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One of the sad commentaries about education in America is the cheating in our public schools that has shifted to avalanche proportions. It is near at an all-time high in the educational world, not just with the students, but it can be blamed on the standards, the administrations, the teachers, and the whole educational establishment as well. It seems that cheating has significantly replaced true studying.

There are all types of cheating going on with the students in public schools—the use of plagiarism, cell phones, iPods, grade changing by altering electronic records, copying others’ work, cribbing notes anywhere and everywhere, etc. In fact, many students are more concerned with learning to beat the system than honestly learning the academic material. Today’s students are more academically dishonest than earlier generations. It has been observed that,  “ forty to sixty percent admitted to cheating at least once, compared with only eighteen to twenty-three percent in a 1941 study, and half of those students are cheating on a regular basis.”  (writing.markfullmer.com-10/28/09).  A bad picture!

Mark Fullmer also observed: “In the United States, teaching morals to children in public schools was one way to keep cheating in check. President Theodore Roosevelt supported moral education, declaring: “To educate a man in mind and not morals is to educate a menace to society.” In fact, teaching of morals was a major part of children’s education in America until the second half of the 20th century. The colonial schools were originally established to teach children to read so they could study the Bible.  (writing.markfullmer.com-10/28/09).

In the 1950’s, our nation led the world in educational achievement. The Christian influence was very much related to public education. II Timothy 2:15 says to “Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.”  The Greek word which the King James version translates as “study” means to “give diligence to,” which amplifies the force of the call of God to diligently study the whole realm of truth.

The epistles to Timothy were written before the New Testament was compiled, so I believe that this doesn’t just apply to the studying of the Bible.  The Bible uses the concept  “truth” in the general factual sense, true in contrast to the false, although it to goes on the fact that God is the truth and we are to pursue that truth, particularly as it is revealed in Jesus Christ, who affirmed that he was “the way, the truth, and the life.”  He is the Truth personified!

Even as late as the 1920s, the nation’s most widely used schoolbooks, McGuffey’s Readers, were filled with Bible stories and moral lessons. But attitudes about religion in schools began to change during the 1960s, after the Supreme Court ruled that school prayer and Bible readings were unconstitutional. Many teachers interpreted the ruling as outlawing moral education altogether, and traditional moral instruction began disappearing from public schools. This hits the nail on the head!

It was brought out that: “While cheating isn’t new, the scope of the problem is. Throughout the 1990s, studies consistently found that more than seventy-five percent of college undergraduates had cheated at least once — an all-time high — and twenty to thirty  percent regularly.  The problem is even worse in high schools, where the slackers aren’t the only ones cheating. Honor students are as likely as low-achievers to cheat; girls now cheat as much as boys and — alarmingly — medical and engineering students are as likely to cheat as liberal arts students.  In its last annual survey of 700,000 top students, Who’s Who Among American High School Students found that eighty percent of the high-achievers admitted to cheating, the highest percentage in the survey’s twenty-nine-year history.”  (writing.markfullmer.com-10/28/09)

However, it is not only the students that are to blame, but the teachers and administrators as well.  In 2011, a USA Today investigation showed a huge amount of wrong-to-right answer sheet erasures at more than half of Washington DC schools, and their inquiry didn’t include charter schools.  Schools in Connecticut, Florida, New York, Georgia, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Ohio, Texas, Virginia, and other states have discovered teachers or administrators seeking to improve performance by either changing answers or encouraging students to change their answers.

On the statewide tests in New York City, investigators found fifty-two educators at thirty-two schools were cheating (USA Today, 3/30/11).  At least 178 teachers and principals in Atlanta, Georgia, public schools cheated to raise student scores on high-stakes standardized tests, according to a report from the Georgia Bureau of Investigation.  Teaching and administrative “cheating was widespread and systemic.”  (The America’s Biggest Teacher and Principal Cheating Scandal Unfolds in Atlanta– By Patrik Jonsoon,  July 5, 2011)

In the Atlanta situation, the high scores enabled Superintendent Beverly L. Hall to collect $600,000 in performance bonuses over 10 years to supplement her $400,000 annual salary. Phyllis Schlafly wrote that according to the 413 report released by Georgia Governor Nathan Deal, Hall and her top staff “created a culture of fear, intimidation and retaliation,” concealed by “a conspiracy of silence and deniability,” that allowed “cheating at all levels to go unchecked for years.”  (“Meet the Extremist Group in Charge of Teaching your Children,” Phyllis Schlafly, Whistle Blower- November 11, 2011).  Hall lost her job, but who knows about how much academic cheating by the teachers and administrators to placate the politicians is still in place not just in Atlanta, Georgia, but elsewhere.  Public Education in some areas has become an educational cheating game!

In the Alliance for Excellent Education Fact Sheet (March 2008) it was brought out that American educational progress has stagnated and that we are near the bottom among the developed nations. In fact, “on virtually every international assessment of academic proficiency, American secondary school students’ performance varies from mediocre to poor.”  In reading literacy we ranked 15^th out of the twenty-nine OCED (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development) nations in 2003 and things have not seemed to  improve. In scientific literacy our nation ranked 21^st, as in fact about “one quarter of the U.S. fifteen-year-olds did not reach the baseline of scientific achievement.”

America ranked 25^th in mathematics literacy and 24^th in problems solving.  It was noted, however, that the U.S. was about average in respect to the number of students scoring at the top and the bottom.  Much of this drop in educational achievement, I believe, is to be blamed on the cheating in our public schools.

The freedom one can know in Christ is a responsible freedom, which cheating would totally contradict.  James 1:25 says: “But whoso looketh into the perfect law of liberty, and continueth therein, he being not a forgetful hearer, but a doer of the work, this man shall be blessed in his deed.”  Education founded on the relationship with God in Christ brings a freedom to learning, where without this moral foundation, it can easily slip into falsehood and pursue its support by dishonesty or cheating.  Much of our decline in educational achievement can be blamed in various degrees on our removal of the moral foundation –the Judeo-Christian ethic — that was basic to the formation of this land in the name of multiculturalism, global education, and political activism.  A godless freedom becomes a form of license that will lead to destruction.

II Timothy 2:22 gives the direction to “Flee also youthful lusts: but follow righteousness, faith, charity, peace, with them that call on the Lord out of a pure heart.”  Biblical training helped our youth overall in this nation for the first 150 years to develop more honest lifestyles, realizing that although not being observed by people, we all we under the all-seeing eye of God.  It was a call to discipline and honesty, and cheating contradicts this!  In public schooling in America, it is the head and not the heart that matters, so much so that the moral life of our youth is slowly dying!

The true way to instill morality into learning, the religious and the secular learning, is to find that focus through Jesus Christ, who has been subtracted from American Public education and increasingly is being attacked as part of the political direction of America.  The Cheating in Our Public Schools and the associated drop in academic achievement is to a great extent is the result of the de-Christianizing elements that have taken hold in the power structures of education in America!

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by Joe Renfro, Ed.D., Educational Columnist, Radio Evangelist, Retired Teacher and Pastor, 5931 West Avenue, Lavonia, Georgia 30553, 706-356-4173, joerenfro@windstream.net

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The divisive twists to teach perversion in the classroom have very much replaced the sound implantation of the gospel in the education of our youth, and the results are becoming very much evident as the youth struggle with inappropriate eating or sleeping habits, inabilities to concentrate, abrupt changes in their personalities, impulsiveness, inability to concentrate on academic work, decline in grades, absenteeism, loss or lack of positive friendships, abuse of alcohol and drugs, and increased involvement in homosexual behavior, on to increased cases of suicide in the school age population.

Without question some homosexuals have been teased, put down, castigated, and bullied at times by other students in the public schools with some reverting to suicide for relief. But now the U.S. Department of Education is blaming conservative Christianity and traditional morality as the cause of this bullying, implicating them as the culprits behind the problem.  Programs are thus being established to present homosexuality in the most positive terms!

There should be no tolerance of bullying, but the liberal activists groups are using the issue of students being bullied as a tool to press a social agenda. Part of this agenda is to blame the religious right! In his national radio broadcast, James Dobson, founder of Focus on the Family, warned that a “national homo-sexualization of schools” is coming. He called on parents to take action against what he called a “recent push to integrate pro-gay curriculum in schools”and said he believes it’s a “nationwide effort that will soon put almost every child at risk.” (Pro-homosexual resolution may face National Education Assoc. convention–Posted on Mar 21, 2001  by Jim Burns)  This warning was some time back, but it is really happening as warned by Dobson.

The legislation and power of the federal government is being set up to force pro-homosexual, pro-transgender indoctrination into the classrooms of our public schools.  A California law has only positive information about alternate lifestyles, including homosexuality, in its public schools. Ben Johnson in The Right’s Writer, (October 7, 2011) wrote about how an Obama court case could force Christian schools and churches to employ HIV-Positive, Transgender Teachers. LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender) History Month celebrates the achievements of thirty-one lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender icons. Each day in October, a new LGBT icon is featured with a video, bio, bibliography, downloadable images, and other resources.  These government rulings prescribe the wrong medicine to the wrong malady. It is a divisive twist being set up to teach perversion in the classrooms!  But seeking to put homosexuality into a positive picture frame is not going to curtail bullying to any real degree.

