CHOIS Connection is published quarterly by Christian Homeschoolers Of Idaho State.
This article appeared in a previous issue.

CHOIS Connection

Resource Review
by Suzanne Reid

"America's Humanist Seminaries"
Fall 2006

In everyday conversations with pastors, employers, neighbors, and family members, home schoolers often find themselves giving a defense for their decision to home school. We all know why we left, but we may not know exactly what we left. In this issue of CHOIS Connection we will look at two books, which explain in detail what is going on in the public schools. The two books are The Harsh Truth about Public Schools by Bruce N. Shortt and Public Schools, Public Menace, How Public Schools Lie to Parents and Betray Our Children, by Joel Turtel.

The Harsh Truth about Public Schools, by Bruce Shortt, is not for the weak-minded or faint-hearted. Shortt bluntly presents the truth to a generation of Christians who are asleep at the wheel and need to be awakened before the entire culture careens into the pit of hell. A little exaggerative? Read On. Shortt's book is a must-read for every serious-minded Christian, for as he says, quoting R.L. Dabney:

With that in mind, this book should be given to every senior and youth pastor in America. While it may anger them with its facts, Shortt provides literally 1,152 references, which give evidence to his outrageous yet, unfortunately, true statements. It is time Christians hear the truth about the government schools. Shortt says that we need to tell them, and our pastors need to expose this truth to their congregations.

In chapter one, "Why Are You Educating Your Children at a Pagan Seminary?" Bruce engages the Christian to look at what's really being taught spiritually in the government schools. He starts out by bursting the myth that government schools operate within a religious neutrality by explaining that there is no such thing as a metaphysical neutrality. Rather, the fact that the government schools reject the Bible's teaching about God and the universe but accept other humanist worldviews makes them pagan seminaries. He outlines in depth many of the humanist worldviews and practices being taught in our schools. Classes include: New Age Spirituality, panentheism (all is becoming God), pantheism (all is god), Hinduism, Earth Day worship, Native American and Gaia religions, Wicca and Deep Ecology, Islam, and homosexuality, just to mention a few. He says the mindset among educators is "ABC," anything but Christianity. Worse yet, Shortt reveals that the educators hide their humanist agenda from parents. He quotes a signer of the first Humanist Manifesto, from 1930, "Education is thus a most powerful ally of humanism, and every public school is a school of humanism. What can the theistic Sunday school, meeting for an hour once a week, and teaching only a fraction of the children, do to stem the tide of a five-day program of humanistic teachings?"

Chapter two, "Do you like your daughter's nose-ring and Tongue Stud?" unmasks the amorality government schools teach our next generation. First they break all bonds to Christianity by teaching moral relativism, which purports that moral values are relative, subjective preferences, not based on any truth. Educators help students develop their own system of values in a "non-directive" approach via games, moral discussions in classrooms, writing assignments, etc. This process is "values clarification." Once students clarify for themselves right or wrong, they have no problem engaging in all kinds of sordid activities. Shortt spends the rest of the chapter elucidating the horrifying activities taking place at our middle and high schools.

In "My Child is on the Honor Roll," Shortt begins the chapter with statistical results of surveys given to parents, students, teachers, and administrators. The prognosis: performance is high and participants happy. He quickly begins to dispel the illusion revealing that "perception and reality are not the same." Our students are illiterate, and our college seniors don't know their American history. "The longer American students stay in government schools, the more ignorant they become in relation to their international peers." SAT's have changed significantly in 2003 and 2005 so that the test no longer accurately measures general academic aptitude. Such changes include "renorming" test scores, which gives higher scores for lower results, allowing calculators, eliminating the antonym test, eliminating verbal analogies, giving advantages to an increasing number of students with disabilities such as AD/HD and dyslexia. School districts misrepresent student results of various government testing by teaching the questions to the tests, by inflating scores, by lowering passing standards, by throwing out low test scores when compiling for statistical review, by instructing student cheating, by recording test scores of students from neighboring schools. Lastly, Shortt ends the chapter discussing the ill results of focusing on self-esteem. Infused with humanistic psychology, self-esteem programs undermine real academics, create social pathologies, and force the modification of curricula to include false and multicultural history to cater to the politically correct, leftist agenda.

