The Parent's Responsibility

It has been rare lately for me to take the time to put my own thoughts into words. There are so many other bright, intelligent people putting into words similar thoughts as mine that frequently I hear myself saying, “Let’s not reinvent the wheel.” This time however, I don’t seem to find many people, if any, communicating these thoughts, so I felt led to make this point myself.

During one of our recent Summits [www.AIPNews.com], I heard some interesting discussion about how to impart the importance and worth of restoring our republic. As a former classroom teacher, I understand the desire to impart the Truth to my students and plant seeds that would hopefully grow with more cultivating.

I realized the problem with this belief after God gave us a child to parent. After studying the Word, I realized that the responsibility of educating our daughter was laid directly on the shoulders of my husband and me. And regardless of how much I search, no where do I see that mantle of responsibility removed in Scripture. Even if I didn’t believe “Sola Scriptura,” the fact that the socialist agenda has been encroaching on this right and responsibility for years should prove the point. Years? Actually more like over a century.

“The education of all children, from the moment that they can get along without a mother's care, shall be in state institutions at state expense.” Didn’t we hear Obama say this? Probably. But this quote is actually from Karl Marx himself. And slowly (or not so slowly) the Christians in the United States have been poisoned with this belief. So, off the women go into the workforce and men resign their responsibility of father to a “step” or to no one at all; both treating the “blessings” of God as curses. They turn their children over to government storage facilities. Parents are told that they are not capable of training their children. After all, “The teacher is engaged not simply in the training of individuals, but in the formation of the proper social life.... In this way, the teacher always is the prophet of the true God and the usherer-in of the true Kingdom of God” or so says a famous father of modern education, John Dewey.

“But wait,” say many unsuspecting parents, “we send them to school for an education.” That may be your goal but don’t assume it’s the educational system’s goal. The public education system’s goal is not individual education but communal indoctrination. As John Dewey stated, “Children who know how to think for themselves spoil the harmony of the collective society which is coming where everyone is interdependent.”

While I know that many individual teachers have a wonderful heart for children, what teachers are being taught and given to teach does not provide the worldview some of us hold. Even as I sat in my Science Methods class at a Catholic college, I was instructed to teach evolution. But while there are some teachers who attempt to swim against the tide, most do not or have been too corrupted by the system already themselves to realize they are part of the tide. For instance, as I sat in my Philosophy and History of Education class at the same college, I was the only person in the room who believed in absolutes. Not even our instructor believed in absolutes. If this is the mindset of the majority of those teaching, how can much good come out of it?

Correction. How much good could come out of it for those of us who hold to our conservative, Christian beliefs? There is a lot of good to come out of it for those following and fostering a socialist agenda. If not, why else would Lenin boldly state, “Give me four years to teach the children and the seed I have sown will never be uprooted.” If he knew that could happen after only four years, what about our American posterity that has been abandoned to the enemy for twelve or more years? Is it any wonder then Saul Alinsky taught in his book Rules for Radicals the need for “community organizers” to reach out and train the youth? Is it surprising to find that the well-known “community organizer” not only was praised by Alinsky’s son after the Democratic National Convention for how well Obama had used his father’s model, but he also made sure to teach those principles to students and such groups as ACORN.

It should be no surprise, then, when we learn that Obama is planning to speak to the nation’s students this coming Tuesday. Not only is he speaking, but providing teachers with the correct propaganda material otherwise called “classroom activities.” After all, as Neal McCluskey of the Cato Institute noted, “In his letter, Duncan [Secretary of Education] asserts that the work of educators is ‘critical to…our social progress.’” Sound familiar?

And it is no coincidence that not only will Obama speak, but follow-up materials are provided because after all, “A lie told often enough becomes the truth,” or so believed Lenin.
Many may feel that my thoughts concerning the weight of education lying on the shoulders of the parents is outmoded or even wrong. That is fine. But if you are a Constitutional conservative, you may want to reconsider. After all, nowhere within the explicit powers given to the federal government is education mentioned. We cannot pick and choose which powers usurped by the federal government should be extinguished making sure to leave only the ones that are convenient for us to keep.

So in the end, it is the family who should reclaim our right and responsibility to teach our children in all things including the very important role as citizens of a republic. I agree with the “Prince of Preachers,” Charles Spurgeon, who stated, “The best education is education in the best things.”