Warning about Warren
I have been reading articles written by Rick Warren for some time now and I am always taken aback not so much by what he says about God and Jesus Christ, his son, but by what he doesn’t say.
He doesn’t say,” Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved,” or “Without belief in God’s only way of salvation, Jesus, you will have no hope and ultimately end up in hell where you do not really want to be." He does not say, "All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” No, Warren has a completely different message to the world. His message is, “God loves you,” and “God made you for a purpose.”
While he does not say these these Warren does say quite a lot. Upon close inspection I am taken aback at his double-speak, his self-promotion and the way he speaks badly about those who are the beloved of God.
This first came to my attention October 2003 when someone told me that they were reading Warren’s books. I knew nothing of Warren at the time, but in learning more here and there I finally stumbled across his Peace Plan sermon of November 2003. Listening to this sermon get me interested in know who this man was and what he stood for.
It was not long before I was convinced the man who looked like a sheep was something else beneath the surface, and it all began as I listened to him tell his congregation he was now convinced he was wrong for the last twenty five years about the greatest thing a person could do with their lives. He was no longer convinced the greatest thing a person could do was lead another person to faith in Jesus Christ. No, this pastor who had believed that silly, wrong notion for the last twenty five years was wrong all that time, but now he had the right perspective. He now believed the greatest thing someone could ever do was build a church.
And what do you suppose is the foundation of those churches? If a person is not a Christian it is no longer JEsus Christ... but as you can discover from reading his books and materials the foundation of faith in JEsus Christ is no longer a necessity....if you change your mind like he did and get the story straight, after all these years. The foundation of those churches is something anyone, not just Christians can believe it. The foundation, the very thing you put your faith in, is not Jesus, nor the atonement for your sin, but rather "purpose."
It seems that through this shepherd the eople are being lead purposely away from the truth and unto a lie.
There are lots of bible verses about deception and being decieved :
Matthew 24:4-5, 11, 24(Mark 13:5-6; Luke 21:8) “And Jesus answered and said unto them, Take heed that no man deceive you. For many shall come in my name, saying, I am Christ; and shall deceive many…And many false prophets shall rise, and shall deceive many…For there shall arise false Christ’s, and false prophets, and shall shew great signs and wonders; insomuch that, if it were possible, they shall deceive the very elect.”
Romans 16:17-18 “Now I beseech you, brethren, mark them which cause divisions and offenses contrary to the doctrine which ye have learned; and avoid them. For they that are such serve not our Lord Jesus Christ, but their own belly; and by good words and fair speeches deceive the hearts of the simple.”
I Corinthians 6:9-10 “Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God.”
II Corinthians 4:2 “But have renounced the hidden things of dishonesty, not walking in craftiness, nor handling the word of God deceitfully; but by manifestation of the truth commending ourselves to every man’s conscience in the sight of God.”
II Corinthians 11:3 “But I fear, lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtility, so your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ.”
II Corinthians 11:13 “For such are false apostles, deceitful workers, transforming themselves into the apostles of Christ.”
Ephesians 4:14, 22 “That ye henceforth be no more children, tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the sleight of men, and cunning craftiness, whereby they lie in wait to deceive…”
Ephesians 5:6-7 “Let no man deceive you with vain words: for because of these things cometh the wrath of God upon the children of disobedience. Be not ye therefore partakers with them.”
Colossians 2:4 “And this I say, lest any man should beguile you with enticing words.”
Colossians 2:8 “Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of man, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ.”
II Thessalonians 2:3, 9-11 “Let no man deceive you by any means: for that day shall not come, except there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition…Even him(son of perdition)whose coming is after the working of Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders, and with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish; because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved. And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie:”
I Timothy 2:14 “And Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in the transgression.”
II Timothy 3:13 “But evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse, deceiving, and being deceived.”
James 1:22, 26-27 “But be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves…If any man among you seem to be religious, and bridleth not his tongue, but deceiveth his own heart, this man’s religion is vain. Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world.”
II Peter 2:13-14 “And shall receive the reward of unrighteousness, as they that count it pleasure to riot in the day time. Spots they are and blemishes, sporting themselves with their own deceivings while they feast with you; Having eyes full of adultery, and that cannot cease from sin; beguiling unstable souls: an heart they have exercised with covetous practices; cursed children:”
I John 1:8 “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.”
