up in the way that they ought to go (Proverbs 22:6). Just because the culture demands that children be schooled by the public schools doesn’t change that command.
If Christians take so seriously their responsibility to vote for Christian leaders, Christian parents must take their duty to raise their own children (not leave them up to the government) equally seriously. Without passing on the standards we are fighting for in the polls and in our petitions and in our lawsuits, we will lose the so-called “Culture War.” God forbid we should leave our moral culture in the disposal of our government, our courts, Hollywood, or any other corporation (and no, trying to reform or amend those groups WON’T work in changing America), because the culture of a nation is reliant upon the character and lifestyles of the majority of people, not upon the declarations of politicians in long black robes or of the acts of celebrities on television screens.
“It should be your care, therefore, and mine, to elevate the minds of our children and exalt their courage; to accelerate and animate their industry and activity; to excite in them an habitual contempt of meanness, abhorrence of injustice and inhumanity, and an ambition to excel in every capacity, faculty, and virtue. If we suffer their minds to grovel and creep in infancy, they will grovel all their lives.
~~~
“The foundation of national morality must be laid in private families…. How is it possible that Children can have any just Sense of the sacred Obligations of Morality or Religion if, from their earliest Infancy, they learn their Mothers live in habitual Infidelity to their fathers, and their fathers in as constant Infidelity to their Mothers?”
~ JOHN ADAMS ~
3 Responses to “Homeschooling: The Most Effective Way to Change this Nation”
December 22nd, 2009 at 12:28 am
You’ve made your case well, and are correct. Thanks. Good work!
December 22nd, 2009 at 12:28 am
Thanks for your kind words, Mrs. Mecomber.
I understand that not every single person in America can afford to literally homeschool; however, every parent is well able to educate their children outside of the public school system. If enough Americans pull out of the public schools (i.e. government-sponsored indoctrination camps), then the system will collapse, and THAT will do more in a decade (or so) to change the system and the face of our nation than vouchers or petitions could do in half a century.
December 22nd, 2009 at 12:29 am
I agree.
But pulling one’s kids out of the comforts of public school requires sacrifice: less income, more expense (especially now that the parents will be paying for materials even while STILL paying public school taxes), loss of a daytime babysitter, and will now require effort and discipline for both parents and kids.
Who is willing to pay such a price for their child?
I hope all.
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