Filed under: public education

The Dearth of Freedom in Public Education

Continued reliance on the promise of reforms made by government education professionals simply give tenured radicals more time to dumb down our most precious resource and engineer the "transformation of society."

 

Milton and Rose Friedman pointed out in their book Free to Choose, published in 1980, that "The education, or rather the uneducation, of [all children in public schools but most harmfully] black children from low income families … [is a] disaster area in education and its most devastating failure."  The Friedmans continue:  "More than four decades ago Walter Lippmann diagnosed it as 'the sickness of an over-governed society,' … the exercise of un-limited power by men with limited minds and self-regarding prejudices is soon oppressive, reactionary, and corrupt, … that there are no limits to a man's capacity to govern others and that, therefore, no limits ought to be imposed upon government …  For schools, this has taken the form of denying many parents control over the kind of schooling their children receive.*

 

The radical minority boastfully proclaims their authoritarian credentials and warns opponents that "Sixty-seven countries' national academy of sciences (including the US National Academy of Science) signed the Inter-academy Panel's Statement on the Teaching of Evolution."  The truth is that it was a radical minority in those countries that have "signed" the document.**

 

Albert Einsten (1879-1955) was not stamped by the Darwinian craze.  He is thought to be among the most highly revered scientists of the twentieth century.  Although not a Christian, he recognized the impossibility of a non-created universe.  The Encyclopedia Britannica says of Einstein:  "Firmly denying atheism, Einstein expressed a belief in 'Spinoza's God who reveals himself in the harmony of what exists.'  He once remarked to a young physicist:  'I want to know how God created this world, I am not interested in this or that phenomenon, in the spectrum of this or that element.  I want to know His thoughts, the rest are details.'  Einstein's famous epithet on the 'uncertainty principle' was 'God does not play dice.'  A famous saying of his was 'Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind" (for more details search Famous Scientists Who Believed in God).

 

The pseudoscience of evolution rests on Darwin's book Origin of the Species.  Darwin's theory about the origin of life is both unprovable and illogical.  Dr. Soren Lovtrup, a non-Biblicist scientist and author, declares:  "Believe that one day the Darwinian myth will be ranked the greatest deceit in the history of science."***

 

Adam Sedgwick, one of Charles Darwin's professors at Cambridge University, took immediate issue with Darwin's book Origin of the Species.  Sedgwick told his former student that it "greatly shocked my moral taste" and elaborated in a passage that proved prophetic:  "There is a moral or metaphysical part of nature as well as a physical.  A man who denies this is deep in the mire of folly.  'Tis the crown and glory of organic sciences that it does thro' final cause, link material to moral; …  You have ignored this link; and, if I do not mistake your meaning, you have done your best in one or two pregnant clauses to break it.  Were it possible, which, thank God, it is not, to break it, humanity in my mind would suffer a damage that might brutalize it--and the human race into a lower grade of degradation than any into which it has fallen since its written record tells us of its history."****

 

When collective bargaining unions had a monopoly for supplying railroad industry workers, the opportunity for truckers to compete by hauling freight gave the public an option and stopped costly exploitation by railroad employee unions.  Also, employee unions dominated the auto industry and cars were poorly made.  It was competition from the manufacturers of foreign-made cars that restored quality to automobiles made by American auto manufacturers.  And now at least two American auto manufacturers have been forced into bankruptcy or government takeover because of government-established unions that demand unreasonable wages for autoworkers.

 

When Medieval European religious authoritarians achieved control of education in the Roman Catholic Church, it was competition sparked by the martyrs (the offended protesters were themselves Catholics) that brought about the great Reformation and gave the masses freedom from the despotic education monopoly.

Life_lib_and_pur

 

*Milton and Rose Friedman, Free To Choose (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1980), 151.