The Obama administration’s recent warning to the nation’s public schools – that some bullying may violate federal anti-discrimination law – is less about bullying than it is about advancing the homosexual agenda in public schools, some critics say.  The Right-Wing-Watch, a liberal publication, says, “many Religious Right activists want to derail efforts to combat bullying. An increasing number of conservative leaders and organizations have fiercely opposed anti-bullying programs developed by schools and education groups for the sole reason that such programs identify and attempt to combat the widespread bullying of LGBT youth.” (People for the American Way—December 2011).

In fact in one article, “Suicide Risk may be Lower for Gays, Lesbians in Supportive Areas”, it suggests that a supportive school and community might be able to reduce that risk, if only slightly, for both groups.  They bring out that “Gay and bisexual teens are five times as likely as heterosexual peers to attempt suicide, according to new research — but a supportive social environment can cut that rate by one-fifth.” (“World Health” April 18, 2011, Marissa Cevallos).  That would make it about four times as likely.

Yes, a small degree of help by catering to homosexual values can be provided to alleviate the suicide problem with homosexual students, but is it right, wise, and discrete to do this by exposing the vast majority of the straight students to the encouragement to become involved in homosexual practices?  There might be certain genetic tendencies for one to be homosexual like there are for alcoholics, but that doesn’t determine the issue, for many with homosexual leanings can be delivered from the disaster of a homosexual life.

Liberal social activists have launched an attack on traditional morality, singling out conservative Christian values as being the villains, the cultivators of the bullying. Bullying involves intentional and unprovoked actions toward the victim, repeated negative actions by one or more people against another person, and an imbalance of physical or psychological power. It is absurd to blame traditional morality, which developed from the Judeo-Christian values in our land and which has frowned upon all types of bullying in whatever category. Verbal gay bashing or bullying might use sexual slurs, expletives, intimidation, or threats of violence. These are forms of homosexual bullying. But bullying can be for all types of reasons, such as size, color, appearance, race, particular sex, being in or out of a particular group, whatever—not necessarily for homosexual categorizations at all.  Bullying, however, is not Christian in any way!

In a Layman article it says: “According to a 2008 report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, about thirty percent of American middle and high-school students reported being either a victim or an instigator in a bullying situation – so the bullying is by no means just a homosexual experience. According to the National Education Association, around 160,000 students report missing school every day due to fears of bullying. The report does not state whether or not sexual orientation is a factor in such fears.”  (The Layman Online  – “Former Moderator Says Churches Give ‘Tacit Approval’ to Gay-Student Bullying” (Jason P. Reagan, The Layman, Posted Thursday, June 9, 2011).

However, the liberal activists feel that Conservative Christian churches are currently leading the fight to: 1) prevent gays and lesbians from enjoying rights and protections equal to the general population, 2) prohibit marriages for loving, committed same-sex couples, 3) oppose adoption by gay or lesbian adults, and 4) keep accurate information on sexual orientation out of the public schools. (“Schools Battle Suicide Surge” (Health Pop, October 11, 2010 by Keil Natz)  I could write an essay in rebuttal to each of these, but what matters is to see some of the ways the blame is taking shape!  The Bible throughout condemns homosexuality, and for good reasons relating not just to spiritual health, but physical, mental, and social well-being as well.

It is absurd that the liberal social activists would blame conservative Christian values as the cause of the problem of suicide of homosexual students when the Judeo-Christian influences have increasingly been subtracted from public education, while the secular humanist values have only increasing been instituted and promoted.  If suicides have increased, why then would the blame be put upon the more conservative values?

Suicide is the third leading cause of death for fifteen-to-twenty-four-year-olds, and the sixth leading cause of death for five-to-fourteen-year-olds. Teenagers experience strong feelings of stress, confusion, self-doubt, pressure to succeed, financial uncertainty, and other fears while growing up. However, in 1989, the United States Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) issued its “Report on the Secretary’s Task Force on Youth Suicide,” which found that a majority of suicide attempts were by homosexuals, which were two to three times more likely to attempt suicide than other young people. The American Foundation for Suicide went further and set the rate at three to six times. Confusion can exist in respect to whether an act is classified as an accident or suicide. There are many influences in teen suicide, but homosexuality is without questions one of the most influential.

However, the American Psychiatric Association removed homosexuality from its diagnostic list of mental disorders in 1973, despite substantial protest. The A.P.A. was strongly motivated by the desire to reduce the effects of social oppression. However, one effect of the A.P.A.’s action was to add psychiatric authority to gay activists’ insistence that homosexuals as a group are as healthy as heterosexuals. This has discouraged publication of research that suggests there may, in fact, be psychiatric problems associated with homosexuality.  Back in 1998 the suicide rate for homosexuals was six times greater than the average, which was concerned with all age groups combined, not just youth. Suicide by the homosexual youth is not primarily to be blamed on bullying in the schools, or why is suicide especially characteristic of all in all age groups. (“Homosexuality and Mental Health Problems” –N.E. Whitehead, Ph.D.)

More recently, in the Archives of General Psychiatry– an established and well-respected journal– three papers appeared with extensive accompanying commentary (Fergusson et al. 1999, Herrell et al. 1999, Sandfort et al. 2001, and e.g. Bailey 1999).  J. Michael Bailey more recently, in the Archives of General Psychiatry– an established and well-respected journal–said, “These studies contain arguably the best published data on the association between homosexuality and psychopathology, and both converge on the same unhappy conclusion: homosexual people are at substantially higher risk for some forms of emotional problems, including suicidality, major depression, and anxiety disorder, conduct disorder, and nicotine dependence…The strength of the new studies is their degree of control.”  (Homosexuality and Mental Health Problems N.E. Whitehead, Ph.D.–(Author of “My Genes Made Me Do It”)

A strong case can be made that the male homosexual lifestyle itself, in its most extreme form, is mentally disturbed. G. Rotello, a gay advocate, notes, “the outlaw aspect of gay sexual culture, its transgressiveness, is seen by many men as one of its greatest attributes.”    Same-sex eroticism becomes for many, therefore, the central value of existence, and nothing else–not even life and health itself–is allowed to interfere with pursuit of this lifestyle.  (Rotello, G. (1997): Sexual Ecology. AIDS and the Destiny of Gay Men. Dutton, Harmondsworth, Middlesex, UK).

A.P. Bell and M.S. Weinberg, in their classic study of male and female homosexuality, found that 43 percent of white male homosexuals had sex with 500 or more partners, with 28 percent having 1,000 or more sex partners. 1978, pp. 308,309).  Homosexual promiscuity fuels the AIDS crisis not to mention all the other inflections characteristic of homosexual activities in the West, but even these tragedies are not allowed to interfere with their so called sexual freedom.  (Homosexualities: A Study of Diversity Among Men and Women–New York: Simon and Schuster, P. Bell and M. S. Weinberg,)

Bullying is bad, but it is not the real cause of the increased suicide.  Tom Prichard, president of the Minnesota Family Council said: “There should be no tolerance of bullying, but these groups (those espousing the ultra-liberal thinking) are using the issue to try to press a social agenda.”  (In Suburb, “Battle Goes Public on Bullying of Gay Students” Erik Eckholm, Sept. 13, 2011)

In the December 18^th 2011 Christian Observer publication there is material by the Rev. T.M. Moore entitled, “Educational Foundation for the Devotional Series,” where he writes:  “American education is in a shambles because American educational policy has moved away from the foundations of God’s truth and become fixed to the shifting sands and unreliable tides of mere pragmatism and utilitarianism. Only a return to educational policy more firmly rooted in the fixed standards of God’s Law will return stability and fruitfulness to what has become an educational house of cards. The way back to such stability will not be easy; however, Christians who seek a just and good society, who pray for the shalom of their communities and nation and are committed to working for its welfare, must also take up the cause of educational policy reform without apology, without fear, and without mincing words.”

The shalom or real peace is from and with God, and it is the product of the Christian faith, where to accuse us who call for Biblical Christian teachings of promoting bullying, a concept in contradiction to the shalom, is most outrageous.   By returning to God’s ways we can move away from The Divisive Twists to Teach Perversion in the Classrooms and see true improvement in the product our schools produce, positive moral young men and women, a Conversion in our public education system. May God help us to do so!

by Joe Renfro, Ed.D., Educational Columnist, Radio Evangelist, Retired Teacher and Pastor, Box 751, Lavonia, Georgia 30553, 706-356-4173, joerenfro@windstream.net

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“Anarchy” can be understood as meaning disorder, confusion, without control, or  lawlessness.  In respect to “education” and “anarchy” one is regarded with utmost positive regard, while the other is usually frowned upon.  When we speak of anarchy, we usually don’t begin to think of education, for these areas almost seem like an oxymoron, opposed in meaning.  Nevertheless, as the American public education system has increasingly sought to subtract the Judeo-Christian influences, there is an increasing spirit of anarchy sweeping the land, beginning in the 1960’s after Bible reading and prayer were removed from the public schools.

