By Robert Reed, pastor of Victory Baptist Church in Coden, Alabama, as published on The Transformed Wife
“Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ.” (Colossians 2:8)
Public schools (kindergarten through high school) have proven to be a Trojan horse for school children in America, and colleges and universities throughout our land.
Public schools are not public, they are controlled almost completely by the state and federal government. These schools are not only brainwashing the children, they are also very expensive. Education ranks with defense and welfare as one of the three major expenditures of government. In 2000, the average amount of dollars spent per pupil was nearly $7,000.00. Nearly every politician runs his campaign on the issue of education because it is big business in our nation. If God is not welcome in the public school system, why on earth would anyone want to send his or her children there? In fact, we send missionaries around the world to convert the heathen and send our children to schools that teach the heathens’ ways. Have we lost our minds?
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The public school system has been flawed from the very beginning. It has never been good, and no, it did not go bad in the 1960’s when prayer was taken out of the schools. Even though there have been good people in the system, the conception of state-controlled education is from hell. Public education claims to be neutral on religion, but there is no such thing as neutrality in religion. What they mean is that biblical Christianity cannot be taught, but humanism, evolution, globalism, etc. can be taught. The public school system is very hostile toward Christianity, in other words, the system hates God. The two principle founders of government schools in America hated God and biblical Christianity (Horace Mann, the father of education in America and of the Unitarian Faith and John Dewey, the father of progressive education, and the co-author of The Human Manifesto I). John Dewey was an atheist. In Colossians 2:8, we are told to take warning lest we be spoiled (robbed) through philosophy. Philosophy is simply the love of wisdom apart from God. Many philosophers are admired, quoted, and followed in the public school. Philosophers such as Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle were mentally deranged, hated God, and yet their teaching is prevalent in education.
Plato’s ideal society was to have the government to train the children, eliminating parental authority and influence. The goal of public education is to make loyal state citizens, taking the children from their parents.
Karl Marx called for the abolition of the family, desiring to stop the exploitation of children by their parents.
In Europe, the Prussian monarchs adopted government education as a way of producing children of the state, and other European nations followed suit.
In Germany, Hitler used education and the authority and power of the state to accomplish his agenda.
As one writer so plainly said, “State controlled education is a blueprint for tyranny.” Hitler’s youth became loyal followers of the state and marched to the drumbeat of Nazi ideals. This was seen in the oaths and pledges of the youth in Germany at that time. Hitler gained control of the entire nation by gaining control of the education system. Government schools are common among dictatorial nations. When the communist came to power in Russia, government controlled education was one of the first things to be incorporated. Even in ancient times, nations wanted control of the children. Pharaoh wanted the Israelite children (Exodus 10:9-11), and Babylon wanted to control the training of the children taken captive (Daniel 1:3-5). This is not a new tactic.
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The answer is simple; get your children out of the system (II Corinthians 6:14-18). We are not to be conformed to the world (Romans 12:1-2) and evil communication corrupts good manners (I Corinthians 15:33). The system is anti-God, anti-Christian, and anti-family. Every public school should be shut down in America, and this could be done if it was not tax funded. There is a war going on for the souls of our children. The indoctrination of our children goes on for twelve years, seven hours a day, one hundred and eighty days a year. Be obedient to God’s Word and learn not the way of the heathen (Jeremiah 10:2).
Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
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yeah, the first thing to do when you want to raise your kids “right” is to pull them out of public school and homeschool them. 🙄
some day they will learn that ignorance is worse than education, regardless from where it comes.
Yes, totalitarian societies both left and right use the education system to effectively brainwash children. They also use the police and military to systematically harass and oppress their citizens. So should we in the US not have government police and military? By this author’s logic, we shouldn’t.
Good public schools are essential to a federal democracy for the very reason the author gives..so children can learn real science and real history.
I am not a fan of propaganda or agenda driven history, neither from the far right or far left. Human history has nuance and circumstances that transcend political ideology. Religion is part of history, and I have no issues with religious principles being taught in public schools so long as all of the history is taught, not just that one religion is portrayed as all bad and others as all good, etc. Every religion, like every political ideology, has their closet of atrocities.
That to me is why neutral and fact-based public education is essential. Being Catholic, I have no issue at all with the option for religious schooling, but it’s curriculum should adhere to basic state standards.
My father was a high school German and English as a second language teacher. The teachers do the best they can, but they are given pre-planned curriculum to teach in each class for things like history etc. When I attended High School we were taught almost no black history about the civil war and southern reaction to blacks being taught.
In religious schools, what is taught is even more controlled. Kids who go to religious school do so inside the capsule of their religion. In many of these schools they are taught as little science as possible.
From the first 2 examples I show how what is taught is part of the society we live in. Every kid should be taught as balanced and far reaching knowledge as possible. I do NOT support religious schools unless can conform to current knowledge. This includes especially science. If kids are not taught modern science, you are leaving them in the dark ages. ALL schools must teach modern science whether it conforms to their religion or not.
Why is anything not explicitly religious automatically ANTI-[whichever religion]? Why can there be no neutral? Public schools should be without religion, and the family can provide that religion on their own time? Math and science aren’t relative to or impacted by religion.
