As Education is slowly returning to state control versus federal Government control of our schools, we can consider ourselves blessed. The previous few years has shown us that Government control doe not offer “real” learning of material education opportunities that represent learning what our students need to know to live healthy, effective lives, that are not based only on individuals with disruptive ideas for society. It is good to see some of the troublesome information that was being taught and, many time, added to our school systems’ library shelves.
When reading from the many sources that are available about our education system in the United States I came across, the “Visions of Order: The Cultural Crisis of Our Time” – Richard M. Weaver, published in 1964, that was eye-opening to my understanding of why we are seeing such a radical cultural change. Here is a quick synopsis from his thoughts he wrote before his passing.
The United States has chosen to look upon its schools at all levels as a means of education rather than instruction. “A state-supported public education by progressive educators that is “intimately related to the preservation of a culture.” Which would be open to debate from a Christian point of view that was taught how to think, not what to think.
Their “progressive theory of education” are the following: 1) There is no such thing as a body of knowledge that students need to learn; 2) Since the essence of the world is change, there is no final knowledge about anything; 3) Therefore, the object of education is not to teach knowledge, but to “teach students”; 4) The student should be encouraged to follow his own desires in deciding what to study; 5) The teacher should spurn the role of authority figure and instead serve as a “leader” whose only duty is to coordinate the work of the students; 6) Students should never have fear, especially of grades or competitions. You might detect a conflict between these tenets and the “principal teachings of the Judeo-Christian-classical heritage,” Number seven: “The mind is not to be exalted over the senses,” followed by 8) “activist” learning” is equal to intellectual learning. “
The human mind is now viewed as a “tyrant.” The student has been left unprepared to “save his soul,” not to mention without the “wisdom and usages of past civilizations. “The general aim is to train a student so that he will adjust himself not simply to the existing society… but to society conceived as a social democracy.” That public education in the United States has been “in the hands of revolutionaries.” In fact, a ‘virtual educational coup d’etat” had been staged by a “specially inclined minority,”
The progressives, you see, are not just mere revolutionaries, they are modern “Gnostics” operating on the basis of their own “false view of nature and man.” The Gnostics of this cabal have a “false view of nature and man,” namely that man was somehow superior to the created universe. Therefore, what man wants to do, he should do.
The “doctrines of the new educationists” are at least as menacing to the survival of our culture as were the Gnostic heresies of the first and second centuries. “And the “progressive educational theory” offers nothing more and nothing less than a “gnostic version of the image of man.” Carrying a concealed Marxist hope that the state may be utilized to gain their ends.” The progressivists’ assault upon virtually all forms of authority, discipline and the centeredness that is accompanied by “conditioning the young for political purposes.” these progressives are about the business of producing “citizens or subjects for the secular communist state.”
Lately, I have heard those of a conservative outlook for government looking at the challenges of our schools with some solutions such as the idea of eliminating the cell phones of students to encourage attention in school disciplines, also to at least be able to read at a third-grade level to move on to fourth grade, have the study of civics for our country’s history so they may learn what they are required to graduate. None of these are a bad thing, but we need also to do the right thing by demanding students learn of our Judo-Christian heritage, how to think for themselves by reading from many sources of knowledge that is available to them and learn of the wisdom of those that came before them that they may equipped for a good life.
“If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost. That is where they should be. Now put the foundation under them.”-Henery David Thoreau
Our government to enjoy or regret
Chairman
Bruce Miller
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gilacountycommitteeofsafey.org, gilacos.org
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