Our society is increasingly seeing the breakdown in families, our youth sinking into destructive life styles, and a general lack of purpose and direction in the lives of masses in our society.  The Occupy movements, that are sweeping our land show this discontent and suggest a display of anarchy. In a November 17, 2011 article in Godfather Politics, it is suggested that these protests are the result of our socialistic education system, inspired by the philosophy of John Dewey.  A common thread that seems inherent to this movement is that they want the government to take care of everybody. It is bed of discontent that foments anarchy.

The American education philosopher John Dewey advocated replacing the Judeo-Christian values in American schools by a “socialistic naturalism without God, without Christ, without religion, without immortality.  Every single strain in it, from the influences of (the philosopher) Hegel to the inspiration of Darwin, finds its place within his system”, observed Geoffrey O’Connell in his work, Naturalist in American Education, (p. 137,  New York: Benziger Brothers, 1938. )  Dewey died in 1952, but his thinking lives on in American public education, as Progressivism.

In interpreting Dewey’s understanding of God from his work, A Common Faith, (pp. 42-43. New Haven: Yale University Press.)  Allen Hardon observed that for Dewey:  “God does not exist except as the projection of our imagination of those non-objective ideas which guide our human conduct.  While the idea of God is not real, therefore, since it is created by fantasy, it is not illusory because it has served the purpose of idealizing our hopes and desires.”  (Rev. John A. Hardon, S.J. Reprinted from the Catholic Review, Sept.1952.)  So God for Dewey was but a useful illusion for those who needed it!

Hardon went on to observe that Dewey “…goes out of his way to oppose what he calls the suicide of reason and human effort which consists in revelation and the belief in divine grace to supplement the weakness of man.”   Man is quite capable himself to attain all the knowledge that he needs and achieve all the ambitions he desires. If there must be faith, let it be men’s faith in each other and in their mutual co-operation.”  ( Common Faith, p.24)  This would be the movement toward humanism.

Man, according to Dewey, possesses no soul or mind in the traditional sense of these terms.  A spiritual vital principle is rejected because “…the independently existing soul restricts and degrades individuality, making of it a separate thing outside the of the full flow of things, alien to things experienced and consequently in mechanical or miraculous relations to them.”  (John Dewey, The Influence of Darwin on Philosophy, p, 268, New York” Henry Holt and Co., 1910).   Dewey in his autobiography in the last sentence epitomized his life as he wrote:  “For forty years spent in wandering in wilderness like that of the present is not a sad fate—unless one attempts to make himself believe that the wilderness is after all the promised land.”  (Dewey, “The Philosopher-in-the-Making,” Saturday Review of Literature, XXXII, Oct. 22, 1949.

Dewey along with a dozen leading Americans in 1933 signed and published the so-called “Human Manifesto.” Of particular interest is item six that says: “In the place of old attitudes involved in worship and prayer, the humanist finds his religious emotions expressed in the heightened sense of personal life and in a co-operative effort to promote social well-being.” (A Humanist Manifesto, published as a separate statement under the auspices of the American Humanist Association, Salt Lake City, 1933.)  It is interesting, however, that the humanists dogmatically stultify what does not fit into their worldview, while seeming to be proclaiming liberty for all.

A Newsweek poll (April 6, 2009) reveals that although most Americans are still holding on to their faith and describing themselves as Christians, fewer believe religion can answer today’s problems. According to the poll of 1,003 adults, sixty percent of American adults say religion is very important in their lives and seventy-eight percent say prayer is an important part of their daily lives. However, less than half (forty-eight percent) believe religion can answer all or most of today’s problems. The percentage is the lowest number Newsweek has recorded since it began polling Americans on that issue in 1957 (when eighty-two percent believed religion could answer the problems of that time).

In respect to religious affiliation, the percentage of Roman Catholics in the United States has continued to grow and remained steady at about one in four since 1990, while the percentage of other Christians has plummeted from 60 percent to 50 percent. (CNN Survey-2010).    Much of this I feel is because of the fact that many Catholic children have access to Catholic schools.  The church membership for Protestant Christianity peaked in 50s when Bible reading and prayer were part of public schooling in the U.S., but it has it has gone down since then.  The education of the youth is important in respect to their spiritual understanding of life. Sound teaching is the product of a sound faith beneath it.

The Bible gives in Titus 2:1-10 the teaching of how to communicate the behavior that goes with sound teaching. It sets a pattern in the practical domain to where people are “not so heavenly minded that they are of no earthly good,” but where they are both heavenly minded and of earthly good. Notice here that the focus is on “sound teaching.”  First there is instruction to older men to be temperate, dignified, self-controlled, sound in the faith, in love, and in endurance. Secondly there is instruction for older and younger women to be holy and teach what is good to their children and not to be slanders and not enslaved to strong drink. The young women are as well to love their husbands and children, and to be  in subjection (not enslaved) to their husbands. The younger men are to have “self-control, integrity, and dignity.” This focus would not only positively affect individuals, but society as well.

The philosophy in American public education for the past fifty years has been to remove the Judeo-Christian values and worldviews away from public education or to just sidetrack it into a category of world religions to where it was to be seen as just being in the category of opinion only.  This has caused a void created by the American education system, as it has sought to indoctrinate the objective facts while neglecting the spiritual and moral underpinnings needed to rightly understand these facts.

I use the category of “Judeo-Christian” in this article, and there is a distinction that needs to being made between Judeo-Christian values and being born again as a Christian. Being born again is an awakening to the subjective awareness of God, where “Judeo-Christian” is an objective understanding of a certain worldview. They aren’t the same.  But the Jewish moral and spiritual and the Christian values harmonize so far as the cultural accord, where other religions, like Islam do not. The categorization is not to equate the two religions, but to show that they maintain much the same worldview and overall values.

American democracy has worked because Judeo-Christian values have been an underpinning from which to work.  Dewey felt that democracy is a method of organizing society, which is in keeping with the method of inquiry, not just a form of government, but it is a way of life, an ethical ideal, and a personal commitment. It is a call for individuals to be self-directing to pursue their own goals and projects for the common good together with the individual benefit. But Plato in the Republic felt it was but one step away from tyranny, having within itself the tendency to lead to tyranny and was the worst of all lawful governments, and the best of all lawless ones.”   (Dictionary of Philosophy and Religion.  W.L Reese, Harvester Press, 16 Ship Street, Brighton, Sussex, 1980, p. 122,123). Dewey’s concept sounds good, but it lacks a foundation, while Plato’s understanding suggests a strong warning.

The reason that the American democracy has worked beyond Plato’s warning, however, is that underneath has been the Judeo-Christian foundation, and this is suggested by the Declaration of Independence, from the “Laws of Nature” in accord with “Nature’s God,” and “endowed by their Creator.” Here is basic reference to God, understood broadly from the Judeo-Christian heritage and the fact that the laws of our land have basically have evolved from the Ten Commandments.  Our culture did not develop from the Islamic culture or Far Eastern understandings.  Although there were only three Deists among the fifty-six that signed the Declaration, even deism was from the Judeo-Christian background, not some other.

If the American education system continues to slide away from our heritage into the focus that we are but a melting pot for all cultures and worldviews, we can but only witness the wilderness of anarchy spreading across our land. It is a sad picture I don’t want to see.  But are we educating for anarchy in the American public schools and our colleges.

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by Joe Renfro, Ed.D., Educational Columnist, Radio Evangelist, Retired Teacher and Pastor, Box 751, Lavonia, Georgia 30553, 706-356-4173, joerenfro@windstream.net

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A New Jersey high school special education teacher is under attack after allegedly posting anti-homosexual remarks on her Facebook page. Vicki Knox criticized the school’s lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) history month display and stated that homosexuality is “a perverted spirit that has existed from the beginning of creation.” She went on to say that homosexuality is a “sin” and that it “breeds like cancer.”

John Paragono, who is a lawyer as well as a former councilman and municipal judge in Union Township where the school is located, came across the teacher’s Facebook post.  After reading the comments, he wrote to Union Township Schools Superintendent Patrick Martin to request some sort of action be taken.  “Hateful public comments from a teacher cannot be tolerated,” wrote Paragano. Paragano continued: “She has a right to say it. But she does not have a right to keep her job after saying it.”  In response to the controversy, Knox was escorted from school property, but Martin declined to confirm whether or not she would be suspended.

