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?
Yes it is I think.
We can talk about all other issues until we are blue in the face. Truth is...this is the biggest and only one that really matters or can ultimately make a difference. If the public is stupid (and they are), you have a big problem. ...and we do. Question is what do we do now?
I think we can debate whether it’s better to homeschool or private / public school, but bringing “sin” into it is somewhat ridiculous. My parents both teach at public schools. They are wonderful people, and they have not devoted their lives to “sin.”
” * 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; “
I do not buy these numbers, period!
Narses: Another Reason for Catholics to find a good Catholic school that teaches **traditional** Catholic principles and values. Do that or homeschool.
It’s a small wonder that right thinking people exist at all in our current environment.
Socialist/Libs dominate education, entertainment and the MSM and I hope for the briefest of time, the whitehouse and congress.
BTW, as a single father, I raised and sent all four of my kids to private school.
The school experience, in my opinion, is centered on one teacher in one given classroom. Or a few, as in High School. If you have a Christian teacher that year, your experience will be a thousand percent different than if you have a raving lib.
A good, Christian teacher can make for a life-changing year in the life of a student, whether or not he preaches the gospel. Speaking the Truth is always compelling, whether it is a light in the darkness or one light among many.
Did the Apostles only speak to believers? Did they only go where it was safe and already Christian? No. Christians have always been small lights in the darkness, and it is never counted a sin.
We homeschooled, however.
Common sense.
PSALM 1
Ps 1:1 ¶ Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful. {ungodly: or, wicked}
2 But his delight is in the law of the LORD; and in his law doth he meditate day and night.
3 And he shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that bringeth forth his fruit in his season; his leaf also shall not wither; and whatsoever he doeth shall prosper. {wither: Heb. fade}
4 ¶ The ungodly are not so: but are like the chaff which the wind driveth away.
5 Therefore the ungodly shall not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous.
6 For the LORD knoweth the way of the righteous: but the way of the ungodly shall perish.
EPHESIANS 6
Eph 6:4 And, ye fathers, provoke not your children to wrath: but bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.
DEUTERONOMY 6
De 6:4 ¶ Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God is one LORD:
5 And thou shalt love the LORD thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might.
6 And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart:
7 And thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up. {teach: Heb. whet, or, sharpen}
8 And thou shalt bind them for a sign upon thine hand, and they shall be as frontlets between thine eyes.
9 And thou shalt write them upon the posts of thy house, and on thy gates.
This writer lost me at “83 percent of children from committed Christian families attending public schools adopt a Marxist-socialist worldview.”
First of all, define “Marxist-socialist worldview.” Secondly, how on earth would you measure such a thing? Thirdly, even here in New Jersey we don’t even have that many Marxist-socialists.
I am sick of Christians who will a accept an intellectually flaccid product (be it writing, entertainment, or purported “research”) from fellow Christians, apparently for the sake of supporting one of their own and hearing what they want to hear.
YES!!!
I am a product of the government schools (GS). I graduated from high school in 1957 and was exposed to several hundred teachers. Most were dedicated professionals. And I can STILL name the EXCEPTIONAL ones.
Edna Kleinmeyer who didn’t just teach English: She imbued us with a love of language I carry to this day. It was Ms. Kleinmeyer who told me I had a gift for writing;
Charlie Kluckholn, the tough old wrestling coach who taught chemistry and gave me some of the best advice I had received to that time;
Charles Huffman, the homeroom teacher who helped me over a very rough spot in my life;
Franklin Jefferis, a “lowly” shop teacher, whose love of a job well done was wordlessly communicated to his kids in thousands of subtle ways. Mr. Jefferis died soon after I graduated. One October night, I “visited” him – alone — at the funeral home and wept as I thanked him one last time.
But the current GS are radically different from the system through which I passed 50 years ago. Know that my concern and hostility are NOT directed at those who still TEACH — really teach, really want the best EDUCATION for the kids, want to prepare them academically for the future.
Those feelings are reserved for SCHOOL ADMINISTRATORS who have socialist/collectivist agendas or quietly acquiesce to the agendas imposed on them from above. They know that what is going on is wrong, but say nothing lest they jeopardize their careers. Author Thomas Sowell calls these folks “the anointed.” And as the title of his book on the subject, “The Vision of The Anointed,” indicates, they HAVE a vision!
That it is NOT the PARENTS’ vision is of no concern to them.
