Education from and to the Revision of History

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By the Rev. Dr. Joe Renfro

The meaning of history in contemporary American education has changed from what it once was to becoming a form learning directed toward developing minds into a thinking which is in accord with what many want to happen.  Change has been escalating in American education in the past fifty years, as the grappling fingers of liberalism has for the most part has transformed education from the earliest grades on through college with the progressive revision of the subject of history.  David L. Goetsch in a Patriot Update article in January 27, 2015 rightly wrote that: “Liberals are rewriting America’s history to create a past that does not exist and to eradicate the one the does.”

However, Karl Marx, whose family converted from Judaism to Christianity when Karl was six missed the message of history, that it is being determined by God.  He created a revision of history that depended on what he esteemed to be the historical materialism.  History to Marx was determined by class struggles moving through historical material on to socialism and ultimately the utopia of communism. The liberal and progressive thinking that is being indoctrinated into our society to a great extent through our public schools and the educational establishment, as fits in very well with the Marxian thinking!

Goetsch rightly observed that: “Our Founders had a vision for America that runs counter to the vision of today’s liberals in all respects. It was a vision of self-government by free people who were willing to govern themselves so that government did not have to. It was a vision of personal responsibility, individual liberty, free markets, and limited government.”  This is why liberals are rewriting history, for the understanding of history as it once was understood is antiquated to them. A new vantage focus is developing to comport with the left’s agenda of big government, burdensome regulations, entitlement, statism, and lifelong dependence.”  Big brother is no longer just watching you, but he wishes to determine what you think.

The Patriot Update article went on to say: “The Founders sacrificed dearly to establish a nation based on their vision. Their founding principles—personal responsibility, individual liberty, free markets, and limited government—are difficult to square with the future today’s liberals envision for America.”

The call is for big government with liberties being increasingly infringed on by burdensome, unnecessary regulations that develops into a society of entitled finger-pointers who refuse to accept responsibility for themselves or their actions and who think they are owed a living; a permanent underclass that is completely dependent on the government; high taxes; and a statist/socialist economy. 

The call is to educate toward this goal of the so-called equality of all, and the holy word is “Inclusivism! The quest for the so-called inclusivism, however, is really much more a form of divisivism—ultimately dividing people into various groups that are feel they are not getting their fair share of the pie.  People are basically classified as groups, not individuals!

In our universities, the hiring of history professors declined by almost fifty percent under the previous administration in the U.S.A.  The stress shows a shift from the learning of facts to the quest for the harmonizing of the populace into the progressive thinking. Diversity hiring it seems is on steroids, as nearly a hundred American colleges and universities have hired “chief diversity officers.”  The revision of history is not so much to learn what happened, but it is to direct what will happen, starting even to get the students involved from the earliest years (Activism For Kids — by Innosanto Nagara, Triangular Square).

The liberal agenda rejoices that children in early school have gone from being so-called passive recipients to becoming active partners in world change, whether it’s the smaller local world or the global playground. And the progressives view no better time to harness their enthusiasm to take part than to begin with earliest schooling. This thinking is integrated in the curriculums from even pre-school.

Liberals teach a revised history to school children.  They picture a dark view of our nation, as one built on aggressive racist imperialism, theft, and genocide that needs to be changed.  As it evident in many schools across our land they intend to drive those who do not agree their world view from the public square, or at least from the classroom.  This is evidenced from early schooling on through the colleges and universities.   Radical campus groups demand more and more staff and new centers for the progressive agenda – a reinforcing spiral of radicalizing students and providing jobs for radicals, gays, and feminists to continue the pressure on campus.

Groesch observed that we in American education are: “Creating a false history and substituting it for true history is precisely what liberals have been doing since the 1960s. Their efforts include: 1) Distorting America’s history to create a past that does not exist, 2) Indoctrinating naïve public school and college students to hate what is best about America, 3) Portraying the Founders and other great Americans as villains, 4) Ignoring great Americans who cannot be cast as villains but whose lives and contributions do not comport with liberal orthodoxy, and 5) Exploiting the ignorance they have created by using public schools and colleges to indoctrinate rather than educate. Collectively, these strategies are allowing liberals to take America down a path that leads to the destruction of everything our Founders envisioned and sacrificed to establish.” (David L. Goetsch in a Patriot Update article in January 27, 2015)

At the end of Goetsch’s article and in conclusion he observed that: “Although a small percentage of American students still receive a solid education in Christian schools and home-schools, the majority are being indoctrinated in public schools by leftist elites who hate America and believe our Founders were nothing but a bunch of patriarchal tyrants and racist bigots.” 

It is sad that we have been in the process of educating the population of our nation into the culture of the enemy, as more and more we are seeing Islam becoming the protected culture in America while at the same time, acceptance of the loss of American Sovereignty is gaining tremendous ground.  Christianity is under attack all over the world, and even in America forces are working diligently to undermine Christian beliefs.