Sigh
I remember when growing up in the 70s and 80s how evangelical Christians discussed public schools as being “bad”. This was all wrapped up in racism too as we were located in the South, and there were years of busing/forced integration at play. The small elementary school i attended grades 1-4 had white kids and black kids, but there were never any black kids in my class. The school had 2 wings of the school: the regular classrooms where we white kids were, and the “special education” wing that housed mostly black kids from a predominantly black community “down the hill” (there were a handful of white kids in the “special ed” wing, and they were obviously impoverished compared to the rest of us white kids). Anyway, in our town there were 2 small elementary schools, 1 middle school that was fed by the 2 elementary schools, and in the neighboring town a high school that brought in the kids from our community plus the black kids from “down the hill”. Those white families that could afford to sent their kids to a private Christian school which were virtually all white. The school i attended was one of the ones targeted by the IRS for excluding black kids. (I found out years later that the man who donated the land in the late 60s on which the school was built did so under the agreement that no black students should ever attend the school). Anyway, most of the kids at the church I attended went to the mixed-race high school, with a few of us attending Christian school. Adults frequently discussed how “bad” the high school was. However, many of my friends took honors courses, graduated, went to colleges, had careers. Same with the Christian school (though we didn’t learn about evolution, reproduction, or real history). My friends from church who went to the public school liked it. I don’t know what was so “bad”.
Fast forward to being a parent myself. We had moved away from the South to a state ranked really high for education. I have few complaints about the schools my kids attended. There were religious kids, nonreligious kids, and everyone was treated respectfully at the public school regardless of their ethnicity, race, religious background, etc. I don’t understand the problem. If you want your kid to get a Christian education, send them to the type of Christian school that aligns with your sect. I can’t imagine that an evangelical would like their kid going to Catholic school and learning Catholic doctrine. So if you send your kid to public school, you’re likely to be unhappy with the religious doctrine being taught as there isn’t usually homogeneity in a neighborhood. And Christians can sure split hairs over tiny differences in doctrine!
I wish I had attended public school. In a “Christ-centered” education there’s a lot of presupposition that doesn’t mesh with observation and following the evidence. You’re taught what to think rather than how to think. My kids were in honors classes, so I can only speak to that, but they learned how to think, question, and fact-check. I was not. Our fact-checking was restricted to the King James Bible.
Sigh
I remember when growing up in the 70s and 80s how evangelical Christians discussed public schools as being “bad”. This was all wrapped up in racism too as we were located in the South, and there were years of busing/forced integration at play. The small elementary school i attended grades 1-4 had white kids and black kids, but there were never any black kids in my class. The school had 2 wings of the school: the regular classrooms where we white kids were, and the “special education” wing that housed mostly black kids from a predominantly black community “down the hill” (there were a handful of white kids in the “special ed” wing, and they were obviously impoverished compared to the rest of us white kids). Anyway, in our town there were 2 small elementary schools, 1 middle school that was fed by the 2 elementary schools, and in the neighboring town a high school that brought in the kids from our community plus the black kids from “down the hill”. Those white families that could afford to sent their kids to a private Christian school which were virtually all white. The school i attended was one of the ones targeted by the IRS for excluding black kids. (I found out years later that the man who donated the land in the late 60s on which the school was built did so under the agreement that no black students should ever attend the school). Anyway, most of the kids at the church I attended went to the mixed-race high school, with a few of us attending Christian school. Adults frequently discussed how “bad” the high school was. However, many of my friends took honors courses, graduated, went to colleges, had careers. Same with the Christian school (though we didn’t learn about evolution, reproduction, or real history). My friends from church who went to the public school liked it. I don’t know what was so “bad”.
Fast forward to being a parent myself. We had moved away from the South to a state ranked really high for education. I have few complaints about the schools my kids attended. There were religious kids, nonreligious kids, and everyone was treated respectfully at the public school regardless of their ethnicity, race, religious background, etc. I don’t understand the problem. If you want your kid to get a Christian education, send them to the type of Christian school that aligns with your sect. I can’t imagine that an evangelical would like their kid going to Catholic school and learning Catholic doctrine. So if you send your kid to public school, you’re likely to be unhappy with the religious doctrine being taught as there isn’t usually homogeneity in a neighborhood. And Christians can sure split hairs over tiny differences in doctrine!
I wish I had attended public school. In a “Christ-centered” education there’s a lot of presupposition that doesn’t mesh with observation and following the evidence. You’re taught what to think rather than how to think. My kids were in honors classes, so I can only speak to that, but they learned how to think, question, and fact-check. I was not. Our fact-checking was restricted to the King James Bible.
The Rev understandably defends his “craft” if selling religion may be called that. If science and knowledge are the enemy of superstition and ignorance, then science and knowledge are the enemy of what he is and what he does. Not that science, as such, reliably defines absolute unbiased truth. Humans with their biases define science, interpret science, and are motivated to distort science to support interests in which they are emotionally and materially invested. Public education, unavoidably controlled by people, isn’t neutral. Indoctrination in greater or lesser forms will sneak in. Even so, a publicly controlled and provided, nominally neutral, science-oriented education, to which all are entitled, is the antithesis of ideological education for the few. If the ideal is to provide the greatest potential to benefit the greatest number of people, regardless of status, then universal public education is the only realistic plan.