I John 3:7 “Little children, let no man deceive you: he that doeth righteousness is righteous, even as he is righteous.”
II John 7 “For many deceivers are entered into the world, who confess not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh. This is a deceiver and an antichrist.”
Revelation 18:23 “And the light of a candle shall shine no more at all in thee(Babylon); and the voice of the bridegroom and of the bride shall be heard no more at all in thee: for thy merchants were the great men of the earth; for by thy sorceries were all nations deceived.”
Saturday, August 22, 2009
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
In God We Trust
In God We Trust (ALL OTHERS PAY CASH )
Is your economy falling apart? Are you confused about investments or not sure your you will be able to go another day unless you do something drastic? It is time to do something drastic. Trust God!
You know, someone, somewhere, sometime in history, decided to put the words "In God we trust" on American currency. How interesting that on the very money that passes through the hands of the people of our nation everyday, such powerful words remain and they give testimony,"In God We Trust."
Perhaps those words printed on our money will someday stand also as a testimony against man. Ask yourself now, if you are so inclined, just exactly, "What or who do put your trust in?... s it in God or in cash?" Remember that Jesus said, "No man can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one, and love the other, or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon."
Is it possible that people who serve God, also serve money in the process? You might think so, but Jesus said you could not do both, it has to be one or the other. God or money, God stuff or man stuff... What do you trust and who do you serve?
“In God we trust” is a noteworthy motto, but more than that it is a way of life. It’s a new kind of economy, unlike any other that there is on earth, and it's freely available to all. It's a sure thing too, used, handled, dispensed and invested in by Christians for centuries. It's a way of life that is somewhat foreign to our basic nature.
Is your economy falling apart? Are you confused about investments or not sure your you will be able to go another day unless you do something drastic? It is time to do something drastic. Trust God!
You know, someone, somewhere, sometime in history, decided to put the words "In God we trust" on American currency. How interesting that on the very money that passes through the hands of the people of our nation everyday, such powerful words remain and they give testimony,"In God We Trust."
Perhaps those words printed on our money will someday stand also as a testimony against man. Ask yourself now, if you are so inclined, just exactly, "What or who do put your trust in?... s it in God or in cash?" Remember that Jesus said, "No man can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one, and love the other, or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon."
Is it possible that people who serve God, also serve money in the process? You might think so, but Jesus said you could not do both, it has to be one or the other. God or money, God stuff or man stuff... What do you trust and who do you serve?
“In God we trust” is a noteworthy motto, but more than that it is a way of life. It’s a new kind of economy, unlike any other that there is on earth, and it's freely available to all. It's a sure thing too, used, handled, dispensed and invested in by Christians for centuries. It's a way of life that is somewhat foreign to our basic nature.
Monday, August 17, 2009
Lessons Learned
April 29, 2005-
This was written as what is now commonly known as Parent Partnership Programs were sweeping the nation, gathering up homeschoolers and would-be homeschoolers left and right. into the public school system. Many families were swept directly into public school without even knowing that they were no longer homeschooling under the home-based education law that so many homeschooling families worked so hard to get on the books.
Lessons Learned
Wisdom is a defense, and money is a defense:
but the excellency of knowledge is that wisdom giveth life to them that have it.
................................................................................................ ECCLESIASTES 7:12
A gift has arrived! Local school districts now extend new alternative school programs as an outreach to the home schooling community. It's not regular school of course, it's "alternative school," an alternative to the traditional public school classroom, but it still public school and it's coming to a school district near you.
Homeschoolers should look carefully at this gift, because at first glance these programs look a lot like what has traditionally been thought of as "homeschooling." They may look like homeschooling, feel like homeschooling and may even be called a "homeschool" program, but anyway you look at it, it is not homeschooling. The sad part is that these cleverly crafted programs seem to have a lot to offer. They come with a price however. Their cost: freedom, and taxation.
In a letter dated April 2005, I was personally invited via a letter in my mailbox, addressed to me, asking me to consider their kind offerings. Their literature offered me, an average homeschooler, “additional support,” and even “ a reprieve,” from the daily routine of homeschooling. "
Complete with the testimony from other homeschooling families, they offered the recipient of their letter elective classes, a meeting place for classes, financial aid, a sense of belonging to a community, and even their own professional expertise in goal planning. It was obvious to me that the offer believed itself to be the homeschooler’s dream come true. To receive such gracious benefits all I had to do was go to the local school and enroll today.