In "A Blackboard Jungle," Shortt uncovers much of the wickedness, which our schoolchildren daily encounter in the shadows of the school halls. He begins the chapter comparing two types of institutions -- American and Canadian prisons with American government schools. In comparing the number of persons suffering violent crimes (rape, sexual, aggravated assault), for 1997 the rate in public schools was approximately 12 per 1000; while for U.S. federal prisons, for 1990 the rate was 7.4 per 1000. Shortt concludes "it appears that inmates in U.S. federal and Canadian prisons arguably may be as safe or safer from serious assaults than students in urban American middle schools and high schools." More disturbing is the fact that "crimes against persons" by elementary students doubled in California from 1995 to 2001. Shortt gives statistics for other states showing similar increases in aggressive behavior by elementary students. Schools underreport this school violence for fear of being labeled "persistently dangerous," and thus losing federal funding. In addition to violence, Shortt reveals evidence that suggests that sexual abuse of students by school employees is "likely more than 100 times the abuse by [Catholic] priests." Shortt moves onto the mental abuse being enacted on our sons. Through the aggressive work of radical feminists, Congress enacted the Women's Educational Equity Act in 1994. This legislation authorizes the Secretary of Education to offer grants for studies, programs, etc. which promote "gender equity" -- code for "deconstructing" boys and teaching them to think like girls. Bruce provides statistics, which reveal that girls are favored over boys. These "feminized schools" are creating a culture among boys where it is "cool not to learn," and, as a result, the Department of Education projects the 2007 enrollment in 2- and 4-year colleges to be 43% male and 57% female. Shortt moves onto the wicked fact that our government schools are emerging as the largest purveyor of toxic neuropharmacological drugs, such as Ritalin, to control and suppress our mentally and physically active students. Because it is a "gateway" drug to other drugs, such as cocaine, experts are characterizing Ritalin as perhaps "the greatest drug problem we have in this country." Shortt spends several pages discussing the controversies surrounding the pandemic ADHD diagnosis. He culminates the chapter asking the parent that if he puts his children under the authority of pagans during their most vulnerable years, "do you truly expect to be told at the end of your race, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant?'"

In "School Reform: A Popular Delusion," Shortt gives several reasons with supporting evidence why public schools are "unreformable." He explains the main reason why school reform will not take place is because the country's most politically powerful and economically wealthy unions will not allow reform. With 3.7 million members between the two largest teachers' unions, the National Education Association (NEA) and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), they have annual dues-based income of over a billion dollars, which they use to lobby their purposes. They effectively control school board elections. They control the pass rate on teacher competency examinations, such that there are no national standards for passing, and in many states teachers can pass with less than 50% accuracy, or loopholes are designed so that teachers can stay in the classrooms without any requirement of test taking. The unions dictate what teachers' colleges must teach and require for graduation -- graduates must demonstrate that "they are showing correct ‘dispositions' regarding diversity and that they are teaching ‘multicultural and global perspectives.'" While parents may think they are making a dent in the public school bus with charter schools and vouchers, these options are too little, too late. Additionally, with a $500 billion annual budget up for grabs each year, various special interest groups (teachers, textbook publishers, contractors, architects, engineers, food service workers, etc.) have joined with the unions to capture this significant source of revenue. They are not about to let parents remove their source of income.

Later in the book, Shortt gives the most concise, fascinating history of government schools in America that I have seen. He reveals that in an effort to proselytize the growing number of Irish Catholic immigrants in Massachusetts, our Protestant ancestors joined forces with the Unitarians, atheists, spiritualists, and other sectarians to establish the Common School -- the granddaddy of our current government school system. Just to learn this history is worth the price of the book.

Generations later, Protestants are still supporting the government schools. Combining statistics from various sources, Shortt estimates that 85% of Christians today send their children to the government schools; and to that group he dedicates a chapter, "Are Your Children Unequally Yoked?" Here he debunks the common excuses Christians give when defending their reasons for keeping their kids in "Pharoah's" schools. You know the list. He adds a few that you may not have encountered. Ultimately he asks the reader "why would you chose to give your children to an institution that is anti-Christian, that aggressively promotes anti-Christian values, that is physically dangerous, and that cripples children intellectually, and hope that your child will somehow pass through the fire unscathed?"

From here he provides hope to the reader with a chapter, "Leading Your Children into the Promised Land of Homeschooling and Christian Schools." It is a thorough, yet concise, chapter full of resources for locating and connecting with both home and Christian schools in one's area.

Bruce ends his book with a conciliatory chapter, "Postscript to Teachers and Administrators." Here he shares more war stories and encourages them to be true to their calling and Christian convictions.

The last 88 pages of the book are Shortt's endnotes. Typeset in 8-point type (really small) Shortt gives his evidence. Don't overlook this section, it is full of wonderful resources and websites to further one's education. Some of the reading in this section has given me some remarkable new insights and ideas for my home school, and I'm starting my tenth year.

