Utah's Republic

Posts Tagged ‘Education’

After forwarding out the announcement from Parents for Choice in Education (PCE) a few weeks ago as a courtesy to them on Jeb Bush’s visit and presentation on education progress in Florida, some of you were happy to get it, and some of you were surprised that I sent it out. I actually wrestled with the decision to send it out because I’m not a Bush-clan fan because of the Bush family stance on global government. I explained to one of you that the reason I sent it out was because there are 2 issues we are dealing with.

1) How do we improve the effectiveness of the current system until we achieve needed reforms?
2) What is the ideal education system and how do we move toward it?

Jeb Bush has had some success on item 1 and I forwarded out the email since it was directly pertaining to improvements to the current system. Some of you attended Jeb’s presentation and were very excited about the material presented. I believe the current system is in need of reform. Scores keep declining and we keep getting tapped for more money to prop up a system that is slow to respond and largely ineffective at course corrections (for many reasons).

A couple months ago, I asked the question if you were king for a day, what would you change about the education system. I got a number of great responses. Before you read those responses, I’d like to ask you to read this article I recently came across. Changes are coming to the education field. Whenever technology can dramatically reduce costs, change becomes inevitable. If an industry won’t adapt, they’ll get passed by eventually and go the way of the typewriter in the face of the computer.

Please read this article and then continue below.
http://www.lewrockwell.com/north/north874.html

The “King for a Day” project can then be found here (or the link at the top of the screen). I struggled to find the best way to do this, and there are probably better ways, but please contribute and then come back frequently to see what people are posting and help vote the best ideas to the top in each category.
http://www.utahsrepublic.org/king-for-a-day/

Oak

Orson Scott Card is one of my favorite authors. As a child I read “Ender’s Game” and have been waiting for the movie for more than 20 years. Card is a registered Democrat (ie. not a right-winger for any educrats reading this) and lives in North Carolina where he writes a variety of books and plays, and even does some political commentary for his local newspaper. I came across this excellent article entitled “The Horse Ain’t Dead, Keep on Flogging” that relates to our education system and the destruction of our true American history from our school textbooks. If you’re short on time, here’s one salient clip.

http://www.ornery.org/essays/warwatch/2010-02-21-1.html

It is time that tax-supported education cease promulgating the values of the extreme Leftist elite that dominates the university faculties and the educational establishment, and accept that the job of education is to transmit the values of the people who pay the taxes.

When we require people, under penalty of law, to send their children to the public schools, then there is a solemn responsibility to pass on to those children the culture that made our nation a light to the world. (Which it is, except in the delusional mindset of America-hating intellectuals who have no qualms about attacking America while sucking on the public udder.)

There are no educational experts; their “educational science” is a joke; and even if it were not, their expertise as “professional educators” would only extend to methodology, not content.

The content of courses is another matter entirely, and we all have a right to a voice in deciding that. Especially history courses, since those are the classes that create the American self-story for the next generation.

No one group should own the teaching of history in our schools — like our government, it should be a compromise among all the beliefs that are part of our polity. But the arbiter should always be the facts, not one ideology.

Susan Schnell 3/9/10

Let me introduce myself. My name is Susan Schnell and I wrote the email that is circulating around the district. You might wonder why your motto, “Enculturating the Young into a Social and Political Democracy” is important enough to draw so much attention. Perhaps I can shed some light.

I am the daughter of an immigrant who was forced to flee her country when the Soviet Union under Stalin seized Ukraine and brought it under communist rule. The Soviets collectivized farms, burned down churches, took away their religion, their traditions and their heritage and then murdered many millions of Ukrainians. Just before they escaped, my mother overheard her parents say that the “Soviets are stealing away our children.” She understood well that this meant from the age of 3, the children would be sent to public schools where they would completely indoctrinate them into a new culture. The Ukrainian children were to “unlearn” everything their families taught them about their religion, history, culture, heritage and even their native language. The Soviets knew that to succeed, they had to control the minds of the children.  As Vladimir Lenin said,

“Give me four years to teach the children and the seed I have sown will never be uprooted. Give us the child for 8 years and it will be a Bolshevik forever.”

So my grandparents sacrificed everything they had, even their lives to come to America where their family would be free from oppression and their children free from indoctrination, or should I say “enculturation.” Because of this heritage, I have been warned my entire life to watch for warning signs of socialism. Freedom and education came at a very high price for my family.

I received my teaching degree from California State University in Sacramento. I am now painfully aware of why they named my major Liberal Studies instead of Elementary Education. I ended up receiving 4 years of liberal indoctrination instead of how to succeed as a teacher, so I am well aware of the training teachers receive before they go into the classroom.

