http://www.realclearreligion.com/index.htmlreal clearengen@realclearreligion.comCopyright 2007 2007-03-20T13:27:58-07:00 hourly 1 2000-01-01T12:00+00:00 Sun, 30 Sep 2007 15:48:37 -0700gen@realclearreligion.comPUBLIC SCHOOLS VS HOME-SCHOOLING AND THE DEATH OF THE WEST2007-03-20T13:27:58-07:00http://www.realclearreligion.com/public_schools_vs_home-scho_files/a5360ef01450a428624740c5a2be2422-0.html#unique-entry-id-0http://www.realclearreligion.com/public_schools_vs_home-scho_files/a5360ef01450a428624740c5a2be2422-0.html#unique-entry-id-0The recent wave of school shootings highlights the danger that public schools pose to our children's  minds, bodies and souls, and is another nail in the coffin for public education.  It is not enough that the schools are hostile to God, now our children are exposed to physical danger. 


It is time to take back our children.  These are truly   tumultuous times and we need to rear them in the light of Truth and grace. 
Removing one's children from public school has become more than a good idea --it has become necessary for the future of the West.  Public schools are one of the most liberal arms of the government.  Its administrators have been seduced by nearly every advocacy group.  Liberals have fought tooth and nail to force feed their agenda down our children's' necks to shape the future to their own liking.   


The entire notion of a public school system that educates the masses for free should be rethought.  It is essentially an entitlement program that most of us have become comfortable with.  We turn a blind eye to its defects so that we can go on living our comfortable and complacent lifestyle.  Put the kids on the bus and both parents go off to work only to return too fatigued to care that their children have unrecognizable beliefs, contrary to their own.  


With every entitlement comes a massive downside--it is a yoke that grips tighter and tighter around our culture's neck.  The relativism that was fed to us and continues to be fed to our children has softened our conscience to every sort of immorality, and made us apathetic to good and evil. 
 

Where is our anger and outrage over the advocacy and social agenda being force fed our children?  Where is our anger at violence in schools?  Where is our anger over the mediocre education that fails to teach children to critically think and forces conformity upon them?
 

Free education for the masses is socialism.  We are on the dole and would sell out our children for the comforts and pleasures it permits us.  Lenin said, "Give me four years to teach the children and the seed I have sown will never be uprooted."     
                                           
The comfortable yet debilitating days must come to an end--it is time to take up our cross and educate our children ourselves.  We must be heroic Christians who produce children of heroic virtue.  Average mass educated citizens cannot lead us through the murky waters that are ahead. 


Socialization? --it is the most commonly heard objection to homeschooling by far.  Never mind that a large part of what a student receives in public school is not truly education but is rather "socialization" anyway. According to dictionary.com, "socialization means a continuing process whereby an individual acquires a personal identity and learns the norms, values, behavior, and social skills appropriate to his or her social position". 


When one reads between the lines of the socialization objection, what is really being said is that your children will be miserable little social failures that do not harmonize with the philosophy of our society.   And why bother sheltering them from the evils of the world since when they finally leave your stale grips they will jump head first into everything you sheltered them from.

It is noteworthy that one rarely hears an academically based objection since it commonly accepted that public schools are in deplorable condition academically. 


But let's look at the norms, values and behaviors in the public school system?  The norms and values are the inculcation of hypersexuality in all of its forms, relativism, pantheism, nihilism, tolerance of everything, conformity at all costs, loathing of the West and christianity, egalitarianism, and unrestrained materialism and consumerism.  The behaviors mirror the "norms and values".

That is not the socialization we need today.  Our children need not harmonize with the underbelly of our culture.  We are indeed in the midst of a culture war where each camp has two very distinct world views.  One being that man is at his essence good and without original sin and is therefore not in need of redemption.  This is where we find all the trite "self-lingo": self-esteem, self-confidence, self-realization.    On the other hand we have the believing Christian who is very aware that man without grace is capable of much wickedness.


"Every method of education founded wholly or in part, on the denial or forgetfulness of original sin and of grace, and relying on the sole powers of human nature, is unsound."  Pope Pius XI


Christians should avoid, at all costs, the breed of socialization that is promoted in the public school system.  As christians we want our children "socialized" according to the norms, values, and behaviors of Jesus Christ.


"A general State education is a mere contrivance for moulding people to be exactly like one another; and as the mould in which it casts them is that which pleases the dominant power in the government, whether this be a monarch, an aristocracy, or a majority of the existing generation; in proportion as it is efficient and successful, it establishes a despotism over the mind, leading by a natural tendency to one over the body." – John Stuart Mill, "On Liberty"


Mass produced minds and hearts will not change the course of the West, instead we need individuals who are taught to think in light of the Truth.  We need counter-cultural children with a strong sense of divine purpose to claim back our culture.    
]]>