The Journey Towards Home - From Mess Maker to Home Maker

A Battleground for the Minds of Our Children

            “Jesus said to His disciples:  ‘Things that cause people to sin are bound to come, but woe to that person through which they come.  It would be better for him to be thrown into the sea with a millstone tied around his neck than for him to cause one of these little ones to sin.  So watch yourselves.’”  (Luke 17:1-3) 

            John Dewey was a very out-spoken prophet for the anti-God public school system.  Not only did he not want God entering through the doors of our schools, but God’s absolutes, God’s morals and principles would put a wrench in his plans for our youth.  There is no room for the God or anything to do with His kingdom.  “Every teacher should realize the dignity of his calling; that he is a social servant set apart for the maintenance of proper social order and the securing of the right social growth…In this way the teacher is always the prophet of the true god and the usherer of the true kingdom of god.”[1] [emphasis mine]   And again, just in case you didn’t understand the first time, he added this for good measure: “Faith in the prayer-hearing God is an unproved and out-moded faith.  There is no God and there is no soul…There is no room for fixed, natural law or moral absolutes.”[2]   

            Oh, but there is more.  Horace Mann and John Dewey were certainly not the only ones to take this point of view.  They are merely standing at the head of the line of our modern school system.  More recently, Paul Blanshard, a writer for The Humanist magazine even hinted that even though America’s arithmetic, science and reading skills are sinking – even while billions of our tax dollars are being poured into the bottomless pit of educational “reform” – that only seems to be part of the plan for him.  “Our schools may not teach Johnny to read properly, but the fact that Johnny is in school until he is sixteen tends to lead toward the elimination of religious superstition.”[3]

            For anyone who doubts, Blanshard was not the first person to think this way.  Adolph Hitler once said, “Let me control the textbooks, and I will control Germany.”  And that is exactly what he did.  And to make sure, he made private school, parochial school and home education illegal.  “Recalcitrant parents were warned that their children would be taken away from them and put in orphanages or other homes unless they enrolled[4] [in the government schools].”  (Sound familiar?)  But Hitler was certainly ahead of his time.  In 1983, John Dunphy, yet again another writer for The Humanist magazine, reiterated that what the public schools are secretly fighting unaware parents for are the minds and immortal souls of their children:  “The classroom must and will become an arena of conflict between the old and the new – the rotting corpse of Christianity, together with all its adjacent evils and misery, and the new faith of humanism.”[5]

            And let us not forget about this generation’s leader of the pack:  The National Education Association.  Dr. John Goodland wrote a report for the NEA in which he said, “Our goal is behavioral change.  The majority of our youth still hold to the values of their parents and if we do not resocialize them to accept change, our society may decay.”[6]  [emphasis mine] 

            Reading, writing and arithmetic have had to make way and be replaced by a new value system.  Values clarification seems to be the order of the day whether parents want it be or not.  (Remember the outcome of the Ninth Circuit Court’s decision.) 

            “Values Clarification.”  It has the sound of the educational system desiring nothing more than to help our youngsters get a handle on right and wrong, doesn’t it?  Mary Pride, in her book “The Way Home,” is not one known to beat around the bush.  She cuts right to the chase as she puts it this way:  “…as the public schools are demanding the right to indoctrinate children in values that may be directly contrary to the parents’.  Sex education courses are designed to brainwash children into accepting homosexuality and fornication as ‘valid forms of sexual expression.’ Values clarification classes systematically destroy the Biblical concepts of an absolute right and an absolute wrong.  One-world government programs in Social Studies are meant to destroy patriotism, while the study of ‘women’s role in today’s society’ is a front for indoctrination in feminism.  Economics courses teach socialism; English teachers assign pornography as required reading; even my high-school gym class featured instruction in occult Yoga techniques.”

            Even though I graduated from high school in 1977, I can personally verify nearly everything she listed.  In my own experience, my Psychology teacher required us to lay on mats hooked up to monitors that measured our bio rhythms.  All in the name of progressive learning.  Mann and Dewey would have been so proud.           