Funny, I never knew the public school was in support of homeschooling. In fact, history shows they are not. They have been supporting the homeschool community for five years? Really? That's funny. I have never known the public school to like it when parents remove thier kids from the roster at the local school. I had heard about these programs though and I knew they were not homeschool. But could I be wrong? Was it possible the students in the program are still "home schooled"?
I immediately called the PPP school office and specifically asked if students in the Parent Partnership Program they offered were homeschoolers or if they were public school students. The secretary who answered the phone said, “They are public school students.”
People in these programs, people who write these letters to homeschooling families must understand, these public school programs are not homeschool. Furthermore, people who value, not only homeschooling, but the public education system should have a sense of responsibility regarding the money spent by our government on education.
Homeschoolers need to remember that the freedom to homeschool was not something simply given to them by the friendly school district who believed it really was the best thing to do for children. It's time to count the real cost of these strange public school programs. Maybe it's even time to look a gift horse in the mouth.
It looks a lot like a horse to me, a Trojan Horse. A long time ago, after a great war between the Greeks and the Trojans had finally ended, a great lesson was learned, a lesson we all could learn from.
The war was over. The Trojans had been victorious. The Greeks, defeated at last, had taken every last one of their marbles and gone home.
At last all was well in Troy. That is, until one day, just outside the city gates, the still happily celebrating Trojans noticed a very large beautifully crafted wooden horse. They could tell by it's decorations that it had been made by the Greeks, for it was beautifully ornate, larger than life, and it was truly a sight to see! Some people in the city thought it must have been left as a gift, an offering of peace. After all, it was a horse, and as a horse, it was, no doubt, perfectly suited for Troy, which was known as the City of Horses.
Other people of the city were suspicious. They could not help wondering why the enormous, although beautiful horse was there. They wondered why the Greeks would leave a gift behind, after all, they had lost the battle. They were suspicious, however they were nice people, and because they were nice people, and because the horse appeared to be so magnificent, all the suspicion slowly dwindled away into a teeny tiny doubt, and then even that disappeared as they became enamored with the beauty of the magnificent horse.
Enamored with the horse’s appearance, infatuated with its possible monetary value, some of the more prominent people of Troy who decided that they felt good about the horse, even thought it was the way the God had blessed them for their victory in war, tied ropes around the huge wooden beast and pulled it through the gates of the city. There they could really marvel at it's beauty. They talked about how great the horse was and how wonderful the Greeks were to have left it for them and then night fell and the gates were locked and they all went to sleep, happy that they had been given a gift of such great value.
Unfortunately for Troy, sometime in the night something strange happened to the horse. Enemy troops emerged from the inside of the horse and Greek troops overtook the city. In the morning there was nothing but a city was left in ruins and all the inhabitants of Troy were destroyed.
Fact or fiction, history or myth, it doesn't really matter, the lesson is the same today as it was 1500 years ago. It's a lesson in the nature of deception. The “gift horse” was a lot more insidious than what it appeared to be. To believe that the public school has created a wonderful gift for the homeschooling community is ludicrous, akin to believing the defeated Greek warriors left a gift.
In case you do not know, it was not long ago that state run schools and private schools were the only options for people with school aged children to comply with the compulsory education laws mandated by the state. Private schools were expensive and public schools were battlegrounds, full of anti-God and anti-family philosophies propagated by men such as Charles Darwin, Benjamin Bloom, Paul Brandwin and Chester Pierce. With educational excellence waxing cold and madmen usurping parental authority as they crowned themselves the custodians of the next generation, parents did not sit idly by and do nothing. Some sat on school boards, others started PTA and some rendered unto Caesar what was due Caesar, they paid their taxes, took their own children out of the government school and proceeded to teach them themselves, at home.
That is when all out “War” ensued. There was courtroom battle after courtroom battle and the battle raged all the more as people choose to stand firm in their convictions to educate their own children at home. Parent after parent, family after family went to court and took a stand against the public school system. It was years of legal combat, but after thousands of court cases demonstrating earnestly that homeschool was a viable option for a child's education, laws were made and the war was over.
