Monday, July 18, 2016

Education or Indoctrination




  
Education or Indoctrination

By de Andréa,
Opinion Editorialist for
‘THE BOTTOM LINE’
Published July 08, 2016 

Do we really have an educational system in American public schools, or has it become a robotic social Indoctrinational brainwashing of ‘Godless National Marxism’?  Moreover, is America really going through an ‘awakening?’  Turn around, look down the road, and see the future…

An education is one of the few things that we can give ourselves and our children that will have a lifelong and lasting effect.  Although most American families send their children—as they themselves were sent by their own parents—to public schools, how often have we stopped to question the goals of the so=called public educational system?  All American’s, but Christian parents especially, should be asking this question.  Are we truly concerned whether the goals for educating our children are the same as the goals of the American public school system?  You might want to ponder on that…

Proverbs 1:7 tells us “the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge” or in some versions “wisdom”.  It should stand to reason that if “the fear of the Lord” is the beginning of knowledge, starting a quest for knowledge where God has been banned, will not yield knowledge at all.  While it may yield a robotic program, we should be more than just recording machines absorbing whatever the institution happens to be vomiting out...  You might want to ponder on that as well!  Man!  This is really, really, profound.

Revelation 21 describes the “new heaven and the new earth” and the New Jerusalem.  In verse 23-24 we read: “And the city has no need of the sun or of the moon to shine on it, for the glory of God has illumined it, and its lamp is the Lamb.  The nations will walk by its light, and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it.”  Notice that the final chapter of the final book of the final word of the infinite God, speaks of being illumined by the light or glory of God.  God is at the beginning AND end of understanding and learning.  This should be the goal of learning for everyone and should certainly be the goal of education for the Christian.  Note also that the “kings of the earth” have a glory of their own, but they bring it into (i.e. subject it to) God’s light.  We must remember that our mind is a gift from God and we are to think His thoughts after Him.

The goal of education then—for the Christian at least—is not necessarily just to acquire a plethora of facts and knowledge, but it is in the end, to glorify God.  Our minds are to be sacrificed in humble dedication to the Creator, the One who made thought possible.  “Do not be conformed (indoctrinated or brainwashed) to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect” (Romans 12:2).

 Rather than viewing education as a means to an end—a better job, more money, higher social status, or better than you neighbor at Trivial Pursuit, etc—we must view our education as a constant renewing of our minds in order to better “think God’s thoughts after Him”.  If the educational establishment where you or your children are enrolled does not share this goal, then it should be cause to rethink sending yourself or your children there to be “educated,” or robotically programmed, as the case may be.

As Allan Bloom points out below (and it has only gotten worse since he wrote these words in 1987), “every educational system has a goal”.  And although he is primarily referring to universities in his book, the same holds true at every level of education.  As an educator, and for most of his career, Bloom was known in academic circles mainly for his translations of the philosophies of Rousseau and Plato.  But the publication of The Closing of the American Mind in 1987 brought him fame and fortune, praise and vilification.  In this best-seller, Bloom argued that cultural relativism threatened to extinguish the "real motive of education”…  Read what he has to say…

“Every educational system has a moral goal that it tries to attain and that informs its curriculum.  It wants to produce a certain kind of human being.  This intention is more or less explicit, are more or less results of reflection; but even the neutral subjects, like reading and writing and arithmetic, take their place in a vision of the educated person.  In some nations the goal was the pious person, in others the warlike, in others the industrious.  Always important is the political regime, which needs citizens who are in accord with its fundamental principle.  Aristocracies want gentlemen, oligarchies men who respect and pursue money, and democracies lovers of equality.  Democratic education, whether it admits it or not, wants and needs to produce men and women who have the tastes, knowledge, and character supportive of a democratic regime.  Over the history of our republic, there have obviously been changes of opinion as to what kind of man is best for our regime…  This education has evolved in the last half-century from the education of democratic man to the education of the democratic personality.

The palpable difference between these two can easily be found in the changed understanding of what it means to be an American.  The old view was that, by recognizing and accepting man’s natural rights, men found a fundamental basis of unity and sameness.  Class, race, religion, national origin, or culture all disappear or become dim when bathed in the light of natural rights, which give men common interests and make them truly brothers.  The immigrant had to put behind him the claims of the Old World in favor of a new and easily acquired education.  This did not necessarily mean abandoning old daily habits or religions, but it did mean subordinating them to new principles.  There was a tendency, if not a necessity, to homogenize nature itself.”

This philosophy has been the cornerstone of American history for more than 200 years.  But now we face the threat of a Marxist as well as an Islamic theocracy that unlike all other cultural origins doesn’t homogenize itself into any other culture.  It infiltrates and surreptitiously mutates the host country’s civilization until it is replaced with the invading Ideology.

