By Cari Campos
What exactly are your kids being taught when they step foot into a public school? Is it good or bad? Is it dangerous or helpful—or maybe a little of both? One of my biggest fears is that parents just blindly send their kids off to school thinking that everything is fine and dandy. They never take the time to read through their kids’ textbooks or look into exactly what is being taught. I can say without hesitation that if most parents were to take the time to look, they would be very shocked—and probably a little angry. Our intention in this article is to give a small taste of what the youth in this country are being force-fed and also give you some ammo on how to fight the battle.
Adolph Hitler once said, “Let me control the textbooks and I will control the state.” Every dictator who has ever controlled a country used the school system to gain power. At a congress of Party education workers during the Bolshevik Revolution it was stated, “We must turn children who can be shaped like wax into real good communists. We must remove the children from the crude influence of their families.” This education policy meant the displacement of the family as the nation’s most important and fundamental social unit, the establishment of institutes to train state approved teachers, and the disassociation of education from the church and its traditional values. Sound familiar?
Under the U.S. Constitution, our system of education is designed to be controlled at the local level by parents and teachers who know the children best. This is to ensure our freedom of education. After all, a “one size fits all” program cannot work in teaching people.
Local control of education worked for many years in this country. That is until President George W. Bush pushed through legislation called the “No Child Left Behind Act” (NCLB). If you ask any teacher abou t this program, he or she will probably keep you there for hours telling you how ineffective this program is, and how in most cases, it is damaging to your child’s education.
I will not spend much time on this topic because many people already know the problems with NCLB. For those who don’t, I recommend doing a Google search on the Internet to find out about the ineffectiveness of the program.
NCLB was signed into law on January 8, 2002 with the primary purpose to close the gap between low performing and high achieving students. This may sound like a noble cause, but the method used to achieve this is doing more harm than good. Under NCLB, every student in every school has to pass exams called “Adequate Yearly Progress Reports.” These exams are exactly the same for every student—including English language learners and special education students.
If schools do not pass these AYPR exams, and keep improving every year, they could face extreme sanctions—including being taken over by the state. One teacher told me, “We are always trying to circumvent the requirements.” Since the fear of not meeting the requirements is so strong, many schools have lowered their curriculum standards in order to get all students above par. NCLB has not raised the standard of education in our country, but has instead, showed the youth how to aim for the floor. The actual NCLB law is over 1,000 pages long—that’s 1,000 pages to get your students to pass exams that are the lowest level of testing in the history of education.
To this day, many states have decided either to pass their own legislation and completely opt out of NCLB, or opt out of certain requirements of the program. In some cases, states have sued the U.S. Department of Education for not allowing them to opt out of the program and maintain their own control. For example, when Utah began to push for opting out of NCLB, Bush administration officials made three visits to the state in less than a month. State officials were told that if Utah chose not to participate in NCLB, all federal funding would be terminated…even those funds completely unrelated to the Act. Would you call that freedom or dictatorship? Unfortunately, I fear this issue isn’t the only thing wrong with our educational system—it is just the tip of the iceberg.
Thomas Jefferson said, “The only foundation for useful education in a republic is to be laid in religion.” For over 200 years we had prayer and the Ten Commandments in our educational system. But on June 25, 1962, the Supreme Court decided we didn’t need them any more, and that they were against the law.
Initially, this may not sound like a big deal, but what that decision did was create a snowball effect that has now resulted in our schools teaching more against Christian values and principles rather than just being neutral. If you were to read a 10th grade history book, you would quickly discover that Christianity, its principles and our founding fathers, are under attack. One textbook, America’s Pathways to Present, for example, tells students: “Along with new ways of trading and worshiping, the Europeans also brought the ravages of disease to the Native Americans.” Both these statements may be true, but when you lump the lot together you have what’s called “association propaganda.” Students see worship and ravages of disease on the same level.
If you think this may be stretching it a little, look at the chapter about the Puritans who first migrated to America. These men and women were constantly—but subtly—made out to be religious freaks: they preferred to study the Bible, listen to sermons, and closely examine their lives and their world for clues to God’s will. Like this is awkward! It then goes on to say that the term “Puritan” has come to be associated with cheerlessness and hypocritical morality.
