| date | Oct 3, 2009 | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| author | Voddie Baucham | topics & issues | Biblical Ethics, Children, Education, Family |
by Bruce N. Shortt, J.D., Ph.D.
WELCOME TO THE CONTINUING COLLAPSE!
Exposing Government Schools: The Youth Ministry of the State Church of Secular Humanism
September, Anno Domini 2009
"Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it, misdiagnosing it, and then misapplying the wrong remedies."
(Groucho Marx)
Here richly, with ridiculous display,The Politician's corpse was laid away.
While all of his acquaintance sneered and slanged
I wept: for I had longed to see him hanged.
(Hilaire Belloc)
Autumn is upon us. Trees provide a symphony of color; the football season is underway; cool breezes abound; the celebration of the Lord's birthday is in view; and millions of Christian parents are vomiting forth their children into the clutches of that swirling cauldron of spiritual, moral, and academic pathologies known as the government school system.
In this edition of The Continuing Collapse we survey the moonscape of government education in 2009 and wonder, what would motivate Christian parents and pastors addicted to aid-to-dependent-parents to rescue their children from government schools? Would it be cannibalism in the lunch room? Child sacrifice in the auditorium? The Continuing Collapse suspects that for many parents and pastors these things would only matter if their own children were "what's for lunch" or the "guest of honor" in the auditorium.
From the "Our Schools are Different" Department
Pastors and parents from sea-to-shining-sea mendaciously attempt to justify their government school sin by claiming "But our schools are different." Of course...and the check's in the mail, too.
In it's never-ending quest to make this nugget of Christian dishonesty untenable, The Continuing Collapse again brings to its readers' attention the remarkable Kevin Jennings, sodomite extraordinaire, founder of GLSEN, purveyor of homosexual clubs to middle school and high school children, and, now, Dear Leader's czar of "Safe Schools.
For the "our schools are different" crowd, Jennings is not only the "Safe Schools" czar for places such as Chicago, Los Angeles, and Boston, but also for places like Muleshoe, Texas, and Walla Walla, Washington. Yes, wherever you may live - even in places that are really, really "different" - Kevin Jennings is in charge of making your government school a safe place for promoting the sodomite lifestyle to every child institutionalized in government school.
How safe does Jennings want to make schools for sodomites? Safe enough to make pedophiles feel that school children are fair game. Do you think that TCC is being "mean spirited"? The link below is an audio file of Jennings explaining to sodomites how he, while a government school teacher, covered up and encouraged the molestation of a schoolchild by a sodomite adult. You will have to listen very carefully because the recording was made surreptitiously.
Sodomites detest having their pedophiliac tendencies exposed. Nevertheless, just remember that Kevin is in charge of "safety" in your "really different school", too.
What's Next in Government Schools?
As government schools continue romancing sodomites and other "sexual minorities", our highly trained education professionals continue to introduce children to more and more of the "colorful folkways" of sexual deviants.
San Francisco -- A San Francisco group billing itself as "the best in LGBT media" is claiming hundreds of public schools in California have signed up to show its films and use accompanying discussion materials. One film features a boy "coming out" by wearing his mother's bikini. Another film incorporates Native American spiritualism to cast LGBT (lesbian, gay bisexual and transgender) persons as "two-spirit" people...
The list of schools claimed to use these materials include scores of high schools throughout the state, as well as a few middle and junior high schools, and at least one elementary school in San Leandro, California. While many of the affected schools are located in the Bay Area and Southern California, other regions - including the Sacramento area and small communities in the Central Valley and the Sierras - are also affected...
http://www.calcatholic.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?id=348b9d15-8dad-40d0-a616-910a00199d1c
And What is the End Game?
Only hard core government school addicts and the terminally naive can believe that the government schools are not willing participants in an effort to eliminate America's Christian understanding of the family and sexuality. Eliminating that element of our Christian culture, after all, has been the objective of "sex educators" for generations. Now we discover that SEICUS now has a helper....
