TEACHING CRITICAL SKILLS TO CHILDREN

Lawrence M. Krauss is a militant atheist who has just written a new book entitled, “The Greatest Story Ever Told -- So Far: Why Are We Here?” In it, he argues that children’s education should not be about information but learning how to evaluate information. About this, a favorably disposed reviewer writes:

·       What we lack is any decent filter to weed out erroneous or partisan information. Children are the most susceptible to this, and Krauss argues that teaching children how to question information—essentially, how to make children skeptics—may save humanity from a dumbing-down.

In principle, I agree that we need to approach information critically. Jesus taught His hearers to be skeptical even about His teachings:

·       If I am not doing the works of my Father, then do not believe me; but if I do them, even though you do not believe me, believe the works, that you may know and understand that the Father is in me and I am in the Father.” (John 10:37-38; 5:31)

However, teaching children is another matter. They are unable to critically process information. Before all else, they need the ABCs and the 123s. This principle applies to science, politics, as well as to morality and religion. As much as Krauss might NOT like to admit it, someone is going to have to indoctrinate the children – either the parents who love them or the State, which has its own political agenda.

However, the State routinely refuses to acknowledge its political agenda. Instead, they claim to be so concerned about the welfare of the children, that they are willing to remove them from homeschooling parents who teach that homosexuality and transgenderism is a sin. https://www.onenewsnow.com/perspectives/michael-brown/2017/06/07/big-brothers-ready-to-raid-your-home-steal-your-child?utm_source=OneNewsNow&utm_medium=email&utm_term=16787384&utm_content=474774931925&utm_campaign=29791

However, in the past, some politicians have been “refreshingly” candid about their use of propaganda and the indoctrination of children:

·       In every really great revolutionary movement propaganda will first have to spread the idea of this movement. Thus, it will untiringly try to make clear to the others the new train of thought, to draw them over to its own ground, or at least to make them doubtful of their own previous conviction…The organization receives its members from the followers in general won by propaganda. (Mein Kampf)

Journalist Peter Hitchens mentions another illuminating example regarding sex-ed, which has now trickled down into the kindergarten:

·       “It's said,” Hitchens noted, “that Gyorgy Lukas, who was commissar for education in the short-lived Bela Kun Soviet Government in Hungary in 1918, openly said that the purpose of sex education when he introduced it then - I think he was probably the first person to do so - was to debauch the minds and morals of religiously-brought up young women particularly. It seems to me to make a certain amount of sense…because the kinds of things that people are taught in sex education are disinhibiting things.”

However, we need certain inhibitions and taboos. Do we want a world where parents regard their children as possible sexual prey? This would destroy both trust and family. It would deprive children of their only real safe-place and produce monsters. Instead, there are essential values that must be communicated to our children and maintained even at the cost of our own lives, if God wills.

The State has a very poor track-record in its care of children. While it has proved to be an effective instrument of indoctrination, it has failed to both raise children of character and to instill the necessary critical skills. Instead, children belong to those who love them and will sacrifice for them rather than sacrifice them to their socio-political or sexual agenda.