Posted on 03/05/2010 12:59:51 PM PST by BruceDeitrickPrice
"One word. Two different worlds...
No wonder so little genuine communication—or progress—occurs in education
I had been writing about education for more than 25 years when I finally realized the divide, the scam, the silent sophistry, call it what you will, that renders so many discussions about education close to pointless.
When most people say the word “education,” they mean something very specific, and almost everyone knows exactly what it is: reading, writing, arithmetic, geography, to be followed by history, science, literature, and the arts.
Now, if everyone in the discussion has this meaning in mind, they can make progress.
Unfortunately, the people who control the public schools and shape most of the debate have another meaning in their minds, and they know exactly what it is: social engineering, indoctrination, political correctness, and left-wing politics...."
(Excerpt) Read more at canadafreepress.com ...
You guys have any sources for that?
I keep hearing it on FR but never heard it before.
The Blaine Act and anti-Catholicism public schools.
Nativism anti-Catholicism public schools
History of Catholic schools public schools anti-catholicism
Most Freepers know the difference between education and school.
Those are pretty weak supports for your contention that the establishment of public education in the United States was for the purpose to *de-Catholicize Catholics*.
I’m calling BS on that whole conspiracy theory. Unless you can provide any substantial evidence to support that contention any more, I’m going to start hitting the abuse button every time I see someone trying to stir the Catholic Protestant pot by bringing up questionable events and accusations of things that happened over a century ago.
Implication and innuendo do not make a case.
It just talks about perception of what the Protestants were doing.
I still haven’t seen any evidence of some sort of conspiracy to *de-Catholicize Catholics*.
I found this statement in there.....”Following the program laid out by Horace Mann in the 1840’s, public education would inculcate a nondenominational Protestant morality through Bible reading, hymn singing and the use of the McGuffey readers.”
So what’s the problem with Bible reading and hymns? The Catholic church claims to have WRITTEN the Bible. Why should having Bible reading in schools be a problem?
That was over a century ago and there’s simply no point in dredging up unsubstantiated accusations. It does nothing but stir the pot and that we DON’T need.
My point still stands. There’s just not enough documentation or evidence to support the contention that there was a deliberate push to *de-Catholicize Catholics* and if I keep seeing that unsubstantiated accusation being made on FR, I’m hitting the abuse button.
I’m not going to see these homeschool threads turn into Catholic/Protestant flame wars.
Catholics were horrible to Protestants, Jews, and Moors when they were in charge.
Moors/Muslims were, and are, terrible to Jews and Christians when they were, and are, in charge.
Protest high church and low church were horrible to each other when either had the upperhand.
People are imperfect, and sometimes their imperfections, when magnified across populations, sum up to hideous crimes.
The secular humanists are now the dominant religion. They are forcing horrible choices on Christians and orthodox religious of all persuasions. Do we send our children to public schools where they will be indoctrinated into the vile silliness of modern culture, or do we spend large amounts of our over-taxed wages on private education? Or does one of the parents have to forego a career in order to properly homeschool the children?
No group, whether protestant, catholic, or secular should ever have been given the reins to government. Government should always be seen as the last desperate wall against anarchy. Everything else should be accomplished through the efforts of individuals and private organizations.
The Protestants were hegemonic at one point in American history. They took hold of the reins of government believing that they had hold of the truth, and no one would ever come after them to take away the reins.
It is an open question as to whether Protestantism is the closest approximation to the truth.
It is no longer an open question as to whether, after having built up and centralized the power of the state to define the education system, the Protestants lost hold of the reins.
No problem with the Bible, per se, but there are differences between Protestant versions of the Bible and Catholic ones.
There are also differences between what parts to emphasize. This is also true of hymns which may reinforce Protestant dogma over Catholic dogma.
If we can all agree that the public school system is, and will always remain, bankrupt then there is no need for a flame war.
If any of us, however, believes that the public school system can somehow be saved, then it is important to know how it came to be where it is today in order to know what needs to be done to fix it.
