By Al Benson Jr. On May 25 at 1:50 PM
By Al Benson Jr.
How often have I heard someone say “If we could just get the public schools back to the good old days (the way the speaker thinks they were when he went to school) everything would be alright.
This is a popular fallacy shared by many who have not taken the trouble to look into the history of the “good old days” in public schools. Had they bothered to do so, they would have found out there aren’t any.
The public, or government schools, were bad medicine from day one! That statement will probably shock some who remember some good old Christian ladies that taught them in school. This article is not an attack on those good Christian ladies, but rather on the system that employed them. They were captives to the school system just like the students.
The foundation of public schools in this country is Unitarian in nature. They were founded by Unitarians, of which Horace Mann was one of the leading ones, and they were founded as a reaction against the church schools of their day (the 1830s). Seeing that the public education system is reactionary toward Christian education and its foundations were Unitarian, they will never be reformed back to what people think they were. If their very basis was Unitarian, what, pray tell, do you “reform” them back to?
The Unitarians were noted for their rejection of the Holy Trinity and for their rejection of the divinity of Jesus Christ and for their rejection of the truths of Holy Scripture. This is the foundation of public “education” in America in the 1830s and since.
Unfortunately, the Christians of that era bought into this system and have been doing it ever since and they can’t figure out why the country is in trouble.
Lets face it, the government schools have their own theology--and it is an anti-Christian theology whether some realize that or not.
The textbook protesters in Kanawha County, West Virginia back in 1974 found this out when they sought to remove really vile textbooks from the public school system there. I have previously mentioned the book “Protester Voices--The 1974 Textbook Tea Party written by Karl Priest. It can be obtained for $19 by writing to him at 141 Karmel Lane, Poca, West Virginia 25159.
Mr. Priest notes, on page 84 of the book: “Children should be removed from public schools. Home schooling is ideal. A good private school is the second best option. Christian parents are biblically mandated to give their children a Christian education. A Christian education encompasses all academic areas--not just a Bible lesson a couple times a week.”
Also noted, on page 185: “The goal of the Progressives was to turn schools into indoctrination centers for the purpose of creating a godless and socialist society. They intended to do so by making teachers ‘change agents.’ That change was coming was made clear by one of our Kanawha County principals who loudly proclaimed, ‘We are no longer transmitters of information in education. We are transformers for social change.’ The term ‘change agent’ was being heard from school administrators and teachers and appearing in professional education journals.” In the words of the late author and researcher, Alan Stang, “You need to read this book.”
Many of the protesters thought they could reform the government schools by getting rid of the filthy books. What many didn’t realize at that point, (some do now) was that they were trying to get the people in the government schools to remove their religious dogma (humanism) and the government school educrats were not about to do that. Christianity, for them, was a competing faith that went against what they were trying to do with the schools and there was no way they would give in to that. They knew, from the beginning, that they had a theological agenda and that they would never be responsive to the wishes of the protesters. All they had to do was to attempt to placate the protesters until they had their program in place, which they did.
The protesters did well to hang on as long as they did and whatever happened, they could not just let the anti-Christians enact their program on their children. So they fought back, and helped to awaken the country as to what was going on. In 1975 it has been reported that there were around 200 textbook protests underway. Most were small enough that a compliant media could ignore them. The one in West Virginia transcended that. But don’t you wonder, with our so-called “investigative” media, why you never heard about any of the other protests?
Folks, this same old shell game goes on today. Christian parents have been bamboozled in this generation into thinking that government schools are okay. If the anti-Christian humanism was rank in schools in 1974, what do you think it is today--over three decades later?
The home school movement is growing, thankfully. It needs to grow more, and the folks in the Tea Party Movement need to begin to take a look at the government schools. Once they do, those with discernment among them will be appalled.