Sharman Burson Ramsey's Blog, page 4
August 12, 2022
THE NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION/ALABAMA EDUCATION ASSOCIATION IS WOKE AND PERHAPS THE SOURCE OF WOKE
I. The National Education Association (NEA) /Alabama Education Association (AEA) is a political organization that supports Democrats and yet every Alabama taxpayer is forced to support an organization that stands for issues contrary to the beliefs of most Americans.
A. NEA 1-18. The Association also believes that members have the right to have payroll deductions of both Association members dues and voluntary political contributions. (1982, 2013).
https://www.nea.org/sites/default/files/2021-09/NEA%20Resolutions_2021-2022.pdf
This payroll deduction scheme happens in every school across our state/country. Secretaries and bookkeepers deduct Association dues and voluntary political contributions. This is an in-kind contribution to an organization determined to control what our children learn and how they are taught.
B. NEA J-3 Association believes that school policies should provide release time without loss of pay who are fulfilling leadership responsibilities, attending meetings or participating in other Association activities.
The association believes that all members have the right to receive union communications at their work sites from their local, state and national associations.
Once again, union leaders are frequently found in the schools on union business rather than the business of educating children. Teachers should also have the right not to be intimidated into joining that Marxist organization.
C. NEA F-36 The Association believes that school board policies should allow the provision of release time without loss of pay for those who are fulfilling leadership responsibilities, attending meetings, appearing in court in their roles as advocates, or participating in other Association activities. The Association also believes affiliates should be allowed uncensored and unencumbered use of school property for conducting Association business. (1976, 2015)
The National Education Association expects citizens to pay for their organization activities and the place to conduct their business. Our schools.
II. This Left Wing Lobbyist Organization demands control of credentialing of teachers.
A. NEA G-6 Accreditation of Teacher Preparation Institutions.
The National Education Association believes that teacher preparation programs must be approved at two levels: at the state level through an agency such as a professional standards board and at the national level through the Council for the Accreditation of Educator Preparation (CAEP).
The Association also believe that CAEP and its governing boards must include representatives of all levels of the teaching professional as well as aspiring educators.
In other words, those who have brought our children's academic standards to a new low, will determine who will teach and what is to be taught. The public has no say. Just this Left Wing Lobbying group posturing to be a professional organization.
In addition to certifying teachers, the National Education Association has assumed the position to police those who hold certification.
This affects public and private schools that require teacher certification before hiring.
G-2 The National Education Association supports voluntary national certification by which the professor grants recognition to an individual who has met qualification specified by the profession (meaning them). The Association recognizes that this function is filled by the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS), which is composed of a majority of practicing public school teachers. (Members of the NEA)
The NBPTS establishes appropriate assessment procedures by which individuals demonstrate exemplary practice in pedagogy and in subject matter areas, issues certificates to all individuals who meet NBPTS-established standards, maintains a roster of those who have been certificated, and encourages reciprocity with state professional standards boards.
The Association also supports the periodic evaluation of such certification procedures to ascertain whether cultural, economic, gender, racial, age, or other biases are perpetuated by the requirements for certification.
In other words, teachers, they have your number. NTBPTS determines those appropriate assessments. But, not for academic excellence. Their pedagogy has more concern for attitudes and beliefs.
Please notice in G-3 under Licensure that the National Education Association and its affiliate the Alabama Education Association oppose standard literacy and basic skills tests to determine competency.
III. Curriculum choices by the NEA
WHAT IS CRITICAL RACE THEORY?Critical Race Theory (commonly abbreviated as CRT) refers to a way of analyzing systems, institutions, and power through a lens of race and racism.
Central to Critical Race Theory is the idea that many institutions are built on and enforce systemic racism and oppression of people of color, that this racism and oppression have a long history in the US and the world (including slavery and its legacy), and that they are ongoing and driven by white supremacy.
As an academic, intellectual, or philosophical discipline or school or thought, Critical Race Theory is broad and encompasses the discussion and use of many related concepts and terms, such as implicit bias, intersectionality, and white privilege.
Critical Race Theory has widespread influence among scholars who study race and racism and is also applied by scholars and professionals in other fields, including law and education. It is part of or is the basis for part of the curriculum in some schools and universities. (Politics by Dictionary.com)
A. The Right of Redress for Descendants of Slaves
B. Opposition to all forms of Discrimination except against the "white supremacy culture." (See below)
C. Observances should include Cesar Chavez Day and the Indigenous Peoples' Day
Did you get the irony of them saying they opposed all forms of discrimination and then do a special discrimination statement against what they call a White Supremacy Culture? And they are a Left Wing Union, so of course these liberation pedagogists promoting Paolo Freire's theories from Pedagogy of the Oppressed must change Columbus Day to Indigenous People's Day and insert another special day to honor a labor organizer like themselves, Cesar Chavez.
"inimical to the ideals of the association." I wonder, do they realize that they are an extremist group working in every school in our nation? Intimidating teachers by their power and constant presence in the schools, they threaten teachers who do not want to be part of their cult. They are a cult because they pursue their Marxist ends with religious fervor.
IV. Curriculum choices by the National Education Association
NEA H-13 Please note that historic preservation does not extend to Confederate monuments. The National Education Association has decreed and will teach all the students of our country that those monuments are a form of white supremacy that should be removed, rather than a teaching opportunity. “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” – George Santayana, The Life of Reason, 1905.
