SCHOOLS AS TOOLS-PART 1
Histories
People are suddenly worried about Common Core dumbing down their children with a new experimental educational system when the entire modern educational system has been an experiment of failure and they as long with their children are already dumbed down.
The discovery of a 1912 Eighth Grade examination in Bullitt County Kentucky that few modern Eighth Grade students could pass should have sent shock waves of change through the schools of America. But no one seems to know what to do nor are they willing to do it. Like sheep they bleat their complaints and wait for others to fix the problem.
I have raised sheep in the high deserts of Oregon. I have pointed the way for sheep for decades when they needed a good direction to go. I have been changed by the sheep and they have been changed by the desert. Farm flocks who have lived in fenced fields for generations do not do well on the open range. It is much the same with people and public schools that fence in the minds and emotions of your children.
My wife and I have taught our six children at home for years. Over those years I became a collector of old and new school books. I noticed long before that 1912 test was discovered that there was a difference in the books over time. Vocabulary in higher grades of the 1980’s was previously required in a much lower grade in the 1940’s or 20’s. Math skills in the 5th grade in the 40’s were equal or superior to what was required of the 8th grade student in the 1980’s. And the earlier problems were more pragmatic.
Probably the most alarming change was that the content of the history books was changing. My discovery of history’s alteration began when my young son had read several children’s books on George Washington. I quizzed him as to who this George W. was. I received the typical responses of the first President, a General, married to Martha and of course he had wooden teeth. The answer seemed hollow. This was not who the man was. I felt we should look into this in greater depth.
I found some writings by Washington and began to read them. This is when I discovered I did not know who old George Washington had been either, what he thought and believed. I had been dumbed down. “Read not to contradict and confute, nor to believe and take for granted, but to weigh and consider… Histories make men Wise.”[1]
Deliberate Lies
“The trouble with people isn’t their ignorance-it’s the number of things they know that just ain’t so.” Mark Twain
The more I began to read the actual record of History at its source the more I realized that the truth is not being taught. As I compared the more modern history books with older curriculum I realized that they had gone from basic omission to outright lies. The most unsettling thing was that there seemed to be both a method and a pattern to the distortions of our history.
“History is the torch that is meant to illuminate the past, to guard us against the repetition of our mistakes of other days. We cannot join in the rewriting of history to make it conform to our comfort and convenience.”[2]
To control the people it is essential to keep them ignorant. The best way to keep people ignorant is to give them a degree of knowledge as if it were the whole truth. Pile upon their minds and thoughts a mass of education but leave out those aspects of reality that would give them a grasp of the whole truth. It is a brave new world we live in today. 1984 came and passed us by and we didn’t even notice. Now we are trapped in a mental matrix of lies and half truths, a labyrinth built with bricks of prevarication but mortared together with our own pride.
“To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed… systematically undermines the solidarity of the family…” Orwell, George, Nineteen Eighty-Four.
Could “…our schools have been scientifically designed to prevent over education from Happening?”[3] Would we notice the changes? “An ignorant people are easily betrayed, and a wicked people can never be ruled by the mild influence of their own laws.”[4]
“The Matrix is everywhere… It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth.”[5] “And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” John 8:32
Pilate asked Jesus, “What is truth?” The truth is we are a slave to our own pride which keeps us from seeing that we do not already know the truth. No-one can be told what the truth is unless they are willing to believe that they do not already know truth. Humility is key.
People may accept a lie but to deceive the whole world is something the Christian community has been forewarned of and should be forearmed. But are Christians really Christian? Deception can still take place as it did in the times that Jesus preached and walked among us. How could such deception take place and be so universal in its scope?
When men first began to publish Bibles in large numbers and the common man began to read and study their religious history there was a reaction to the this newly acquired knowledge. The people were not as easily controlled when they could begin to think for themselves.
It was quickly realized that printing was here to stay. The book burning that had accompanied the inquisitions and the bloody persecutions of anyone who questioned the exercising authority of the princes or pontiffs of the “world” was no longer a practical solution. A alternative plan was devised. If you can’t beat them join them and subvert the truths which they think they are reading.
The best way to stop reform and protest is to join it and alter its natural course avoiding a righteous conclusion. It was suggested to fight knowledge with more knowledge. The motivation for this plan was not to discover or impart the truth but to maintain power, authority and control over man’s mind by subverting the truth with a seductive distortion and rationally convenient alternative.
“Jesus said unto them, If ye were blind, ye should have no sin: but now ye say, We see; therefore your sin remaineth.” John 9:41
It is a masterful plan which relies heavily on the avarice and vanity of the individual by ensuring that they have a degree of knowledge. Once men believe they see the truth they may remain more comfortable within the bondage of a lie, even defend it against reason to the death of body and soul.