My recommendation: Don't miss this book. It speaks to the Christian and is full of Scripture and wisdom.

Public Schools, Public Menace, How Public Schools Lie to Parents and Betray Our Children, by Joel Turtel

In presenting his case against the public schools, Joel Turtel draws from a varied background and makes a broad-based appeal. He holds a degree in psychology, has owned his own consulting firm, and has spent the past ten years as an educational policy analyst researching the state of America's public education, federal and state laws regarding public education, and the effects of public education on families. Syndicated radio talk host, Dr. Laura Schlessinger, recently featured his book on her show and recommended it as "a must read for every parent." Joel ultimately urges parents to pull their children out of the government schools and provides parents with resources for alternative educational methods. He states his goal in writing the book "was to convince parents that the public-school system is beyond repair." He concludes that, "The only way to fix the public schools is to scrap them."

Tracing the history of public education in America, Turtel begins his book by demonstrating that literacy rates have fallen in the United States with the introduction and increased domination of government education. In the 1850s, before compulsory, government-controlled public schools, literacy rates for children and adults averaged 90%. According to a 2002 annual report prepared by the New York State Education Department, student illiteracy ranges from 30% to 70% depending on race. More specifically, 70% of African-American kids cannot read and 65-70% of Hispanics cannot read. History of education reveals higher literacy rates in cultures where education is parent directed and funded.

Turtel argues that compulsory public schools are anti-parent, anti-Judeo-Christian and anti-American. The fact that each state has its own set of compulsory-attendance laws violates parental rights. He reminds us that Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA) represents an average of 365 families a year who have been charged of child abuse because they would not comply with compulsory-attendance laws. The public schools reveal their anti-parent, anti-Judeo-Christian and anti-American agendas in the following: 1) they claim themselves as the educational experts who know better than parents; 2) they unilaterally decide sexual education curriculum, which often violates children's innocence and parents' moral values; 3) they teach "values-clarification" classes which instruct children that moral values are subjective and meaningless -- there is no right and wrong; 4) they teach pagan religions and use behavior modification methods to indoctrinate anti-American and anti-Judeo-Christian values; 5) they use textbooks such as the National Standards for United States History, which distort history, teach multiculturalism, and promote anti-American sentiment.

Quoting several experts from their respective fields, Turtel explains why public schools are so corrupt. In teaching the three basics -- reading, writing and arithmetic -- Turtel says the teachers are dishonest, and their methods are incompetent and destructive to learning. Rather than teaching reading using phonics, many teachers use whole-language instruction, which is "student-centered, and an easy way out for ill-trained teachers who never learned the phonics method." Many public schools teach "creative spelling" and "new math," both of which have no correct answers. Because exact answers are no longer needed, tests scores are arbitrary, and higher, which benefits the teachers, principals and schools, not the student. Most insidious among public school instructional methods is Outcome-Based Education (OBE). Portrayed as a method where no student fails, OBE programs do not improve academic skills but teach politically correct attitudes.

Turtel discusses other ways besides instructional methods in which our public schools harm our students. He describes situations in inner-city schools where teachers exhibit racist attitudes by expecting lower results from low-income minorities. Public schools pressure parents into drugging their alleged hyperactivity with drugs, such as Ritalin. He notes that the United States consumes 85% of the world consumption of Ritalin, and that the drug is a "gateway" drug leading to dependence on further drugs. The drug has deadly side effects and can cause kids, especially boys, to become violent. One of the teenagers who shot six students in the Columbine High School massacre was on Ritalin.

Turtel explains that public schools get away with criminal behavior because "they are protected by government compulsion." Local and state governments pass compulsory attendance laws, forcing parents to put their children in the government schools. This is un-American because the Constitution never gave government any right or power to control how parents educate their children. The public school monopoly continues as long as government provides for it with compulsory taxation.

The last third of his book, Turtel dedicates to helping parents discover the alternatives to public school. He provides a list of 22 danger signals that parents should look for in their publicly educated children to determine if they need to be yanked immediately. Among the options he suggests are private, internet, virtual charter, and home schools. He spends the most time discussing the values, difficulties, advantages and mechanics of home schooling. His final chapter includes eighteen pages of resources for the forenamed options. It includes a great listing of resources, most of which could be found online through HSLDA.

Public Schools, Public Menace is a thorough, scholarly exposé of the status quo of the public school system. Turtel presents the facts in a secular approach, which appeals to a mass audience. Finally, because Shortt approaches the subject from a Christian perspective, his arguments provide more depth and insight to the Christian thinker -- at least to this Christian thinker.

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