Posted on 07/05/2009 7:36:02 AM PDT by wintertime
A slew of research shows that America is losing the conservative Christian youth in massive droves. These studies show a generation being increasingly won over to a socialistic/secular-humanistic worldview in spite of the American church increasing their apologetic courses, children's programs, youth rallies and books and sermon series on child training.
What is happening? Could it be that we are doing something wrong? I would make the case that we are blatantly sinning in sending our kids to places that are, in fact, causing them to fall away. Let me lay out the case in three simple points.
( SNIP)
2. Is there any convincing evidence that a secular-humanistic public education is causing kids to stumble and fall away from the church?
* 88 percent of the children raised in evangelical homes leave church at the age of 18;
* 83 percent of children from committed Christian families attending public schools adopt a Marxist-socialist worldview;
* Mounting evidence that the public schools are successfully converting covenant children to secular humanism;
* Nehemiah Institute's graph showing the shocking result of a 20-year study on approximately 60,000 youth in 50 states from churchgoing families.
(Excerpt) Read more at wnd.com ...
There's a first!
Source?
Yes.
It would not surprise me to learn that if public schools teach any reliigous classes at all, it is to denounce and discount religion in people’s lives.
But in this type class, religious teaching should be inclusive so as not to be intolerant of any one religion or philosophy.
But that’s not happening. The NEA and ACLU have teamed up to ensure, for instance in NYC schools that all religions with the exception of Christianity are given equal access.
Christmas trees banned in NYC, words to Christian songs banned in Florida, the word Christmas itself banned in Georgia; preciptiating various groups such as www.ThomasMore.org to get involved.
They’re in a fight to reverse the bullying by the Georgia ACLU here to remove, under threat of lawsuit, Christmas from our school’s calendar.
A FEDERAL holiday!
If there is any school bias about religion, it is most assuredly against Christianity and Catholicism.
I agree. On another un-related thread (concerning Sara Palin I think), I saw where bullies need to be confronted, on ALL fronts. In my mind this includes schools.
The schools are already there physically. They belong to us, because we paid for them and we continue to pay for them.
Liberals need to confronted, not abandoned to wreak continuing havoc in ANY arena.
But I also agree with wintertime in privatizing them.
You are right, but one thing the progressives did (John Dewey) is to lower the ages for compulsory education and there is a big move to make preschool universal....it is all to indoctrinate children into the progressive (moral relativist) view. Parents are being undermined in all aspects--through media, music, esp. and schools. As they are being undermined they are told it is as good to have young children raised in day cares as in the home--again to break the family bond and create good little marxists who are conformists)
Absolute values are being constantly attacked if you go outside the home, Christians especially. The attack is as ruthless as it has been on Palin but is more covert and couched by "nice" language. Tolerance, multiculturalism, pro-choice, equal rights, etc., etc. Progressives have painted moral people as bigots and haters and have control over all media but a few outlets. It is extremely hard to buck the system--Palin is a good example. Children are NOT strong enough to fight the progressive system in place (emotionally or intellectually) and most adults have trouble identifying it even if they are against it. Putting children in public schools is like throwing them to the wolves. Like I say, it was covert for years and now, with O, it is seeing the light but most people still can't understand what is happening. To think children will be immune to the intense indoctrination is ignorant.
Couldn’t have said it better myself. We should all be ever vigilant over this because if we allow it to happen and continue unabated, we will see our country fall into the deep abyss of moral degeneration and disintegration.
“What about teachers? Is it a sin for Christian teachers to teach an atheistic godless worldview to their students? Is is a sin for Christian teachers to support with their labor an institution whose very goal to teach children to compartmentalize their faith and to evaluate everything they learn through a godless lens?
By the way...Any Christian teacher who tries to sneak in little bits of Christian values is teaching the children that Christians are sneaky. Will the job of true missionaries be easier or hard when these students reach adulthood?”
When are you going to get off your morally superior high horse and admit that the teacher smearing you do is a lie?
As a parent, I am certain I will have to account for my children’s upbringing at the Judgment Chair. Letting the government run schools do my job is absolutely not going to ever happen. Not now, not never.
No one says you have to be Catholic but I do wonder where some of these fantasies come from. Posting things that are patently untrue and likely outside your personal experience against a Faith very likely not your own is no way to build conservative or Christian solidarity for the struggle we are all in in the age of Obamamessiah and the Democommune known as the US Congress.
Probably. Ditto on Dewey and Kinsey. A lot of the crudeness coming out of the locker rooms and sex courses erodes morality. The hierarchy has been in the process of abandoning Catholic traditions in education. This presents problems. Parents are faced with difficult decisions, some economic. Protestants, apparently, have mostly abandoned Christian education and the idea of a public Christian culture so the culture itself is a problem. There need to be stronger efforts to restore Catholic education and make it affordable for families. The bishops need to address this with some urgency. Without it, civilization collapses.
The infiltration and destruction of the Jesuit colleges and universities brought tremendous damage to the whole educational system. It will take a long time to recover.
You need orthodox clergy and Catholics who know what they are doing for one thing.
Amen. And yet we cannot shirk, we must rebuild. First our own soul, then our family, then our parish.
Sure it does.
Example #1: What's a Christian who won't witness in some way to his/her faith? (I'm not talking about selective silence; which we all do at times...I'm talking about zero expression = no endorsement that this faith is a reality to be exported).
Example #2: Let's say you have a relative who got "married" -- "married" to a fellow gay -- during that brief time CA said it was "legal" last year. The relative visits you regularly -- but you never acknowledge the existence of that other person as their "spouse" -- because you don't believe gay "marriage" exists. By not mentioning that relationship, you're endorsing the non-(legal) reality of gay "marriages."