Eugene Delaudo wrote: “The Homosexual Lobby is taking over our schools and using them to promote their radical agenda to our children and grandchildren. And they are attacking anyone who tries to stop them.” Delaudo wrote that Vicki Knox expressed her opinion on her private Facebook page that the homosexual display was wrong to have in a school. She said homosexuality is “against the nature and character of God.” Public schools are “not the setting to promote, encourage, support and foster homosexuality.”  And for that she is being smeared by the New York Times, pro-homosexual websites, and is under investigation from her school district!

The question comes as to whether and how the public schools can approach the subject of homosexuality. Judeo-Christian thinking as well as Islamic thinking have traditionally very much opposed the practice of homosexuality.  Some Protestant denominations such as the United Church of Christ, the Episcopal Church, the Unitarians, and the Presbyterian Church (PCUSA) have tended to promote the acceptance of homosexuality.  But most religious teaching has been opposed to it. The public schools, however, are not religious institutions, but how should they teach about or in regard to homosexuality?  How can they help homosexuals see the problems, overcome the problems, and leave the lifestyle?

In March 2000 the Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network’s Massachusetts organization held its Ten Year Anniversary GLSEN/Boston Conference at Tufts University, fully supported by the Massachusetts Department of Education and the Safe Schools Program.  Barack Obama’s “Safe Schools Czar,” Kevin Jennings, is the founder of GLSEN, and was paid $273,573.96 as its executive director in 2007. Jennings was the keynote speaker at this 2000 GLSEN conference.  Jennings, throughout his career in education, has focused on bringing homosexuality into the public schools.

The Little Black Book, a publication of GLSEN, was distributed to hundreds of kids (middle school age and up) at Brookline High School, Brookline, Massachusetts, on April 30, 2005. It was written by the Boston-based AIDS Action Committee, with help from the Massachusetts Department of Public Health and the Boston Public Health Commission.

The book says its purpose is to teach safe sex to homosexuals.  The event that day was designed for children and their teachers across Massachusetts and organized by the Gay Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN).  This is the group that runs “Gay-Straight Alliance” clubs in public schools across the country.  These clubs are one way that GLSEN has said the stigma many homosexuals feel in the public schools can be taken away.

However, after learning about the availability of  The Little Black Book at a high school assembly, then-Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney released a statement that said, “Graphic pornographic material on the gay lifestyle has no place in any school….The particular publication is grossly inappropriate and should never find its way into the hands of school-aged children.”  (Selling Homosexuality to America’s Schoolchildren - Dr. D. James Kennedy, www. coralridge.org – 2006.)  The Bible is the book they need!

The Bible declares that homosexual practices are sinful and an abomination to God, as it says in Leviticus 18:22 that “Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind; it is an abomination,” and in Romans 1:26-28 where it says: “For this cause God gave them up to vile affections: for even the women did change the natural use into that which is against nature: And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves the recompense of their error which was meet.”  This tells it as it is!

Proverbs 19:27 says, “Cease, my son, to hear the instruction that causeth to err from the words of knowledge.”  And Proverbs 22:6 says: “Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.”  It should be important for the teaching about homosexuality in the public schools to focus on the real knowledge about homosexuality and the great dangers in disease, emotional problems, and negative influences associated with homosexuality. It is not educational to neglect this!   It does not have to be from the biblical teaching, but from the overall facts, though the Bible is not in contradiction to the overall facts.  Tendencies can be genetic, but all, like alcoholics, they can change from it.  Many do!

The American Psychiatric Association regarded homosexuality as an illness until 1974, and many mental health practitioners still feel it is an illness.  But what has happened is that many feel it is normal just to become politically correct.  However, just think of the gory murders and high incidence of murder often committed particularly in the homosexual communities and the widespread molesting of children in that community!

In the pamphlet, The Legal Liability Associated with Homosexuality Education in Public Schools, it is said:  “What is becoming increasingly clear, however, is that despite claims to the contrary, the “safe school” message of the organizations (the gay rights groups) is nothing more than a deceptive ploy to preach safety while actually encouraging sexual behaviors that are quite unsafe.”  (Citizens for Community Values -info@ccv.org, p.1)

In the Journal of the American Medical Association, January 2001, is an article supporting the position that men with same-sex sexual behavior are at greater risk for psychiatric disorders compared to heterosexual men.  The homosexual men are:  “727% more likely to have suffered bipolar disorders at some point in their lives with 502% more likely in the last twelve months—718% more likely to have suffered obsessive-compulsive disorder in the last twelve months with 620% more likely at some point in their lives—632% more likely to have suffered agoraphobia (fear of leaving home or being in public) in the last twelve months, and 454% more likely at some point in their lives—421% more likely to have suffered “panic disorder,” and 229% more likely to have suffered “social phobia” at some point in their lives—375% more likely to have suffered  “simple phobia” in the last twelve months, and 361% more likely at some point in their lives—311% more likely to have suffered mood disorders at some point in their lives, and 293% more likely in the last twelve months—261% are more likely to have suffered anxiety disorders in the last twelve months with 267% more likely over the course of their lifetimes—270% more likely to have suffered two or more psychiatric disorders during their lifetime, and 235% more likely to have suffered major depression at some point in their lives.”  What does this say about mental health?

In respect to homosexual women, the same study of the Journal of the American Medical Association compared the two sexual behaviors and found that homosexuals are “405% more likely to have suffered a substance abuse disorder—241% more likely to have suffered mood disorders during their lifetimes, and 209% more likely to have suffered two or more mental disorders during their lifetimes.”  This is to say nothing about the problems with AIDS/HIV or other types of venereal disease that are physical, not mental.

Homosexual youth are two to three times more likely to attempt suicide than other young people, and they may comprise up to thirty percent of completed youth suicides annually.  Homosexual men are six times more likely to attempt suicide than straight men, a University of California at San Francisco study reported. (<jsheehy@ari.ucsf.edu> –August 5, 2002)  If grown men display this tendency toward suicide, why would we think it would not be evident in the homosexual teens as well?

The question comes down to: “Is it right to hide the facts about homosexuality in the context of education?”  To blame Christians or even school officials for the suicides of some students, who have felt harassed because of being homosexual or bisexual, or who are offended by Christians saying homosexuality is sin, or even by public health officials that say it is an illness, is faulty reasoning. As the public schools teach about homosexuality in sex education, they should look at and teach the facts, not the feelings – even if the facts happen not to contradict the teachings of the Bible.  The homosexual lifestyle is a problem lifestyle, and it can be overcome or avoided.

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by Joe Renfro, Ed.D., Educational Columnist, Radio Evangelist, Retired Teacher and Pastor, Box 751, Lavonia, Georgia 30553, 706-356-4173, joerenfro@windstream.net

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There are many masks shielding the real purposes behind much of contemporary of American Public Education.  There are various masks disguised under the category of pluralism, and they are very deceitful and increasingly are altering public education.

It is distressing to see the mask of secular humanism apparently applauding the Islamic faith.  This is done under the guise of advocating equal representation for all religious beliefs, which is really in essence the discounting the validity of any.  From the Islamic position there is a pretense of peace, but a peace really dependent on ignorance. By promoting the Islamic faith in the public schools, the secular humanists really hope to calculate in the long run the categorization of all religious beliefs as but superstitions.

There are three basic monotheistic belief systems:  the Jewish, Christian, and Islamic.  These are all lumped into one category by the secular humanist, as well as the multiple faiths of the Far East and others.  But are all the faiths the same?  No one could consistently argue that most faiths have contributed in various ways to the progress of humanity, and on the other hand negative observations can be made regarding the history in all faiths.  But it can well be argued that the Christian religion and the Judeo-Christian values have overall contributed more the welfare of humanity than all others.

The term “Judeo-Christian” has been used in America since the 1940s to refer to standards of ethics held in common by Judaism and Christianity. It is also used in a historical sense for the common connections between the faiths.  But notice there is no such harmony between the Islamic faith and either Christianity or Judaism.

The Jewish Conservative columnist Dennis Prager, for example, writes: “The concept of Judeo-Christian values does not rest on a claim that the two religions are identical. It promotes the concept there is a shared intersection of values based on the Hebrew Bible, brought into our culture by the founding generations of Biblically oriented Protestants, that is fundamental to American history, cultural identity, and institutions.” (Prager, Dennis. “The Case for Judeo-Christian Values, part 5” February 15, 2005. Accessed: 2008-07-12.)

It has been observed as well that:  “Most of the ten universities founded before the Revolution taught Hebrew. To graduate from Harvard, students had to be able to translate the Old and New Testament from Latin to Hebrew. Orations at graduation were in Latin, Greek and Hebrew. Ezra Stiles, president of Yale, and a personal friend of the leading Jews of Newport, told the story in 1771 about an American Jew who brought a letter in Hebrew he received from Hebron in Judea to Stiles to be translated. (Reiss, Oscar, Jews in Colonial America, 1925, pp 40ff.) In 18th century America, “Harvard assumed that no Christian gentleman could be considered truly educated unless he could read the Bible in its original tongue.” (American Jewish Historical Society, ajhs. org. scholarship)

Christianity developed from Judaism, where the Islamic faith developed from the so called religious revelations of one man, Mohammed, who could neither read nor write, but who made up his own stories from what he had heard from the Hebrew and Christian religions in his caravan journeys with his uncle in Arabia and Syria.  He started the Islamic faith by making himself the greatest of all the prophets.  He calls the two religions, “People of the Book,” but according to his teaching they changed it all, while he gave the right breakdown of it as recorded in the Koran, the book of Islam.

