Yet another reason to homeschool your children… at least until the government tells you that you have no right to.
At a hearing last week, Lexington (Massachusetts) public school officials argued in court that public schools have a mandate to teach positively about homosexuality and that parents have no right to have their children exempted from such instruction. A parent’s only option is to withdraw their children completely from public school, lawyers argued.
This is part of the David Parker case. Parker was arrested while protesting that his son’s school was engaging in homosexual indoctrination while failing to notify parents and provide an opt-out as mandated by state law.
Mass Resistance, a group which supports parents rights in the state, reports that Lexington school officials argued in court that schools have a “legitimate state interest” - in fact a mandate - to teach what they call “diversity”, which includes normalizing same-sex romantic relationships in the minds of elementary school children. The state must fight “discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation” in ways that “do not perpetuate stereotypes,” the lawyers argued.
The school brought up various Massachusetts Department of Education curriculum frameworks as well as the assertion that same-sex marriage is “legal” in Massachusetts.
Brian Camenker of Mass Resistance explained that the second major point argued by the school representatives was that parents have no right to control what ideas the schools present to children, even elementary school children. Parents’ only legitimate option, the lawyers for the school system argued, is to take their children out of the public school system. “Once I have elected to send my child to public school, my fundamental right does not allow me to direct what my child is exposed to in the public school,” the lawyer said.
We’re getting close to a point in which no Catholic parent should, in good conscience, send their child to a public school. This is fairly typical liberal thinking in which the Nanny State tells us what to think and believe and how to live our lives, right down to the minutest detail. For all their vaunted defenses of civil liberties, in the end the liberal establishment only cares about promotion of its pet ideologies.
This is the natural consequence of an ideology that believes that “it takes a village to raise a child,” not in the Catholic sense that the village nurtures and protects and creates an environment for the family to do the right, but in which the village takes charge of the individual and decides what each individual should and should not believe and do. In this mindset, it’s only natural for government officials to indoctrinate children into a mindset that the bureaucrats believe is good even against the wishes of the parents. The good of society—and especially the favored minorities in society—outweigh the rights of families and individuals.
Technorati Tags:childrearing, family, homosexuality, Massachusetts, parent’s rights, public education, school
The books that are at issue in this court case against the Lexington school system are only the tip of the iceberg. The curriculum that is being piloted at the Estabrook Elementary School is the Massachusetts LGBT Early Childhood Education Initiative-Making Room in the Circle.
To see for yourself the kind of indoctrination that is taking place, do a search at:
Parent Service Project: Lesbian,Gay,Bisexual and Transgendered Initiative.
There you will see “Making Room In The Circle”. Take a look at the “Glossary” section to see what the concepts are that are being taught as necessary concepts that the school thinks little children must learn.
“Pansexual” and “Two- Spirit” are among these concepts.
The ironic thing is that, in order to justify transgendered behavior, they use the belief that “the two-spirited person was one who had received a gift from the Creator, that gift being the privilege to house both male and female spirits in their bodies.”(p.14)
If a teacher ever said that the Creator created them(human beings) male and female, as Genesis states, that teacher would be accused of being “Transphobic”, which is another concept that the little children learn. Transphobia is defined as “The fear of a transgendered person and the hatred,discrimination,intolerance, and prejudice that this fear brings. Transphobia is manifested as harassment,threatened safety,disgust,ridicule,restrictions on freedom of movement,etc……………..”.
By the way, the Mass. Teachers Assoc.(MTA) wrote a brief to support the Lexington School “curriculum”. So any teachers who object to having to teach this curriculum will not receive any support from their teachers union. But all teachers have to pay the union dues!
I never though of homeschool, but definitely considering for my children in high school. They have plenty of online high schools much like online colleges. The concept of public education is such a recent trend in the whole historic concept of schooling, I think it is possible to even see it die out sooner then later.
I’ve seen now on more then one occassion the term “heterosexism”. Another Life Site story had that subject.
http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2007/feb/07021906.html
As a recently retired public high school history teacher in Mass. I saw this coming and am very glad I was able to retire. In Mass. everything possible is being done to make public schools moral cesspools—and with the virtual collapse of the Catholic school system it is worse than a dictatorship with nowhere to turn—except the extremely difficult for most families-home schooling.
Dom, I’m glad that you continue to advocate homeschooling. I’m sorry to have to disagree with the deacon, but I do not think that homescholing is “extremely difficult for most families.” In our early homeschooling years, most of the other homeschoolers we knew managed on limited incomes when compared to other families in our area. Some chose to live more simply, in small homes and with only one car (public transit being unavailable in most neighborhoods, a car was a necessity.) In comparison, these families also tended to more often sew much of their clothes, raise gardens, take advantage of free entertainment, and make other choices to stretch their budgets in order to have a parent at home (yes, it was mainly moms but we did have one dad in our group.) However, I don’t recall any who felt deprived or who resented the choices they needed to make so that homeschooling would be feasible. Only a few families purchased costly school-in-a-box programs. Most made use of the public library (& library loan program), support group libraries, and sharing among homeschoolers. I don’t want to downplay the time commitment that homeschooling requires, but neither do I want to see potential homeschoolers frightened by the notion that it’s too demanding or expensive to even consider attempting.
