Wednesday, July 1, 2015

Attn Christians--Why Are You Feeding Your Kids to the System?

Disclaimer-This post might not apply to you. If there is absolutely no way to exist on one salary, do not read this post. If your kids aren't in public school, this post does not apply to you. If you are not a Bible-believing, Christ following Christian, this post does not apply to you. If you fall in those categories and keep reading, you're probably going to get mad. Finally, if you are a teacher or work in the school system, you probably shouldn't read this either, even if you don't fit in any of the other categories. If you don't fall in those categories, you might get offended or mad, but I cannot keep silent. So read the rest at your own risk.

There are two common reasons that people think that they can't homeschool, so I will address those first. The first is cost. Homeschooling does not have to be expensive and can often be done for little or no cost if your budget is tight. My blog is still in it's baby phase, but I'm not the only one with a mission to help people homeschool on a tight budget. If you google "free homeschool curriculum," you will get a lot of results. There are also used curriculum sites and sales and homeschooler communities where members pass down their old curriculum. So cost is not really a dealbreaker.

The other one is that people say there's no way they could teach their own kids. They say that their kids won't listen to them or they don't have the patience. There is some truth to this, but there's an amazing reward that balances out the bad days. The time you spend with your kids might make you all feel irritable and crazy some days, but there are a lot more days where you will enjoy watching their excitement when they finally understand a tough lesson. There are days when you will take an impromptu field trip and get to experience the zoo or a hike or any other opportunities available to homeschoolers. There are days when you will be able to skip lessons and just have some fun with your kids and that will be ok too. And since you know your kids best, you'll be able to adjust to their learning style and teach them in ways that really encourage learning.

With those two objections out of the way, I'm ready to tackle this subject. There is a war in this country against parental rights and the schools are a powerful instrument. When you send your kids away for 7 or more hours a day to be taught in a secular school, you are handing over a large portion of their time to a place that teaches different values. No matter how good your local school is or how amazing the teachers are, the curriculum undermines some of the basic beliefs of the Bible. And a lot of times, you won't even know what extra lessons are being taught or what information is being gathered from your children. With the recent supreme court action to create a law instead of simply performing their intended function, the fight for our children's minds and hearts just got tougher. Families are being redefined and the curriculum is going to reflect that. Instead of discussions about same sex relationships being part of sex ed, it will now be taught as part of the curriculum or under the guise of anti-bullying programs where parents have no option to opt out of the lesson. Books that promote the LGBT agenda will be part of story time in younger grades and on the reading lists for older grades. Christian parents might be able to counteract this exposure during the evening and weekend hours, but it will take a lot of work.

So many parents trust that the schools are promoting open communication and sending any important information home. However, check the news and you'll plenty of stories of children being offered things in the schools that most parents would refuse if given the option. Consider this story in Seattle, where children as young as 13 are being offered IUDs and other potent contraceptives without parental consent. Health risks of the procedure aside, the quote from Katie Acker, one of the providers, should show the really alarming truth of the matter:

“Because we’re at the school, which is so wonderful, we have access to the students, and they have access to us, pretty much any time.”

Access to your children and the ability to offer them things that you might not agree with from a medical or religious standpoint. Combine that with the teen culture of peer pressure and you might have a higher number of kids using these services than they would if they were not being offered it in the schools. If you think you're safe from this because you don't live in Seattle, you're being deceived. Things that are allowed in other states will spread until it is enforced on a federal level. Here are a few more examples that support the alarming trend--

Florida Schools Illegally Take Iris Scans of Students Without Parental Knowledge


Fairfax County Moves Ahead to Add ‘Gender Identity’ to Curricula

These programs and policy changes are not isolated and are spreading. In Florida, had the child not told his parents what had happened, they would have been able to continue in the future until someone did speak up. Other districts push for abstinence only education, but where is the push to leave sex education as a job left to the parents? With all the complaints that teachers only teach to the tests and don't have enough time in the day to teach all the material, why are they teaching about sex at all? The argument that some parents don't teach their kids at home so it is the schools' role to step in and teach it is the prevailing argument. I have a solution--if I want to be the one to teach my kids about sex, I'll just go ahead and do it since I am in charge of their education. And since the schools will do it when they think it's appropriate and possibly without my permission, I will just remove the schools from the equation.

I don't understand how parents that want to raise their kids to follow Christ can send their kids to the schools and expect that their beliefs won't be questioned and systematically eroded. I must admit that the supreme court ruling, the controversy over the confederate flag, and the passing of the mandatory vaccination law in California created the perfect storm that pushed me over the edge. The importance of a strong family is no longer valued and history is being rewritten. Christianity is mocked while every other religion is given preference and government involvement is our family's personal lives are getting out of control. Handing your kids over to the government educational system furthers the agenda and gives them more hold over the future generation. How are we to have any hope of Christianity to continue into the next ten or twenty years if it's being undermined on a daily basis by the government that has proven to be opposed to it and the culture that hates it?

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