The secular humanists wish to categorize the Bible and the Koran into the same category, both in which there is little or no cognitive support for true education, and thus devoid of any real knowledge.  The Koran developed from about 650 AD, which is over half a millennium after the New Testament writing and about a millennium or 1,000 years after the final Old Testament book, and close to two or four thousand years, depending on ones interpretation of when the first books of the Bible were written.

It has been observed: “The impetus for collecting Mohammad’s revelations in a single volume came after Mohammad and other important Muslims started dying off.”  (Robert Spencer-The Complete Infidel’s Guide to the Koran,  p. 29) Thus, the book was written from manuscripts copied by followers during Mohammad’s spiritual trances and what a few followers had memorized although there many different accounts.  The Bible in contrast, however, has over 40 authors and is a combination of history, drama, poetry, parables, philosophy, worship literature, and apocalyptic writings—material the Muslims accuse the Jews and Christians of having distorted.

The Christian the message is that Jesus is the Christ, and it becomes the unifying force of the whole Bible and the logos, rationally bringing all knowledge together as Romans 11:33-36 so beautifully confirms saying:  “O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! how unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out!  For who hath known the mind of the Lord? Or who hath been his counselor? Or  who hath first given to him, and it shall be recompensed unto him again? For of him, and through him, and to Him, are all things, to whom be glory for ever. Amen.  (AV)  Pluralism in education does not give this!

The Muslim teaching about Jesus is as a great prophet, but not as the Christ, the Son of God.  A contrast between the two can be seen from the Koran 2:28 that says:  “Who is an enemy of Allah, and His angels and His messengers, and Gabriel and Michael! Lo! Allah (Himself) is an enemy to the disbelievers.”  In Matthew 5:44-45 the Jesus Christ is quoted as saying:  “But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven, for he makes his sun to rise on the good and the evil, and sends rain on the just and the unjust.” What a contrast!

The Muslims in the Koran’s ninth Sura (9:29,30) are given the explicit exhortation to wage war against the Jews and Christians and subject them to Islamic law, “Fight against such of those who have been given the Scripture as believe not in Allah…and follow not the religion of truth until they pay the tribute readily, being brought low.  And the Jews say: ‘Ezra is the son of Allah, and the Christians say: The Messiah is the son of Allah…They imitate the saying of those who disbelieved of old.  Allah (Himself) fighteth against them.  How perverse are they!”  However, the more liberal influences in education in America are very much ready to take the stand that Islam is not a religion of war, but is one of peace, as the vast majority of Muslims declare they want peace. But the message of the Koran is peace only in the context of subjection to the Islamic law.

All that the name “Allah” means is “God,” but the name of God does not necessarily refer to the same understanding of God.  The Islamic focus is that, “There is no God, but Allah and Mohammad is his prophet.”

Concerning the threat to terrorism it has been noted that: ”The Muslim Brotherhood’s strategic memo, entered into evidence at the Holy Land Foundation terrorism financing trial in 2007 was: “The Ikhwan [Muslim brothers] must understand that all their work in America is a kind of grand jihad in eliminating and destroying Western civilization from within and `sabotaging’ their miserable house…”  (Becky Yeh –OneNewsNow California correspondent—12/1/2010).  The liberal secular humanist forces wish to mask and cover up the threat of the Muslims infiltrating our civilization through our classrooms!

Without question we are witnessing The Masks of Pluralism in Public Education, shielding the true picture. There are many other instances of the use of this mask, such as allowing places in public school restrooms for Muslim students to wash their feet or to allow time outs for their prayer times, while Christians have all types of restrictions.

The publishers of Across the Centuries, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, is a 558-page textbook used in middle schools contains 55 pages on Islam.  Less than ten pages are on Christianity.  It is shocking that:  “The chapter on Islam accounts for ten percent of the text, while Christianity and Judaism are almost entirely absent.”  It was pointed out that, “This book is taught in every single public school across the United States, in every state and city…that everything Islamic is praised and every problems is swept under the rug.” (Becky Yeh – OneNewsNow California correspondent – 12/1/2010)  Here’s a mask!

We need to look behind the masks and see what really is.  I believe that the secular humanists are behind a mask that really knows the Islamic faith as a perfect example of religious superstition.  But by paralleling it with the Judeo-Christian world views they hope to discount in time any religious influence.  There is a straw man behind the mask, a backdoor method to attack the Judeo-Christian values basic to the formation of our nation, ultimately to found one nation without God.

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by Joe Renfro, Ed.D., Educational Columnist, Radio Evangelist, Retired Teacher and Pastor, Box 751, Lavonia, Georgia 30553, 706-356-4173, joerenfro@windstream.net

Some people feel that when teachers had the practical board of education, the paddle, there was much less classroom disruption and thus schools were much more houses of learning.  The contemporary educational establishment proposes solutions they deem better, and so they delegate oversight to boards of education to make sure that administrators, teachers, and other school personnel are responsible for behavioral problems.  But is corporal punishment helpful in cultivating classroom discipline? Can it have a positive effect in cultivating positive behavior in individual students?

One side of the argument suggests educators be empowered with every effective means of not only disciplining classrooms, but instilling self-discipline in students, while the other side maintains that paddling or other forms of corporal punishment only tend to create negative behavior and lasting psychological damage to the young minds and should be banned.

The United States is the only nation in the western world, which still permits corporal punishment in its schools with twenty states still allowing the use of it. Canada banned corporal punishment in 2004. No European country permits corporal punishment. So far, the United States Congress has not acted on requests from organizations such as Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union to enact federal legislation banning corporal punishment. Since education is widely viewed as a local and state matter, any further banning of corporal punishment will probably have to occur at that level. (Robert Kennedy, “2 Reasons for Banning Corporeal Punishment,” About.com Guide).

Evangelical Christian schools use the board of education, the paddle, much more than secular schools.  Progressive and liberal thinkers frown upon corporal punishment.  The general tone of the more liberal domain is that rewarding good behavior produces better behavior than punishing bad behavior, and this perspective has become dominant in most of the Western world.

Those who advocate spanking for bad behavior, however, also applaud rewarding good behavior and even wish to point out that it becomes its own reward. From the more traditional Christian understanding we can not only look to particular verses in the Bible, but the over all biblical theme of the cultivation of discipline. Verses in particular such as Proverbs 23:13-14 speak very directly and they state:  “Withhold not correction from the child: for if thou beatest him with the rod, he shall not die. Thou shalt beat him with the rod, and shalt deliver his soul from hell.”  Proverbs13:24 points out that: “The father of the righteous shall greatly rejoice: and he that begetteth a wise child shall have joy of him.”

From the New Testament Hebrews 12:5-7 says, And ye have forgotten the exhortation which speaketh unto you as unto children, My son, despise not thou the chastening of the Lord, nor faint when thou art rebuked of him: For whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth. If ye endure chastening, God dealeth with you as with sons; for what son is he whom the father chasteneth not?”

In the Bible “chastisement” is a vital teaching.  The Holman Bible Dictionary says chastisement “refers to an act of punishment intended to change behavior.”  It is brought out that one of the uses is “to instruct a discipline.”  The Holman dictionary states: “The climatic Old Testament word for chastisement is that of the Suffering Servant, who has born our chastisement, so that we might not have to suffer it (Isa. 53:5).” And that “Ultimately, chastisement shows God’s love for the one chastised (Rev. 3:19).  He seeks to lead us away from the eternal chastisement  (I Cor. 11:32, Heb. 12:10).” Here is a closure, and paddling can provide this!

It is not only the influences of prayer and the Bible that have been removed from the public school arena, but corporal punishment as well, and it can be very much observed that since parents have abandoned these too, the schools have proved very inadequate in the development of positive discipline. The society at large has declined so much that youth violence has greatly increased.  Even some have referred to the public schools in America as a “war zone.”

I taught in the public schools for twenty-six years, and I found that when the board of education, the paddle, was rightly used, it was helpful in the cultivation of discipline for many students and in setting the discipline in the classroom. Paddling should not be the first line of punishment, for there are many means that can be used before the use of the paddle.  However, there are proper ways to use the paddle in corporal punishment.

Once I paddled my own son because he needed it. A teacher came to my room and told me that she had tried all kinds to ways to get my son to do his homework and that she told him if he didn’t do it next time he was going to be paddled.  I thanked her and asked if I could administer the paddling.  She approved, and I gave him three good solid licks, heavier than she could have administered I felt.  I hoped this would help him to see the errors of his way and motivate him to do what he ought to do.

