public educaiton

Michele Bachmann regularly speaks about her work in Minnesota to advance homeschooling and charter schools, and she even co-founded a Christian-themed charter school that helped launch her political career. According to the New York Times, “state and local school officials warned the school that it was at risk of losing its charter” for running afoul of code, and Bachmann ultimately had her “children enrolled in private Christian schools.”

Her mentor John Eidsmoe in God & Caesar details the case against public schools that may have influenced Bachmann’s early activism in education issues. Eidsmoe discusses the supposed dangers of the public education system throughout God & Caesar, saying, “The power to educate is the power to control though and shape personality. The power to educate is the power to brainwash.” He even said that America’s stalwart public school system is reminiscent of Nazi Germany, warning “exclusive state control of education is a blueprint for tyranny” (p. 143).

Eidsmoe laments that instead of promoting Christianity, public schools endorse “secular humanism.” He writes that ever since public schools embraced secular humanism, children have been “brainwashed” into supporting evolution, sex education, and moral relativism instead of creationism and conservative Christian teachings.

He calls on Christians to “voice our objections when we see government funds or government facilities being used to promote humanism” (p. 139), since he believes that secular humanism was created by the devil: “When Lucifer rebelled against God, he declared, ‘I will be like the Most High’ (Isaiah 14:14). And, having fallen from heaven, he seduced Eve with the same temptation: ‘Ye shall be as gods’ (Genesis 3:5). The modern humanists offer man the same promise” (p. 132).

Eidsmoe explains the reasons why Christians should challenge the public school system:

As we have seen, Scripture gives parents the right and duty to educate their children. Traditionally, parents have fulfilled this duty with help from the church or synagogue. Within the last century and a half, however, the state has gradually usurped this function. As long as the public schools taught nominally Christian values to their children, many Christians did not object to the state taking over education. Within the past few decades, however, and particularly within the past few years, more and more parents have become concerned that the public schools may be teaching values to their children that place them at odds with their parents.

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The Christian parent who believes in special creation may find his children brainwashed by evolutionists. The parent may believe that the source of values is God and his revealed Word, but the child may learn from his teacher that values are relative and that we must discover them for ourselves. The parent may believe that sex is to be confined to marriage, but the school health teacher may teach that premarital sex is okay “if you really care about each other.”

Yes, parents can combat much of this by carefully instructing their children at home, and they should be careful to do so. But why should parents have to support a school system that teaches alien values or compete with the state for their children’s allegiance, perhaps for their children’s very souls? (p. 123)

Writing for the ultraconservative Crisis magazine, Kevin Ryan of Boston University’s Center for the Advancement of Ethics and Character is outraged over the recently signed California law that makes sure textbooks cover important LGBT historical figures. Ryan said that the policy has a “distinct Stalinist odor” that will bolster the “gay agenda.” But Ryan has a way to respond to the new textbook law: abolish public schools. “Eliminate state-run public schools,” Ryan writes, “make a transition to one of the many school choice options” like home schooling:

Given the brute fact that the state can and does put parents in the slammer for not delivering up their children for the state approved and directed schooling, this new legislation has about it a distinct Stalinist odor. The odor is particularly strong in the nostrils of those parents who believe such grave matters as how one lives out their sexuality is not the educational province of the state bureaucrats who create the lesson plans for teachers.

It is tempting to dismiss this soon-to-be statewide curriculum as just another in a long line of outrageous and kooky, La-La Land events seemingly designed to keep the rest of us chuckling and mildly finger-wagging. However, the Sunshine State is the 800-pound gorilla of the textbook world and teachers and parents in Montana, Iowa and Georgia will surely be seeing the “gay agenda” in their next textbook adoptions.

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Another idea — and one which is receiving a great boost from legislation requiring a gay-friendly curriculum — is to eliminate state-run public schools. That is, make a transition to one of the many school choice options that put parents back in charge of their children’s education.

Increasingly, the very idea of the state answering the core educational question, “what is most worth a child knowing,” is being acknowledged as dangerous and a violation of parents’ right to control the education of their children. Currently in the US the parents of well over one million children are making huge personal and financial sacrifices to homeschool their children, and the movement is growing. While motivations vary, many of these parents have withdrawn their children from the public school because of the very over-sexualized environment this new California legislation will doubtlessly intensify.

It is tempting to take solace in the idea that this latest school victory by gay activists is a step too far and will spark a revolt. However, the public school teachers unions, local, state and national, are very strong and very politically protected. The opposition is underfunded, disorganized and tends to have a short attention span.

On the other hand, if attempts to alter our children’s understanding of their sexuality and what is the correct way for them to live out their sexuality cannot arouse parents to action, what, in God’s name and our nation’s future, will?

Randy Thomasson of the Religious Right group Save California was interviewed by the Christian Broadcasting Network about a California bill that would make sure textbooks cover important LGBT historical figures in textbooks. During a sympathetic interview with CBN’s Mark Martin, Thomasson said that the reason Democrats backed the bill was because they are “sold out to the perversion lobby” and urged parents to “make plans to get your children and grandchildren protected from this brainwashing” by pulling them out of public schools before they are “sexually indoctrinated.”

Martin: Randy, why is this bill so dangerous?

Thomasson: Well, children should not be taught lies. Homosexuality is not natural, there’s no such thing as a gay gene, no biological basis. Homosexuality is actually unhealthy with a higher chance of sexually transmitted diseases, cancer, and earlier deaths. So why tell children ‘don’t smoke,’ ‘don’t drive drunk,’ ‘don’t take drugs,’ and then say, ‘well go ahead and experiment with homosexuality’? It makes no sense. That’s what this bill would do because it would hold up as a positive role model the homosexual, bisexual, cross-dressing lifestyle.

Religious Right activists have been vigorously fighting a California bill that would make sure textbooks address the role of LGBT figures in the state’s history, even going so far as to urge parents to take their kids out of public schools if the bill is signed into law. Save California has warned of “sexual brainwashing” and a “tsunami of perversity” if the legislation passes, and now the virulently anti-gay Traditional Values Coalition is calling for people across the country to protest the bill. Benjamin Lopez of the TVC told Charisma that the bill represents politicians “messing with the minds and the innocence of children for their own twisted benefit”:

The FAIR Act, written by self-admitted homosexual state Sen. Mark Leno of San Francisco, will force all California schools to use textbooks and instructional materials that include homosexual, bisexual and transgender teachings. Despite its name, the Traditional Values Coalition says there is nothing fair, accountable, inclusive or respectful about it.

“The state of California is on the verge of financial collapse,” Benjamin Lopez, legislative advocate for Traditional Values Coalition, told Charisma News. “The last thing we need is to make an unnecessary expenditure to promote the gay lifestyle in California’s schools.”

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“The victory and the nail in the coffin for the gay agenda” would be if there was a “ a groundswell across the country demanding textbook companies say no to gay teachings in textbooks,” Lopez explains. Lopez and the Traditional Values Coalition urge everyone to help stop the law from passing before it gets voted on at the State Assembly. “If they’re California residents, we want them to absolutely bombard the state assembly with phone calls, letters, emails and faxes, demanding that legislators reject SB 48,” Lopez pleads.

“For people across the country—for everyone outside of California looking in—they’ve got to think, 'As California goes, so goes the nation.' We need people outside of California to write their local legislators saying, 'Don’t even consider doing what they’re doing in California.'

“My very stern plea is for people ... to take action. [Lawmakers are] messing with the minds and the innocence of children for their own twisted benefit. If that doesn’t bug you, I don’t know what will,” Lopez says.