RICHARD DAWKINS, THE STATE, AND MILITANT INDOCTRINATION

The renowned atheist, Richard Dawkins, recently stated something that is increasingly resonating with others:

·       “There is a balancing act and you have to balance the rights of parents and the rights of children and I think the balance has swung too far towards parents,” he said. “Children do need to be protected so that they can have a proper education and not be indoctrinated in whatever religion their parents happen to have been brought up in.”

Well, what’s wrong with such a statement? Much! For one thing, religious liberty has enabled Western Civilization to thrive. It has given every family a sincere welcome, but now it is being taken away, and many are beginning to feel marginalized, even victimized. The nation that had once been their friend is now regarded as a deadly enemy – a threat to their family.

However, there is another problem with this statement. It fails to acknowledge a couple of crucial realities:

1.    There is no alternative to the indoctrination of children. It will either be the parents or it will be the State. However, the State has a poor track record in caring for our children. State control also reduces choice and diversity.

2.    The State also has its religion and values that it is militantly determined to inculcate, even around the backs of the parents.

State control is nothing short of oppression and disdain for the welfare of the children.

The UN, Parents, Children’s Rights, and the Catholic Church

 

Under the guise of the “protection of children,” the United Nations’ Committee on the Rights of the Child under precept #26 recommends that:

• The Holy See bring all its laws and regulations as well as its policies and practices in conformity and make full use of its moral authority to condemn all forms of harassment, discrimination or violence against children based on their sexual orientation or the sexual orientation of their parents and to support efforts at international level for the decriminalisation of homosexuality.

By promoting a highly self-destructive lifestyle that, according to surveys, shortens the male homosexuals’ life by 20-24 years, the UN has lost all credibility, especially in light of the fact that real human rights violations – namely, the genocide of religious minorities in many Islamic countries - are vainly crying out for attention.

In their mindless dash to enforce gay rights, the UN has ignored many of the costs:

1.     Attenuated lifespan

2.     The Proliferation of STDs, Substance Abuse, Suicide, Mental Illness Endemic to this Lifestyle.

3.     The Fact that all of the Major World Religions have Ruled against it

4.     The Historical Evidence that this Lifestyle Produces a Dead End

5.     The Suppression of the Freedoms of Speech and Religion to Achieve this End

6.     The Resulting Gender Confusion and Sexualization of Children

7.     The Breakdown of Values that have Produced the Greatest Civilizations.

Of course, the Committee knows better than their own parents regarding the welfare of children and has demonstrated that it is more than willing to limit parental rights in favor of their own “enlightened” agenda:

• #32. The Committee reminds the Holy See that the right of children to freely express their views constitutes one of the most essential components of children’s dignity and that ensuring this right is a legal obligation under the Convention, which leaves no leeway for the discretion of the States parties… (c) Encourage, through legislation and policy, opportunities for parents and guardians to listen to children and give due weight to their views in matters that concern them and promote parenting education programmes, which build on existing positive behaviours and attitudes.

Who is to determine these “positive behaviours and attitudes?” The UN, of course, and the parents and church must fall in line and submit to “opportunities for parents and guardians to listen to children and give due weight to their views!” While the UN hypocritically champions the free speech of children, it extends no such privilege to their parents other than re-education. Indeed, we have a lot of prior horrific experience with States that claim that they know what is best for children and therefore limit parental influence:

• Lenin had said: “The best revolutionary is a youth devoid of morals.” His word being law in Communist organizations, all members work secretly to make young people of both sexes anti-social and immoral. Children up to teen-age are taught to rebel against the discipline of the home. Parents are represented to their children as old-fashioned. Parental authority is scoffed at. The subverters argue that parents have lied to their children since they were old enough to listen, regarding Santa Claus and where babies come from. The subversives claims parents are the victims of reactionary teachings and capitalistic exploitation. The child is encouraged to educate the parents in regard to modern and progressive ideas. They are warned that, for their own good, they must refuse to be dominated or disciplined by their parents. The purpose of this subversive campaign is to destroy the sanctity, and unity, of the home which is the foundation upon which our civilization is founded.