  Its another crisp cool morning in Alabama.  I have a messy kitchen to clean up this morning, I was simply lazy after the JV game let out at 8:45.  Yesterday's dinner was potato soup with bacon, fried okra, and homemade biscuits.  The potato soup had heavy whipping cream I had left over from something else, I cubed the potatoes, boiled them tender, drained, and then added 2 C of 2% mild and 1 C cream along with garlic, butter, pepper, and  a wee bit of onion.  They liked it alot, it was very rich and thick. I am doing Southbeach, so I couldn't have any of what I did for dinner so I had what I could have.

    Apparently last night it rained here lightly, which is good, the sun is not out yet today, its overcast and cloudy.  Dh and I discussed more the desire to move from town and find land (very small 2-5 acres) and begin the process of living the way we prefer (as we did before)  We will most likely stay here 2 years so son finishes high school, but even that isn't concrete....he prefers a smaller school too.  It seems impossible from where we are, with the housing market where it is, but God is God and he has given us each this desire, so we shall see His work first hand.

   I have a writing project due by Thursday for a writer I ghostwrite for.  It is not a tedious writing project but new software for the product has me dreading it, so this afternoon I will knock that out....nothing like getting something you dread off the table!

    Tonight is family night so we'll be having a family friendly meal such as spaghetti and then play a board game together for the evening then early to bed.  God is good and we are blessed!

Sweetie

For Today...

Outside my Window...a beautiful sun-shiny day.  The only disappointment about the weather is that it's supposed to get up into the low 70s...I'm ready for it to stay down in the 60s and 50s.

I am thinking...that my friend, whose son was just murdered in front of his wife, is grieving and needs so much prayer.

Isn't it amazing how little time truly each chore takes? Lately I've played a game with myself on what to do each "run"  In the amount of time my coffee pot brews two cups, the counter can be washed down, or the dishwasher unloaded.  In the time a load washes on light load I can sweep the front hall and porch and kitchen.  In a quick trip while warming up coffee again later  (50 seconds) the hall bathroom can be counter wiped.  I so imagine all of these taking so much longer.

Its beautiful here today...in Northern Alabama and I so want to get the house spiffy so I can go outside and enjoy the day a little while at lunch. We have a patio table and chairs we rarely use, but today its so the right temperature and niceness to take daughter for a patio lunch outside and enjoy visiting there for an hour or so before school work.

To "be" in the moment of this life, that is what I am trying to be today. To enjoy knowing I am spiffing up for the joy of a clean kitchen, to smell fresh laundry and know they (the children and husband) find it in their drawers easily done without search....to enjoy the beauty of a cleared table with apples in the basket for them later.

You know, of all the things I have grown up with and had as well as have now, the most expensive things are not what I look on fondly, its the crisp biscuit and homemade jam with a loving relative, its the joy on son's face when he sees homemade chicken noodle soup, its the fun baking with daughter....and the blessing of a man who appreciates dinner cooking for him when he gets home.

These are simply blessings that I do not want to overlook my ability to give them....God has so blessed us each one, and my focus is on those blessings today and not on the lack I so fleshly look for sometimes....

God is so good .

My dear blog friend, Amy (Simplefolk ~~ a MUST READ blog, by-the-way!!), posted about losing her sweet dog that used to be her grandpa's.  That losing their Rosie was a milestone of sorts as she had belonged to her loving grandpa.

It brought back memories - good and sad - about our dear Hickory that we lost at age 10 back in January from liver cancer.  He was "our boy" and I still think of him daily.  Even though we now have our cute little Maggie (a "big girl" at 10 whole months and all of about 10 lbs., now!), I still miss Hickory.  I've had dogs all my life and, as any pet owner knows, as much as we love them all there are a couple in our lives that are just special.  That was Hickory.  Maggie is doing a wonderful job of playing her way right into those empty parts of our hearts, so we're hoping that she will be just as speical as Hickory.

This is "our boy", Hickory, just a couple of years ago.  I miss that face. 

Blessings from Ohio, Kim Wolf<><