In 1993, by the grace of a power greater than “we,” the right for parents to actually keep their children in the home and teach them to read and write without the interference of the state was won. The Home based Education law was established and homeschooling became a viable option, an option set into law. Legally defined in black and white, in all 50 states, home-based education became known as "homeschooling."
All of the assertions of the NEA and friends were relegated to silence. Homeschooling, proven to have merit made a new option, one where parents could raise and educate their children without the direct involvement or interference of the state. It was a defeat for the NEA and other entities who wanted more than anything to have greater influence in classrooms, even to the point that they would happily prevent parents, especially Christian Parents, from rocking their own cradles.
It's interesting that in an effort to recapture the funding loss due to the mass exodus of “independent educators” who took their children out of government schools through this movement of homeschooling, school officials all over America have taken up the business venture of 'creating special partnership programs that target "homeschoolers." You would think that perhaps they would instead focus on kids in the classroom, making the existing schools better. Instead, they find creative ways to spend the national deficit.
The amount of capital given to a school district to operate depends on the numbers in enrollment. When parents do not enroll their children in the local school, these numbers go down and so does the funding. When more students enroll in school the numbers go up and so does the funding. The solution then might be to have a higher enrollment. The problem is, it takes a while to grow a kid, besides that a lot of kids who used to be enrolled are now homeschooling.
By offering a partnership program, the district can receive full funding for the student, but they end up with a surplus because the students in the alternative program do not have to be in school like all the other students. They only have to be on school premises, for so many hours per week, and the funding for them is the same as every other student. Staffing is less too because the teaching is done at home by the parent. The school saves on space and teachers and gets all the money for a student! Well, they get almost all the money because, after all, this is a partnership. A set portion of the districts amount per student is delegated for use by the parent. Parents get money that they can spend on books, materials, classes and curriculum used for the education of the student enrolled in the public school PPP.
Yours and my tax dollars hard at work. And while a public school student in a regular classroom has no freedom to input what teachers they spend the year with and brings home a list asking parents to buy crayons, pencils, paper and a tissue box for classroom use for the poor starving school district, the Partnered Parent is having the school pay for whatever they'd like including ballet class and piano lessons.
These PPP's so graciously offered by the schools are beautiful aren't they? It will be whatever you want it to be- just dream up any class you want … tell the district exactly what you desire and “poof” it magically appears. Never mind that over time you sense that the program is changing. Never mind that it appears slightly unstable as new directives from the state fall into place that were not there in the beginning. Never mind that you suddenly feel as if you are under some odd restraint. Never mind that it's a partnership and your yoke is showing. Remember how beautiful the public school system and all it's philosophies really are. After all, it's everything you ever wanted, you and your tax dollars are working! Nevermind that it's all done in the name of the entire public school system.
History tells of duplicitous horses and Greek bearing gifts.
If the home school community is anything like the city of Troy, then it is only a matter of time before everyone will see the true nature of the beast. Meanwhile, the program is appealing, the monetary reimbursement is alluring, and the camaraderie of the many trusted freinds involved in the program is appealing. There is even a beautiful, newly remodeled building to call your "home away from home." How interesting that the same entity that ferociously fought parents in every state across the nation now wants provide quality opportunities and resources to enhance “learning goals” for the potential home-schooled student!
A horse? Look at it this way... it's a manageable horse, one that you can train yourself to do anything you want it to do. It will help you carry your burden, you know, give those home schooling parents a reprieve from the daily routine of schooling their own children in their homes around the kitchen tables, that is, only if they will let it in.
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NOTES:
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Benjamin Bloom, mentioned in the article above is the author of Taxonomy of Educational Objectives: The Classification of Educational Goals, a 1964 work considered to be a "landmark" in education and a textbook used in teacher education courses, In it he says, "a large part of what we call 'good teaching' is the teacher's ability to attain affective objectives through challenging the students' fixed beliefs...A child is not truly using his higher order thinking skills until he no longer believes in absolutes of right and wrong."
Bloom is a psychologist, and humanist and is perhaps best known for developing Outcome-Based Education and Mastery Learning. He is renowned for promoting the notion that there are no right or wrong answers and is quoted as saying, “The purpose of education and the schools is to change the thoughts, feelings and actions of students”
(How is it that schools are a place not to simply learn?)
