Wednesday, September 5, 2007

Taking back our children

Parents, do not let your children be indoctrinated. Here is an article on homeschooling. (One may not agree with everything, but she makes some interesting points.) To quote:

No kidding. Abetted by mandatory education laws, many modern schools now serve as de facto indoctrination centers where little kids, tweens, and teens are compelled to listen to half-truths about everything from the Founding Fathers to the free market. The kiddos are ‘taught’ by folks who are largely too lazy, too liberal, too inexperienced, or too illiterate to teach phonics, history, economics, or mathematics with any degree of rigor or intellectual honesty.

Furthermore, the modern academy is actually intended to be hostile to traditional family values. As James T. Bennett and Thomas DiLorenzo state in Official Lies: How Washington Misleads Us, “Schools are to act in loco parentis – in the place of parents – in matters great and small, from hygiene to morals. Mass education proponents of old repeatedly confirmed that inconvenient truth. Compulsory-education advocate Newton Bateman wrote in the late nineteenth century that government has a ‘right of eminent domain’ over the ‘minds and souls and bodies’ of us all; therefore education ‘cannot be left to the caprices and contingencies of individuals.’ “ Share

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

That is a GREAT article! I wish everyone, whether they have children or not, would read it. It really says it all.

This is a great line:


As Alan Caruba, founder of the National Anxiety Center, observed in a recent commentary: “From the Head Start program to the International Baccalaureate, the whole purpose of ‘education’ today is to create new generations of Americans who think that the United Nations should govern the entire planet and who uncritically accept politically correct beliefs about gender issues, diversity, multiculturalism, and environmentalism.”

elena maria vidal said...

I agree!

Vara said...

This is news? Such has been going on since the time of Dewey! Do not forget how the public schools were used to undermine Catholicism (and incidentally, Judaism and Orthodoxy) in the early 20th century. The public schools have always been a vehicle for the inculcation of the religion of Americanism, it has just become more blatant in the last twenty years, and lost its Protestant veneer.

What is scary is that many things done in the old Soviet Union (such as ratting on parents, and belittling home instruction) are now going on in our public schools. Are we "educating" a generation of Pavlik Morozovs? One wonders. Do NOT forget that "political correctness" was originally a Soviet term!

Vara

elena maria vidal said...

You get no argument from me!

Unknown said...

Incorrect; "political correctness" was originally Maoist, not Soviet. Nowadays it's used mostly by people on the right to use something other than its original meaning - namely, the ideology of the government in power at any given moment, which, for present-day America, would be "neoconservatism", not ultra-socialist and Marxist thought. For example, going to war against Iraq and Iran is politically correct right now; pacifism would not be. "Political correctness" is far too often misused to refer to the prevailing attitudes of academia. That's unfortunate, and I would love to see that bit of doublethink come to an end.

elena maria vidal said...

The term "politically correct" is of Soviet origins, and comes from the Russian phrase "politicheskaya pravil'nost'" used in the 1920's. (Mao did not take power until 1945; the Chinese communists borrowed a great deal from the Soviets.) It refers to kow-towing to the party line, whatever the party line may be.

I prefer not to choose between Mensheviks and Bolsheviks, or between the Girondins and Jacobins. For the Mensheviks only pave the way for the Bolsheviks and the Girondins for the Jacobins.....

Vara said...

I quite agree. The October Revolution would not have been possible without the arms handed over to the Soviets by Kerensky.

Political liberalism and secularism is nothing but a halfway-house on the road to totalitarianism. "Kto to"?

Vara

Anonymous said...

It is frightening how the government's grip on the family and our children is tightening all the time. Our children are at the mercy of whatever idealogical persuasion is in power....and therefore whatever 'program' the superintendents, school boards, administrators and teachers choose to peddle at the moment.

The only way to preserve true academic freedom in this country is to allow for various educational choices. Not several state sponsored or administered methods...or the problem will only perpetuate. We must allow, encourage and advocate for many choices, whether private schools, tutors, governesses, homeschooling, etc. Keeping parental choice sovereign is paramount - and something that Holy Mother Church recognizes in Her wisdom.

Mandatory public state controlled education is only a few misguided steps away from a totalitarian type control over our children. They will no longer be our charges - they will belong to the state.

elena maria vidal said...

I'm with you, Margaret.

Anonymous said...

I just wish they would teach proper grammer and writing skills instead of filling in the blanks from a workbook.