Posted on 08/28/2006 5:29:09 AM PDT by mathprof
In early American public schools, there was no separation between church and state. Tenets of Christianity were embedded in almost every lesson and book, including spelling, reading, history, grammar, arithmetic and science.
A was for Adam, B was for the Bible and C was for Christ. In arithmetic, "How many days is it since the birth of Our Savior?" In geography, "Christianity is the prevailing religion of the leading nations of the world." In science, "All parts of the solar system are framed and adjusted to answer exactly the purpose intended by the Creator." In nature, "The more we examine the insect world, the more sensible do we become of the mighty power and goodness of God."
The schoolbooks used by early Americans were supposed to teach literacy and knowledge, but they also had a broader purpose: to create a national character, instilling children with a belief in God and a moral code appropriate to the pious citizens of a new republic. While learning to read, students also had to absorb messages about religion, patriotism and other virtues, such as thrift, diligence and honesty.
"A sense of God permeates all [early school books] as surely as a sense of nationalism," wrote Ruth Miller Elson in "Guardians of Tradition" (1964). "The books devote the greater part of their space to the subject of God's relationship to the universe, to man and to the child himself."
As late as 1880, Noah Webster's popular spelling book included practice sentences such as, "God created heaven and earth in six days" and "The devil is the great adversary of man."
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
Thank God for someone with the courage and credibility to tell it like it is! I think we need to run with this truth. Press the advantage, as it were. The Left is utterly bankrupt, and it bankrupts everything it influences.
Somebody needs to wake up the libertarians and warn them that the Taliban are coming!
I like your attitude!
I love this article.
Thanks for posting.
Don't know why, but this one does not.
I watched part of Apollo 13 on television Saturday night. I'm still trying to figure out how Congress was permitted to pass a resolution for people to pray for the safe return of the astronauts and still govern without turning this country in to a Christian Afghanistan.
Shalom.
Makes the world turn around.
*troubled
Ping, read and save.
Sobering!
bump
Schools trained the heart as much as the head.
By contrast, this shows how today's system is glaringly corrupted to undermine God given self government.
Indeed, undercutting the various Christian and other sects among varied immigrant groups was a principal purpose of the government takeover of primary education - pesky Catholics or Quakers got you down? Can't abide them teaching their kids peculiar notions about God and the universe? Just march their kids at gunpoint to government-run Protestant schools for indoctrination against their parents, and pass laws against private or home schooling, and poof, the problem vanishes in a generation.
How true. Unfortunately there are many freepers who agree with the left's fashionable and ludicrous interpretation of the 1st Amendment's establishment clause.
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