Chester M. Pierce is Emeritus Harvard professor and an M.D. a psychiatrist. He's published over 180 books over the years and was founding president of the Black Psychiatrists of America, was national Chairperson of the Child Development Associate Consortium, a Commander in the US Navy and has been senior consultant to the Surgeon General of the US Air Force; advisor to the Children's Television Network (Sesame Street, Electric Company); and advisor to the US Arctic Research Commission.
It is this same man who, at the 1973 Childhood International Education Seminar, openly declared that five-year-old children, when they first go to school, go there “mentally ill.” He is often quoted (from transcripts of the event) as having said, “Every child in America entering school at the age of 5 is mentally ill because he comes to school with certain allegiances to our founding fathers, toward our elected officials, toward his parents, toward a belief in a supernatural being, and toward the sovereignty of this nation as a separate entity. It’s up to you as teachers to make all these sick children well — by creating the international child of the future.”
(Where I come from, parents send their 5 year old kids to American school expecting they will come back home still respecting authority in the classroom, in the neighborhood and community and even in the home. They hope that kids in school will learn to read and write and maybe even learn some history, embrace the ideal of freedom and understand what it stands for. What comes back home from school is many times vastly different than most parents would expect, and we can only wonder if it's because of influential words from men like Pierce and what is carried forth into educational arenas, by their teachings.)
This was written as what is now commonly known as Parent Partnership Programs were sweeping the nation, gathering up homeschoolers and would-be homeschoolers left and right. into the public school system. Many families were swept directly into public school without even knowing that they were no longer homeschooling under the home-based education law that so many homeschooling families worked so hard to get on the books.
Lessons Learned
Wisdom is a defense, and money is a defense:
but the excellency of knowledge is that wisdom giveth life to them that have it.
................................................................................................ ECCLESIASTES 7:12
A gift has arrived! Local school districts now extend new alternative school programs as an outreach to the home schooling community. It's not regular school of course, it's "alternative school," an alternative to the traditional public school classroom, but it still public school and it's coming to a school district near you.
Homeschoolers should look carefully at this gift, because at first glance these programs look a lot like what has traditionally been thought of as "homeschooling." They may look like homeschooling, feel like homeschooling and may even be called a "homeschool" program, but anyway you look at it, it is not homeschooling. The sad part is that these cleverly crafted programs seem to have a lot to offer. They come with a price however. Their cost: freedom, and taxation.
In a letter dated April 2005, I was personally invited via a letter in my mailbox, addressed to me, asking me to consider their kind offerings. Their literature offered me, an average homeschooler, “additional support,” and even “ a reprieve,” from the daily routine of homeschooling. "
Complete with the testimony from other homeschooling families, they offered the recipient of their letter elective classes, a meeting place for classes, financial aid, a sense of belonging to a community, and even their own professional expertise in goal planning. It was obvious to me that the offer believed itself to be the homeschooler’s dream come true. To receive such gracious benefits all I had to do was go to the local school and enroll today.
Funny, I never knew the public school was in support of homeschooling. In fact, history shows they are not. They have been supporting the homeschool community for five years? Really? That's funny. I have never known the public school to like it when parents remove thier kids from the roster at the local school. I had heard about these programs though and I knew they were not homeschool. But could I be wrong? Was it possible the students in the program are still "home schooled"?
I immediately called the PPP school office and specifically asked if students in the Parent Partnership Program they offered were homeschoolers or if they were public school students. The secretary who answered the phone said, “They are public school students.”
People in these programs, people who write these letters to homeschooling families must understand, these public school programs are not homeschool. Furthermore, people who value, not only homeschooling, but the public education system should have a sense of responsibility regarding the money spent by our government on education.
Homeschoolers need to remember that the freedom to homeschool was not something simply given to them by the friendly school district who believed it really was the best thing to do for children. It's time to count the real cost of these strange public school programs. Maybe it's even time to look a gift horse in the mouth.
It looks a lot like a horse to me, a Trojan Horse. A long time ago, after a great war between the Greeks and the Trojans had finally ended, a great lesson was learned, a lesson we all could learn from.