**State of Washington, Kitsap Herald, July 22, 2006, A4.

***Dr. Soren Lovtrup, Darwinism: The Refutation of a Myth (New York: Croom Helm, 1987), 422.

****Adam Sedgwick (1785-1873), http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/history/sedgwick.html

 

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Public Education Shuns Reality

The secularization of education discriminates against students.  The idea of the Ten Commandments as a basis for personal decision-making is fully substantiated by beneficial outcomes.  Without that moral compass, our nation's youth are left in the dark and under the CONTROL of destructive thinking.  They are not given the knowledge for healthy families, fiscal common sense and national prosperity.  When taxpayers figure this out, marginalization by teacher union bosses and teacher tenure will be exposed.  This will open things up and give parents, along with 95% of the teachers (who are in agreement with the citizen majority), the freedom to install religious diversity back as a source of knowledge.

 

This struggle within our education system is not a debate between science and religion, but between religion and religion, atheism and theism.  Science is simply the sphere in which the debate is taking place.

 

Dr. Michael Ruse, a leading evolutionist and authority on philosophy, points out in his recently published book The Evolution-Creation Struggle that the "theory of evolution is, in fact, religion."*  Dr. Ruse also writes:  "Evolution is promoted by its practitioners as more than mere science.  Evolution is an ideology, a secular religion, a full-fledged alternative to Christianity with meaning and morality.  Evolution is a religion.  This was true of evolution in the beginning and is true of evolution today."

 

The change in American culture since the 1947 Supreme Court decision in Everson v. Board of Education, teacher unionization, and tenure law has led to a colossal increase in family breakdown, abortion, homosexuality, use of addictive drugs, and burgeoning needs for hospital and prison space.  Universities and colleges dominated by the old European secular philosophy have become havens for alcoholism and dorm cohabitation by unmarried students.  Some state universities have a department of religion dominated by atheists who serve as a campus mafia to destroy the academic standing of any faculty member who dares to suggest that there is such an alternative to Charles Darwin's Origin of the Species as intelligent design or a God of creation.

 

"The first national study of four common sexually transmitted diseases among girls and young women has found that one in four [is] infected with at least one of the diseases, US health officials reported Tuesday" (Laurence K. Altman, The New York Times, Tuesday, Mark 11, 2008).  One in four US teenage girls have STDs.  The diseases, which are infections caused by bacteria, viruses and parasites, can produce acute symptoms … and potentially fatal entropic pregnancy … and cervical cancer."**

 

In 2010, according to Pam Stenzel, a leading lecturer to young people regarding sexual abstinence, teenage girls in America today are carrying, on average, 2.3 sexually transmitted diseases.  In one 24 hour period, 12,000 teens contract a sexually transmitted disease.***  In the 1950s there were five known sexually transmitted diseases.  They could be treated with antibiotics.  Today, there are over thirty sexually transmitted diseases and thirty percent of them are absolutely incurable.  Among the possible disastrous results are a lifelong necessity of treatment as well as sterility, infertility, radical hysterectomy, cervical cancer and death.****

 

"One of every 100 adults are in jail or prison, according to a new report documenting America's rank as the world's No. 1 incarcerator," states a report from a new study by the nonpartisan Pew Center on the States.  With more than 2.3 million people behind bars, the United States leads the world in both the number and percentage of residents it incarcerates" (David Crary, New York Associated Press, February 28, 2008).

 

These are merely symptoms of the consequences of the courts' detachment from written and permanent law.  Far greater damage is the hidden loss to the soul of American youth.  Is it any wonder that studies show a significantly higher percentage of public school teachers send their children to private schools than non-teacher parents" (George Archibald, The Washington Times, September 22, 2004)?


Govt-censorship

 

 

*Dr. Michael Ruse, The Evolution-Creation Struggle, (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2005), 327.

**Lawrence K. Altman, "One In Four US Teenage Girls Have STD's, Study Finds," International Herald Tribune, March 12, 2008.