If parental influence can be neutralized, what then is left to influence our children? The sexualizing influence of the culture – the permissive, morally-relativistic schools and the morally-indulgent media! Meanwhile, parents must only listen to their children and give their words and desires full respect.

Discipline? Forget it! Our children are free moral agents, according to the UN, and what we teach our children better reflect this:

•   #40. The Committee reminds the Holy See that all forms of violence against children, however light, are unacceptable and that the Convention leaves no room for any level of violence against children… ensure that an interpretation of Scripture as not condoning corporal punishment is reflected in Church teaching and other activities and incorporated into all theological education and training.

While the UN demands that children have their say, it is not as accommodating to their parents or their religion. Evidently, the UN has reached such a state of enlightenment that it can confidently dictate to us how we are to understand and teach the Bible.

The UN demands to reign supreme over all areas of the family – religion, education, values, the works. After all, “He alone, who owns the youth, gains the future,” as Adolph Hitler confidently professed. How then does the world government own the youth? By making itself the supreme authority in all family matters:

•   #41. The Committee is concerned about the Holy See’s position that civil authorities should intervene in the family setting only in cases where a proven abuse has been committed in order not to interfere with the duties and rights of the parents.

The UN demands the right to intervene whenever! How can the UN demand such authority? Has it been able to shed the gentle light of reason in these areas? Has it demonstrated that it is the better and more loving caretaker of our children?

In contrast, the wise King Solomon knew a critical truth about mothers. When two women came before him, each claiming maternity over a certain baby, Solomon ordered that the baby be cut in two – one part given to each claimant. At this, the real mother cried out:

•  “Please, my lord, give her the living baby! Don’t kill him!” But the other said, “Neither I nor you shall have him. Cut him in two!” Then the king gave his ruling: “Give the living baby to the first woman. Do not kill him; she is his mother.” (1 Kings 3:26-27)

The UN is the “other” claimant. It does not love the children as the real mother and will allow their destruction in order to promote its blind and tyrannical agenda.

Homeschooling and its Threat

Homeschoolers are facing intense persecution in manycountries:

• Despite the fact that his children passed difficult government imposed tests, and even qualified for law school at the ages of 13 and 14, homeschooler Cleber Nunes and his wife Bernadeth have been slapped with fines equivalent to a total of $3,200 for refusing to submit their children to the Brazilian school system.

In Sweden, homeschoolers are facing even more intense persecution:

• A leader of Sweden’s Liberal Party last week called for a change in the country’s social services law so that the government can take children away from home-schooling families more easily by allowing social workers to do so.

• The call for the change comes amidst already stringent penalties in Sweden for home schooling. The Home School Legal Defense Association and Alliance Defense Fund have applied to the European Court of Human Rights on behalf of one family whose child was abducted by the government in 2009 and have filed a brief in a Swedish appellate court on behalf of another family fined an amount equivalent to $26,000 U.S..

• “The right of parents to choose the kind of education their children receive is a fundamental human right recognized in international legal documents including the Universal Declaration of Human Rights,” said HSLDA attorney Michael Donnelly. “Sweden has lost its way and is ignoring basic human rights joining Germany in repressing educational freedom. It’s important that free people stand up to governments who persecute their own people.”

Sadly, the USAseems that it might also follow the same trajectory as it pursues a greater educational role for the State at the expense of parental rights:

• The New Hampshire Supreme Court upheld a lower court order Wednesday that sided with the father of a homeschooled student and forced her into a government-run school against her Christian mother’s wishes.

Although the court claimed that it wasn’t considering the “larger religious liberty and homeschooling concerns,” this claim is suspect. First of all, the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF) attorney John Anthony Simmons, who represented the mother, who is divorced from the father, claimed that:

• Because no harm was demonstrated and the girl was acknowledged to be academically superior and socially interactive, even by the court, Simmons argued that the homeschooling arrangement should not have been changed.