Bloom continues:
“The recent education of openness has rejected all that.  It pays no attention to natural rights or the historical origins of our regime, which are now thought to have been essentially flawed and regressive.  It is progressive and forward-looking.  It does not demand fundamental agreement or the abandonment of old or new beliefs in favor of the natural ones.  It is open to all kinds of men, all kinds of life-styles, all ideologies.  There is no enemy other than the man who is not open to everything.  But when there are no shared goals or vision of the public good, is the social contract any longer possible?  “

Bloom’s question may sound mostly rhetorical when asked today, because we have been conditioned for so long that different beliefs should be celebrated rather than questioned, i.e. the religion of Political-Correctness and Multi-Culturalism.  In other words, the public indoctrinational system is working.  In 1970, Ivan Illich A half Jewish Catholic priest with educational studies pointed out that we had confused “going to school” with “getting an education,” and this confusion has only gotten worse in the intervening 40 years.  Government education is accomplishing with amazing accuracy the very goal that it has openly stated from its beginnings: a “socialized indoctrinated public”.  We are only now beginning to see an awakening—possibly through the throngs of TEA-party demonstrators and anti-Socialism campaigns—to a partial understanding of what socialization actually means.  Yet most of these same protesters view socialism as only an economic program.

Bloom continues:
“Our culture is being manipulated to worship the State. [Setting the stage for the Islamic agenda and or a Marxist State]  We see the state as a god, with the right to control everything which it chooses.  The State is being endowed with powers for controlling the destiny of its human resources—the power of predestination.  Our culture teaches us to think of the State as having a natural right to control the education of children for the sake of society, because, after all, the Democratic State is the embodiment of society.  Our culture teaches us that the State has a compelling interest in its own survival and success.  Hence the State must own the children, for the children are the future of the State.  Though this doctrine is rarely stated in such explicit terms, it is nevertheless the implicit declaration of virtually all state programs.  The State seeks to be omniscient—to know everything about us.  The State seeks to be omnipresent—to be everything in society.  The State seeks to be omnipotent—to control everything in society.  The State is the incarnation of the god of humanism.  Man, through the State, has become the measure of all things.  The promise of this enemy in the Garden of Eden is at last fulfilled in the Socialist State.  Man is as a god, determining for himself what good and evil is — measuring everything by his own invented and perverted grey standards, apart from God.”

Now if one throws the curve of Islam into the mix, the enemy in the Garden of Eden begins to materialize.  It should go without saying that we should want less, not more, of this type of Marxist socialization or Islamic Sharia for ourselves and our children.  Many otherwise well-intentioned Christians actually object to alternatives to government education because they claim that their child will not get enough “socialization,” or “multi-cultural exposure.”  I realize that when people say that they want their children to be socialized at school, they do not mean, they want them to be influenced by and taught Multi-Culturalism in the form of Communism, Marxist socialism, or Islamic Jihad.  But this is beside the point, because that is exactly what is happening.  Public, or social, education is one that “aims to develop ‘man’ as a member of a social collective society and not as an independent individual…  The idea of social education and social pedagogy [the art of teaching] in its most general form was formulated by Immanuel Kant, a metaphysical philosopher in the mid 1700’s, who in his lectures on pedagogy expressed among other things the following thought.

 “Children must be trained not for the present but for the future improvement of the human race and in accordance with some conception of the destiny of mankind.  And when that destiny of mankind is one that self-consciously excludes the God of the Bible, we should just as self-consciously reply ---I will not be attending.”

In reality, Americans have at least been socialistically programmed for decades.  When Americans for example, claim that they want nothing to do with President Obama’s Muslim or Communistic social agenda, they seem to be oblivious to the fact that at least this dependant socialistic agenda has been ongoing since before the Great Depression of the 1930’s.  Every president since FDR has followed his lead of involving the government in more and more areas where it constitutionally does not belong; some to greater, some to lesser degrees. 

Education is always in the forefront of government time, money, and resources, being directed at it.  And for all of the attention it has been given, the positive results have steadily decreased in nearly direct proportion to the amount of money being funneled into it.  This is only to be expected because Islam and Marxist Socialism is primarily about government control—of everything—not about getting your monies worth or more dollars out of your wallet.  Getting your money is the easy part.  ‘The last thing the state needs is your money; the first thing it needs is your mind and you soul, and more importantly the minds and souls of your children’.

Allen Bloom’s quotation above should not be forgotten when the topic of education is discussed.  He says, “Every educational system has a moral goal that it tries to attain and that informs its curriculum.”  That is, education is designed to fulfill a need; it is designed to meet the needs of changing opinions “as to what kind of citizen, comrade, or oppressed follower is best for our regime.”  Those who openly display opposition to the current program of “European-style socialism” or the multi-cultural attitude towards Islam being imposed on the American people are often befuddled as to why their own children don’t seem to be bothered by it.  They blame everything from video games to the media, but they will seldom confront the thousand pound gorilla of government education.  Our country thinks the way it does because of how it has been programmed.  This should come as no great shock, but somehow it is always viewed as “controversial.”  There is really nothing controversial about it; the real controversy is why we aren’t doing anything to stop it.  We have allowed Islam and Marxist socialists to not only take over the public education system, but we have actually given them the funds with which to do it.  We have literally paid the Muslims and Communists (and paid them quite well in fact) to enable their evil agenda of Sharia and social programming and what’s worse, the subversion of our own children. 