The war was over. The Trojans had been victorious. The Greeks, defeated at last, had taken every last one of their marbles and gone home.
At last all was well in Troy. That is, until one day, just outside the city gates, the still happily celebrating Trojans noticed a very large beautifully crafted wooden horse. They could tell by it's decorations that it had been made by the Greeks, for it was beautifully ornate, larger than life, and it was truly a sight to see! Some people in the city thought it must have been left as a gift, an offering of peace. After all, it was a horse, and as a horse, it was, no doubt, perfectly suited for Troy, which was known as the City of Horses.
Other people of the city were suspicious. They could not help wondering why the enormous, although beautiful horse was there. They wondered why the Greeks would leave a gift behind, after all, they had lost the battle. They were suspicious, however they were nice people, and because they were nice people, and because the horse appeared to be so magnificent, all the suspicion slowly dwindled away into a teeny tiny doubt, and then even that disappeared as they became enamored with the beauty of the magnificent horse.
Enamored with the horse’s appearance, infatuated with its possible monetary value, some of the more prominent people of Troy who decided that they felt good about the horse, even thought it was the way the God had blessed them for their victory in war, tied ropes around the huge wooden beast and pulled it through the gates of the city. There they could really marvel at it's beauty. They talked about how great the horse was and how wonderful the Greeks were to have left it for them and then night fell and the gates were locked and they all went to sleep, happy that they had been given a gift of such great value.
Unfortunately for Troy, sometime in the night something strange happened to the horse. Enemy troops emerged from the inside of the horse and Greek troops overtook the city. In the morning there was nothing but a city was left in ruins and all the inhabitants of Troy were destroyed.
Fact or fiction, history or myth, it doesn't really matter, the lesson is the same today as it was 1500 years ago. It's a lesson in the nature of deception. The “gift horse” was a lot more insidious than what it appeared to be. To believe that the public school has created a wonderful gift for the homeschooling community is ludicrous, akin to believing the defeated Greek warriors left a gift.
In case you do not know, it was not long ago that state run schools and private schools were the only options for people with school aged children to comply with the compulsory education laws mandated by the state. Private schools were expensive and public schools were battlegrounds, full of anti-God and anti-family philosophies propagated by men such as Charles Darwin, Benjamin Bloom, Paul Brandwin and Chester Pierce. With educational excellence waxing cold and madmen usurping parental authority as they crowned themselves the custodians of the next generation, parents did not sit idly by and do nothing. Some sat on school boards, others started PTA and some rendered unto Caesar what was due Caesar, they paid their taxes, took their own children out of the government school and proceeded to teach them themselves, at home.
That is when all out “War” ensued. There was courtroom battle after courtroom battle and the battle raged all the more as people choose to stand firm in their convictions to educate their own children at home. Parent after parent, family after family went to court and took a stand against the public school system. It was years of legal combat, but after thousands of court cases demonstrating earnestly that homeschool was a viable option for a child's education, laws were made and the war was over.
In 1993, by the grace of a power greater than “we,” the right for parents to actually keep their children in the home and teach them to read and write without the interference of the state was won. The Home based Education law was established and homeschooling became a viable option, an option set into law. Legally defined in black and white, in all 50 states, home-based education became known as "homeschooling."
All of the assertions of the NEA and friends were relegated to silence. Homeschooling, proven to have merit made a new option, one where parents could raise and educate their children without the direct involvement or interference of the state. It was a defeat for the NEA and other entities who wanted more than anything to have greater influence in classrooms, even to the point that they would happily prevent parents, especially Christian Parents, from rocking their own cradles.
It's interesting that in an effort to recapture the funding loss due to the mass exodus of “independent educators” who took their children out of government schools through this movement of homeschooling, school officials all over America have taken up the business venture of 'creating special partnership programs that target "homeschoolers." You would think that perhaps they would instead focus on kids in the classroom, making the existing schools better. Instead, they find creative ways to spend the national deficit.
The amount of capital given to a school district to operate depends on the numbers in enrollment. When parents do not enroll their children in the local school, these numbers go down and so does the funding. When more students enroll in school the numbers go up and so does the funding. The solution then might be to have a higher enrollment. The problem is, it takes a while to grow a kid, besides that a lot of kids who used to be enrolled are now homeschooling.