Even more suspect is the lower court rationale:

• In July 2009, Judge Lucinda V. Sadler reasoned that the girl’s “vigorous defense of her religious beliefs to [her] counselor suggests strongly that she has not had the opportunity to seriously consider any other point of view.”

However, there is no evidence to support the court’s claim that the girl is suffering any deprivation as a result of homeschooling. Instead, the court’s judgment reflects secular hubris - that the State is a better judge and provider of what children need than the parents. But what are the facts about homeschooling, and shouldn’t these govern the State’s decisions?

• In 2007, the Home School Legal Defense Association commissioned Dr. Brian D. Ray of the National Home Education Research Institute to conduct a nationwide study of homeschooling in America. The study’s purpose was to develop a current picture of homeschool students and their families—capturing their demographics and educational background—and analyze the impact of certain variables on homeschoolers’ academic achievement. Dr. Ray collected data for the cross-sectional, descriptive study in spring 2008. The 11,739 participants came from all 50 states, Guam, and Puerto Rico.

• In the study, homeschoolers scored 34–39 percentile points higher than the norm [50%] on standardized achievement tests. The homeschool national average ranged from the 84th percentile for Language, Math, and Social Studies to the 89th percentile for Reading.

This strongly argues against the contention that the State knows best and can provide what’s best for the children. The study also showed that it didn’t matter if the parent was a certified teacher or if homeschooling had been supervised by the state had no significant effect upon the academic outcome. Interestingly, socio-economic family status didn’t impact academic outcomes.

In another study conducted by Ray in 2003, over 7,300 adults were surveyed who were homeschooled:

• Over 5,000 of these had been home educated at least seven years, and the statistics in this synopsis are based on their responses.

• Over 74% of home-educated adults ages 18–24 have taken college-level courses, compared to 46% of the general United States population.

• Homeschool graduates are active and involved in their communities. Seventy-one percent participate in an ongoing community service activity compared to 37% of U.S. adults of similar ages. Eighty-eight percent of the homeschool graduates surveyed were members of an organization…compared to 50% of U.S. adults…Only 4.2% of the homeschool graduates surveyed consider politics and government too complicated to understand, compared to 35% of U.S. adults.

• 95% of the homeschool graduates surveyed are glad that they were homeschooled. In the opinion of the homeschool graduates, homeschooling has not hindered them in their careers or education. Eighty-two percent would homeschool their own children. Of the 812 study participants who had children age 5 or older, 74% were already homeschooling.

According to Wikipedia,

• Numerous studies have found that homeschooled students on average outperform their peers on standardized tests…In the 1970s Raymond S. and Dorothy N. Moore conducted four federally funded analyses of more than 8,000 early childhood studies, from which they published their original findings in Better Late Than Early, 1975. This was followed by School Can Wait, a repackaging of these same findings designed specifically for educational professionals.[24] They concluded that, "where possible, children should be withheld from formal schooling until at least ages eight to ten."

Wikipedia also admits that

• While there is no specific evidence to suggest that abuse among homeschoolers is more pervasive or severe than other institutions.

Why then the opposition?

• Stanford University political scientist Professor Rob Reich (not to be confused with former U.S. Secretary of Labor, Robert Reich) wrote in The Civic Perils of Homeschooling (2002) that homeschooling can potentially give students a one-sided point of view, as their parents may, even unwittingly, block or diminish all points of view but their own in teaching.

However, if diversity is truly Reich’s concern, it would seem that he would be a champion of alternatives to the monolithic state controlled system.

• He also argues that homeschooling, by reducing students' contact with peers, reduces their sense of civic engagement with their community.

However, this contention is invalidated by Ray’s surveys. Why then the hostility against homeschooling? Is it that homeschooling presently lies beyond the influence of secularism?

