If we redefine marriage, then what will the schools teach our children about it?

Here’s a good article in the Public Discourse.

Excerpt:

We need to be careful not to project our adult understandings onto children. They will develop identities based on the culture around them, not on the culture we grew up in. In the past, boys knew that if they married when they grew up, they would marry a woman; and girls knew that if they married when they grew up, they would marry a man. Children understood that marriage brought men and women together to form families because every aspect of our culture conveyed that message. There was nothing automatic about it. Change the culture, and you change the outcome.

What will our culture teach children now? How will parents answer children’s questions? If Billy says, “Do you think I might marry Timmy when I grow up?” what is the answer? “We’ll have to wait and see what your sexual orientation is and what Timmy’s sexual orientation is”? Or “If you get married, it will probably be to a girl”? Instead of a clear foundation for building their self-understanding, the children will receive nebulous answers.

The educational system will be an authoritative source of insecurity for children. Planned Parenthood, the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States (SIECUS), Advocates for Youth, Answer, and Future of Sex Education (FoSE) are powerful national organizations bonded together to promote not just sex education but also “gender education” to our young. These groups have produced the National Sexuality Education Standards “to address the inconsistent implementation of sexuality education nationwide.”

Under these standards, children ages eight to ten will be taught to “define sexual orientation as romantic attraction to an individual of the same gender or of a different gender.”

Children ages ten to twelve will be taught, among other things, to

1. Differentiate between gender identity, gender expression, and sexual orientation.
2. Analyze external influences that have an impact on one’s attitudes about gender, sexual orientation, and gender identity.
3. Access accurate information about gender identity, gender expression, and sexual orientation.
4. Communicate respectfully with and about people of all gender identities, gender expressions, and sexual orientations.

Throughout these and other guidelines published by national sex and gender education groups, there is an emphasis on teaching young children three identities, underscoring a distinction between each person’s biological sex, gender identity, and sexual orientation. This “three identity” approach may help some students, but it will damage the vast majority of them.

In fact, the “three identities” approach will confuse us all. For example, Massachusetts has a new transgender directive about the use of bathrooms and locker rooms. Suppose someone has a male body, a female gender, and a lesbian sexual orientation. Does that person use the girl’s locker room or the boy’s? This is not said in jest or with a trace of sarcasm. The issues are too important and the people involved are too important. Helping children who have gender questions navigate the world is laudable, but we need to do it in a way that demonstrates a caring and a love for all of the children.

These gender standards or a version thereof are coming to a community near you. The goal of the “gender education” groups is to wrest control of education from local communities and parents and move the curriculum to a more centralized authority.

How will this work out in the future? Well, it’s already being pushed by left-wing activists, legislators and lawyers:

Last month, a bill was filed in Congress (H.R. 1652) entitled the Student Non-Discrimination Act (SNDA). It has the backing of the American Association of University Women; the American Federation of Teachers; the American Civil Liberties Union; the Gay, Lesbian & Straight Education Network; the NAACP; the National Association of School Psychologists; the National Association of Secondary School Principals; the National Council of La Raza; the National Education Association; and the National Women’s Law Center.

SNDA would bring the Massachusetts gender model to all public schools across the country, prohibiting discrimination against any student on the basis of actual or perceived sexual orientation or gender identity. The bill authorizes lawsuits and permits federal authorities to intercede if necessary.

The same effort is underway in many states that still allow local communities and parents a voice in sex and gender education. Even Massachusetts allows for a certain amount of local control but a bill is pending to eliminate local community influence and impose statewide standards.

If local control cannot be taken by legislation or administrative directives, litigation will be employed. For example, the ACLU recently sued an elementary school in Utah because it removed a book about a lesbian couple from the school’s library shelves and made the book available by request only. The school settled the lawsuit and put the book back on display.

The drive to control sex and gender education in local school systems is and will continue to be relentless. The forces behind this movement are smart, powerful, and well-funded, often with millions of taxpayer dollars.