There was an article in the Time-Picayune paper, February 24, 2011 about how the alumni of the Saint Augustine High School in New Orleans alumni took the microphone near half-court in the school’s packed gymnasium to support corporal punishment in the Catholic school.  The article said that: “They had graduated as long ago as 1960 and as recently as just as few years.  But almost to a man they recalled one paddling at the hands of a Saint Augustine teacher that turned them around.”

The movement in our contemporary education is increasingly becoming a pattern to resolve problem behavior in the classroom not with the “board of education,” the paddle, which sometimes might be necessary, but to resolve by bringing the classroom issues before the county or city Board of Education.   I hope my paddle, Old Sam, given to me by a student, has helped many students get their lives in order.  I have some questions about just how well the modern day issues that are brought before many boards of education are really going to turn out.

by Joe Renfro, Ed.D., Educational Columnist, Radio Evangelist, Retired Teacher and Pastor, Box 751, Lavonia, Georgia 30553, 706-356-4173, joerenfro@windstream.net

We hear continually about our energy problem in the world and in our nation, but right before our eyes here in America we have a terrible waste of energy that is even worse than the power problem.  It is intellectual energy!  We have no problem using mental energy for entertainment, as there are all kinds of electronic equipment to use to pass the day, but the question comes, “How much is real learning and the type of learning that ultimately leads to constructive lives?”   We use our mental energy in all kinds of ways, but how much of it is used in ultimately learning that which is of little of consequence or things even with negative consequences?

Samuel Blumenfield in his book, Is Public Education Necessary? observes that:  “American educators can be divided into two groups:  There are the “progressives,” who view public education primarily as a tool for social and cultural reform to be achieved through the remaking of human nature, and the “traditionalists,” who view education, public or private, primarily as a development of an individual’s intellectual skills in combination with moral instruction based on Judeo-Christian ideals,” (p. 200).

Blumenfield concludes his book, by saying that,  “The failure of public education is the failure of statism as a political philosophy,”  (p. 214). The fact is that traditional education helped to create responsibility, positive moral mores, and a positive attitude toward the religious values that were basic to this land.  But recall the sixties and the generation gap that all over age thirty were over the hill and the downhill run since that time.  Here we can look back in public education and see the shift from the traditional schooling to the progressive thinking.

II Timothy 3:1-5 says:  “This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come. For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, Without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, Traitors, heady, highminded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God; ?Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away.” Just think of the mental energy that is being used in respect to the promotion of these negative characteristics that the Apostle Paul observed!

However, I particularly want to key into the last characteristic given in II Timothy 3:5 that of, “Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof:”.  Here is a central problem in our educational dilemma today, the humanistic morality that isn’t working!  The humanistic philosophy focus has become basic in our land, beginning in the 1960s.  We can see the problems that have developed!  The progressive thinking is that through educational and socio-economic means the errors of humanity will be erased.  However, when academic achievement is lacking in the secondary domains, and the moral problems are exploding all over our land, why can’t our leaders see what is happening?

Robert Owen  (1771-1858) was a Welsh-born social reformer, who set up the famous New Harmony community in Indiana back in 1823, as he focused on equal opportunity for all. It has been observed that, “The key dogma in Robert Owen’s system was the notion that man’s character had been deformed by religious brainwashing, and that only rational education could correct it.” (Blumenfield, p. 62)  But what is meant by rational, and what is meant by religious brainwashing?  Could there not be secular brainwashing as well?  There can be secular brainwashing, as well as religious brainwashing!

Blumenfield observed that, “It was clear to the Owenites in 1828 that national public education was the essential first step on the road to socialism and that this would require a sustained effort of propaganda and political activism over the long period of time.” (p.69)  The progressives were very much in agreement with the Owenite prospective, and although the New Harmony community failed totally, contemporary American Public Education from the influence of the education philosophy of John Dewey still applauds the progressive stance to use public education primarily as a tool for social and cultural reformed, so as to remake human nature.

In an article by Cosby Burns and Philip Ross called “Gay and Transgender Discrimination Outside the Workplace”, they say: “Many people know that gay and transgender individuals experience high rates of discrimination and harassment in the workplace. But gay and transgender individuals also experience discrimination in other areas, such as housing, healthcare, and areas of public accommodations. Unfortunately, no federal law currently exists to shield gay and transgender individuals from discrimination. Activists and lawmakers have long advocated for laws such as the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, or ENDA, that would protect gay and transgender workers from senseless discrimination on the job. More needs to be done to combat discrimination against gay and transgender Americans not only in the workplace, but in all spheres of life.” (Center for American Progress, July 19, 2011)

In California the governor, Jerry Brown, signed a bill requiring schools to teach gay history.  It will also require teachers to instruct on the role of people with disabilities.  Brown’s justification for this was that “History should be honest.” Brown said Thursday he had signed a bill that will require public schools in the state to teach students about the contributions of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Americans.

“History should be honest,” Brown said in a statement. The Rev. Louis Sheldon, chairman and founder of the Traditional Values Coalition, said that, “It is an outrage that Governor Jerry Brown has opened the classroom door for homosexual activists to indoctrinate the minds of California’s youth, since no factual materials would be allowed to be presented.” And he went on to say that, “If parents don’t already have their children out of public schools, this should cause them to remove them.” (CNN—July 15, 2011)  California law already requires state schools to teach about the contributions of Native Americans, African-Americans, Mexican-Americans, and Asian-Americans, among other groups, but this is not the same as homosexual behavior!

The gays are increasing not just getting rights as they should, for they should have rights like any other group, but they should not have the right to promote their life style as a positive lifestyle for children to follow. For homosexual behavior is not an overall positive behavior. Are they going to teach about all the murders, suicides, mental breakdowns, and other negative factors often dominate in the homosexual population?  There is good reason why the Bible condemns homosexual behavior!

In the 20 July 2011 Presbyterians Week, there was an article about the Rt. Rev. Professor Emmanuel Marty of Ghana.  When asked about calls from human rights activists to the government of Ghana to grant homosexual rights, Prof.. Martey responded: “Not all rights are helpful to society. We are Christians and thus we must stand up against practices which are not in principle with the concepts of God’ s teachings or which contradicts the Bible.” Martey spoke about Sodom and Gomorrah and quoted from Genesis chapters 18 and 19, Matthew 11:20-24, and 1 Timothy 1:10, before saying that he will continue “to educate homosexuals to help them transform their lives and repent. When good people keep quiet, evil people take over society.” He would not promote teaching homosexuality as a desirable lifestyle!

However, in an attempt to morally be neural in public education our public schools are promoting not just non-Christian behavior, but negative behavior as well.   Homosexuality is just one area, but it is an area that would well fit into the evils described in II Timothy 3:1-5.  But in many ways our educational establishment even promotes many of the areas thus described.

But can you believe that even major denominations, which who are also on the progressive bandwagon, not only “reformed, but reforming” are in this process of promoting “a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof:,” even affirming the ordination of gays and lesbians.

Righteousness is to accept the homosexual in Christ’s love, but it is not to applaud or teach the behavior as positive. It is not righteousness to applaud ungodly behavior or promote its spread through the public schools or private schools.  But this is but one result of the progressive focus in public education, and as a result there is an intellectual energy crisis in education, as immoral, decadent, and ultimately negative factors can be learned to the exclusion of or even condemnation of positive behavior or godly behavior for those of us who know Christ.  The message of Christ is not perversion or diversion, but it is conversion!

by Joe Renfro, Ed.D., Educational Columnist, Radio Evangelist, Retired Teacher and Pastor, Box 751, Lavonia, Georgia 30553, 706-356-4173, joerenfro@windstream.net

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Calvinism or Pluralism In Education?

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Samuel L. Blumenfield, a noted author, brings out in his book, Is Public Education Necessary?, how that public education has shifted from educational freedom to an educational tyranny, and he brings out that ”America’s intellectual history is inseparable from its religious history.”  (p. xii, 2011).

I entitled this article, “Calvinism or Pluralism in Education,” because I want to expound more on this shift that ends not just in the religious domain, but degenerates into a public educational focus that has left the Calvinistic and Biblical foundation and degenerated into materialism, secularism, behaviorism, in such a way the very foundation that once was dominate and productive has very much eroded into a system very much against the Christian heritage once basic to our land which greatly promoted learning.

The theme of secular humanism has eclipsed education from being founded in the grandeur of God to a concentration on the corruption of humanity.   We can see the shift from the foundation of faith in God to a pluralism that goes everywhere, but nowhere. Dewey, Marx, Freud, Neitzsche, Skinner, and others have replaced the influences of Calvinism, even Christianity in education.

