Education or Indoctrination?

By: Lisa Van Houten

We warn our children about “stranger danger.”  We tell them that no adult should ever ask children to keep a secret from their parents.  Yet as millions of children head back to school, that is exactly what teachers will be doing.  Over 1,000 school districts in the U.S. have adopted polices telling teachers to keep students’ gender identities secret from their parents.  Pedophiles tell children – “this will be our little secret.”  Now teachers are telling kids – “don’t tell your parents you changed your gender.”  Family Research Council warns, “parents need to assume they will be deceived by their school if their child makes a gender identity declaration to a teacher or counselor.”

I taught in the public schools for 11 years and I know there are many good teachers in public schools who don’t agree with transgender ideology and are not trying to indoctrinate your kids.  However, I also know that often their hands are tied as to what they’re required to teach and what they’re not allowed to teach.  Administrators, curriculum companies infiltrated with leftist/Marxist ideology, Democrat state and federal Departments of Education which threaten to withhold funding, radical teacher unions – all are pulling the strings and forcing conformity to woke ideology.  And when schools do strive to do the right thing, this happens:  in New Jersey, three school districts put in place a policy requiring faculty to inform parents if students expressed gender identity confusion; however, a state judge blocked the policy, forcing the schools to keep parents in the dark.

Parents have a fundamental, God-given right to direct the upbringing of their children.  And while the law has long recognized that right, increasingly the government and public schools are seeking to usurp parental authority.  The Left has long striven to separate children from their parents, claiming children have a “right to privacy” apart from parents.  They want the right to control your kids and turn them into little leftists.

President Biden has repeatedly made comments such as this from last April: “There is no such thing as someone else’s child. Our nation’s children are all our children.”  And a 2016 ad for the liberal group “Lean Forward,” stated: “we have to break through our kind of private idea that kids belong to their parents … and recognize that kids belong to whole communities.”  That lie that children belong to the state is blatant Marxist-Communist ideology.  As parental rights group, Moms for Liberty, stated:  “We do NOT CO-PARENT with the GOVERNMENT.”

A New Mexican school board administrator, speaking to members of local school boards, stated: “Parents do not have a fundamental right to tell you how public school teaches their child.  Parental rights end when you decide to send your kids to public school. What you teach this generation, that will soon be voting, are going to be instrumental to the future of us as a democracy and as society goes forward.”  This view permeates the ideology of the lion’s share of those who set the agenda for our nation’s public schools. And he’s right on one thing – what is taught to this generation will be instrumental to the future of our nation – and that is exactly why the Left wants to capture the minds and hearts of your kids and grandkids.

At their annual convention, the powerful and very liberal teachers’ union, National Education Association, used the ironic hashtag “TeachTruth,” demanding the “freedom to teach” and the “freedom to learn.”  They don’t want to teach THE truth, but their “truth.”  They want the freedom to teach LGBT ideology, re-write American history, and push CRT.  Their message to parents and taxpayers, as signs held by teachers at the NEA convention stated, is: “keep your nose out of my classroom.” 

While math and reading scores plummet, many schools seem more focused on indoctrination than education.  How many students today would be able to answer these questions from the 1924 Stephenson’s Iowa State Eighth Grade Examination Question Book?  Arithmetic: “A wall 77 feet long, 6-1/2 feet high, and 14 inches thick is built of bricks costing $9 per M. What was the entire cost of the bricks if 22 bricks were sufficient to make a cubic foot of wall?” Grammar: “Define five of the following terms: antecedent, tense, object, conjugation, auxiliary verb, expletive, reflexive pronoun.” Civil government: “Name three township, three county, and three state officers and state what office each person holds …”

And not only are schools not educating, they’re stripping children of their innocence.  Corrie ten Boom wrote in The Hiding Place: “‘Sex,’ I was pretty sure, meant whether you were a boy or girl, and ‘sin’ made Tante Jans very angry, but what the two together meant I could not imagine. And so, seated next to Father in the train compartment, I suddenly asked, ‘Father, what is sex sin?’

“He turned to look at me, as he always did when answering a question, but to my surprise he said nothing. At last he stood up, lifted his traveling case from the rack over our heads, and set it on the floor. ‘Will you carry it off the train, Corrie?’ he said.

“I stood up and tugged at it. It was crammed with the watches and spare parts he had purchased that morning. ‘It’s too heavy,’ I said.

“‘Yes,’ he said. ‘And it would be a pretty poor father who would ask his little girl to carry such a load. It’s the same way, Corrie, with knowledge. Some knowledge is too heavy for children. When you are older and stronger you can bear it. For now you must trust me to carry it for you.’”

As one pastor wrote in response: “We are asking our children to carry loads that are way too heavy for them. … Innocence is worth protecting and worth fighting for.”

God gives parents the responsibility to guide, direct, and protect their children.  Don’t let agenda-driven schools usurp your authority and lead your children into sin.

 

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