In our case, public schools were not an option, and the parochial schools in the states where we lived were not much better (if at all.) We ended up homeschooling until college. Our children were so well prepared that they earned multiple academic scholarships. More importantly, they remain active in the practice of their faith.
I encourage parents who are interested in homeschooling to learn about the laws in their state. Work to keep homeschooling legal and unencumbered. I pray that many more Catholic parents will exercise their right as the primary educators of their children.
WRT homeschooling in MA: there are great Catholic homeschooling groups around the state. For “starter” information, you could try looking for CHIME (Catholic Homeschoolers in Massachusetts East) at the Boston Catholic Men’s and Women’s Conferences in three weeks. Homeschooling is a do-able project for any family with a stay-at-home parent. There are lots of affordable materials, and lots of sources for second-hand materials, and lots of guidance from more experienced homeschoolers. Little kids are easier to switch over from school, and it’s easiest with those just starting, but wherever they are, you can do it.
Also, it will change your family life in an incredibly positive way—I wouldn’t have thought of this as a reason for homeschooling, but it’s one reason I stick with it. The kids are friends in a way that their cousins aren’t, and have learned to consider each other and work things out with each other beyond measure. Even if you return to the school system at some point, the homeschool closeness “sticks”.
I was just reading about the possibility of this legislation being passed in an old news clip yesterday! Grades pre-K to 12? That’s horrifying. I don’t know why more people don’t see this as brainwashing.
This sort of education, (because formal education is a reward system) is even more damaging than the pervasive media and the children’s “tolerant” peers. The “tolerant” environment has already caused my children confusion and emotional suffering. It does NOT lessen stereotyping and bullying, but INcreases them. We have little boys trying to figure out who is or isn’t gay even before they understand what that means, practically speaking. And if you want to disgust and anger a boy, try being the first person who has to tell him (even as delicately as possible) how “gay” persons engage in sex!!
Of course the Sex-Ed tolerance fanatics will say that the shock and anger occur because of a lack of preparatory education. They are wrong. The shock happens because the behavior is shocking. There IS quite a difference when a child is taught about conception and God’s design for marriage, including sexuality. There is initial embarrassment but once logic and wonder kick in, especially by use of the GREAT books available on life in the womb, even the “tough” kids admit to being “wonderfully made”. Not so when the teachers are LYING to our kids!!
I homesschooled my 2 youngest for 1 year – they opted to go back to public school which I gave them as their option.
My experience with the Catholic home school group was mixed – half of them were SSPX and schismatic, and tried at every meeting to convict the rest of us of their “truth”.
My point is this – no place is safe from falsehood and indoctrination into values which you do not hold. Homeschooling is not an innoculation from this miserable culture.
My daughter attended Fransiscan University with many homeschooled kids, some were very balanced and some were not. Some had been completely sheltered their entire lives, while others had held real part time jobs in the real world, had played on sports teams. etc. These were the more well balanced kids.
I absolutely believe in homeschooling, but for many, like myself, it is simply not an option. My approach with public school is to inform them of my beliefs and counter their lies told to my kids with the truth.
One of the things I expereinced through out middle school and beyond is the message “not to trust parents” or having teachers make you question your parent’s values. You see that a lot with these advocates, they portray parents as idiots who want to supress information from their children. What once use to be indoctrination during freshmen orientation at college is starting in 1st grade.
My parents themselves were unaware of the true
message from these advocates. When my parents back in the day didn’t blink of the idea of sex ed, and especially about STDs which my mother was all in favor, for she was a nurse who worked with patients who had STDs. She thought they were going to talk about anatomy, issues of emotional attachments, about how to prevent STDs not encourage it. She didn’t think they would be misinformation of risky sexual acts and promotion of non-marital sex with multiple partners over time. They had no clue, when they went to school they didn’t have to worry about advocates basically telling their children not to trust parent’s beliefs or ideals.
I second what Renee has said. My son, a senior at a “very good” public high school, has struggled in English all year. Why? Well, the teacher has an agenda. Read bits of the Bible? Job, together with poems questioning God’s goodness, and an awful modern play called “JB”. Read Shakespeare? Hamlet, together with “Waiting for Godot” and existentialism.
We’re coaching him through because he needs to pass, but the teacher has explicitly told him that he needs to open his mind to new ideas, which my son interpreted to mean that he should not listen to what we’re teaching him at home.
If anything, this teacher has driven my son closer to the Church (although I won’t pretend he’s on fire). But he’s not going to have the opportunity to “inspire” any of the others!
We did think of switching our son out of the class, BUT the three alternatives are the same or worse. And this is the English department, where every student MUST spend four years. We can opt out of the sex ed unit, but not English, and not the attitude that our children shouldn’t listen to us.