As the Protestant Reformation began Martin Luther in 1528 set up public schools for all in Germany, and then in 1536 John Calvin, the Swiss Reformer, urged the founding of and led in the development of public schools in Geneva before he went on to found the Academy in Geneva in 1559 to instruct ministers and teachers. The Calvinists led in learning, as the Protestant Reformation spread from Geneva on to the new world.

The Pilgrims landed at Plymouth in 1620.  Then, barely six years after the first settlement in Boston in 1630, the Pilgrims began to lay the foundation for their education system, as it appropriated 400 pounds toward the establishment of what was to become Harvard College, founded in 1636, sixteen years after the Pilgrims had landed at Plymouth. Calvinism became the base for the founding of Harvard College, whose charter was granted in 1650.

The emphasis of the Puritans on education was two-fold; to encourage learning in general and religious study in particular. The Westminster Standards with the Larger and Shorter Catechisms were an important part of this, but as well Calvin’s insistence that education be as well in the “languages and the worldly sciences.”  (Williston Walker, John Calvin (NewYork: Shocken Books, Inc. 1969)

Our forefathers who first came to the shores of North America, were to a great extent men and women of faith, faith in Christ.  Europeans came to America to escape religious oppression and forced beliefs by such state-affiliated Christian churches as the Roman Catholic Church and the Church of England. That civil unrest fueled the desire of America’s forefathers, so to establish the organization of a country in which the separation of church and state, and the freedom to practice one’s faith without fear of persecution, was guaranteed.  The U.S. was the first western nation to be founded predominately by Protestants — not Roman Catholics.

Religious persecution and iron-fisted rule by state-affiliated Christianity in Europe had begun to loosen its hold in the 16th century when, for the sake of debate, Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses on the door of the Castle Church in Wittenburg, Germany. King Henry VIII founded the Church of England, owing to disagreements regarding papal authority. In later attempts to free themselves from the tie of the state governmental system imposed by the Church of England (Anglican Church), such denominations as the Reformed-Presbyterian churches and the European Free Church were formed.

The Puritans came to the New England colonies to escape religious persecution. The Puritans later gave birth to the Baptists and the Congregationalists. Led by John Winthrop, 900 Puritan colonists landed in Massachusetts Bay.  Managing to endure the hardships of pioneer life and accustomed to caring for each other’s needs, they prospered, and their numbers grew from 17,800 in 1640 to 106,000 in 1700. Their attempt to “purify” the Church of England and their own lives was based on the teachings of John Calvin. Using the New Testament as their model, they believed that each congregation and each person individually was responsible to God, and part of this was the proper education of the youth in the disciplines of the Bible.

The Puritans also were responsible for the first free schooling in America, establishing not only education for the children, but later established the first American college, Harvard College in Cambridge Massachusetts. The educational focus of the Puritans had great influence on education as it developed in all the colonies.

However, some 150 years later after establishing Harvard College in 1650 the Rev. William  E. Channing (1780-1842) and a number of other more liberal thinkers began to change the Calvinist focus of Harvard.  Channing entered Harvard in 1794 and graduated in 1798 at the top of his class.  Then in 1801 he was elected regent of Harvard which years later under his leadership and influence shifted from a Calvinistic focus to that of   Unitarianism.

However, there only three Unitarians of the 204 founding fathers who signed either or both, the Declaration of Independence (July 1776), the Articles of Confederation (drafted 1777, ratified 1781) and the Constitution of the United States of America (1789).  Some people even sound like the Unitarians were the basic founders of America.  The Unitarians, however, have been and are one the great advocates for pluralism in America.

Channing became a leading Unitarian minister, but when the American Unitarian Association was organized in 1825, he refused the office of president.  He was a leader in  the Unitarian movement, but much of his energy was focused on developing a new direction at Harvard College and the education in the new nation. Channing’s optimistic view of human nature was very much in contrast to the Calvinistic and Biblical understanding of the “total depravity of man.”

Channing based his Christology on scriptural evidences of Christ’s perfection and his own belief in the freedom of the will.  For him, Christ exemplified the perfection to which others can attain. In order to account for Christ’s flawless moral perfection, he felt it was from hiss preexistence; yet he maintained that others should aspire to, and could achieve a similar perfection.  He regarded Christ as the moral perfect example for humanity and did not see salvation as dependent on Christ’s death for the elect on Calvary, which was central in Calvinism.

Samuel Eliot Morrison’s Three Centuries of Harvard, 1536-1936—(p. 23) says about the school in the original charter and first century that “A learned clergy was the immediate and pressing need that Harvard was expected to supply…Harvard students were reminded that the object o their literary and scientific studies was the greater knowledge of God; and that the acquisition of knowledge for its own sake, with out ‘laying Christ in the bottome, as the only foundation’ was futile and sinful.”

The question comes,  “Calvinism or Pluralism in Education?” There is Pluralism!  In many ways the ball of pluralism rolled from Harvard.   Diana Eck from the Harvard University Pluralism Project in an article, entitled “From Diversity to Pluralism” says that: “Pluralism is the engagement that creates a common society from all that plurality.”  She is talking about religious pluralism, but I feel it relates to all philosophies as well.  And she goes on to say that “Clearly the pluralism that would engage people of different faith and cultures in the creation of a common society is not a given, but an achievement.“

What about Calvinism?  The Calvinistic love for learning, putting the mind and spirit above the secular, material values inspired our forefathers who came over from Scotland, Holland, England, and the rest of Europe where the Reformation had taken hold.  When we look at history, it is very evident that wherever Calvinism has gone, that knowledge and learning has taken hold with the moral discernment necessary to build a positive environment and truly knowledgeable people.

Bancroft, the father of American History (1800-1891) in The History of the United States, says:  “We boast of our common schools; Calvin was the father of popular education—the inventor of the system of free schools…wherever Calvinism gained dominion it invoked intelligence for the people.” (p. 463).

Pluralism is an ideology that basically is saying you can start with different presuppositions and reach the same goal.  I feel that much of the chaos in the contemporary American Public School education is that we have left the Calvinistic even Christian influences that once germinated learning in our land and shifted to an amalgamation of everything that ultimately equals nothing.  Our youth have no foundation, and the public schools give not positive direction.   Beliefs have effects on one’s perception of and understanding of reality.    Calvinism offers this!

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by Joe Renfro, Ed.D., Radio Evangelist, Retired Teacher and Pastor, 5931 West Av, Lavonia, Georgia 30553, 706-356-4173, joerenfro@windstream.net

There are many understandings of freedom, and in fact many totalitarian governments parade under the label of freedom, such as Communist China and many Islamic nations. Freedom in the contemporary American understanding is the ability for an individual or group to do what they wish rather than to be controlled by another.

The Bible, however, never portrays freedom as a type of irresponsible behavior as many in America do. Central  in the message of the Lord Jesus was freedom, as the Lord Jesus said, “Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free…If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed”  (John 8:32,36). Notice that it is to know the truth is to be free, not that you are free to know what might be esteemed to be truth.

Freedom is a great key for educational development, but is a key that is increasingly being discarded in our land, particularly when we ignore the Judeo-Christian tenets that were once basic in American public and private education. There are token steps in many private schools and in many charter schools, but is this really where the focus is?  What is meant by real responsible freedom in education? It is not imposed from without but develops from within!

In the Bible, freedom is a continual theme from the very beginning, from Genesis 3:5 when Adam and Eve sought to be free to determine what was good and what was evil, and fell to the temptation from Satan.  This was an example of the misuse of freedom in contrast to the true promise of the liberty that flows from the presence of God, as Revelation 22:17 so powerfully proclaims:  “…Come.  And let him that is athirst come.  And whosoever will, let him take of the water of life freely.”   The history of the Israelites has been one of continual quest for freedom, and the message of Christ is the very foundation of what is really true freedom.  Recall Christ said, “I came not to destroy the law, but to fulfill it.”   In this is a presupposition on which free and positive education can develop.

Romans 7:6 states a central focus of the Christian message as it says:  “Now we are delivered from the law…that we should serve in newness of spirit.”   Many educators in our land are very much distressed by the destruction of freedom in public education. In respect to understanding the Scriptural truth of this verse—instead of moving from, in, and toward freedom in learning, public education has shifted much to a programming of the students by the educational establishment…a type of bondage.  It is to pass the NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND TESTS, to the neglect of developing a passion for  learning in the children.  Much of this is to be blamed, I feel, on our forsaking the foundations on which our nation was founded and from which developed freedom of religion together with freedom for each to learn responsibly and individually.

U.S. Rep. George Miller (D-California) at a forum, “A Pathway to Excellence: The Future of Education in America”, in New Jersey, was one among many seeking to address the great crisis in American education.  He said, “I see change taking place all across the country in public systems, public systems that have adopted public charter schools, that let people go to private charter schools, that have adopted open choice.”  This looks like a real movement toward freedom, but is it?

The forsaking of our Christian heritage is bringing more and more legalism into public schooling, and performance is going down.  There is a student plague from the lack of academic responsibility.  And many teachers, in fact, most young teachers are leaving the profession after a few years in the classrooms, disenchanted by the public school programs.  It is a sad picture!

