Hello … welcome to another Mission Possible: Truth and Freedom podcast … as always I’m happy you are listening and my hope is that I’ll inspire you in some way with the information presented here. Today’s topic on Education is one that I feel is very important. Some of you may know that I was working as a Substitute Teacher (yes they gave me a license to teach) up to 2020. After that my mother’s decline didn’t allow me to return. So … I experienced quite a bit in our public schools during that time. I’d like to see us get back to the basics!!!
The greatness of America and its history is linked to the attitude our forefathers had about education. During the time of the Declaration of Independence we followed the lead of the Pilgrims and other colonial settlers who saw education as a personal, family, and church responsibility. During this time in our brand-new nation, which had no super-organized school system, we nonetheless enjoyed a 70% to virtually 100% literacy rate. This according to educator Rosalie J. Slater. And it was not an education “limited to just the few,” as she puts it. All segments of society were involved.
Two main features of our education included, first, “self-governed, principled study and reasoning, undertaken in Christian homes (and Christian schools).” This is according to historian Marshall Foster (Author of the American Covenant). The second feature, a centerpiece of Noah Webster’s leadership as the father of American education, included character development.
However, the most significant feature of educational philosophy was the foundation of the Bible where children were encouraged to find guidance and use its principles as the basis of their reasonings. According to Rev. J. Wingate Thornton in the Pulpit of the American Revolution the Continental Congress called the Bible “the great political textbook of the patriots.”
However, it would only take fifty years for Horace Mann to come on the scene in Massachusetts where he would introduce educational ideas that were opposed to that of the generation to which our Founding Fathers belonged. The public-school movement started and with it steps toward deemphasizing Biblical doctrine. It also patronized character development to no longer see it as a fruit of fearing God and loving His virtues, but as a part of humanistic evolution. Individual creativity and ingenuity found replacement with groupthink. The slide away from Christian-based philosophies of education had begun.
About 100 years later, as Marshall Foster points out, the humanistic curriculum had become a part of the American public-school bureaucracy, the largest in the history of the world, and most of America’s youth had been vaccinated against what this new progressive education considered as “the infectious disease of absolute moral values.” Christian heritage and history began to fall into obscurity. Not because it had proven itself ineffective, on the contrary, but because humanistic thinking would not submit to God-ordained wisdoms no matter how successful.
Somehow in the early sixties it became important to remove from our public schools prayer and Bible reading, which was the standard practice in the previous century. And the Supreme Court did just that. The argument for the idea is that they are not really removed, as students and teachers can still pray and read the Bible on their own time at recess or at lunch, but what was invoked was the infamous separation of church and state concept (I talked about it in my last podcast). It prevented the establishment of the state coming across as religious or promoting religion. Sounds good only on the surface. Never mind that our foundations were poured with the cement of prayer, fasting, and Bible preaching. Our history is replete with the presence of the Bible in political speeches and engraved on government buildings and university pillars. Many of our colleges initially existed as seminaries. With all these facts on the table at no time was there any indication that we were slipping headlong into establishing a state-based religion. Our Christian roots and principles are not so insecure that Christianity has to demand a state organized religion to deliver the power of its effectiveness to the culture. These two rulings in the 1960’s represented overkill attempts to lay aside the Bible and prayer as we made one more step toward secularization and godlessness.
Imagine, instead, the breath of fresh educational air that would visit our classrooms and culture if the books during our nation’s founding were present today. Historian David Barton makes books like these available at his website: Wallbuilders.com
First, there’s George Washington’s Rules of Civility & Decent Behaviour in Company and Conversation. Before he was 16, George Washington copied and adapted 110 rules of civility based on a work created in the 16th century as a guide for a young gentleman. Washington took these rules to heart and they strongly influenced him throughout his life. Many of the rules deal with etiquette, and many others concern deeper matters that touch on self-respect, wise judgment, honor, success, and integrity. These rules have a glimpse into the habits and manners of the Founding Era, but they are timeless principles still relevant today.
Then there are the New Testament Bible Study Course and the Old Testament Bible Study Course. Both were the curriculum of choice for decades in Dallas, Texas public high schools. The in-depth study includes outlines, reflection questions, and historical background information; plus maps, charts, and supplementary writings.
The first textbook ever printed in America was The New England Primer (pronounced “primmer”). It was used to teach reading and Bible lessons in our schools until the twentieth century. In fact, many of the Founding Fathers and their children learned to read from The New England Primer.
And finally, Noah Webster’s Advice to the Young and Moral Catechism. Founder Noah Webster wrote this to “enlighten the minds of youth in religious and moral principles and restrain some of the common vices of our country.” The moral catechism section uses a series of questions to teach children qualities such as honesty, generosity, and gratitude.
And speaking of vices. Our public schools and higher education institutions are trying to make not just vices, but perversions and immoralities a part of the status quo; as well as gaining access to the minds of those for whom we have the greatest aspirations (the children) and violate them with ideologies and critical theories that are anti-American and anti-Biblical.
The last verse of the Old Testament is a call for fathers (and mothers) to turn their hearts to the children. In that context the hearts of the children can be turned to their fathers. This is the Bible’s mandate and that verse says that such a standard prevents the earth from being struck with a curse.
I know you don’t need my permission to make the right decisions to do things like home school or send your vulnerable children to private schools. But godly parents and grandparents who want to raise their children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord are noticing how the blatantly obvious attempts to conform our children to compromised standards has reduced our options. We must act to protect our descendants.
I’m Tammy Reneé. And this is Mission Possible: Truth and Freedom
“Do you not know that we are to judge angels? How much more, then, matters pertaining to this life!” – 1 Corinthians 6:3
For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery. – Galatians 5:1
Announcer: Freedom will prove the ultimate evidence that truth was allowed to have its way. . . Godspeed.
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