“The most controversial issues of the twenty-first century will pertain to the ends and means of modifying human behavior and who shall determine them. The first educational question will not be “what knowledge is of the most worth?” but “what kinds of human beings do we wish to produce?” The possibilities virtually defy our imagination.”[6]
This article was the subject of Keys of the kingdom radio broadcast
To be free souls under God the early Christians and ancient Israel both knew they had to provide all their health, education or welfare through a voluntary network of freewill offerings. Join Thelivingnetwork.org
Footnotes:
1. Francis Bacon.
2. Claude G. Bowers,The U.S. and the Spanish Civil War.
3. William T. Harris, 1899 U.S. Commissioner of Education 1889-1906.
4. Stansbury, 1828.
5. Morpheus in the movie Matrix.
6. Professor John Goodlad Researcher and chief movers in American education during the last half of the 20th century. 1969.
PART 2
Right Reason
“Strange times are these in which we live when old and young are taught falsehoods in school. And the one man that dares to tell the truth is called at once a lunatic and fool.” —Plato
We need to awaken and peel back the deception of “world” which has been pulled over our eyes. We need to realize that we have become human resources in a more complete and devastating bondage than Moses redeemed us from in Egypt, more insidious than that which Jesus redeemed us from in the days of Rome.
“Augustus was sensible that mankind is governed by names; nor was he deceived in his expectation, that the senate and people would submit to slavery, provided they were respectfully assured that they still enjoyed their ancient freedom.”[1]
The reason education is so important in the rearing of children is because, “If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be”.[2]
“Throughout history, rulers and court intellectuals have aspired to use the educational system to shape their nations. The model was set out by Plato in The Republic and was constructed most faithfully in Soviet Russia, Fascist Italy, and Nazi Germany…”
“One can see how irresistible a vehicle the schools would be to any social engineer. They represent a unique opportunity to mold future citizens early in life, to instill in them the proper reverence for the ruling culture, and to prepare them to be obedient and obeisant taxpayers and soldiers.”[3]
“The education of all children, from the moment that they can get along without a mother’s care, shall be in state institutions at state expense.” —Karl Marx, The Communist Manifesto.
“By the early twentieth century, the school in fact had expanded its functions into areas not dreamed of in the early part of the previous century… The school [became] a central social agency in urban America. The one theme that ran through all these new school programs was the desire to maintain discipline and order in urban life. Within this framework, the school became a major agency for social control.”[4]
“Give me four years to teach the children and the seed I have sown will never be uprooted.” —Vladimir Lenin
“A small number of very passionate American ideological leaders visited Prussia in the first half of the 19th century; fell in love with the order, obedience, and efficiency of its education system; and campaigned relentlessly there after to bring the Prussian vision to these shores.”[5]
These American public school advocates “imported three major ideas … the purpose of state schooling was not intellectual training but the conditioning of children ‘to obedience, subordination, and collective life.’… Second, whole ideas were broken into fragmented ‘subjects’ and school days were divided into fixed periods ‘so that self-motivation to learn would be muted by ceaseless interruptions.’ Third, the state was posited as the true parents of the children”[6]
“The state will take youth and will give to youth its own education and its own upbringing. Your child already belongs to us… What are you?” —Adolf Hitler
“Social control” was the stated objective of the General Education Board (GEB), an institution created by John D. Rockefeller in 1902 that developed and promoted various radical schemes to reconfigure American society through the public school system.
“Education is a weapon, whose effect depends on who holds it in his hands and at whom it is aimed.” —Joseph Stalin
Fred Gates defined the GEB’s intent when he said: “In our dreams, we have limitless resources, and the people yield themselves with perfect docility to our molding hand. The present educational conventions fade from our minds; and, unhampered by tradition, we work our own good will upon a grateful and responsive rural folk.”[7]
“Parents give up their rights when they drop the children off at public school.” —Melinda Harmon, Federal Judge, 1996
The Truth
“We are apt to shut our eyes against a painful truth… For my part, I am willing to know the worst truth; to know the worst; and to provide for it.”[8]
What is truth and what is the lie? What has been removed and what has been supplanted? How does one find the truth of our History and where can we learn what has been hidden? We cannot fix a problem unless we admit there is one.
“During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary Act.”[9]
“For 140 years this nation has tried to impose objectives downward from a lofty command center made up of ‘experts,’ a central elite of social engineers, It hasn’t worked. It won’t work…. It doesn’t work because its fundamental premises are mechanical, antihuman, and hostile to family life. Lives can be controlled by machine education but they will always fight back with weapons of social pathology: drugs, violence, self-destruction, indifference, and the symptoms I see in the children I teach… It destroys communities by relegating the training of children to the hands of certified experts – and by doing so it ensures our children cannot grow up fully human”[10] becoming instead mindless automatons programmed by the state’s change agents.