By offering a partnership program, the district can receive full funding for the student, but they end up with a surplus because the students in the alternative program do not have to be in school like all the other students. They only have to be on school premises, for so many hours per week, and the funding for them is the same as every other student. Staffing is less too because the teaching is done at home by the parent. The school saves on space and teachers and gets all the money for a student! Well, they get almost all the money because, after all, this is a partnership. A set portion of the districts amount per student is delegated for use by the parent. Parents get money that they can spend on books, materials, classes and curriculum used for the education of the student enrolled in the public school PPP.
Yours and my tax dollars hard at work. And while a public school student in a regular classroom has no freedom to input what teachers they spend the year with and brings home a list asking parents to buy crayons, pencils, paper and a tissue box for classroom use for the poor starving school district, the Partnered Parent is having the school pay for whatever they'd like including ballet class and piano lessons.
These PPP's so graciously offered by the schools are beautiful aren't they? It will be whatever you want it to be- just dream up any class you want … tell the district exactly what you desire and “poof” it magically appears. Never mind that over time you sense that the program is changing. Never mind that it appears slightly unstable as new directives from the state fall into place that were not there in the beginning. Never mind that you suddenly feel as if you are under some odd restraint. Never mind that it's a partnership and your yoke is showing. Remember how beautiful the public school system and all it's philosophies really are. After all, it's everything you ever wanted, you and your tax dollars are working! Nevermind that it's all done in the name of the entire public school system.
History tells of duplicitous horses and Greek bearing gifts.
If the home school community is anything like the city of Troy, then it is only a matter of time before everyone will see the true nature of the beast. Meanwhile, the program is appealing, the monetary reimbursement is alluring, and the camaraderie of the many trusted freinds involved in the program is appealing. There is even a beautiful, newly remodeled building to call your "home away from home." How interesting that the same entity that ferociously fought parents in every state across the nation now wants provide quality opportunities and resources to enhance “learning goals” for the potential home-schooled student!
A horse? Look at it this way... it's a manageable horse, one that you can train yourself to do anything you want it to do. It will help you carry your burden, you know, give those home schooling parents a reprieve from the daily routine of schooling their own children in their homes around the kitchen tables, that is, only if they will let it in.
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Benjamin Bloom, mentioned in the article above is the author of Taxonomy of Educational Objectives: The Classification of Educational Goals, a 1964 work considered to be a "landmark" in education and a textbook used in teacher education courses, In it he says, "a large part of what we call 'good teaching' is the teacher's ability to attain affective objectives through challenging the students' fixed beliefs...A child is not truly using his higher order thinking skills until he no longer believes in absolutes of right and wrong."
Bloom is a psychologist, and humanist and is perhaps best known for developing Outcome-Based Education and Mastery Learning. He is renowned for promoting the notion that there are no right or wrong answers and is quoted as saying, “The purpose of education and the schools is to change the thoughts, feelings and actions of students”
(How is it that schools are a place not to simply learn?)
Chester M. Pierce is Emeritus Harvard professor and an M.D. a psychiatrist. He's published over 180 books over the years and was founding president of the Black Psychiatrists of America, was national Chairperson of the Child Development Associate Consortium, a Commander in the US Navy and has been senior consultant to the Surgeon General of the US Air Force; advisor to the Children's Television Network (Sesame Street, Electric Company); and advisor to the US Arctic Research Commission.
It is this same man who, at the 1973 Childhood International Education Seminar, openly declared that five-year-old children, when they first go to school, go there “mentally ill.” He is often quoted (from transcripts of the event) as having said, “Every child in America entering school at the age of 5 is mentally ill because he comes to school with certain allegiances to our founding fathers, toward our elected officials, toward his parents, toward a belief in a supernatural being, and toward the sovereignty of this nation as a separate entity. It’s up to you as teachers to make all these sick children well — by creating the international child of the future.”
(Where I come from, parents send their 5 year old kids to American school expecting they will come back home still respecting authority in the classroom, in the neighborhood and community and even in the home. They hope that kids in school will learn to read and write and maybe even learn some history, embrace the ideal of freedom and understand what it stands for. What comes back home from school is many times vastly different than most parents would expect, and we can only wonder if it's because of influential words from men like Pierce and what is carried forth into educational arenas, by their teachings.)
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