SAN FRANCISCO, California, September 18, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) - A San Francisco sex group's four-year strategic plan, aimed to "change the way Americans think about sex" by desensitizing mainstream American culture to aberrant sexual practices, has been leaked.
The document reveals a well thought out strategy to acclimatize the American public to everything from the practice of sadomasochism to orgies and every other "consensual" sexual behavior besides.
"CSC will be taking the lead in framing the sex positive discourse in our culture," writes the Center for Sex and Culture in its 2007-2011 strategic plan. "In this ambitious vision of the future, certainly more than five years distant, CSC will have accomplished the difficult task of changing the way Americans think about sex.
"People will feel more comfortable with their sexual desires and society at large will be more accepting of a wide range of attitudes regarding sexuality."
CSC says its mission is "to provide non-judgmental, sex-positive sexuality education and support to diverse populations" by means of educational initiatives that include "hands-on, practical skills-building events." The group currently offers several workshops related to homosexual, orgiastic, and sadomasochistic sex, and other "non-mainstream sexualities," and advertises a monthly erotic reading circle as well as an annual web-broadcasted "Masturbate-A-Thon."...
[CSC also intends] to indirectly help dismantle various state laws against sexual perversion.
"The work that we do is sort of … groundwork for getting those inappropriate, in our opinion inappropriate, laws out of the way," she said. "We make the discussion happen for other people who are in a position to make laws."
Dr. Judith Reisman, an internationally-recognized expert on sexuality, told LifeSiteNews.com (LSN) this week that the term "sex positive" means "all bets are off: pansexuality, usually including pedophilia and sadistic sex as well any ages, so long as 'consent' is provided."
Reisman's research was responsible for revealing the fraudulent foundations of Dr. Alfred Kinsey field of "sexology," that largely spurred on the sexual revolution in America in the 1960s. Reisman showed that Kinsey's research into sexual attitudes collected data from prostitutes and prisoners that was then extrapolated to the general public.
The devastating effects of Kinsey's research have matured into the multifaceted attacks on human sexuality that have achieved mainstream acceptability in recent years, including birth control, explicit sex education, homosexuality (including same-sex "marriage") - and, perhaps in years to come - the broad embrace of all sexual deviations represented by such groups as CSC...
"'Consent' means the offender perceives the victim as consenting," said Reisman. "A child then can be seen to 'consent' if it screams, cries, and such but if the molester determines these hysterics are signs of orgasm (as did Kinsey)."
Much of Kinsey's research is now known to have been based upon records kept by an anonymous pedophile source referred to as "Mr. Green," who claimed to have molested hundreds of infants and young children from 1917 to 1948.
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2009/sep/09091810.html
Now We Know Why Our Highly Trained Education Professionals Don't Want to Teach Shakespeare...
(TCC means, besides the fact that they have trouble reading him)
From small town America:
WOLFEBORO, N.H. -- An English teacher is being closely monitored at Kingswood Regional High School after administrators said she assigned an inappropriate essay topic to her students.
Jack Robertson, superintendent of the Governor Wentworth Regional School District, said the teacher asked students to respond to the question: "If you knocked your brother down, would you urinate in his mouth?"...
School officials said the assignment didn't have to do with a book the students were reading.... "While on the one hand, I appreciate her interest in trying to get kids to write, there are other topics and there are more appropriate prompts that could create that same kind of interest," Robertson said...
The district said a supervisor is now monitoring the teacher's assignments. Officials said the hope is that she continues to motivate her students in more appropriate ways.
http://www.wmur.com/education/20990241/detail.html
If this had happened even a few years ago, do you think this highly trained education professional would still be employed with her own special "babysitter"? Those who think that their memories of their school days equip them to understand what government schools are doing now are entirely delusional...and grossly irresponsible.