***Pam Stenzel, http://pamstenzel.com/

****Pam Stenzel, http://pamstenzel.com/


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Manipulation of the Constitution

Secular authoritarians insist upon what they call a "living constitution" that has an open-minded disconnect from moral absolutes.  As has been attributed to Dostoevsky among others, "If God is dead, then anything is permitted."  The colossal failure of secularized education flowing from teachers unions and tenure privileges, which subordinates citizen sovereignty, is the damning consequence of atheistic-secular politics.  The Constitution becomes a mere political document for manipulation by authoritarians who show themselves to be enemies of family, human dignity and limited government.

 

Regardless of the arguments advanced by those who reject the intent of the Constitution, the Rule of Law means that the government is limited in all of its actions by the rules fixed and ratified beforehand.  This is the context within which legislation, court decisions and administrative directives at all levels of government must fit.

 

For those who deny the important role of morality, here is its meaning from Merriam-Webster:  "a: of or relating to principles of right and wrong in behavior:  ETHICAL <moral judgments>; b: expressing or teaching a conception of right behavior <a moral poem>; c: conforming to a standard of right behavior; d: sanctioned by or operative on one's conscience or ethical judgment <a moral obligation>; e: capable of right and wrong action <a moral agent>.

 

Americans determined to protect liberty reject the "living constitution" because it leaves society vulnerable to political deception.  Constitutional government by "written and permanent law" requires an amendment that is acceptable to the people before a change in its provisions is acceptable.  Faithfulness to this process protects society from political deception and the convolution associated with government by incalculable and changeable decrees.

 

Those who reject the rule of law based upon moral absolutes are like ships without an anchor.

Illusion_of_reality_diagram

This drift is illustrated by judicial decisions that set precedents ignoring and overriding the meaning of the Constitution.  An example of the foolishness of the rule of man rather than the rule of law is the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit's ruling on November 2, 2005, that parents' fundamental right to control the upbringing of their children "does not extend beyond the threshold of the school door," and that a government school has the right to provide its students with "whatever information it wishes to provide, sexual or otherwise" (Fields v. School District, No. 03-56499, D.C. No. CV-03-00457-JVS).  This unconscionable judge-made law further strengthens the arms of union bosses, leftist teachers and radicals, if any, on school boards.

 

American conservatism transcends both the good and evil intentions of today’s adherents to the old European secular philosophy—the religious and political left.  Revisionist morality, supported by the Darwinian theory for life’s origin, meaning, and purpose, represents one of the greatest evils of our time.*  A focus upon the danger to American liberty can be narrowed to those who are at the seat of the problem—secular militarists.

 

American exceptionalism, the tradition of citizen self-reliance, and the liberty that comes with limited government CAN be restored.

 

 

 

*Charles Darwin published his theory for a God-rejecting worldview in the book The Origin of Species, published in 1859.  There is some adaptation within species, but the Herculean efforts of science pretenders to find evolution between species fail.  Sir Arthur Keith, a leading evolutionist has written:  “Evolution is unproved and unprovable.  We believe it only because the only alternative is special creation which is unthinkable” (Sir Arthur Keith, as citation in Wallie A. Criswell’s Did Man Just Happen? Grand Rapids MI:  Zondervan, 1972, p. 73; D. M. S. Watson acknowledged the same in Nature, vol. 124, August 10, 1929, pp. 231-234).

 

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Ban the Ten Commandments? What For?

The laws of creation's nature include the perimeters for civil behavior provided by the Ten Commandments (Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5).  Because of the universal benefits that come from applying the Commandments, they are a common part of the moral religions throughout the world.  Prior to the time that supremacist judges embraced the intolerance of a tiny minority (the laws of man), the rest of us had the benefits that come when the Commandments were emphasized in the schools and on public properties throughout the nation.

