Mind control or gun control

The core of federal interference in education is deep-seated in the national standards that public schools have been coerced to accept. The carrot dangled as incentive to bring state and county education administrators in line is the usual one… money. National standards have subverted every aspect of education, from teacher training to the pervading test-oriented teaching practices now employed across the board. Having taught education majors and possessing an advanced degree in the field, I may be able to offer some perspective on the issue, especially as one who disagreed with much of the claptrap that I was expected to consume without dissent (not that I did). (There are times when running to beat the news cycle can cause more trouble than taking the time to state your case with a level of coherence. My friendly proofer noted some things that needed deeper explanation in addressing the failure of education, particularly clarifying that teachers are looked upon as a cog in the wheel of institutionalized education. In the eyes of the union and the state, teaching is no longer a calling it is an occupation. The difference is apparent in how teachers are now trained and expected to do their jobs. Thank God for the teachers who still answer to the call and not the government.) The narrative currently running the media is the same as always – guns and racism, racism and guns. The press is largely restricted to these two reasons for every ill in our society much because modern journalists, bloggers and commentators are products of the public education system. Education philosophies have been instilled in teachers that blame everything except the institution for poor learning outcomes in the classroom. The illegitimate concept that social inequality is the driving force for students’ inability to cope with studies, let alone life, has incapacitated generations of Americans going forward.

How was this accomplished? Stigmatizing achievement as “unfair” and making it a result of being disadvantaged by lack of privilege (race, sexual orientation, family ‘de’-structure, etc.), that’s how. The Sun-Sentinel (the article has since been deleted) and ABC hopped onto the gravy train of blaming white supremacy by picking up a blog from the Anti-Defamation League (having dropped the B’nai B’rith name correlation) that said it connected the shooter to an alt-right group. Neither news organization bothered to follow-up on the claim (the idea of ‘primary source’ having been thrown out with the advent of progressive and social media journalism), disregarding photos of the suspect sporting communist/Antifa t-shirts which would appear to belie the white supremacy argument. (Come to find out hours after I wrote this that ADL was indeed punked.) Face it, even today’s ADL isn’t doing its job of standing up against anti-Semitism by equating all faiths and creeds, basically eschewing God in so doing. It has become a secular political lobby. …Which brings this column around to where it was intended to go – faithlessness. President Trump touched on the role of faith in his address to the nation February 15, 2018, for which he is sure to be vilified. Yet it is the rejection of faith in God that is at the center of this and every other act of violence infiltrating the schools, and it is by way of this lack of moral guidelines that the violence is disseminated throughout American (European and others’) society. Our education system is both the seminary and the mission field of anti-faith in this country. One commentator properly questioned why parents are not shouldering responsibility for the drastic increase in school shootings by students. Abdication of parental duty feeds directly into education that stresses immature self-focus and instructs children to believe nothing except the government prescribed curriculum. Removing all aspects of Judeo-Christian faith from schools (Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, Atheism and other religions are freely encouraged) leaves students bereft of superior knowledge of the universe. They are expected to accept the secular view of science, forgetting that God created that as well, as the source for answers to unanswerable queries. The lack of connection to the spirit that resides in each person leads to reliance on the visual and tangible, which is, if anything, unreliable even according to secularly accepted nanoscience – that which is too small to be seen is explained by theory. Believing that youth’s limited worldly experience, which fuels unreasoned passion, is the be-all and end-all of existence leads to tragic events like what we witnessed in Parkland. Senseless, brutal acts stem from the root of teaching that feelings are valid above all else. Emotion is king in the current incarnation of education. But emotion blinds the educated from recognizing the King of Kings where lies real help, solace and peace.