When my kids were still in the GS, my wife and I were quite active. The Principal of their elementary school chose me to represent the school in something called the LSAC (Local School Advisory Committee) program. I attended several meetings held at the County Board of Education headquarters. I came away from the VERY FIRST of those meetings with these impressions:
1. Those folks DID NOT speak English. Through tight little smirks clearly indicative of the low esteem, indeed, contempt, they had for the uninformed and ignorant gaggle of parents arrayed before them, they spoke in buzz words and technobabble code only they comprehended. At one point — to the visible relief of the other parents — I stopped one woman’s presentation and asked for a translation of what she’d said. She was NOT pleased!
2. They DID NOT want parents involved! Cookie sales and PTA? OK. Serious criticism of a course or textbook? Verboten! Your option was private or parochial school. There very little home schooling then.
3. Most of these people MAY have once been educators. They were now bureaucrats guarding their turf.
4. Many of those administrative folks were making over $50K and, though I looked for signs of it, I saw little evidence of anything resembling “work.” And this was 20 years ago when the average classroom teacher earned less than $25K.
5. There were WAY too many administrators in the GS. It is a perfect opportunity to provide make-work sinecures for “anointed” members of the educational fraternity. Four years as an Air Force instructor taught me how to spot the signs.
Here’s the “bottom line:” Simply hurling more money into the black hole of the GS WILL NOT WORK. Most of that money will NEVER get to the classroom or into the pockets of DESERVING teachers who actually TEACH. And teach what any sensible human being – REGARDLESS of race, faith or ethnicity — instinctively understands to be correct, morally defensible material.
Bush is right about one thing: We need accountability! Perhaps you recall Clinton’s asinine plan to send 100,000 PAID Americorps “volunteers” into the grade schools to TEACH KIDS TO READ. Why hadn’t their PREVIOUS teachers – OR THEIR PARENTS! — taught them to perform that rather basic skill???
Think about what you just read as YOUR local government schools continue to raise YOUR property taxes.
Another encounter with “The System”
In 1978, my wife and I came to know a young woman named Patty. She
was a devoutly religious young mother who’d become more devout when her
husband and father of her two small sons aged 2 and 6 informed her that he
was leaving. In dire economic straits, I offered to let her stay in our
former home in Chamblee — which was not rented at the time – rent-free until she got back on her feet. She had been clandestinely home schooling the 6 year
old for about 2 years using very well done Christian course materials from
an organization in Texas the name of which escapes me. The lad had recently been tested and had placed at least a year ABOVE his chronological age. As required by the government school authorities at the time, she dutifully apprised the authorities of his scores.
For reasons which would become clear in a moment, Patty had been harassed by the DeKalb County school authorities for about 6 months and, by the time she moved into the Chamblee house, had been — unbeknownst to us — ORDERED to put the 6 year old into the nearest government elementary school or suffer the consequences. Because she wanted the boys to be educated Christians, there was no way she was going to do that and she told them so.
At approximately 2 am one morning, a loud knock on the door announced the
arrival of the aforementioned “consequences.”
Dressed only in a nightgown, she was confronted by several burly police officers who thrust an arrest warrant in her face. With the now awakened 6 year old watching and the 2 year old wailing in the other room, she was handcuffed and led out the door to jail. She was tossed into a large cell with a couple of hookers and a junkie who spent much of the rest of that morning vomiting in the corner. The two young boys for whom the educational authorities professed such great concern were just left AT THE HOUSE — ALONE! Patty was later told that the bureaucrats from Children Services who were SUPPOSED to accompany the cops were late and, in their haste to get this dangerous miscreant behind bars, the cops just missed the fact that the Children Services people were, well, missing. The CS folks showed up an hour later to find two terrified kids, one of whom had just seen his mother hauled off in cuffs.
Patty was ultimately brought to trial under the Georgia Truancy Statutes. Her pro-bono attorney tore the school authorities to shreds and hers has been called THE case that opened the floodgates to home schooling in Georgia. Once they had all the facts, the jury didn’t take long to acquit her. I’m proud to have played a small part in that.
At Patty’s trial, a previously overlooked aspect of the government schools was put into sharp focus for those paying attention: The Director of Instruction for DeKalb County testified that the then current 7 hour school day consisted of an average of approximately 3 hours or less of instruction. At that time, Patty was devoting 4 to 5 hours a day to direct instruction.
He also as much as admitted that the REAL reason they wanted ALL these kids in school was the $3,000.00 per kid per year (I’m sure that number is higher in 2001!) they then got from the state and federal government. Empty seats = lost funds. As in most things, follow the money.
Patty home schooled these two boys through high school.
And how did the boys turn out?