 

 

Americans recognize that the promotion of life-building attitudes is important, but that it is not right to punish harmful attitudes that have not been expressed by criminal actions.  "We, The People" places the consequences of attitudes, good or bad, in the hands of God.  He sees and hears all.  Over time, the failure to police one's own thoughts renders severe punishments in direct proportion to the evil committed.  These six commandments pertain directly to such matters of the heart:


You shall have no other gods before Me.

You shall not make for yourself a graven image.

You shall not take the name of the LORD your God in vain.

Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.

Honor your father and mother.

You shall not covet your neighbor's house; you shall not covet your neighbor's wife, nor his male servant, nor his female servant, nor his ox, nor his donkey,  nor anything that is your neighbor's.

 

Four of the commandments provide the foundation for civil and criminal law in America:


You shall not murder (the right to life).

You shall not commit adultery (the sanctity of marriage).

You shall not steal (the right to own property).

You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor (the right to be truthfully represented).

 

It is citizen support for moral absolutes reflected in the Ten Commandments that promotes the passage of good laws by elected representatives.  It is, exclusively, this moral climate within our society and government that can prevail over the curse of moral relativism practiced by the masters of political deception.

 

 

To justify taxpayer support, educators must teach the truth about the God-honoring Declaration of Independence and Ten Commandments that have enabled Americans to change a wilderness into the greatest nation on earth.

 

Tencom07

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Telling Taxpayers the Truth

The Declaration of Independence is universal and immortal in scope. It provides the design for freedom, justice and tolerance.

 

In their quest for liberty, our Founding Fathers focused upon 1) the conspicuous Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God, 2) the Declaration of Independence, 3) the governing character of humility, 4) the Golden Rule, and 5) the morality of the Ten Commandments.  The Constitution was prepared and establishedThe Constitution is the tool for implementing that design of freedom, justice and tolerance.

Image_we-the-people-300x225

Leftist union bosses and unelected judges who allege entitlement to dictate our laws ARE THE ENEMIES of the American concept of man under God over government. Laws should reflect the will of the people who choose like-minded representatives to establish their laws. 

 

The purpose of Restoring Education Central to American Greatness is to tell people the TRUTH. When taxpayers realize what is happening, they resolve to restore their control.  For example, most Americans would be appalled to know how their education tax is being used in captive student classrooms. As a citizen, your help in this important matter is needed.

 

After reading only four chapters of the book, a public school teacher from Ames, Iowa said in amazement, “This was not taught to me in American history.”  She offered some great ideas for improving education; I agreed, but had to tell her that those ideas could not be instituted.  The problem that must be corrected in order to effect the changes she is looking for goes much deeper than that: it is with the system itself. The problem is that parents and the great majority of teachers no longer have control over what is being taught.

 

 

A full discussion of these vital American Principles can be found in my book, Restoring Education Central to American Greatness.

 

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American Principle Eleven: Government and Union Monopolies Involving Education or Religion Are Prohibited--For Liberty's Sake

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a 'redress of grievances.'"

Constitution of the United States

 

Education that does not teach the timeless principles recorded in the Declaration of Independence empowers the enemies of life and liberty for the pursuit of happiness.  The delegates to the Constitutional Convention understood this, and they focused upon the fact that governments are by nature a nesting place for tyrants of the mind.

 

It is the collective political power granted to monopoly teacher unions and the establishment of tenure laws that empower the enemies of the family, human dignity, and self-government.  Tenured secular authoritarians have achieved control of curriculum used in the soft sciences and the study of law taught in government schools.  The weapons they use to enforce what must be taught include the ridicule and denigration of the reputation of anyone who dares to challenge leftist political correctness.  The use of the word "science" is code for their atheistic human origins, meaning, and purpose; "diversity" is code for demanding the approval of evil life practices; and "social justice" is code for using government power to force the transfer of wealth from the thrifty to their own block of voters. 

 

It is the competition of education suppliers that reduces inefficiencies in  government-run schools and helps restrain moral pollution by tenured government radicals.  The debasement of morality evident in the tragic church-state monopoly of Medieval Europe compares with the moral decline that started with government establishment of teacher unions.  First-amendment law intended to prevent the suppression of the right of parents to choose between competing education suppliers for their children's education are superior to all other laws--national, state, and local.