The Repressive State and its Religion

 

Repressive, totalitarian regimes are never satisfied with merely controlling the political process. They also seek to control the mind and indoctrinate the youth. Hughes and Mann wrote about the goals of National Socialism:

• From the beginning the Nazis were determined to subvert German youth to their own aims…By the end of 1933 all other youth organizations had been either banned or subsumed into the Hitler Youth…In 1939, two executive orders…made “youth service” compulsory…The Nazis monopolized every free hour and parents dared not object lest they were seen to be troublemakers. Youngsters, living more and more with their comrades, were gradually being weaned away from their families. (Inside Hitler’s Germany, 50-54)

Secular Western nations are quickly following in the steps of National Socialism and its totalitarian cousin – Communism – by indoctrinating children. Even as early as 1973, Dr. W. P. Shofstall, the state superintendent for public schools in Arizona commented that, “The atheists have, for all practical purposes, taken over public education in this country.” The results have been obvious:

• On November 17, 1980, the Supreme Court struck down a Kentucky law that required the posting of the Ten Commandments in public school classrooms. The Court said that the Ten Commandments were “plainly religious…and may induce children to read, meditate upon, and perhaps to venerate and to obey the commandments.” (Erwin Lutzer, The Rebirth of America, 82.

Meanwhile, the Court has raised no qualms about the children venerating pornography or another religion – militant secular humanism:

• Secular Humanism would like us to believe that they are broadminded, pluralistic and neutral in moral matters. They are opposed to censorship, sectarianism and intolerance. The media has done a successful job of getting the American people to believe that it is he so-called right wing religious fanatics who are seeking to “impose morality on society”…Secular Humanism is imposing its own morality on the American public. It does so through the media, the schools and the courts. There is a clear intent to keep Christian thinking out of the mainstream. (83)

• As columnist George Will put it so ably, “And it is, by now, a scandal beyond irony that thanks to the energetic litigation of the ‘civil liberties’ fanatics, pornographers enjoy expansive first amendment protection while first graders in a nativity play are said to violate the First Amendment values.” (84)

However, this insipient totalitarianism doesn't just apply to education. James Schall, S.J. describes it is as a full frontal attack:

•  We have been taught to think that “democracy” is automatically “the best regime,” the only alternative to any totalitarian state power. Though it has been coming for some time, within these past couple of weeks, we are seeing clearly that the desire, force, and will to subsume all subsidiary social institutions, especially religion and family, under the control of the state is also endemic in current democratic societies.

Although the Secular West is not seeking to build an empire based upon racial ideals, it is trying to impose its own utopian values – multi-culturalism, moral relativism, humanism, naturalism, sexual-permissiveness - under the guise of neutrality. Interestingly, Secularism, National Socialism and Communism have all attempted to achieve their goals through the neutralization of parental and Christian influences.

Although we don’t have to contend with the Hitler youth, we do have public education which has become increasingly secularized to the point that the Bible is now verboten! Private schools are only an option for those districts that have a voucher system or for those parents who can fork out the big bucks. Consequently, the public system has been awarded a virtual monopoly over the minds of the youth.

Some decades ago, prayer and moral absolutes were rejected and “values clarification” exercises quickly filled the vacuum. These conveyed to the youth that there is no correct moral answer. Consequently, there can be no correct or even incorrect behavior, as long as it didn’t interfere with the schools’ interests. Instead, morality became just a matter of clarifying the subjective and arbitrary reasons that govern our meaningless choices.

In Canada, parents have just sustained an additional blow:

• In the past week we have witnessed the Supreme Court of Canada dismiss the appeal of a Quebec family for permission to exempt their child from that province’s controversial ethics and religious culture course, which critics say is “relativistic,” and teaches that all religious are equally valid. And we have heard a spokesperson for the Alberta education minister state that under the province’s new Education Act even homeschooling parents will no longer be allowed to teach their children traditional Christian sexual ethics. Without the right to educate our children as we choose according to the values we choose, what do we have left? State-imposed orthodoxy. Totalitarianism. These two developments come amidst the ongoing efforts of the Ontario government to impose their “equity” program, “diversity” curriculum, and transparently ideological “anti-bullying” bill on all schools – whether Catholic or public. Already the largest school board in the province has said that parents will not be permitted to exempt their children from parts of the curriculum they deem unacceptable.

