The Contemporary Educational Trinity Brews Destruction

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Forces we can call the Contemporary Educational Trinity work today from high places to displace the Judeo-Christian moral values once basic to our land and to promote their codes of intolerance in the name of tolerance, set up the guides that ignore individual differences lumping all into one pot, and looks to technology as the sure cure for true educational achievement.  The destruction of our culture can be brewing from our classrooms, as the educational establishment seems to look toward the wrong trinity.

This Contemporary Educational Trinity is evidenced in 1.) The No Child Left Behind that has not worked because it has left God behind. 2.) The Core Curriculum focus that is not working, because it works from the outside in, neglecting the process from the inside out, which is the spiritual essence in each unique individual.   3.) The technological revolution calls for a computer for every student, but can’t solve the problem of the misuse of this technology, since computers don’t learn, while students do!

Many of us are grieved about the great stress evidenced in our youth, as masses are grasping for a foundation for living and learning, while finding only a mixed confusion of contradictions.  The overall plight is that contemporary education has lost the glue to hold it together.  And a common characteristic of contemporary youth is the gravitation toward negative values, being totally confused about lasting values!

We have major problems! Over the past half-century the public schools in America have gone down in most all areas in overall achievement of the students.  Many students have truly excelled academically, but at the same time our culture has suffered from the overall confusion and weakened self-discipline in the students. This problem has been amplified since the removal of the Judeo-Christian teachings in school was instituted by the Supreme Court’s decisions to take the bible and prayer from our public schools.

The progressive, amoral, and secular forces are at work today from high places as the federal government takes more control of all education, and seeks to displace the Judeo-Christian moral values once basic to our land.  Political correctness is the new morality.

Ben Stein observing our amoral decay wrote and recited on the CBS Sunday Morning Commentary that: “I the light of recent events – terrorists attacks, school shootings, etc. I think it started when Madeleine Murray O’Hare (she was murdered, her body found a few years ago) complained she didn’t want prayer in our schools, and we said okay. Then someone said you better not read the Bible in school.  The Bible says ‘thou shalt not kill; thou shalt not steal, and love your neighbour as yourself.’  And we said, okay.”

”Then Dr. Benjamin Spock said we shouldn’t spank our children when they misbehave, because their little personalities would be warped and we might damage their self-esteem (Dr.  Spock’s son committed suicide).  We said an expert should know what he’s talking about. And we said okay.”

And Stein went on to say:  “Now we’re asking ourselves why our children have no conscience, why they don’t know right from wrong, and why it doesn’t bother them to kill strangers, their classmates, and themselves… Stein well observed, “Funny how we believe what the newspapers say, but question what the Bible says.”

It has been observed that history, at least our Western history, has moved from the European playing field to the American.  In particular, I want to point to the contemporary situation in Great Britain in respect to education and have you think about how this relates to what is happening in America. It is funny how simple it is for people to trash God and then wonder why their world is going to hell.

In an interview with the noted British sociologist and theologian Dr. Clifford Hill, he stated the foundations of Christian civilization are crumbling, as a “nightmare of moral anarchy is spreading in Great Britain.”  Hill brought out that almost half of Britain’s babies were now born out of wedlock as opposed to just five per cent in the 1960s. And much of this has been from ignoring the moral foundation established from the Ten Commandments, as seen in the developing of the new morality so accepted by the progressive thinking in America.  Are we moving Great Britain’s way historically?

Sociologist Hill has been conducting research into family breakdown for more than thirty years and says: “All the research shows that the children of fragmented families are more likely to do badly at school, have health problems, emotional or behavioral problems, are less likely to get good jobs, and will have a poor record in forming stable relationships which, of course, greatly increases the instability of the next generation.”

He has observed that: “All the research shows that the children of fragmented families are more likely to do badly at school, have health problems, emotional or behavioral problems, are less likely to get good jobs, and will have a poor record in forming stable relationships which, of course, greatly increases the instability of the next generation.”

And he capped the interview off by saying: “Clearly they have forgotten what education is all about – teaching children what is right and wrong so that they can best contribute to the building up of a healthy and integrated society where the needs of others should come before their own. This is the basis of the Christian civilization which is now crumbling around our ears under the weight of sycophantic political correctness.”  (‘The foundations of Christian civilization are crumbling’ Charles Gardner, <assistnews@aol.com>).

We are observing the Contemporary Educational Trinity in the name of progressivism display intolerance in the name of tolerance, as the political elite call it intolerance for schools to promote the teaching of the bible as given in the Ten Commandment, and yet it applauds the morality of the countercultures.    Who can deny that the Contemporary Educational Trinity is working not only to displace and destroy our Judeo-Christian culture, but to lead us in a way that may well be the destruction of our society.

The “No Child Left Behind” program is not working, as it seeks to solve the problem from the outside in, rather than from the inside out.  It is a federal program that has sought to restructure schools to what the government has established to be educational success.  It has been observed, however that “American schools are mired in the mess of No Child Left Behind, a failed reform that keeps on sharing its failures with students and faculty… Since No Child began, school districts have been required to report a larger and larger percentage of students meeting the program’s phony standards.” It has not worked!   (“No Child continues its Miserable Failure”, Quad-City Times, September 27, 2013).

Secondly, the “Core Curriculum” sets their standards to be the acquisition of the knowledge and skills students should have within their K-12 education careers in English Language Arts, Mathematics, and Literacy in History/Social Studies, Science and Technical Subjects, as the federal government seeks to be the ultimate determiners of what the children learn and how and what the local teachers might teach. It sounds good, but sadly this misses the heartbeat to true learning and ends up limiting the more advanced students, while trying to pull up or program the less advanced

Many over our nation have opposed the institution of the Core Curriculum, and at one district in Baltimore, Maryland parent protested as the state offices, demonstrating and carrying signs, some of which said: “Common Core—rotten for kids”, “Get Common Core out of our public schools”, “Stop the Common Core.  Our Kids deserve more.” “My child’s teachers hate Common Core.”  (“Angry Md. Parents Band Together To Fight Common Core”, CBS–November 18, 2013)

The final segment of the Contemporary Educational Trinity is the “Technological Revolution,” as the computer provides it all to them.  Without question the technology can be a most valuable instrument, but when the technology shapes the students instead of the students using it to shape themselves constructively, there is a major problem.

Many wonder why our youth are so fascinated with little game machines, but totally closed to true spiritual involvement. But as Archibald Hart and Sylvia Hart Frejd  observed in “Modern Stress, Technology and Parenting” (Christian Counseling Today, Vol. 18, No.2)  the misuse of technology  “is robbing the younger generation of its ability to concentrate, learn, contemplate or meditate and consequently, their ability to experience a deep knowledge of God.”  (p. 18).

Hart and Frejd summarized it well, saying that: “The current explosion of digital technology not only is changing the way we live and communicate, but it rapidly and profoundly altering our brains.” (p. 16).  When the light go out what will happen?  When we let the electronics do the thinking for us, we each can become just programmed zombies, a zombie being “someone who moves around as if unconscious and being controlled by someone else.” (American English Dictionary).

This someone else might be the new UNCLE SAM with his progressive ideologies, enslaving and indoctrinating the new society through public education. The new Uncle Sam calls for change, a change that is away from the foundation that made our nation great.  The contemporary educational trinity is a brew toward destruction of our Judeo-Christian culture, and values, and a tool to be used to make us a more godless nation.  We don’t need to just sit back and says “okay” anymore!

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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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