I went to public school and the goal is to present the material as objectively as possible...
OK, let me tell you what your statement assumes -- even in just this short phrase above: You assume that public teachers are essentially...
..."neutral" who present material "objectively"
-- vs. somebody who is "faith-based" -- and is therefore automatically "subjective"
But that isn't the measurement of truth! (See my illustration at the end below)
...leave moral instruction to the parent/religious establishment.
Yeah, just try excising ALL moral instruction from the schools...
Teacher: "Oh, you didn't turn in your small-group project because two of the members refused to participate? Oh, that's OK...'cause we don't comment on the morality of teamwork."
Vice-Principal: "Oh, you brought a toy gun to school...Oh, that's OK 'cause we don't engage in 'moral instruction' when policies are disregarded."
(I'm sorry, but there's no such thing as "amoral instruction" when educators already DAILY comment upon relationships, politics, history, social science, etc...otherwise, educators could never favor abstinence over promiscuity, marriage over polygamy, etc!!!)
Besides, schools these days actually do try to talk about "character" -- even in small "dosages." But who can talk about character without at some point discussing love? ('cause all character is based upon how we relate to each other; and how we relate to each other is rooted in an ethic of loving your neighbor as yourself).
So, in response to your last sentence...to exemplify, you could have two distinct "multicultural" presentations to students on the Auca Indians of Ecuador as they were in history in the early 1950s:
The educator's presentation: He/she implies or states outright that the Auca culture has always been 100% fine as is and any "invasive" attempt to reach them by American missionaries was cultural imperialism.
Contrast that to a presentation by a family member of one of those missionaries who were killed by the Auca Indians in the 1950s: Yes, this missionary family member might give a more "subjective" presentation, but it'd be more based in reality if it focused on how fruitful the gospel has been within that culture -- and that the Jesus-stated ethic of love and friendship was best stated by the ultimate sacrificial efforts of those missionaries: "There's no greater love than this, that a man lay down his life for his friend."
The fact is that something like sacrificial service IS the best objectively stated reality that our students could hear. So instead of hearing this, they often get MAJOR dosages of SELF -- under the guise of "self-esteem" curricula! So when pub education is teaching the morality of "self-actualization" and "self-esteem" and focus mostly on yourSELF, don't tell us the P.R. propaganda that schools "leave moral instruction to the parent/religious establishment" -- because they don't!
Well said.
My mother taught public school for 40 years, and retired 10 years ago, but in her day, she put up Bible verses on her bulletin boards, read Bible stories to her students, and quote Scripture regularly, without any reprocusion from administration. This cannot be done today. So the question is — Can a committed Christian who believes in the admonishishment of believers by Christ to live holy lives and to reflect the character of Christ, to walk faithfully with the Lord, while teaching with a perspective that is completely and totally void of any reference to faith of any kind, or to a Master Creator who purposefully made the world and all people in His image? Should a Christian purposefully mask their relationship to Jesus by blending in to a profession that disallows the mere mention of faith to be made in any context within the school day of teaching?
This is, I believe, the real question, and I don’t know how a believer in Christ might answer this by defending their choice to teach in public school. My mother’s era of teaching in public schools is over. She still thinks Christian teachers can use verses on bulletin boards and read from Bible story books to their students. She doesn’t get that it is no longer possible to live so openly as a Christian teacher in the school system, the way she once did those years before.
I am a single Christian adoptive homeschooling mother of four, who recently put one of my four back in public schools for 10 weeks, because he (my 11 year old) seemed to need more structure and was not responding to my leadership the way I thought he should. Those 10 weeks recently of dealing with my son at a “very good” neighborhood school was quite eye-opening for me. I tried hard not to be the paranoid, deranged, anti-public school mother — but it was very hard to do. Let me just list a few things that happened within two days of enrolling him this last spring:
The female principal was charged and sentenced for rape of a child (a female student she’d been having sex with for years). My son was shoved to the ground twice, and called names for being a “goody goody” (he is polite, well-behaved, and eager to learn). He was excluded from every single playground activity / game because he was “too short” to play, according to other students. One little girl came up to him the first week, and told him, “You’re too stupid to be in 5th grade.” Lovely. The last straw was when he and a younger friend were leaving school, and a group of older girls with BATS attacked the boys, and my son found a large sharp piece of metal on the ground to defend himself with (which made these girls run away). After that, I was in the principal’s office declaring our family would never come back, and that homeschooling was the only way to keep my children safe and happy. Done with that. I teach my children to stand up for themselves and be a “light in the darkness”, but THAT was ridiculous and pure insanity.
Just some thoughts from my side of the fence...
I teach at a public school and continue to offer balance to the muddle headed liberal teachers I work with on a daily basis. (I teach first graders)
I also have students come up to me and ask if I can check them on their Act of Contrition and Hail Mary. I do so with pride!
It depends on your motive. If in your ignorance you just do what you think is right, no it is not a sin. If you have evidence that the school district is undermining Christian principals and the character of your child and yet you continue sending your children into that environment everyday because you like your freedom during the day, you don’t want to make the sacrifice to pay tuition etc., yes it may well be you are sinning.
God knows our hearts better than we do, and it is He who judges us. If you have been guilty of the above repent and by golly invest in your children. Do not subject them to the current day school system. It is not what it use to be in many areas of the US. Some insist their Public schools are just great with many Christians teaching and they are in smaller communities. Pray it stays that way, but don’t be lulled into a trance that it will always be that way. Stay vigilant and involved our country is depending on each of us to raise up the next generation. And Lord willing they will be much better than my generation. I am so grateful the Lord opened our eyes when our children were young enough for us to make a difference.
To God be the glory!
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