Part of the Government School Problem is the Current Generation of Parents Discipled in Government Schools
Today’s update on America’s culture war comes from the village of Wintersville, OH, population 4, 067. This charming enclave is home to 21 churches, an authentic drive in movie theatre, and perhaps the only high school marching band in the nation that has turned the vulgar music of Britney Spears into a football halftime show...According to news reports, students in the Indian Creek High School marching band were permitted by director Donald Llewellyn to choose the music for this year’s halftime show...
The students chose “Gives You Hell” by the All American Rejects, “If You Seek Amy” by Britney Spears and “Don’t Trust Me” by 3OH!3.
Earlier this year when it was released, the Spears song made headlines because of its sly lyrical trick. In the chorus where the song title is sung, it’s meant to sound as if Ms. Spears spells out the f-word. The tune by 3OH!3 includes the f-word as an adjective, as well as a scathing reference to Helen Keller and her deaf/mute disability.
Now, here’s an important juncture in this story. It seems like most adults in a position of authority over a large group of high school students would execute some due diligence to be sure that the songs the students wanted to play were acceptable and appropriate. Then, finding that the original versions of these songs were laced with profanity and offensive themes, would respond, “Nice try guys. We’re a high school band. We don’t play stuff like this.”
Instead, Mr. Llewellyn and his staff choreographed an elaborate, nine-minute half-time show featuring precision marching, hip dance moves, and even a vocal rendition of the offensive Helen Keller chorus:
“Shush girl, shut your lips,
Do the Helen Keller and talk with your hips.”
The show was performed at football games before someone complained to Indian Creek Schools Superintendent Jene Watson. Mr. Watson, asserting the wisdom and authority missing earlier in the chain of events, declared two of the band’s songs unacceptable and banned them from the show.
You might think his decision was supported throughout this small, suburban community. After all, he merely decreed that the band must restrict its choices to the millions and millions of pieces of composed music whose original lyrics did not include the few vocabulary words universally considered offensive. And to be sure, many parents, including some band parents, are relieved that the songs were removed from the band’s halftime repertoire.
But wouldn’t you know, some parents are upset. They believe their children’s freedom of speech is being suppressed and further, that since the band doesn’t sing all the lyrics, the songs are fine. They’re going to the school board in October to fight for their children’s right to… (now hum “Stars and Stripes Forever”) …play vulgar songs at halftime...
STUPID IN OKLAHOMA
Don't Snicker. Your government schools are no better. In fact, odds are that they are worse.
OKLAHOMA CITY -- Only one in four Oklahoma public high school students can name the first President of the United States, according to a survey released today.
The survey was commissioned by the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs in observance of Constitution Day on Thursday.
Brandon Dutcher is with the conservative think tank and said the group wanted to find out how much civic knowledge Oklahoma high school students know.
The Oklahoma City-based think tank enlisted national research firm, Strategic Vision, to access students' basic civic knowledge.
"They're questions taken from the actual exam that you have to take to become a U.S. citizen," Dutcher said.
A thousand students were given 10 questions drawn from the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services item bank. Candidates for U.S. citizenship must answer six questions correctly in order to become citizens.
About 92 percent of the people who take the citizenship test pass on their first try, according to immigration service data. However, Oklahoma students did not fare as well. Only about 3 percent of the students surveyed would have passed the citizenship test.
Dutcher said this is not just a problem in Oklahoma. He said Arizona had similar results, which left him concerned for the entire country.
"Jefferson later said that a nation can't expect to be ignorant and free," Dutcher said. "It points to a real serious problem. We're not going to remain ignorant and free."
Question % of Students Who
Answered Correctly
What is the supreme law of the land? 28
What do we call the first ten amendments to the Constitution? 26
What are the two parts of the U.S. Congress? 27
How many justices are there on the Supreme Court? 10
Who wrote the Declaration of Independence? 14
What ocean is on the east coast of the United States? 61
What are the two major political parties in the United States? 43
We elect a U.S. senator for how many years? 11
Who was the first President of the United States? 23
Who is in charge of the executive branch? 29
http://www.news9.com/global/story.asp?s=11141949
The Continuing Collapse has an idea...let's restrict voting to only those who can pass the citizenship test! At least that would mitigate some of the damage being done by our highly trained education professionals and the parents and pastors who enable them. Indeed, it would eliminate a large part of the NEA's voting block.