The lesson we should all learn from the history of public education in America is that no one religion/philosophy/ideology can be trusted to dictate what is taught in public schools.
Either public schools need to be completely abolished, or they need to be returned completely back to their separate localities so that, as George Bush I once said, a thousand points of light can shine for our under-educated children.
Can you say *Inquisition*? I knew you could.
It goes both ways. Catholics are not blameless in the horrible treatment department themselves. They can stop playing the martyr..
If someone wants to start feed Catholic/Protestant animosity, there's far better fuel than this to use.
The Blaine amendments were aimed squarely at Catholics and Catholic schools. Pierce vs. Society Sisters was aimed at eliminating Catholic schools. Thankfully for homeschoolers the state lost that fight.
http://www.blaineamendments.org/Intro/whatis.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierce_v._Society_of_Sisters
But...Government schools hurt ***Protestants*** as well as Catholics.
I am now a Protestant. I see “non-denominational” and read this as “watered-down” Protestantism....watered down so as to offend the fewest number of Protestants.
Right there with this “non-denominational” Protestantism, the Utopian progressives set the course for continually more and more secularism.
By the 1963, when I attended government high school for 11th and 12th grade, the curriculum in our school was entirely secular ( godless) in its worldview with 2 minutes of scripture study and the Lord's Prayer in the morning and a few Christmas carols at Christmans. Those few minutes of religiosity was like putting a band-aid on a pumping secular hemorrhage.
Today, Western Civilization is to survive Islam then our children **MUST** be thoroughly educated in their Christian or Jewish denomination. They must be strong in the faith of their fathers. That can only be fully accomplished in homeschool or in a church school of their denomination.
By the way, there is a very very very big difference between my education in government school and my Catholic education. Let me give you a few examples:
**Every hour we prayed for God's blessing on the next hour and the next section of studies.
**When we heard a fire engine or ambulance, all work was immediately stopped and we said a Hail Mary and Lord's Prayer ( Catholic version) for the people who needed help and for the safety of the police and firemen.
**We had a half hour of religious studies ( catechism) every morning.
**We studied the lives of the saints.
**Saying the rosary was regularly scheduled.
**In all of our courses,( even math and science) it was emphasized that all knowledge was a reflection of God's glory.
**The sayings and teaching of Catholic philosophers and religious leaders were woven throughout every subject.
** We learned enough Latin in elementary schools to understand the Mass, and learned to use the missal.
**We had important feast days off from school.
During lent we went to the “Station's of the Cross” on Friday afternoons.
**We were encouraged to go to daily mass before school.
**We practiced for May processions.
** The girls would blue uniforms with a light blue ribbon tie to honor Mary.
**The nun's patron saint day was a very important day, and so was the patron saint of the school.
**In high school an entire week was set aside for a religious “retreat” with prayer, Mass, and religious talks from leading religious leaders in the community.
** The girls had to have sleeves in their prom dresses, and our uniforms were mid-knee or lower.
Can you see the difference? I would expect that a truly Protestant education in a Christian school would have many of the same characteristics, except that the principles of their Protestant denomination would **thoroughly** integrated throughout the curriculum and entire day.
Not only would Catholic children suffer from attending government schools (that why John Neumann started the Catholic school system) but Protestant children did too. To accommodate the various sects of Protestantism a lot that was unique to a child's religious denomination had to be scrubbed if it was to be accepted by the various Protestant denominations.
With each passing decade the Utopian progressives pushed the government school to more and more secularism until now we have purely godless ( and Marxist) worldview taught in government schools.
May God save our nation and its children.
The “Public School” is best understood as the Bus Ministry of the State Church of Marxist Humanism.
The very concept of “Public School” is absurd, unless, of course, you want a totalitarian state with subjects whose heads are filled with statist mush, ascribing all Faith and Fealty to the Omnipotent, Omniscient State.
