Wednesday, January 7, 2009

Back to Dunkirk???


An article I stumbled across ...


Christians called to abandon public education

Posted: December 28, 20089:15 pm Eastern© 2009 WorldNetDaily

You've heard all about the disputes: "Silent Night" banned at the "holiday" program, artistic references to the Bible censored and faith-inclusive children's programs facing discrimination.
Now some people are fed up with public school treatment of Christianity and have launched a campaign calling for a rescue of kids from government education programs – a "Call to Dunkirk."
The name Dunkirk is famous for the hundreds of thousands of World War II allies saved in May 1940 when a flotilla of pleasure boats, fishing craft and others rescued the soldiers from the beaches near Dunkirk, France, where they were trapped by an advancing German army.
Full article here:
http://worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=84603

YouTube video here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hRGZLSVph3A

Looking at the video I would have to say that was one of the most offensive propaganda videos I think I have seen in a long time!. Equating public school teacher to Hitler (with convenient Hitler film clips to boot!), Stalinist collective farms, calling public schools "soul killing government indoctrination centers," is a bit much, don't you think?


My thoughts? Well-run Christian schools and quality home-school programs are certainly a viable option for Christians. If one perceives that the public schools become a tool of social engineers to teach anti-Christian messages, then Christian parents may find that removing their children from public schools to be the only option. However I think the problem with the public schools is the lack of parental responsibility for the academic and behavioral advancement of their children. It is no wonder that so many Charter, and Home Schooled children do better than our public schools, they have greater parental involvement and ability to only educate those students they desire. The point of the Social Engineers is valid problem, but NOT the main problem. I would submit that neglecting parental responsibilities IS Anti-Christian.

The mechanism exists for school accountability through school board elections, PTA's, and state and federal grievance procedures. This again has been neglected by the all to often "Too busy to get involved" parent. the problem is that our schools are merely the symptom of a societal breakdown and not the cause. It does however become a vicious cycle, but I believe we should "fix" the society and then the educational system will follow. Their "successes" with certain charter schools only reinforces what the problem is. It is NOT a viable alternative without a quantum shift in our culture back to parental responsibility which schools and homes have NOT supported.

I believe that as Christians we should become more involved with our schools not less! Even using the World War 2 metaphor .... We came back to take the land, not just withdraw from it!

Any thoughts?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I'm not super religious, so I'm kind of on the fence about everything.

On one hand, if they want to pull their kids out of public schools and pay the expensive tuition for private schooling - hey, rock on with your bad selves.

At the same time, I think it's pretty ridiculous that they are making such extreme comments.

It's scary how close that is to those crazy extremists that we hear about on the news.

I think it's important to be around many different kinds of people - with different views/beliefs etc because we grow when we are exposed to different things.

If they pull their kids out and put them in super strict Christian schools, those kids won't have the opportunity to learn about different cultures, or different people or different views.

In my opinion, that's what makes the U.S. so unique - every town, city, state is so diverse.