Posted on 02/06/2005 5:33:41 AM PST by FlyLow
The man who helped push the issue of public education onto the national agenda of the Southern Baptist Convention has written a new book that blows the lid off government schools, showing parents the kind of worldview and values their children are influenced by 180 days a year.
Bruce Shortt, author of "The Harsh Truth About Public Schools," presents myriad reasons why government institutions are failing America's children and thumbing their noses at parents with a religious worldview.
As WorldNetDaily reported, last year Shortt helped spearhead an unsuccessful effort to have the Southern Baptist Convention pass a resolution urging its members to remove their children from public school.
In "The Harsh Truth About Public Schools," Shortt, writing from a biblical perspective, presents rigorous research about the agenda and effect of government schooling on the nation's young people.
Shortt especially wants to educate Christian parents, millions of whom send their kids off to public school every day.
"Contrary to what many Christians have been led to believe, there is no such thing as a 'neutral' education," Shortt writes. "All education is religious and conveys a worldview, and there is no more important decision that we make as parents than how we educate our children."
Continues Shortt: "Unfortunately, Christian parents allow an aggressively anti-Christian institution to form the minds of their children, and the fruit of that choice is bitter. The overwhelming majority of children from evangelical families leave the church within two years after they graduate from high school; only 9 percent of evangelical teens believe that there is any such thing as absolute moral truth; and, our children are being forcibly indoctrinated to believe that homosexual behavior is acceptable."
(Excerpt) Read more at worldnetdaily.com ...
bump
Even though I agree with the status of public schools, I don't think Christians who send their kids to public schools are sinning - I think it is out of years of conditioning and ignorance rather than disobedience to God. We've all been conditioned to send our kids off to government-run schools when they hit 5, not realizing how viable an option home schooling really is for many, many Christian families. The usual "reasons" for not home schooling are easily overcome when one is determined to home school, for the *best* you can offer your child.
That argument is strong enough.
Interesting, but I don't see why the focus on Christianity. Any parent, regardless of religious belief, should be wary of public schools because they fail in what they are supposed to do: educated our kids.
There are no "public" schools.
They've all been co-opted and converted into government schools.
Or more correctly, into government indoctrination centers.
"Re-education" camps.
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The fact that there is some clown anywhere in the world that would even think of something like this is evidence that there MUST be a group trying to create unAryans. Maybe they are succeeding.
I don't know about the sin part. I like to think most of us do the best we can. There have been a number of years that I considered sending a child to the Minneapolis Public Schools to border on child abuse. This is based on the worthless record this system has of putting out literate citizens.
Some parents I know are oblivious to what is happening in public schools. Others simply don't have the money to send their children to private schools. The government is taking their money and forcing them to use spend it on education as the government chooses.
And sadly, the government gives little in return - not a sound education nor moral beliefs.
The preachers of the new morality don't want us. We're too old to change. They want our children, and so far they are very successful.
Sin- the word root derives from the same word applied to shooting an arrow and missing the bullseye... missing the mark... Anything, not PERFECTLY within God's will and direction, the middle of the target, is sin!
Thank God, we are guilty, but, we are forgiven! (
Homeschool bump!
There are many Jewish day schools in my county. One town has several, as well as a Muslim school for girls.
"Continues Shortt: "Unfortunately, Christian parents allow an aggressively anti-Christian institution"
Wonder why more Christians of concern aren't on the school boards where they can have an impact on this?
...our children are being forcibly indoctrinated to believe that homosexual behavior is acceptable."
Societally homosexuality is acceptible b/c society has made it that way. But in the moral views and beliefs of many, it is unacceptible b/c God has made it unacceptible, not those believing in God.
Ergo, the entire thing comes down to whether or not you believe in a Creator God.
I would rephrase that to say "morally acceptible." It clears things up.
Marc Tucker is at it again in Minnesota:
http://www.educationnews.org/clinton-education-agenda-being.htm
You would think these people would give up by now.
Interestingly, this isn't that extreme a position to those of us who were raised Catholic. Until Vatican II, parents were expected to send their kids to Catholic schools (if they were available, and they generally were) to avoid the negative teaching and example they would receive in public schools.
Of course, after Vatican II, Catholic schools became little better (and sometimes even worse) than public schools, from the moral and religious point of view, so that argument fell by the wayside. However, in principle, I think it's something that Christian parents, whether Catholic or Evangelical, should bear in mind. My kids are all grown now, but if I had it to do over again I would either home-school or move to a place that had an orthodox Catholic school.
At some point the "agenda" got so blazingly blatant that only someone with morals who is negligent can in good conscience send their kid to public schools.
Toss is disciplinary issues, guns and other BS today against which the schools offer only paper solutions, and it's really a no brainer to either Home School or send your kids to a private school. One takes money, the other takes a little bit of time.
I remember in H.S. and middle school however sitting in class learning the same stinkin' thing for an entire week, often longer when it was clear after one explanation what was going on. But the pace was so slow b/c there were always a few that didn't grasp things. Which is fine, but it's a waste of time for those that do.
Home schooling takes less than 2 hours per day from what I've heard and is tailored to the student's pace.
Public education, sponsored by the single most powerful union in the nation, is in the process of undergoing a "market correction." People are realizing that with the advent of informational technologies, that there are many, many options of educating their children. Most are vastly superior and more effective than traditional "education" which is really a form of "indoctrination."
People are perfectly capable of coming to their own conclusions on social behaviors and those should be taught by parents. The public educational system has shirked its responsibilities by taking emphasis off of the important things, math, science, reading, music (especially classical), real arts, not some form of perversion labeled as "art", etc., and placed it in the arena of social, moral, and ethical emphases.
People that founded this nation often studied independently. "Professors" were originally people paid to pass on their knowledge of science, physics, math or any number of other objective disciplines to those paying them. Today they are people pushing their personal moral agendas in an arena for which they are given unfettered credibility when none should exist. They transcend what it is that they should be teaching which is objective, and substitute the subjective moral in its place.
Thus, people, often more intelligent than the "professors", yet w/o the credentials given them ala "the fox guarding the henhouse", can see through this Barbara Streisand.
The Founding Fathers all knew better that to maintain a free society such as ours, that a moral basis to it of the Judeo-Christian variety was absolutely crucial to its continued viability and much more so its foundation. Today's educators dismiss such notions as if somehow they are more brilliant than the Founding Fathers. Ironically, all the statistical data is so ridiculously counter to modern educators' agenda that it's laughable for anyone with more than the brain God gave a banana.
It's also why so many people balk at the notions that teachers deserve more money/pay and that the system is any longer viable. I wouldn't even think of sending my kids to public schools in any large city these days and in the smaller cities only after an extremely thorough evaluation of the curriculums. I might consider sending them to H.S. simply so that they learn how to debate and challenge those espousing nonsense.
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