One is now a physician and the other a budding journalist.
But that now seems to be the norm for the growing legions of home schooled kids – which most likely explains why the NEA and the government school folks feel justifiably threatened. And home-schooled kids routinely win national academic competitions.
One of Reagan’s key platform planks was to dismantle the horribly misnamed Department of Education (the Department of Educational MEDIOCRITY would be more descriptive). When he got to Washington, his effort was defeated by the NEA and the federal educrats. Reagan’s 1983 report “A Nation at Risk” declared that if a foreign power had done to government schools what was been done to it by the establishment bureaucrats and teachers’ unions, we would have CONSIDERED IT AN ACT OF WAR!
Sadly, that war goes on – and our kids and the future of this nation are the casualties. Barack Obama is a direct manifestation of how badly America has lost that war and how effectively generations of kids have been indoctrinated.
Thomas Jefferson believed an EDUCATED PUBLIC to be the cornerstone of the system he and the other Founders TRIED to leave behind. He would NOT, I feel certain, be a big fan of the current government education system. If he returned today, he’d home school just as he did before.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D0lR1KQq2-U
What is a sin is allowing the Marxist-Atheists to have taken over the school system. We need more people with classic American values on school boards. People who will not buy the idea that more money for teachers with lifetime tenure improves the education of our children, that teachers need teaching aides, that fewer children per classroom improves education, etc. And we need people who will demand results from the current superintendent and not renew his or her contract if the individual does not produce results and who are not afraid to fire the superintendent or any teacher who does not do the job they are paid to do or who commits any crime. Too many school systems are filled with pedophiles of both genders, yet the members of the school boards are into cutting deals and controlling construction funds rather than in overseeing the educational quality of the schools. The real sin is that we have allowed our school systems to become such cesspools.
I used to think not. By I’ve since changed my mind given the increasing pedophiles working as teachers. The subjects being stuffed down our impressionable childrens minds like chldren having 2 mommies or 2 daddies. The move away from teaching the basic 3 Rs system and the basic English language. Illegals who can’t speak a word of English but the teachers have to focus on them while the rest of the class suffers.
MAYBE....just maybe kids leave mainstream churches when they discover that Easter is really about pagan fertility worship and that Christmas is really a pagan solstice celebration?
Or that the nifty steeple is a pagan phallic symbol?
Or that today’s ‘christianity’ is impotent primarily because it more resembles baal worship than early christian practices.
Maybe kids decide that the lies coming from mainstream churches, and those that defend the pagan practices rob them of their credibility and they seek answers elsewhere?
Perhaps the question really should be is it a sin to send kids to church?
But why should any religious views be injected in a public school? Whose religious view should be acceptable? I don’t buy into that.
My kids can got their dose of religion from home and church. They carry it with them, they don’t need to be indoctrinated in a public school. If I thought they needed more religious education I would have sent them to a religious school.
We are a pluralistic society, many faiths and flavors of these faiths. Nearly all my kids public school friends were going to church/synagogue when they were young. We were just all going to DIFFERENT places.
Same with non-sectarian organizations like scouting. Each year a different church or synagogue sponsors the scout sabboth; it is always inspirational.
And our schools were not scared to celebrate religious belief; there were many nods to different faiths in holiday programs and lessons. The chorale sang religious songs from many faiths, not just the holiday/winter/snow songs, but religious songs. Is that unusual for a public school? We are a suburban NY school district just outside of NYC.
It’s a weird question, but I’ll answer. It all depends on the school. In our case, we have an exceptional charter school (academic ranking is around third in the state depending on the year). It is a public school, so is it a sin to have exceptional academic values in your public school?
The school curriculum is based on a set of “Core Values” (which are “suspiciously” close to a set of Christian ethics”. Is it sinful to send your child to such a public school?
The point here is that things can be done correctly in a public school, but you have to raise Hell and buck the educational system to do it. Is it worth the trouble? Of course, but the parents have to do it. You can’t rely on the “state” to do it for you. You have to get off your butt and do it yourself. It’s worth it, for your kids.
Did I mention that it’s done at about 2/3’s the cost of what it costs for a conventional school student?
Significant results.
I know of Christians, genuine Christians, that have lefts Christian schools and they are infiltrating the public schools and ready for this? MAKING A DEFFERENCE. I admit, this is rare. My hope is that it catches on.
Who'd believe at a PUBLIC school, the principal would notice a group around the flag pole. Not knowing what they were doing he walked over. They told him. He immediately asked if he could lead the prayer on National Payer Day. If more of this could happen ... .
to read later