 

The indispensable role of education and religious liberty in the preservation of American principles for government is "self-evident."  Education that leaves new generations viewing government as some vague entity leaves them confused about truth.  They are then easy prey for manipulation by what Jefferson called "tyrants of the mind."  Definite and specific American principles for government of a responsible nature do exist.  Fifteen of them are my current focus of this blog.  

 

Education worthy of the name will emphasize that government is the servant of and for the people, the sovereigns under creation's God.

 

A full discussion of these vital American Principles can be found in my book, Restoring Education Central to American Greatness.

 

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Tyranny

 

American Principle Two: God Is the Source of Unalienable Rights

“All men are … endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.”

Declaration of Independence

 

“We The People Of The State Of Iowa, grateful to the Supreme Being for the blessings hitherto enjoyed, and feeling our dependence on Him for a continuation of those blessings, do ordain and establish a free and independent government, by the name of the State of Iowa …”

Preamble, Constitution of Iowa, adopted in 1846—

seventy years after the Declaration of Independence

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Belief in a Higher Authority also believes in the opposite side of the coin:  that man does not originate law, God does.  Legislators articulate this pre-existing law and give it particular applications to changing circumstances.

 

During the 1765 crisis caused by the king's Stamp Act, John Adams, when writing the Dissertation on the Canon and Feudal Law, August 12, 1765, the Boston Gazette, pointed out that liberty was not man's creation or something radically new to the world, but rights "derived from our Maker," rights "indisputable, unalienable," "inherent," "essential," "divine" and even acknowledged since the Middle Ages by British law.

 

"We further recommend the most clear and explicit assertion and vindication of our rights and liberties to be entered on the public records, that the world may know, in present and all future generations, that we have a clear knowledge and a just sense of them, and, with submission to Divine Providence that we never can be slaves" (John Adams, pictured below, adopted on October 14, 1765, by the town meeting of Braintree, Massachusetts, and sent to their representatives in the Massachusetts state legislature).

 

Those who reject God's authority and proceed to fix the rights of others are, by definition, false gods and, in practice, become tyrants.  Alexander Hamilton, in The Federalist, No. 78, says:  "A constitution is, in fact, and must be regarded by the judges, as a fundamental law."  When a particular statute violates the meaning of the Constitution, it is the duty of judicial tribunals to disregard it and adhere to the Constitution.  

 

"The sacred Rights of mankind are not to be rummaged from among old parchments or musty records.  They are written, as with a sunbeam, in the whole volume of human nature, by the Hand of the Divinity itself, and can never be erased or voided or obscured by mortal power" (teachingamericanhistory.org, Alexander Hamilton, The Farmer Refuted, 1775).

 

Education in America today is energizing the enemies of the family, self-rule, prosperity and liberty because it does not emphasize that man’s unalienable rights are the gift of God.

Inalienable_rights

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Censorship of Christmas in Public Schools

Antichristmastree

Permit me one interruption of my discussion of immortal American Principles ...

 

Secular militants have shut down ideological competition by preventing religious, political and academic freedom on many campuses throughout the nation.  Haters of citizen self-government in America are effectively muting the voices of tens of thousands of concerned citizens.  

 

The war against the Judeo-Christian foundation for American law, self-government and the spirit of liberty extends beyond leftist radical censorship of American history and foundational American beliefs from public school textbooks.  "A decorated pine tree in the Ames High School cafeteria has been taken down because of complaints from a high school employee and some parents" (The Tribune, December 4, 2010).  Reporting the words of the school Superintendent, "We are in the business of educating students.  I didn't want this [decorated pine tree] to become a distraction … so we decided it would be best to take down the tree."  His frankness about a few people who were intolerant of a pine tree within the sight of students is commendable.  The tree was in the school for the traditional Christmas season, but apparently they dared not even call it a Christmas tree.