Rather than instilling in youngsters an appreciation for individual liberty, the system has brought to life “the ancient pharaonic dream of Egypt: compulsory subordination for all… Schools teach exactly what they are intended to teach and they do it well: how to be a good Egyptian and remain in your place in the pyramid.” “It is a great triumph of compulsory government monopoly mass-schooling that among even the best of my fellow teachers, and among even the best of my students’ parents, only a small number can imagine a different way to do things,” laments John Taylor Gatto.[11]
To restore sanity to American education, to rescue the embattled family, and to preserve and perpetuate individual freedom, “a different way to do things” must be found. Like Aladdin and the magician who gave new lamps for old we have exchange the truth of history for the fables of liars and we have become ignorant of our own heritage, awakening to find our blessing swept away in the night as we slumbered.
With this new learning came new ideas, “As long as the child breathes the poisoned air of nationalism, education in world-mindedness can produce only precarious results. As we have pointed out, it is frequently the family that infects the child with extreme nationalism. The school should therefore use the means described earlier to combat family attitudes that favor jingoism.”[12]
“Regardless of motives, the people who foisted state education on us have committed a grave offense…. Using a variety of strategies, we must reclaim the right to raise our children and to help them educate themselves. In a fundamental sense, that is the American way,” contends Sheldon Richman.
“The future of education, and of America as a free society, depends on the liberation of the American family from the grip of the public school,” There is no more important task, Richman concludes, than to build “a wall of separation between school and state” and restore a system of “family-based learning” in which children can develop their God- given abilities as free individuals.
The idea of mass institutionalized education is a modern phenomena. It has been a social experiment the result of which will be judged in the century to come. We live today in a time of decision. We must consider the viability, practicality and wisdom of education in institutions. God created the family and education was the right and responsibility of the family as a unit. Today, the system of institutional education is often blamed for all the social ills of society. But is this fair? Is it the responsibility of schools to accomplish a job that was once the exclusive realm of the parents and the family?
Some of the top professional educators and psychologists believe the problem is not simply with the efforts of teachers and administrations. The problem is that institutional education is fundamentally flawed. In order to educate children en mass one must set aside the natural parameters of child development. Institutional education abandons by its macrocosm the natural environment of child development and there is no way to restore what is lost with even the best efforts of professional educators, more money or advanced study programs.
Parents have neglected their God given rights and responsibilities by turning their children over to institutions. “[T]he moral strength of a nation is only as strong as the moral strength of its individuals.”[13] Individuals are a product of the family.
“If we want better people to make a better world, then we will have to begin where people are made — in the family.”[14]
The modern family unit struggles as it has for centuries to grow and develop. Parents raise their children according to the standards they themselves have been taught or have come to believe is best for their family. In the last century families have undergone an ever increasing degeneration and disintegration. Divorced, broken and single parent homes have been linked with an increase in under achievement, antisocial behavior, suicide and violence.
“Behold, this was the iniquity of thy sister Sodom, pride, fulness of bread, and abundance of idleness was in her and in her daughters, neither did she strengthen the hand of the poor and needy.” Ezek. 16:49
The sin of Sodom and Gomorrah was in part that they did not strengthen the poor. “The poor” were not merely poor financially but also poor in virtue and strength. Virtues like faith, hope and charity, patience, love and understanding are the strength of the character of mankind. Public education is welfare and it weakens the poor.
“Only take heed to thyself, and keep thy soul diligently, lest thou forget the things which thine eyes have seen, and lest they depart from thy heart all the days of thy life: but teach them thy sons, and thy sons’ sons;” Deut. 4:9
Solutions can be found if you find others who are looking for the whole truth and are willing to provide for it. Join The living network.org
Footnotes:
1. Decline and fall of the Roman Empire Chapter 3.
2. Thomas Jefferson.
3. Sheldon Richman in his book Separating School and State.
4. Educational historian Joel Spring.
5. Award-winning teacher and educational commentator John T. Gatto.
6. Sheldon Richman in his book Separating School and State.
7. GEB Chairman Frederick Gates.
8. Patrick Henry
9. George Orwell
10. John Taylor Gatto New York State Teacher of the Year and Homeschooling advocate, lecturer and filmmaker.
11. John T. Gatto, Teacher of the Year, to the N. Y. State Senate, 1991.
12. William Benton, Ass. U.S. Sec. of State, at a UNESCO meeting, 1946:
13. Eric Sloane
14. Braud’s 2nd Enc. by J.M Braud.
Copyright © 2014, Brother Gregory Williams – All Rights Reserved