I wonder if people who support redefining marriage really have thought through the consequences of their position. They may think “this isn’t going to affect me at all”, and then one day wake up to find a big surprise, courtesy of the public school system.

Filed under: News, Children, Gay Marriage, Gender, Marriage, Same-Sex Marriage, School, Sex, Sexual Orientation

Report: growth in homeschooling is outpacing new public school enrollments

From Breitbart.com. (H/T ECM)

Excerpt:

A recent report in Education News states that, since 1999, the number of children who are homeschooled has increased by 75%. Though homeschooled children represent only 4% of all school-age children nationwide, the number of children whose parents choose to educate them at home rather than a traditional academic setting is growing seven times faster than the number of children enrolling in grades K-12 every year.

As homeschooling has become increasingly popular, common myths that have long been associated with the practice of homeschooling have been debunked.

Any concerns about the quality of education children receive by their parents can be put to rest by the consistently high placement of homeschooled students on standardized assessment exams. Data demonstrates that those who are independently educated generally score between the 65th and 89th percentile on these measures, while those in traditional academic settings average at around the 50th percentile. In addition, achievement gaps between sexes, income levels, or ethnicity—all of which have plagued public schools around the country—do not exist in homeschooling environments.

According to the report:

Recent studies laud homeschoolers’ academic success, noting their significantly higher ACT-Composite scores as high schoolers and higher grade point averages as college students. Yet surprisingly, the average expenditure for the education of a homeschooled child, per year, is $500 to $600, compared to an average expenditure of $10,000 per child, per year, for public school students.

The high achievement level of homeschoolers is readily recognized by recruiters from some of the best colleges in the nation. Home-educated children matriculate in colleges and attain a four-year degree at much higher rates than their counterparts from both public and private schools. Schools such as Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harvard, Stanford, and Duke Universities all actively recruit homeschoolers.

The post also cites another study that puts to rest the “socialization” nonsense objection to homeschooling.

Related posts

• Alabama homeschooling family sends 6 kids to college – by age 12!

Filed under: News, Child, Children, Education, Homeschool, Homeschooling, Parent, Parenting, School

Was Hitler a Christian? Is Nazism similar to Christianity?

One of the strangest things I have heard from atheists is the assertion that Christianity is somehow connected to the fascism, such as the fascism that existed under Adolf Hitler. Two posts by Jewish author Jonah Goldberg from National Review supply us with the facts to set the record straight.

Let’s start with the first post.

Here are some of the points:

1) Hitler wanted Christianity removed from the public square

Like the engineers of that proverbial railway bridge, the Nazis worked relentlessly to replace the nuts and bolts of traditional Christianity with a new political religion. The shrewdest way to accomplish this was to co-opt Christianity via the Gleichschaltung while at the same time shrinking traditional religion’s role in civil society.

2) Hitler banned the giving of donations to churches

Hitler banned religious charity, crippling the churches’ role as a counterweight to the state. Clergy were put on government salary, hence subjected to state authority. “The parsons will be made to dig their own graves,” Hitler cackled. “They will betray their God to us. They will betray anything for the sake of their miserable little jobs and incomes.”

3) Hitler replaced Christian celebrations with celebrations of the state

Following the Jacobin example, the Nazis replaced the traditional Christian calendar. The new year began on January 30 with the Day of the Seizure of Power. Each November the streets of central Munich were dedicated to a Nazi Passion play depicting Hitler’s Beer Hall Putsch. The martyrdom of Horst Wessel and his “old fighters” replaced Jesus and the apostles. Plays and official histories were rewritten to glorify pagan Aryans bravely fighting against Christianizing foreign armies. Anticipating some feminist pseudo history, witches became martyrs to the bloodthirsty oppression of Christianity.

4) Hitler favored the complete elimination of Christianity

When some Protestant bishops visited the Fuhrer to register complaints, Hitler’s rage got the better of him. “Christianity will disappear from Germany just as it has done in Russia . . . The Germanrace has existed without Christianity for thousands of years . . . and will continue after Christianity has disappeared . . . We must get used to the teachings of blood and race.”