This raises an important question that is seldom discussed by our secular establishment. Who should have the primary responsibility for the education of their children? To put it another way – why should parents be denied the right to veto and exempt their children from certain subjects? And why should certain morally objectionable materials be imposed upon private schools and the private and intimate relationship that parents enjoys with their children? What is the compelling national interest, if there is one?

Interestingly, Reich Youth Leader, Baldur von Schirach had expressed more reverence for the authority of the family than do many of our secular institutions:

• The Hitler Youth leader, however, should consider it his duty not only to maintain the best relations with the parents of the youngsters entrusted to him, but also to allow them every possible insight into the work of the organization. [In contrast, our schools are often secretive about the nature of their moral teachings.] He must be ready to answer questions put to him by the parents of his young charges and should try to become the confidant of the family…Every youth movement needs the spiritual cooperation of the parental home…The parental home is in an ever better position to give unqualified recognition to the service of the Hitler Youth, since this service supports the authority of the parents and does not impair it. (Nazi Culture, 296-97)

Ironically, our evolved secular institutions seem unconcerned about the “authority of the parents.” However, both the Hitler Youth [HY] and the secularists win our children by honoring them as “adults.” HY taught the youth the use of weapons, insisting that their youth were vital to their national defense. Similarly, the secularists insist that our children have the same rights as adults. Consequently, they should now report their parents for spanking them. (The communists also manipulated the youth against their parents, encouraging them to report any anti-communist talk or activity.)

While the HY used weaponry, the secularists have used an even more powerful weapon – sex – to convince the youth that their parents are backward and repressive and that the secularists will treat them with more dignity. They have been increasingly insistent that children have a right and even a duty to themselves to explore their sexuality.

No society will last long which turns the youth against their parents, those who truly love them and would sacrifice to protect them. The wise King Solomon realized this, so that when two women came before him – each claiming a certain newborn to be her own – he ordered that the newborn be cut in two, one half for each claimant. This propelled the real mother to cry out:

• "Please, my lord, give her the living baby! Don't kill him!" But the other said, "Neither I nor you shall have him. Cut him in two!" (1 Kings 3:26)

Our secular institutions are like the second woman. They must have their way despite the mountains of evidence demonstrating that society is faltering under their watch. How odd it is that “even home-schooling parents will no longer be allowed to teach their children traditional Christian sexual ethics” even in the face of unacceptably high levels of out-of-wedlock births, abortions, venereal diseases, and the many resulting social ills.

In the mid-eighties, D. James Kennedy wrote about this irony, claiming that his own Westminster Academy, which had been operating for nine years at that time, had never had an illegitimate birth:

• While the rest of America is marching forward with 600,000 unwanted births among high school students…by innumerable hundreds of thousands of abortions…by epidemic drug use…alcoholism…suicide….while we are marching forward into that brave new world, the Christian schools are teaching people about the moral standards of God…who can read far better than the students coming out of the public schools and are academically superior to them. (126)

What compelling reason does secularism have for its intolerance of home-schooling and Christian education? We tend to think that the proof is in the tasting – the results. However, secularism has proven that their ideology trumps the evidence. Why then is secularism committed to a uniformity in belief and religion – moral relativism, humanism, naturalism - even when this uniformity, this State religion, conflicts with the natural interests of the family and our First Amendment rights?

This brings us back to the question – Who should have the primary say over the education of children? The wise Solomon believed that it should be the biological mother, the one who was willing to surrender the child for his own well-being. Secularism repeatedly casts its vote in favor of State uniformity. But why? Does the secularist/atheist have compelling evidence to justify wrenching the child away from parental authority? Can the secularist/atheist demonstrate that society and its children have clearly benefited from secular indoctrination since the sixties?

All indicators would say, “No” – the highly elevated crime rate, drug rate, abortion rate, divorce rate, venereal disease rate…  What then is the justification for continuing this repressive, totalitarian, religious experiment?