When reading this curriculum you will find out, for the most part, that Christianity and biblical principles apparently had little or nothing to do with the foundation of our country. Yet if you were to do your own homework outside of a public school classroom, you would find out that Christian principles had everything to do with America’s foundation.
Let me ask you a question. If the separation of church and state that is so flippantly taught to our youth really existed, why then are Moses and the Ten Commandments on the top of your Supreme Court building in Washington, D.C.? Why is God written on buildings like the Lincoln Memorial, the Jefferson Memorial, and on the Liberty Bell, to name just a few? Why are there scripture verses on the Washington Monument?
Somebody’s not telling the truth about our country’s heritage. Think of it this way: even if we decided as a country that we didn’t want God, morals, or biblical principles to govern us, that still doesn’t mean we need to lie to the people about where we came from and how this country started. The best way to find out the truth on the subject is to look it up for yourself. I would highly recommend www.wallbuilders.com or doing your own Google search.
Now that we’ve established that Christianity is under attack through the education system, you can be certain that all the values that go along with it are under attack as well—values like the traditional family and the sanctity of life. For instance, this is what is being taught to your children about abortion. The following excerpt is taken right out of the textbook, America’s Pathways to Present: “Roe vs. Wade also worked to reform the laws governing a woman’s right to choose an abortion instead of continuing an unwanted pregnancy.”
My understanding of education is to give people the FACTS and TRUTH regarding the entire issue and then let them decide their own path. I guess I would not be so frustrated except for the fact that there is no information given to the students about the extreme risks of getting an abortion, or the details of how an abortion is performed (I would venture to say that most pro-choice youth could not tell you the first thing about the procedure). They also don’t provide information on other options to abortion.
Not only are there no facts taught about abortion, but did you know getting or performing an abortion is against the law? According to the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, “…nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law…” See, no matter what you say, feel or believe, the law is the law, and upholding the law (justice) guards our liberty.
Which brings up another point; why aren’t they teaching the youth of this country its doctrine of law, the United States Constitution? It is simple; if they know the law and follow it, they can point out the errors and prevent perversion from entering this country. Take your job for example: when you go in for new employee orientation, you are expected to have read the handbook of the facility to understand the rules and regulations, and to understand how things operate.
When performing what is “expected of you,” you find that there are no problems, and you begin to work with the same mindset as others to help do your job efficiently. The problem begins when someone neglects his or her “duty,” and you then reference the handbook (law), and show the error. If that person decides not to comply, he or she is removed from the duty (or fired) for which they were hired. We see nothing but lawlessness in this nation, because the average citizen has no behavioral standard to refer to. How are they to know their “duty” or what is to be “expected of them” without guidelines?
There used to be something known as right and wrong in this country, but now what is being taught in our classrooms is the standard of “tolerance.” If you really look behind it, however, you can see how very intolerant they are. Kids all over this country are being taught to tolerate the homosexual lifestyle (no matter what their belief on the subject), every other religion, abortion, addiction (after all it’s only a disease), and almost every other immoral act. In most cases, they are told to tolerate everything except Christianity and its principles.
At one school where we performed recently, a teacher informed us that she will not allow any of her students to stand up and say that they feel homosexuality is wrong— either morally and physically. That sounds like complete INTOLERANCE towards Christianity to me! Isn’t it ironic that the very standard of Christianity is to keep people from destroying themselves, yet now it is becoming a hate crime to warn somebody about their self-destruction?
Let’s just say for a second that even if God doesn’t exist (like they keep telling the kids) and the Bible is just a storybook, our society was a lot better off when we were teaching the principles of the Bible to our kids. Back when we had the Ten Commandments, prayer and a moral standard in our schools, the majority of problems were minor: talking out of turn, chewing gum, and perhaps an occasional fight.