No Dollar Left Behind
Now, dear reader, why do you think that highly trained education professionals would go out of their way to lower their already nearly meaningless academic standards even further? You will only be confused if you persist in the benighted belief that government schools today are primarily institutions for educating children. The truth is that they are primarily a mechanism for allocating over $600 billion among various special interest groups and, secondarily, about providing certain groups within the coalition of special interests that sustain the government school system privileged ideological access to children.
Now you can unravel the secret of lowered standards. Every child is a revenue unit. Anything that prevents little revenue units from leaving the school is a financial gain to our highly trained education professionals and their friends. Indeed, what is the First Commandment of our highly trained education professionals? "Thou shalt not lose any revenue unit."
Seattle Public Schools may do away with a nearly decade-old requirement that all students earn a C average to graduate, and an even-older policy that athletes maintain a C average to play on school teams.
If the School Board approves recommendations endorsed by Superintendent Maria Goodloe-Johnson, as well as most district high-school principals and counselors, a D average will be good enough to earn a high-school diploma. Student athletes would need to pass five of six classes with D grades or better.....
The policy was put into place in 2000, one way the late Superintendent John Stanford sought to raise expectations. At the time, many feared the new requirement could keep hundreds of students from graduating.
That never came to pass, in part because the district stopped counting failing grades, and allowed students to appeal if their average fell below a C. In June 2008, the district says, it granted C-average waivers to 95 students.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2009873682_grades16m.html
Are you smirking at Seattle? Just remember, if your child is institutionalized in a government school, that school has probably quietly adopted of a policy of giving no child a grade lower than 50, 60, or 70 to avoid "discouraging" him and to avoid upsetting his government school addicted parents. Indeed, The Continuing Collapse's very own really, really different school district that people are willing to pay more for real estate to live in does these types of things...and TCC is willing to wager that its district is located in a politically more conservative area than yours.
Want to Strike a Blow for Freedom and Sanity?
Do a Forensic Audit of Your State's Education Spending
Here we have the Wall Street Journal pointing out that most people grossly under-estimate the loot that our highly trained education professionals have at their disposal and the amount that they pay themselves. The Journal also helpfully points out that support for increasing our "tax donations" to our highly trained education professionals evaporates when the public discovers how much is actually being spent.
Alas, the Journal is also getting the amounts spent wrong. Government schools have their own accounting rules that conceal the amounts lavished, directly and indirectly, on the government school establishment. A year or so ago the Oklahoma Council on Public Policy did a forensic audit on k-12 spending in Oklahoma. When all sources of spending on Oklahoma's government schools were identified and included, the average expenditure was over $11k /per student per year - a far cry from the roughly $7k claimed by the education authorities.
If your state reports spending roughly $10k, you can almost guarantee that the actual amount is $15k or more. If that were widely disclosed to the public, support for more education spending would not only evaporate, taxpayers would demand a reduction. Why not find a conservative think tank in your state and get them to follow OCPA's lead?
... when it comes to actual dollars spent per pupil, Americans get the numbers wrong. Those polled by Education Next estimated that schools in their own districts spend a little more than $4,000 per pupil, on average. In fact, schools in those districts spend an average of $10,000.
One can understand the public's confusion on the dollar and cents question. Schools' money pots are filled with revenue from property taxes, sales taxes, income taxes, gambling revenues, and dozens of other sources. It's not easy to add up all the numbers, and no one does it for the voter except the federal government, which manages to get the information out two years late. When those surveyed are told how much is actually being spent in their own school district, only 38% say they support higher spending.
The public also dramatically underestimates the amount teachers in their state are being paid. The average guess in 2007 was around $33,000—well below actual average salary of $47,000 across all states. When told the truth about teacher salaries, support for the idea that they should get a salary increase plummeted by 14 percentage points.