Hh_dp19755592

It is needful that we reject the spirit of rebellion and enjoin the spirit of truth that empowers man to storm the strongholds of evil.  It is spiritual wisdom that enabled this nation to become the most blessed civilization in history.  The restoration of spiritual glory--the potential to reassert our culture's values of freedom, education, prosperity, and truth--is at hand.

Merry Christmas to all"In this was manifested the love of God toward us,

because that God sent His only begotten Son into the world,

that we might live through Him."

(I John 4:9)

In God We Trust (Except In Public Schools)

In-god-we-trust-1

Having confronted the barriers to success imposed by the British Crown at the First Continental Congress, the Founding Fathers needed to address the following questions:

I.               How do we bring into focus the justification for independence that can, in fact, support the life, liberty and happiness that the colonists found possible?

II.             How do we declare the sovereignty of man under God over government, upon which respect for impartial law, citizen self-rule and liberty are justified?

III.           How do we emphasize the need for strict separation from the British king and other pretender gods, who have managed to betray and exploit mankind down through history?

IV.            What must we proclaim that will convince other nations to have confidence in the United States as a sovereign entity?

The answers to these questions became the basis for the unique principles for government in America.  The Declaration of Independence provided a moral and just basis for law as no other document before or since.  These principles were adopted unanimously by the Second Continental Congress on July 2, 1776.  On July 4, 1776, the delegates signed their names to the Declaration, and the new nation—independent from Great Britain—was born.

What is the common bond that enabled Americans to establish the greatest nation on earth?  The USA Today/Gallup Poll published May 6, 2010 reports that 92 percent of Americans believe in God and only 5 percent said they oppose the National Day of Prayer.  The problem is that public schools stopped teaching how the basic American belief “In God We Trust” translates into principles for political decisions that made America the overwhelming choice of immigrants from around the world. 

In-god-we-trust_large1

 

Our Hands Are Tied ... By Teacher Unions

The loss of citizen control over what our nation’s youth are taught in the behavioral studies hinges on two teachers’ tenure contract paragraphs demanded by union bosses when negotiating with local school boards.  The first devastating paragraph provides teacher tenure guarantees that supersede the authority of school administrators to replace employees.  The second harmful paragraph makes it a crime to disclose bad teacher performance to the public or to other schools that are considering hiring the teacher until costly and lengthy legal proceedings have approved such disclosure.

Professionals like medical doctors, engineers, plumbers, and airline pilots—vital to our society—do not have tenure guarantees.  Yet what is being taught to America’s youth is of even greater importance.

The unionization of teachers and accompanying tenure law have enabled a small cadre of radicals to enforce their attacks against God in education. Newt Gingrich stated:  “Those who want absolute proof you cannot teach American history honestly and accurately without reference to God, go to the Lincoln Memorial and read where in Lincoln’s second inaugural, March 1865, he referred to God fourteen times and used two quotes from the Bible.”

Benjamin Franklin, a delegate from Pennsylvania to the second Continental Congress and signer of the Constitution of the United States, wrote about the First Principle in his Articles of Belief:  “ I believe there is one supreme, most perfect Being …  Also when I stretch my imagination through and beyond our system of planets, beyond the visible fixed stars themselves, into that space that is [in] every way infinite, and conceive it filled with suns like ours, each with a chorus of worlds forever moving around him; then this little ball on which we move, seems, even in my narrow imagination, to be almost nothing, and myself less than noghing, and of no sort of consequence … That I may be preserved from atheism … Help me, O Father!... For all Thy innumerable benefits; for life, and reason … My good God, I thank thee!”

Benjamin Franklin, “Articles of Belief,” in The American Ideal of 1776, ed. Hamilton Albert Long(Philadelphia:  Heritage Books, 1963), p. 5.

Lincoln_memorial

 

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