I was raised Catholic and went to Catholic school through grade nine. But, I married a Protestant in his church, and we don’t belong to a church now. So, I don’t have a horse in this race. ;-) This is the first I’ve ever heard a theory that public schools were created to convert non-Protestants to Protestant.
However, I have heard (from relatives) and read that the public schools in the old days put forth a Protestant view and were not Catholic-friendly. There was much controversy over the version of the Bible that was read. In the 19th century, there even were riots in Philadelphia between Protestants and Catholics over the Bible in public schools: http://www.hsp.org/default.aspx?id=1251
There was a lot of anti-Catholic sentiment back then following an influx of Catholic immigrants. My oldest aunt and uncle, who were children in the 1920’s, talked about the KKK marching through their neighborhood to protest the Catholics there. But, the whole movement probably had more to do with nativism than religion. The Protestants of Irish and English descent, who were already established here, weren’t happy when the Irish Catholics emigrated here en masse. Once the Irish Catholics were established, they didn’t want the other Catholics (Italian, etc.) here. And so on.
The reality was that different Catholics didn’t like each other, either. When the Irish Catholics opened their own school in our town, they would only allow Irish children in. So, then the next Catholic immigrants would open their own school and not admit anyone else. And so on. So, when I was a child, the Catholic churches and schools in our area each were devoted to a different ethnicity: there was a Catholic school for Irish children, another for Italians, another for Polish, and so on. Well, that’s free association... nothing wrong with it. :-)
Anyway, it was the Catholic vs. Protestant disagreement over the Bible that eventually led to an end to prayer in public school: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edgerton_Bible_Case
Are there any of us who would or would not homeschool if these allegations turn out to be true? It wouldn't make a difference in our household.
Government schooling is bankrupt - morally, socially and educationally. It brings about the exact opposite of its intended goal.
I like John Taylor Gatto's The Makers of Modern Schooling
But, I don't know that his history is absolutely true. It makes sense given the outcome - government indoctrinated media slaves who cannot think for themselves. But, the exact reason for government schooling can still be lost to history and the results of government bureaucratic instruction would still be the same.
Metmom has a valid point. This list is to support homeschooling and expose the lie of government schooling as effective. It does just that. Hijacking it serves what purpose?
I am on several AP lists and the teachers definitely teach to the test. The children learn very little. Videos are popular as are leftist documentaries.
Maths and computer sciences are the exception. There merit wins out at least at these levels.
What history do you teach?
I am not a teacher but I did teach my kids about this country and am now teaching my grandkids. When you ask your kids about certain aspects of our history and they tell you they never heard that, you need to start asking questions about the schools. Simply ask a high school student about our Founding Fathers. Who were they, what did they do and why? Ask them to tell you about the Federalist Papers. What are they, who wrote them? They will have no idea.
My whole contention is that the accusation that Protestants were out to de-Catholicize Catholics is without support, bigotry against Catholics notwithstanding.
If the Catholics perceived that that was the intent of the decision to include Bible reading and prayer in public schools, then no amount of convincing will change their minds.
And again, Catholics are not blameless in the persecution and bigotry department. It went both ways and still goes both ways. I’ve experienced myself, not real recently, but not that long ago.
I don’t see why there should be an issue with the Catholics about the *Protestant* Bible being used in public schools. The Catholic Bible itself contains every book the Protestant Bible does. There is nothing that those Catholic school children would hear from the Protestant Bible that they couldn’t read in their own, if they ever read it. The Catholic Church even claims to have written the Protestant Bible and takes credit even for its existence, so complaining about it being used is disingenuous.
The point I object to most about the whole issue, close to the objection of it being devisive, is that my understanding is that wintertime is neither Protestant nor Catholic and does not have a dog in that fight. There is no point in stirring the religious bigotry pot after over a century. It simply smacks of rabble rousing for no good reason.
FWIW, I was raised Catholic myself and have seen both sides of the issue. Both sides share blame and both sides could do better in making amends.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.