We are seeing our great nation collapse because of socialistic ideas which are seeping into our government. Our Constitution is hanging by a thread, no doubt. But recently it has come to our attention that even our children right here in Alpine School District are being uninformed and misinformed of our great American heritage. We have been naïve, too trusting, and too busy to notice the awful situation that is now upon us. We put our trust in our government leaders, including this school board, and they have let us down. We think America is always going to be great just because it is America and we don’t have to do anything to stand up for it. Well, we have awakened! We now have a generation of millions of school children across the nation who are either going to save this nation or help to destroy it and it all rests in the hands of their parents and teachers. We know that in every state, children are being indoctrinated in schools because conspiring men know as Adolf Hitler said “He alone who owns the youth, gains the future.” There is a war going on to transform our nation and we are seeing it right in front of our eyes. Socialist educators like John Dewey, John Goodlad and Bill Ayers have been feeding the socialist agenda for years in many universities around the nation and yes, unfortunately, that includes universities here in Utah.

Right now in Texas, school book publishers are trying to change history by leaving out some of our Founding Fathers and the great men who fought for this country. These books will be distributed throughout the whole country. They are taking out patriots such as Ben Franklin, Davy Crocket, and Daniel Boone. In CA schools, my children learned that Christopher Columbus was a horrible man and that Abraham Lincoln was gay. In the high school, they were taught that parents and religion were old-fashioned and they should question the belief system they learned at home. This was fed to them everyday at school with posters, plays, rallies and school assignments.

I testified in front of the CA State Senate against a bill that would completely re-write our American history in school textbooks. I thought a school field trip with my 4th grader to the State Capitol Building in Sacramento would be a wonderful patriotic experience for the children. Instead, they were told that the Constitution was not inspired, but just an incomplete, living, breathing document with many errors that needed to be fixed or thrown out. They were shown Japanese internment camp displays for an hour while listening to speakers tell them how evil America is. They went away ashamed of America, not proud of their heritage. I believe Vladimir Lenin when he said, “A lie told often enough becomes the truth.” Adolf Hitler echoed, “If you tell a big enough lie and tell it frequently enough, it will be believed.” After putting up with so much indoctrination I finally took my children out of school to home school them so we could bring God and truth back into their daily academic lessons.

We moved from California to Utah a year and a half ago because we had hoped that this was a more conservative, religious environment to raise our children. I told my children they would be safe to go to school here because we didn’t have to fear indoctrination. Well I was wrong. Not only are they not being challenged academically but now we are finding out that the district is involved in pushing this dangerous progressive agenda whether they realize it or not. Through your motto, you are telling parents that their family’s culture isn’t good enough, so it is the school’s job now to enculturate the children into believing in a new culture, one of social and political democracy. From everything that I’ve studied, that means socialism or the next step towards it. Lenin said “Democracy is indispensable to socialism.” Karl Marx is quoted as saying “Democracy is the road to socialism.” Who are we following? Who are we using as our Founding Fathers? George Washington and James Madison, or Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin and John Goodlad?

My father served in the United States military for decades defending this Republic. My mother sacrificed everything to come to this country of liberty and escape from communism. I have been taught my entire life to respect this country, to be thankful for the freedom I have and to fight any evil that seeks to destroy my liberties. I will not sit idly by as my children and the other children of this district are taught false statements about this country. If this nation does become “fundamentally transformed” like so many of our progressive government leaders are trying so hard to accomplish, I do not want to look my children in the eye and tell them I did nothing to save it. Correct education starts at home first. The schools should be an extension of those teachings, not an enculturation factory which undermines the family. We need a strong generation of educated and civic minded children. If our beloved Constitution is to be hanging by a thread, I want this generation of children to know how to restore it back to the original form the Founding Fathers intended it to be when they were inspired by God to write it. I ask you, please concentrate on academics, and when you do teach civics, be careful to follow the Founding Fathers who wrote our inspired Constitution and not the educated elite who follow a Socialist agenda.

Before I went on air this morning, an individual named Scott called in from Sandy and shared some excellent thoughts on the ethics reform initiative being floated by some citizens. That initiative has drastically different purposes from the petition on this site.  It would set up a kingdom for the writers of that bill where this petition is merely to ask the appropriate body for a redress of our grievances.

In a Republic, our duly elected representatives exercise power on our behalf. Our sovereign power is to elect and un-elect those representatives periodically to ensure we are being properly represented. The citizens ethics initiative would set up an oligarchy for the writers of the bill. Imagine drafting legislation that would give you kingly power and telling the public the bill is to help clean up the law makers. Won’t the public be surprised…

I was sent a link to a free online book called Slightly to the Right. Written about 40 years ago by Senator Bill Richardson from California, this book describes the tactics of the communists in changing the language we use in order to indoctrinate us. Having skimmed it, it’s a fascinating looking book and not very long at all.

Slightly to the Right!

By: H.L. “Bill” Richardson

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Read the rest of this entry »

I received an email about a week ago from a Susan Schnell concerning a link Alpine School District (ASD) had put on their website Mission Statement page in an effort to bolster their position that America is a Democracy. By directly linking to an outside site, they gave tacit approval and endorsement of everything on that site, but especially the page they linked to.

After Susan’s email started to circulate, ASD pulled the link. Read below and you’ll find out why.You’ll also wonder how on earth they thought the original page they linked to was acceptable just by itself. I filed a GRAMA request with the district on 2/18/10 for more information which will be published here when we have the answers. Please sign the petition on this site (www.UtahsRepublic.org) to be notified as things progress and to ask the state to return us to constitutional education in the tradition of our Founding Fathers.