We need change, the right kind of change, and what we need is a return the solid values that were basic in the education of the founders of this nation, which were permeated with Judeo-Christian values, not the Sharia Law of the Muslims or the Atheistic worldviews of the Communists.

David Risselada in  the Freedom Outpost article-September 6, 2016 entitled “The Depths of Ideological Subversion: Communism and Islam” observed that:   “Sharia Law has little to do with the actual religion of Islam and more to do with a radical political ideology. It is virtually an Islamic version of communism if you want to be more specific. Looking at where America is today, fifteen years after the September 11 attacks, it is safe to say that America is forever changed and will likely never be the same.”

Risselada went on to says that “People are begging for communism and restrictions on our freedoms, Islam is becoming more of an accepted culture than Christianity and the idea of American Sovereignty in the minds of millions is a laughable concept. The idea of a free and prosperous America has been destroyed and if it were revealed that the U.S. was in fact responsible for 9/11 (as some try to argue), then the country would be completely discredited on the world stage and ripe for a complete ideological takeover, which is in fact one of the goals of the communists. Are the communists using Islam as a force for world revolution? “

The article brings out that: “Without question the educational process in America has been twisted and turned to bring forth an agenda to change society? This is not new as it has happened in the past. You have heard of the nasty regime under Adolf Hitler. He had said, ‘Give me the minds of one generation of youth and I will change the government of the next”. This is happening before our eyes, and this process of the revision of history that began in the 1960s is now really bring forth evil consequences.  It is happening before your very eyes.

This is a process of history revision that began in the 1960’s is now bearing evil consequences with conflicts between all types of minority groups that claim their rights have been and are being violated. Our society has failed to pass on our foundation, “endowed by our Creator” in respect to the rights of individuals. Rights are not given by God, but they are dispersed by the government from their vantage point.

The American patriotism that I recall in my youth was so strong and basic as I grew up in the forties and fifties.  Together with the Judeo-Christian values that were once basic in the teaching in our schools it was positive to patriotism and religious commitment.  But it is now very much on the wane. It is a sad fact that most history and social studies textbooks used in elementary and secondary schools are very much inadequate, as they are more geared to social objectives rather than to teach what really happened.  Back in fifties we led the world in educational achievement, where now we have slipped toward the bottom compared with the other industrialized nations of the world in math, reading, and in science. In the name of political correctness and multiculturalism, their authors and publishers deliberately provide an inaccurate, dishonest account of American history. It is a sad commentary, and we need to change it!

America, unlike most other nations, was founded on ideas, principles and values such as God-given liberty, freedom, individual rights, personal responsibility, and unity.  The Christian faith in our land allowed different religious beliefs, even demanded freedom of religion for groups that even were not Christian, which is very much in conflict when compared with the situation in Islamic nations, the nations that the liberal, the progressive, politically correct crowd tend often to presently applaud—or to blame America for the hostility this group might feel toward the West. 

There is the threat of the Common Core Education.  The Common Core with its’ lack of moral principles is redefining America’s founding ideas.  What is being taught in schools today will be the undoing of American exceptionalism.  It has been implemented in 42 states across the country and the uproar just keeps getting louder and louder.  More than a third of our children cannot read or do math, but we are spending so much of our educational energy trying to cultivate attitudes that applaud diversity—even when the diversity is divisive and destructive. Education has sunk from being concerned with learning to facts to stimulating social and political activism.

The Lord Jesus stressed the importance of educating our youth in the right way. He said, “Suffer little children, and forbid them not, to come unto me: for of such is the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 19:14). Again in Matthew 18:3 he said: “Verily I say unto you, ‘Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven’.”  He did not try to instill in the minds of the children or in the adults with whom he related any form of political activism, as even when asked about taxation, he said to “Render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s  and unto God what is God’s”.

History is best understood as “His Story” that is God’s story.  It involves judgement and defeat to individuals, nations, and cultures, when God’s people refuse to follow his directives, but victory and blessing when people follow God’s directives. 

In Deuteronomy 31:13 it calls the people to teach the history of God’s working to deliver and bless the people, as it says: “And that  their children, which have not known any thing, may hear, and learn to fear the LORD your God, as long as ye live in the land whither ye go over Jordan to possess it.” The Jewish people we commanded by God to centralize in the teaching of history, as God dwelt and dealt with his people. It was important then, and it is today as well.

No argument can be made that it was the call in the Bible or in the founding principles of our nation to teach the youth political activism even from the early years of schooling, or environmental justice, civil rights, LGBTQ rights, and everything else that activists believe in and fight for.  We need to return to basics, and it is basic in this to support the values and moral directives of Judeo-Christian heritage on which our nation our founded. Education from and to the revision of history is a form of politically correct indoctrination that ultimately will lead to the destruction of our land unless it is reversed!