A presidential truth-in-spending address is definitely in order. Over $100 billion of the stimulus package went to K-12 education, doubling the federal contribution to school spending. A powerful public-school lobby will fight fiercely to keep federal aid to education at these historic highs. President Obama could head off such deficit-driving pressures by sharing accurate information about how much students learn, how much schools spend, and how much teachers are paid...
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB20001424052970203440104574400850103134572.html
By the way, did you ever wonder who the Porkulus Bill is actually bailing out? Go to the head of the class if you answered "mainly the unions and government employees". In the case of our highly trained education professionals, the amount is about $100 billion, as you can see from the Journal article. For Dear Leader, this is a two-fer. Not only does he get to pay off the education special interests, the money will be used to attempt to further consolidate power over education in Washington, D.C.
Now Our Highly Trained Education Professionals Want Parents to Pay Tuition So that They can Continue Destroying Our Children
As Dave Berry would say, "and I'm not making this up."
Below we have an op-ed from a major American daily newspaper in which a highly trained education professional displays a profoundly exaggerated sense of his own and his colleagues' importance as highly trained education professionals.
With states across the country facing huge budget deficits and potential devastating cuts to services, the time has come to start charging parents tuition for their children’s public school education.
If parents of the 47 million students in the United States who attend kindergarten through 12th grade were billed $360 per child per year — that’s $2 a day for each of the 180 days of instruction — nearly $17 billion would be generated.
Can half of America’s parents afford $360 per year for each of their children?
For the price of a cup of coffee, a child can get educated for a day. For the price of a movie ticket, a child can get educated for a week.
For the price of a cellular phone bill, a child can get educated for a month. For the price of a video game console, a child can get educated for an entire year.
Parents spend hundreds of dollars on iPods and cellphones for their children. Is $360 going to break their backs?
However, let’s say only half of the parents can foot the bill. That still leaves $8.5 billion going to public schools.
Cutting a week out of the skimpy school calendar as some have proposed as a way to save money is not the solution to a fiscal crisis, though if the week cut out was the one for state testing, many teachers and students wouldn’t mind.
Already American children attend school fewer days than most other industrialized nations. While a free education for all is a wonderful gift, it’s simply not possible anymore.
There should be no sticker shock about this. Parents today pay for athletic uniforms, musical instruments, lab fees, school-embossed clothing, and field trips.
Plus, they get nickeled and dimed to death from schools throughout the year to donate money for art and music programs, to get their cars washed for athletic programs, to consume cardboard pizza so that a few dollars will go to the schools. Children would no longer have to go begging relatives and neighbors to buy coupon books [small chance of that]...
Brian Crosby, a National Board Certified Teacher, is a veteran high school English teacher, author of “Smart Kids, Bad Schools: 38 Ways to Save America’s Future.” He is founder of the American Education Association and writes a blog at brian-crosby.com.
http://www.ajc.com/opinion/charge-parents-for-public-133567.html
Crosby does get one thing right. Government schools today are expensive to attend. Most parents have no idea that they are paying far more in fees, transporation costs, donations, books and supplies, and unneeded services and products marketed by the schools for fund raising than homeschooling families spend out of pocket for homeschooling. Most government school parents also don't realize that they are spending more time pursuing their child's "free" government education than homeschoolers spend homeschooling. Too bad most pastors can't be bothered or can't find the courage to tell the truth about education.
That's a wrap for this edition of The Continuing Collapse. So, TCC bids you a fond "adieu" and asks you to:
REMEMBER:
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1. Feel free to circulate The Continuing Collapse.
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2. If you aren't hearing about at least some these government school problems from your pastor, why is he your pastor?
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3. FRIENDS DON'T LET FRIENDS SEND THEIR CHILDREN TO GOVERNMENT SCHOOLS.
“Half the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don’t mean to do harm – but the harm does not interest them. Or they do not see it, or they justify it because they are absorbed in the endless struggle to think well of themselves.”
T.S. Eliot