Now we have school shootings, babies having babies, the abuse of every drug known to mankind, illiterate youth graduating from high school, and so much more immorality. I would rather sacrifice all the technology and everything we are blessed with today to live back in the day when this country honored God and had a moral code of conduct. It’s time we get back on the old paths as it says in Jeremiah 6:16, “Thus saith the Lord, Stand ye in the ways, and see, and ask for the old paths, where is the good way and walk therein, and ye shall find rest for your souls.”
As parents, teachers, and citizens, we must be concerned about drug abuse in the lives of the youth. You see it becoming more and more prevalent. But our biggest fear should be that drug dealers are no longer just on street corners; they are now sitting in doctors’ offices and CEO’s chairs. Mental health medications—like those for ADHD—are being overprescribed at alarming levels.
Too extreme you say? Well, have you ever heard of Teen Screen? Teen Screen is a questionnaire being used in schools all over the country to evaluate youth for a variety of mental illnesses, including depression and suicidal tendencies. This test is not only forced upon the youth; in some cases when parents have refused to allow their child to participate, they have been removed from the household because the parents were not looking out for the best interest of their children.
Here are a couple questions from this test:
 Has there been a time when you felt you couldn’t do anything well or that you weren’t as good-looking or as smart as other people?
 Have you often felt very nervous when you’ve had to do things in front of people?
Now, many of you answered “yes” to these questions, as do many of us. According to this test, however, we are all mentally ill. Many of the students who take the test receive a recommendation to be put on some kind of medication. David Shaffer, the man from Columbia University who invented the test, even said that the test has an 86 percent false-positive rate, which means that 86 percent of the time, kids are falsely diagnosed with some sort of mental disease. Some students even said that it seemed like the only kids that weren’t diagnosed with some sort of problem, were the kids who didn’t take the test. In some cases, parents have lost their children because they refused to medicate them.
Could it be that maybe the youth in this country need a little more parenting, discipline, structure, and love, a lot better nutrition, and a little less sugar? Maybe I’m just old-fashioned, but it seemed to work fine for my parents and grandparents.
If these drugs were actually working, there would be fewer and fewer problems in our schools. But in actuality, the problems keep getting worse and worse, especially for those who are on the medications. Did you know that schools get more funding when they have more students with emotional issues and staff-diagnosed learning disabilities? I fear our kids are becoming lab rats for the future. There is a great website that has provides a lot of good information on this issue. Check out www.edwatch.org.
Have you ever done any research for yourself to prove how antidepressant drugs like Celexa, Effexor, Prozac, and Paxil work? Did you know that many of the recent school shootings have been linked to suicidal tendencies because of these drugs? For more information on antidepressants and school shootings, read the article titled “The Dangers of Antidepressants.”
The FDA recently put the following black box warning on all psychiatric drugs given to kids:
Suicidality in Children and Adolescents. Antidepressants increased the risk of suicidal thinking and behavior (suicidality) in short term studies in children and adolescents with Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) and other psychiatric disorders. Anyone considering the use of [Insert established name] or any other antidepressant in a child or adolescent must balance this risk with the clinical need. Patients who are started on therapy should be observed closely for clinical worsening, suicidality, or unusual changes in behavior. Families and caregivers should be advised of the need for close observation and communication with the prescriber. [Insert established name] is not approved for use in pediatric patients.
I sit here wondering how it is possible that this is being pushed through the schools. I guess the answer is very simple, as 1 Timothy 6:10 says: “For the love of money is the root of all evil: which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.”
America, there is no quick fix to these problems. However, we are not about just pointing our fingers at the problems but rather about giving people the answers. We could have taken each issue in this article—along with many other issues—and written pages and pages, but there isn’t enough room or time.
As I said before, the best place to start is to take a few hours and research everything you have just read. The best way to be useful in changing something is to know the problems for yourself and not just accept what someone else tells you.
My next piece of advice is this: if you have your children in a public school, I would do everything in my power to remove them from that setting and home school them instead. If this is not an option for you, then spend your extra time getting involved with the school system and working to get the truth and morality back in the classroom. Take the time to teach your child the truth about all these topics.
My last piece of advice is to raise your kids and conduct your lives according to God’s standard…otherwise everything else in life will be futile.
