"Religion, morality, and knowledge being necessary to good government, and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged."
- Northwest Ordinance, 1787
Now that the U.S. Supreme Court has yanked the tattered "separation of church and state" rags off the backside of America's school boards, we're going to see what they look like clothed only in their pious, Christian-hating rhetoric.
Under the guise of "separation of church and state," the Good News Club, which sought to teach elementary school children Bible stories and Christian songs, was banned from meeting after school by the New York school district - despite the fact that a variety of other clubs met after class in the same school facilities. "Wrong," said the court: you're discriminating against religious speech. Ditto for an Alabama state law allowing student-led prayers over the high school intercom system, which the court let stand as a lower court decision.
By almost any measure, America's public educational system is nothing to write home about. And that's if you could: The June 19 Wall Street Journal notes that "the National Assessment of Education Progress reported that a third of America's fourth graders are illiterate. Worse, the average disguises stunning divisions: for Hispanic fourth graders the figure rises to 58% and for African Americans to 63%. This is not simply failure. This is mass fraud."
Mass fraud. One of the marvels of modern life is that a system this corrupt and incompetent still has the time, energy and money to devote to such self-fulfilling pastimes as bricking up the wall of separation between church and state - the one the Constitution never got around to mentioning.
These selfless principals, superintendents and education board members, not to mention more than a few teachers and NEA representatives - while exposing the children in their care to all the latest social fads, like homosexuality and global temperature hopscotch; knives, guns, and physical intimidation in the school; sexual predators masquerading as coaches and teachers; and a discipline-free, non-judgmental environment to help reinforce student choices in life that will consign them to failure - still found time to mount a lawsuit designed to ensure that young children would not hear Bible stories and sing "Jesus loves me, this I know" after school at the end of the day. Dangerous and subversive stuff, those words; but only to the agenda of the nation's educrats. "Values neutrality," on the part of school administrators extends only to non-Christian values.
These two high court decisions have exposed the "wall of separation" for what it was all along: a thicket of anti-Christian prejudice a mile wide and waist-deep. Indeed, school educrats are the modern-day workers depicted by Jesus in the parable of the vineyard. In the story, a landowner digs a well and plants a vineyard, then leaves his servants in charge of the premises while he is away on business. When he sends a series of servants to collect his share of the crop, those caring for the vineyard first beat, then treat shamefully and finally kill the Master's representatives, culminating with the murder of His Son. Jesus' question for his audience has a certain relevance today: "What will the landowner do to those servants when he returns?" (You can read the answer in Matthew 21:33-44.)
Somewhere amidst the fog of the last few decades, public school administrators, teachers and their unions have forgotten who dug the well, built the buildings, and planted the vineyard. They have forgotten, in short, why they are there. The buildings, the buses, the books were originally set up to care for the children, and thus for the benefit of society as control passes into their hands. As Will and Ariel Durant have written in The History of Civilization, "Education is the transmission of civilization."
The Northwest Ordinance, quoted in the opening of this piece, mandated that "religion, morality, and knowledge" were necessary for good government and the happiness of mankind. The schools were entrusted with transmitting this information to children. They have now abandoned two of their mandates: religion and morality. Have you ever driven a car that's not running on all its cylinders? Then you'll understand why our educational system is failing.
Rather than acknowledge that their methods of religion-free, values-vacant, curriculum-lite, feel-good education have not made the grade, but have failed children, their parents, and our communities - these same wicked servants have sought to wrest control of the system from the owners, so they can continue to shamefully abuse the children they promised to care for, and throw out the citizens and taxpayers who built and paid for the vineyard. Thus the education entitlement has now passed from the children who need it to the educrats who covet it. Today, it is accompanied by a demand that we pay once for an unusable system as taxpayers, and again for a private, Christian system as parents. Thus the promise of a public education - which was given to our children - has become the property of an educrat elite, where good schools - like all other political perks - are doled out only to those deemed worthy.
This is not to say that there are not good teachers of integrity and character working in our educational system. There are. One was Mildred Rosario, whom the New York City Board of Education fired for answering questions about her faith and praying with students after a tragic accident killed a classmate. Rosario had dismissed students who did not care to participate to the computer lab or other work before the discussions began, but that didn't stop a lone complaint from being lodged with the administration. Rosario was stripped of her teaching license and fired the very next day. Today, the Rutherford Institute is representing her in federal court, attempting to protect her free speech rights as guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution, but denied by the NYC educrats, which include Muslim school board officials and secular administrators.
What the wilderness experience of the Good News Club, the Boy Scouts, and other character-building organizations demonstrate, however, is that the educrats' anti-Christian policies never were about education. Instead, they were all about perpetuating the failed values of self-indulgent, sanctimonious individuals: the wicked servants Jesus described. It was all about how to pass their godless, failed values on to America's children, while calling the indoctrination "education." Meditation, spirit guides, and a chorus of Buddhist "Oms" from the classroom is fine; but a Christian "Amen" and a copy of the Ten Commandments in the hallway might permanently damage the psyche of the children inside the vineyard - perhaps suggesting to a future killer that his actions were somehow wrong, and thus depriving all of us of living his fulfilled destiny. The light at the end of the educrats' godless tunnel turned out to be not a spirit guide, but the flash of gunfire at Columbine, where even a religious memorial to the slain Christian students can't be permitted to penetrate the thicket of anti-Christian prejudice.
How can we be so sure of the educrats' motives? The day after the Good News Club decision was reported, the very same New York school district that lost the case before the U.S. Supreme Court vowed to prohibit the club from meeting - by denying everyone else the use of the school, if necessary. It was Joseph Stalin who observed, "Education is a weapon, whose effect depends on who holds it in his hands and at whom it is aimed."
Yet America comes from a different tradition. Noah Webster, one of the founding fathers of freedom, and in fact the man known as "America's Schoolmaster" wrote in the preface to his 26-year project, Webster's Dictionary:
"In my view, the Christian religion is the most important and one of the first things in which all children, under a free government ought to be instructed. No truth is more evident to my mind than that the Christian religion must be the basis of any government intended to secure the rights and privileges of a free people."
America has a choice to make. Please pray for her, as she decides.
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