5) Hitler favored the removal of mandatory prayers in schools

In 1935 mandatory prayer in school was abolished…

6) Hitler favored the banning of Christmas carols and nativity plays

…and in 1938 carols and Nativity plays were banned entirely.

7) Hitler abolished religious instruction for children

By 1941 religious instruction for children fourteen years and up had been abolished altogether….

And now the second post.

8) Hitler opposed the ideas of universal truth and objective moral absolutes

…Just as the Nazi attack on Christianity was part of a larger war on the idea of universal truth, whole postmodern cosmologies have been created to prove that traditional religious morality is a scam, that there are no fixed truths or “natural” categories, and that all knowledge is socially constructed.

Practically everything this man believed was 100% anti-Christian. But he fits in fine on the secular left.

Conclusion

Adolf Hitler was a man influenced by two big ideas: evolution and socialism. His party was the national SOCIALIST party. He favored a strong role for the state in interfering with the free market. He was in favor of regulating the family so that the state could have a bigger influence on children. And he favored the idea of survival of the fittest. His ideas are 100% incompatible with Christianity and with capitalism as well. Christians value individual rights and freedoms, small government and the autonomy of the family against the state. The differences are clear and significant.

Filed under: Polemics, God, Atheism, Christopher Hitchens, Secularism, Fascism, Capitalism, Socialism, Richard Dawkins, Christianity, Rationality, Morality, Church, Germany, Accountability, Religion, War, State, Public, Instruction, School, ACLU, Prayer, Value, Private, Liberal, Progressive, Christian, Religious, Duty, Wilberforce, Hitler, Duties, Significance, Atheist, Stalin, Murder, Moral, National, Secular, Death, Bill Maher, Rational, Humanism, Kill, Socialist, Homeschool, Killer, Murderer, Mass, Millions, Obligations, Donation, Innocent, Nazi, Worst, Most, Biggest, Killing, Goldberg, Jonah, Comminism, Sam Harris, Humanist, Agnostic, German, Marginalize, People, Christmas, Nativity, Separation

Calgary boy disciplined by school for protecting classmate from knife attack

The UK Daily Mail reports.

Excerpt:

A schoolboy who bravely tackled a knife-wielding pupil who was threatening a classmate was punished because such heroic actions are strictly banned.

Briar MacLean, 13, stepped in after he spotted an argument was quickly beginning to escalate between two boys at Sir John A. Macdonald school in Alberta, Canada.

Suddenly one of the boys pulled out a knife and began to threaten the other turning an scuffle into a potentially deadly situation.

The heroic teenager charged and tackled the knife-brandishing youngster into a wall sending both attacker and knife falling to the floor.

But for his bravery the pupil received not a commendation but a stern telling off from staff for ignoring school rules.

According to the Calgary Board of Education, Briar should have left the scene to find a teacher – abandoning the unarmed student.

Instead instincts kicked in and he chose to act – meaning there were no cuts, no stab wounds, and no need to call an ambulance.

Briar said: ‘He pulled out his flip knife so I came in and pushed him into the wall.

‘It was just to help the other kid so he wouldn’t get hurt.’

Briar’s reward for his bravery was a day in the school office, removed from the other students, and a stern lecture about not playing the hero.

Here in the United States, we had a similar event.

Excerpt:

A kindergartner who brought a cowboy-style cap gun onto his Calvert County school bus was suspended for 10 days after showing a friend the orange-tipped toy, which he had tucked inside his backpack on his way to school, according to his family and a lawyer.

The child was questioned for more than two hours before his mother was called, she said, adding that he uncharacteristically wet his pants during the episode. The boy is 5 — “all bugs and frogs and cowboys,” his mother said.

[...]If the punishment stands, it would become part of the boy’s permanent school record and keep him out of classes the rest of the school year, the family said. He would miss his end-of-year kindergarten program at Dowell Elementary School in Lusby.