Here is Susan’s email:

WARNING TO ALL ALPINE SCHOOL DISTRICT PARENTS

I am a parent of 4 children in Alpine School District (ASD) in Utah and I just found out some alarming things that our district is promoting. Please take the time to read this as we need to come together as a community to fix a monumental problem which has crept into our local district. Then please go to http://www.utahsrepublic.org to learn more about this issue and what we can do to solve it. School board elections are coming up soon and we can fix this if we all work together quickly.

Many are aware that our country’s leaders are trying to transform this nation into democratic socialism. You already know that one of their main techniques is to indoctrinate school children around the nation into gradually believing Progressive ideology and move away from our great Constitutional heritage. I moved here in the heart of a conservative city and state from California hoping for a better education and environment for my children. However, I was shocked to find out recently that our own Alpine School District has been aligning itself with people who believe that we are NOT a great God-inspired Republic. They are teaching that our Founding Fathers were wrong in establishing a Republic, that the Constitution was set up by wealthy elitists who only wanted gain for themselves and that we should transform our Republic nation into a social and political Democracy by teaching this false doctrine to our children. They even went as far as linking their Mission Statement page with a California Green Party candidate who believes Jesus is a vampire. READ ON….

Read the rest of this entry »

In a recent email exchange with a school district employee, I included the following information. I have been asked a few times what the big deal is on why we need to emphasize “Republic” over “Democracy”. Here’s my brief version:

I do believe there is great importance on understanding what a Republic is. The word Democracy doesn’t appear in any of our founding documents and the Founders were adamantly opposed to Democracies.  I am certain you would agree that a country can call itself anything it wants but the fact remains that China, Iran, the USSR (former), are certainly not Republics that respect the rule of law. They are totalitarian governments where the people have no freedom. They call themselves Republics as a false pretense to the Republic of the United States, perhaps in opposition to us as a way to tell their citizens “see, we are just like the United States…”

The more we keep drilling into our children’s minds that we are a Democracy, the more freedoms we will lose because they will lose sight of the proper role of government in a Republic. The Founders were so against Democracies because they lead to mob rule. If a vote settles every issue, than rights can be given and taken by the majority. The two wolves vote to eat the sheep analogy… Law has no place for the minority.

You may have read some of these documents before but I’ve got a few pages on the site that really help explain this better than I can. I would encourage all of you interested in understanding this topic better to read these pages.

Why a Republic? (Great little video and other information)
C.S. Lewis’ “Screwtape Proposes a Toast” (A Satire on the American education system)
Excerpt from The 5,000 Year Leap (chapter 12 on Republics)
Democracy Vs. Republic Quotes (Founding Father & other quotes)
Toward an Understanding of the 10th Amendment (my own essay)

Karl Marx said, “Democracy is the road to Socialism.” When “socialism” evoked negative feelings a hundred years ago, the communists abroad and within our country adopted the term “democracy” as their new buzzword. It was more palatable and easily assimilated into the culture. For decades we’ve come to use this term as if it was part of our governmental system when in reality, our true enemies have hijacked this term and taken us straight down the road to socialism and Marxism.

One great quote from C.S. Lewis’ piece (if you’ve never read about Screwtape, go to the link above for a brief explanation):

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“Democracy is the word with which you must lead them by the nose…. [T]hey should never be allowed to give this word a clear and definable meaning. They won’t. It will never occur to them that democracy is properly the name of a political system, even a system of voting, and that this has only the most remote and tenuous connection with what you are trying to sell them. Nor of course must they ever be allowed to raise Aristotle’s question: whether “democratic behaviour” means the behaviour that democracies like or the behaviour that will preserve a democracy. For if they did, it could hardly fail to occur to them that these need not be the same.”

…

As an English politician remarked not long ago, “A democracy does not want great men.”

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Oak

I just posted a new page on the 10th Amendment. I’d originally written this page for the Patrick Henry Caucus but they’ve never gotten around to posting it and I hate to have it go to waste. :) It’s now page 5 of the education section. Click here to read it:

Toward an Understanding of the 10th Amendment

I posted a couple of new diagrams on the home page over the weekend. One of them illustrates my conception of proper Republican government, and the other helps illustrate the imbalance we have right now in the control government has over our lives. In reality, working as a legislator at the federal level should be one of the easiest of all political positions. The constitution only authorizes the federal body to perform about 20 common functions for the states. Anything not on that list should be voted against and per the 10th Amendment, left to the states.

One of the eye opening experiences I’ve had in writing my legislators was several years ago I wrote one of our state senators and asked why he’d voted for a new welfare bill. His reply was that it was part of the “general welfare clause” in the constitution. What this term-length-challenged senator expressed is an unfortunate misconception that far too many politicians share. “General welfare” means non-specific. You either have specific welfare (one group) or general welfare (everyone). Redistribution of wealth is specific and thus unconstitutional. Paying welfare funds out of the federal monies whereby people in one state pay for those in another, is simply unconstitutional. The Founding Fathers set up the country so that each state was sovereign and not to be relied on for other state’s state-level issues. If a state wants a welfare program, it’s their business, not the federal government’s.