Did you know that Federal control of the American educational system is in direct violation of U.S. Constitutional law?  Of course you didn’t, because you have been programmed to accept it.  No!  There is nothing in the U.S. Constitution that allows the Federal Government to have a Department of Education; it should therefore be abolished.  Moreover, as the Tenth Amendment restates the Constitution's principle of federalism rather than nationalism by providing that powers not granted to the central government nor prohibited to the states by the Constitution of the United States be reserved to the states or the people.  It is written as follows: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people”

This is why education is such an important subject for Americans, especially Christian Americans to be considering.  (Perhaps the most important)  If it is true that “the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge,” and or wisdom, and it is true that modern State-run education is purposefully teaching with the abolition of God, then it logically follows that government education is deliberately creating programmed robots and ignorance among the masses.  It comes down to a simple declaration of allegiance: either we believe God and are for Him, or we don’t believe God and we are against Him.  There is no middle ground.  A friend once said, “If you insist on being in the middle of the road, you will eventually be run over.”  He is a pastor and a ‘truck driver’; he knows what he is talking about.    

If Proverbs teaches this simple truth that knowledge can only begin when one clearly understands that “the Lord reigns,” it should come as no surprise that eliminating the reigning Lord from education will end in futility (read Psalm 2).  This is not to say that modern education has not successfully attained its humanistic goals, because it most certainly has.  But it has done this by substituting one Sovereign for another: the State in place of God.  By doing this it shows that it believes wholeheartedly in the idea, but not the Source of the idea.  

Which leads to the very difficult question begging to be asked: Why are Americans only now getting hot under the collar about this “socialistic agenda?”  Why did it take the recent financial mess and the election of a Communist Muslim to the White House, to awaken people from their socialistic anti-American slumber, when this educational mess has been public knowledge for more than 50 years?  Why are we more concerned about losing our money than we are about losing our country, or more importantly our children?

This is the real issue.

We pride ourselves on our advances, even when those advances are stifling any long-term benefits for short-term gains.  Unless we really want future generations of Americans to be full-fledged, card-carrying Marxist Socialists, or worse Islamic terrorists, we must admit that the system is not working for us - but against us.  Like an alcoholic, we must first admit that we have a problem before we can begin dealing with it.  In other words identify who the enemy is.

When Dorothy Sayers the English Novelist wrote in her essay, (“The Lost Tools of Learning“), she spoke of the “true object,” she is referring to teaching students how to think, rather than what to think.  While this is definitely a concern, the real “true object” is the Christ of the Scriptures.  It matters little if we teach an entire generation of children how to think, if we fail to give them the Truth as the solid foundation.  Knowing how to think with false knowledge is really no better than being told what to think. As I learned from my Pastor, It took forty years of desert wandering and the loss of an entire generation to clear the Israelites’ minds and souls of the slave mentality they were taught in generations of Egyptian bondage.  We didn’t get into our slavery of Communist Socialism or the oppression of Islamic Sharia overnight, and we won’t quickly get out of it either.  A generational plan must be instituted now - to begin the “exodus” process.  That plan begins with education and it must have Proverbs 1:7 written in permanent marker across the top of this page of history.

THE BOTTOM LINE: I had the privilege of attending a Christian grade school 1-8.  I attended a public High School and College.  My son did the same.  Because of my memory of public education, I de-briefed and de-programmed my son when I could, at the end of every school day as he attended public school.  I am not sure that this would be adequate for today’s government social propaganda indoctrinational institutions, otherwise known as Americans public school system.  If however, a public education were the only choice for ones children, then I would strongly recommend doing the same.  However you might find that undoing each day the damage, which has taken the better part of a day to inflict by a public indoctrinational institution, may be no simple task.

Another choice to consider might be homeschooling at least K-8.  If that is a possible choice, then be sure it has the oversight of a State accredited Christian school.  In some states if the rules aren’t followed to the letter, parents could be brought up on charges of truancy and or child neglect or endangerment and the possibility of having their children physically removed from the home. 

I shudder to think what America might look like in another generation or two when America’s children graduate with all these degrees from all these government indoctrinational institutions, robotically programmed with an anti-American Islamic and or Marxist philosophy and a false ideology of what the American identity really is. 

Don’t be fooled for example, by the religion of Al Gore’s “Global Warming”, it is just another means of robotic control.  Whether one naively believes that it is true, or well read enough to know that it is not, is irrelevant.  It is the motive, purpose and agenda that is important.  Its agenda is to accomplish nothing but to strengthen ones dependence on a central government that is rapidly becoming The National Socialist Republic of America, or possibly just another Islamic State, or even a combination of both.  

Take an interest in what your children are being taught… do the research, and take part in their education.  

Remember…government doesn’t take rights away from us as much as we simply give them up!

My Dad one said regarding ones rights, “Use ‘em or lose ‘em”

May, God bless you and may His blessings awaken the contented slumber of the ‘real, United States of America’…


Thanks for listening
- de Andréa

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