[...]The case comes at a time of heightened sensitivity about guns in schools across the country. Locally, children in first and second grade have been disciplined for pointing their fingers like guns and for chewing a Pop-Tart-like pastry into the shape of a gun. In Pennsylvania, a 5-year-old was suspended for talking about shooting a Hello Kitty bubble gun that blows soap bubbles.

I definitely don’t recommend sending children to public schools – especially.

Filed under: News, Alberta, Anti-Male, Appeasement, Briar MacLean, Calgary, Compassion, Cowardice, Education, Educrat, Feminism, Feminized, Misandry, Nanny State, Pacficism, Public School, School, Teacher, War Against Boys, Weakness

One-third of recent college graduates say they should have skipped college and gone to work

From Forbes magazine, a word of caution to young people, especially to young men who intend to marry and have children.

Excerpt:

Here’s an indication of how burdensome student loans have become: About one-third of millennials say they would have been better off working, instead of going to college and paying tuition.

That’s according to a new Wells Fargo study which surveyed 1,414 millennials between the ages of 22 and 32. More than half of them financed their education through student loans, and many say the if they had $10,000 the “first thing” they’d do is pay down their student loan or credit card debt.

That’s no surprise when you consider student borrowing topped the $100 billion threshold for the first time in 2010, and total outstanding loans exceeded $1 trillion for the first time in 2011.  Student loan debt now exceeds credit card debt in the U.S. which stands at about $798 billion.

Delinquencies are also on the rise. The number of borrowers who are at least 90 days late on student loan payments has jumped from 8.5% in 2011 to 11.7% today, according to a study by the New York Federal Reserve.

The problem sometimes is that not all college educations are worth their cost since they can’t guarantee a high-paying job to help pay off that student debt. A report from the National Association of Consumer Bankruptcy Attorneys says the rising student debt problem can have a bad impact on the economy. Even in the best of economic times when jobs are plentiful, young people with considerable debt burdens end up delaying life-cycle events such as buying a car, purchasing a home, getting married and having children.

There’s nothing wrong with a good education in a trade school or community college.

The actual number for outstanding student loan debt is about $600 billion, and it’s gone up a lot under Obama.

Excerpt:

The outstanding balance for all of the direct student loans the federal government has issued topped $600 billion in April, according to newly released data from the U.S. Treasury.

The total balance hit $600.457 billion by the end of April, says the Treasury, up from $592.142 billion at the end of March.

The Federal Direct Student Loan Program already has built-in debt forgiveness plans for people who end up earning low incomes or for those who entered lines of work preferred by the government.

In January 2009, when Obama was inaugurated, the balance was $119.803 billion and has since increased more than fivefold.

The $480.654 billion increase since January 2009 in what is owed to the Treasury in direct student loans represents a climb of about 250 percent in just over four years.

Before Obama’s first term, federally guaranteed student loans were made both by the government directly and by private lenders using their own capital through what was called the Federal Family Education Loan program. Language inserted into the the Obamacare law signed in March 2010, however, abolished the latter type of federally guaranteed student loan, giving the U.S. Treasury a monopoly over those loans.

As the Congressional Research Service has described it, this Obamacare provision made the U.S. Treasury the exclusive “banker” for federally guaranteed student loans. Thus, U.S. taxpayers essentially own these loans.

The troubling thing is that since the schools have spent all the time teaching children about global warming and the proper use of contraceptives, it’s unlikely that they will be able to find real jobs in order to pay off their loans. They aren’t learning how to manage money in school, and parents aren’t taking the responsibility to teach kids about money at home. The sad thing is that they have been taught by their teachers to keep voting for more politicization of education and more government spending on fashionable causes. But at least they feel superior about it. For now.

Filed under: News, College, Debt, Democrat Party, Education, Employment, Federal Family Education Loan, Indoctrination, Jobs, Loans, Public School, School, Student, Student Loan, Teacher Union, Unemployment, Unions, University, Waste