The subtraction of the Christian focus that once a vital part of public education has had adverse effects over the past fifty years in respect to the academic achievement in the American public schools.   All kinds of academic programming, standards of all types, teacher accountability without parental accountability, and testing, testing, and testing are just some of the areas of this legalism.  The Bible teaches what can be called a particular grace and a general grace.  Special grace is known in those who realize the redemptive personal relationship with God.  General grace is manifest in all creation in God’s goodness to his creation manifest in the secular.

In the general sense God has been gracious to us.  But the time might come in America when the type of education that enabled us to rise as nation to the top, might be no longer.

We look at situations like the total secular educational thinking in Communist China, and say that this could never happen here.  But continually, China is tightening its grip on dissent.  It has been noted that “Simply to have different opinions can cost (dissidents) their life; they can be put in jail, can be silenced and can disappear.” (Jamie’s China, CNN April 12, 2011  Crackdown on dissent in China). The persecution of Christians is covering the whole nation, and any education with a Christian focus is forbidden.

From the religious focus, we can look at that imposed by the Muslim Brotherhood and the great persecution of Christians wherever the Muslims are in power.  In The Center for Security Policy’s recently released report,  “Shariah: The Threat to America” it states that, “The Brotherhood has since 1963 operated a growing number of front organizations tasked with mounting highly effective influence operations in the United States. According to the organization’s own strategic plan, their mission here is ‘a kind of grand jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within’”.

Frank Gaffney observer that “In two different articles published at Pajamas Media we  learn how U.S. government ‘outreach’ to the Muslim-American community has become a vehicle for empowering and protecting enemies of this country and affording them opportunities they systematically exploit with the goal of ‘destroying [us] from within’”.  (“Muslim Brotherhood Proclaim True Intentions in Egypt” 18 Apr 2011–By Frank Gaffney, columnist—Washington Times).

Bondage comes from the secular understanding promoted by Communist China, and it comes from the religious understanding from the Muslim Brotherhood.  Many say, “It could never happen here.”  But as we neglect our Christian heritage as a nation, it might well happen!

by Joe Renfro, Ed.D., Radio Evangelist, Retired Teacher and Pastor, Box 751, Lavonia, Georgia 30553, 706-356-4173, joerenfro@windstream.net

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There is a big problem developing in respect to the separation of church and state in the public schools in the USA, particularly in reference to respecting the Muslim students with a type of reverse discrimination while at the same time not allowing the Christian students their rights.

From the writings of Columbus to the Mayflower Compact, to the Declaration of Independence, America’s founders clearly and articulately enshrined bedrock Christian principles in the foundation of this country. Our pilgrim fathers wrote in the Mayflower Compact, “In the name of God, Amen. We whose names are underwritten . . . having undertaken, for the glory of God and the advancement of the Christian faith…a voyage to plant the first colony in the Northern parts of Virginia.”

In the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson invokes our Creator-God no less than four times.  Jefferson predicates the Declaration on “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God” and concludes the Declaration with an appeal to the “Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions” and with “a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence.”   Faith in God, whether from a deistic understanding of it as in God being the one who has established the laws of nature or as in God revealed in Jesus Christ, is a basic part of America and the education of this land..

Deeptha Thattai, a volunteer with the Cincinnati chapter of the Association for India’s Development, said  in the article “A History of Public Education in the United States”:  “Since the 1950s, public policy toward education has addressed discrimination issues in education more than educational issues. The federal government has especially been concerned with issues of equality in school districts” (deeptha1@yahoo.com). I personally feel this is very true and especially in respect to seeking to accommodate many of the tenants of the Islamic faith.

There has been concern about racial or gender inequalities in education, and our nation has sought to address this, often by reverse discrimination.  Females experienced unequal educational opportunities and our nation has and is addressing this.   Now the shift has turned toward religion, in particular, to making sure Muslims are not discriminated against in their religious faith and practices.  This is fine when it does not interfere with the rights of others. But often reverse discrimination does!

It is educational to teach that  there are religions other than the predominant one in America, Christianity.  But it is something else to teach a distorted, biased or prejudicial understanding of a religion.  Case in point is the focus on the Islamic faith to the neglect of or attacks on the Judeo-Christian worldview.

I wonder why there has been a national pattern in the public school policy of favoring the Islamic faith to the neglect of others such as Hinduism, Buddhism or even some of the other Far Eastern faiths.  Some of us would say there have been attacks on Christians, particularly the evangelical Christians, as seen when a teacher is fired for silently reading a personal Bible during a study hall or when students are not allowed to have student-led Christian prayer at graduations or when students from parochial schools are denied open gym time at the local public school in their district.

Several recent studies have shown American students to be alarmingly ignorant about U.S. history and world events.  Many history educators are distressed that often history textbooks are in error, often from Islamic influences.   Major publishers, such as Houghton Mifflin, Harcourt and Random House, Inc., permit affiliates of Islamic groups to write and produce textbooks that tend to promote Islamic ideologies.

Across the Centuries (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt), a 558-page textbook used in middle schools contains fifty-five pages on Islam, but less than ten pages on Christianity.   It has been noted, “The chapter on Islam accounts for ten percent of the text, while Christianity and Judaism are almost entirely absent.” Some other examples are teaching that Jerusalem is an Arab city; that Muslims first discovered America; that Christianity was started by a “young Palestinian” named Jesus; and that the Koran was revealed to Mohammed first-hand mediated by the Angel Gabriel, while the Jewish and Christian Scriptures were written by men. (“Public Schools Teach the ABCs of Islam,” Erick Stakelbeck–CBN News Terrorism Analyst, January 9, 2009)

In respect to one class in Byron, California, that used the Houghton Mifflin text, Muhammad is portrayed as an extremely moral man who wanted a society of purity. A vast body of historical accounts will refute this image. History actually shows that he had multiple wives, a sexual problem, and among his wives, he took a ten-year-old girl for his pleasure (some accounts list her age as 6). Islam promises its followers that those who become suicide bombers, killing themselves and others, will go directly to Allah’s paradise where they will be given seventy-two virgins for unbridled sexual pleasure for all of eternity. It doesn’t say anything about female suicide bombers getting seventy-two male virgins!

The Houghton Mifflin text does not mention that it was the Muslims who captured blacks and sold them to be slaves to the Western and to the Eastern hemispheres. While European involvement in the Trans-Atlantic slave trade to the Americas lasted for just over three centuries, Arab involvement in slave trade has lasted fourteen centuries, and in some parts of the Muslim world is still continuing to this day. The text condemns the Christian West for buying the slaves, but says little about the Christian Abolitionists who fought the slave trade. This bothers many of us!

In a public school course, there are many verses in the Koran that must be memorized, and students are taught to pray, “in the name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful” and chant, “Praise to Allah, Lord of Creation.”  Twenty-five Islamic terms must be memorized, six Islamic (Arabic) phrases and twenty Islamic Proverbs.  The Five Pillars of Faith and 10 key Islamic prophets and disciples are to be studied.

The Houghton Mifflin history books are quick to note the negative factors in Christian Church history, while Islam is presented broadly in a totally positive manner. Almost everything Christian is shown in a negative light, and the restricted references to Christianity are centered on conflicts such as the Reformation, Martin Luther and the Catholic Church or events such as the Inquisition or the Salem witch-hunts, etc., highlighted in bold, black type.

Randy Dotinga, correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor, July 12, 2007 in an article “Public schools grapple with Muslim prayer” noted about a California school that: “Like a growing number of school districts around the country San Diego is changing its ways to meet the needs of its Islamic students. But, in accommodating Muslim students, is the school unfairly promoting religion?” Dotinga goes on to note that Brad Dacus, president of the Pacific Justice Institute, said:  “The school’s policy ‘presumes that Christians are less religious and less inspired to worship and praise the Lord and come together.’”

In 2005 a suburban Dallas school district allowed Muslim students to leave class to pray after being confronted by the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, a bipartisan organization.  In the Dearborn, Michigan, schools students are to avoid strenuous exercise while they’re fasting and special diets are served for them with meat slaughtered in accordance with Islamic law. Dearborn school district has at least one in three students of Middle Eastern descent – many of whom are Muslim, and it also schedules two days off during the Islamic holiday of Ramadan.  What about the rights of Christians and Jews?

For years now, federal judges have demanded local schools (under the jurisdiction of local and state governments) to prohibit Christian prayers or Bible reading, but now an increasing number of school districts are observing that Muslim prayers and readings from the Koran are to be accepted.  But, I ask, “Is not this a type of reverse discrimination that is wrong and attacks the very foundation of our land?”

by Joe Renfro, Ed.D., Radio Evangelist, Retired Teacher and Pastor, Box 751, Lavonia, Georgia 30553, 706-356-4173, joerenfro@windstream.net

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