In addition one wonders what their definition of "white supremacy" really means. Does it mean the simple fact that one is "white"? How does that discrimination affect a white child?
NEA E-7 B-41 The National Education Association has decided Multiculturalism should replace American History and World History. The goal of Multiculturalism is to divide our nation into tribes in order to bring about the revolution these radicals truly seek. Rather than continue an America that is a melting pot that brings these cultures together under the aegis of a democratic republic in which free speech, opportunity and character over color can bring about success. But everything they promote, every method they use, divides.
A. They are dividing students into tribes rather than teaching the true history of our country and developing a cultural appreciation for what makes America great and encouraging nationalism. These curriculum topics are to be integrated into every subject. Do you see Reading, Writing, Mathematics, History here?
An example of their choice for Multicultural Education is Howard Zinn's book, A People's History of the United States.
Howard Zinn-- (author of the textbook now popular A People's History of the United States)-
A People’s History of the United States is a 700-page tome that covers the history of America from 1492 to the Iraq War. Zinn seeks to trace the history of “people’s struggles” against the rich and powerful. As he explains:
“We must not accept the memory of states as our own. Nations are not communities and never have been. The history of any country, presented as the history of a family, conceals fierce conflicts of interest (sometimes exploding, most often repressed) between conquerors and conquered, masters and slaves, capitalists and workers, dominators and dominated in race and sex. And in such a world of conflict, a world of victims and executioners, it is the job of thinking people, as Albert Camus suggested, not to be on the side of the executioners.”
From the website Defense of Marxism: A Marxist appraisal of Howard Zinn’s “A People’s History of the United States” by Guthrie Burnett-Tison18 January 2022. https://www.marxist.com/a-marxist-appraisal-of-howard-zinn-s-a-people-s-history-of-the-united-states.htm
This philosophy has invaded Mathematics as well.
NATIONAL COUNCIL OF TEACHERS OF MATHEMATICS--call for teachers to move away from the traditional emphasis on computational skills like multiplication tables and algorithms—a teaching method that university mathematicians still favor but that many K–12 math teachers dismiss as “drill and kill.” Teachers (particularly liberal and left-leaning teachers) who instead use a “constructivist” or “discovery-based” pedagogy, sometimes called “fuzzy math,” in which students learn mathematical concepts by trying to solve real-life problems, will see Gutstein’s social justice lessons on how military budgets for the war in Iraq deny poor Americans their fair share of resources as an advance beyond problems about baseball statistics, shopping, or building. (https://www.city-journal.org/html/ed-schools’-latest—and-worst—humbug-12948.html)
Remember when they speak of "integrated" curriculum they mean taught in every subject. So, if the district adopts a certain pet education, death education, sex education or conflict resolution curriculum, it is to be taught in every subject. And here it is in Math.
https://gellerreport.com/2022/08/queer-mathematics-in-public-schools.html/
The Association has decided they should teach sex education rather than the child’s parents. And sex education should begin in Kindergarten. They believe they are best equipped to teach character education as well as Social, Emotional Learning (SEL that Dr. James Lindsay calls, "a psychology based syringe to inject the Marxist theories."
With these dark books it is little wonder child suicide has increased and little revolutionaries created. They themselves admit, violence is now greater in our schools, suicide is up, drugs are more frequently used, and yet they set themselves up as the cure. We see them and their agenda as the cause that must be quickly usurped.
Please note that "Educators and health professionals must be qualified to teach in this area (qualified by whom?) and must be legally protected from censorship and lawsuits." This means they are the single arbiter and not parents.
So they can do what they like with our children.
This is k-12. Planned Parenthood writes the sex education curriculum. Books like this advance an agenda through this Left Wing group that controls our schools, universities, and the Department of Education. The foreword for Queering Elementary Education: Advancing the Dialogue about Sexualities and Schooling was written by Kevin Jennings -- GLSEEN's (Gay Lesbian & Straight Education Network) founder who served as the Assistant Deputy Secretary of Education for the Office of Safe and Drug Free Schools. He was recommended to Obama by Bill Ayers. According to their website, these were long-time partners in the education world: National Association of School Psychologists, Learning First Alliance, The National Association of Secondary School Principals, Council for Exceptional Children, Social Workers Association of America, and the American Federation of Teachers.
C-12 Student Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity and Gender Expression
The National Education Association believes that all persons, regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity, should be afforded equal opportunity and guaranteed a safe and inclusive environment within the public education system. The Association also believes a safe and inclusive environment ensures that all transgender students have access to the bathroom or locker of their choice and protects them from breaches of confidentiality. The Association believes that LGBTQ students have the right to privacy and confidentiality regarding their sexual orientation, gender identity, and gender expression. Further, educators must respect these students and their choice of whether or not to reveal their orientation, identity, or expression.
The Association further believes that, for students who are struggling with their sexual orientation, gender identity or gender expression, every school district and educational institution should provide counseling services and programs--staffed by trained personnel--that deal with high suicide and dropout rates and the high incidence of teen prostitution. The Association further believes that therapies designed to alter a student's orientation or identity are harmful to the emotional development of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, non-binary, and questioning (LGBTQ+) students. Therefore, students should have access to gender affirming health care.
The Association believes that all transgender students should be able to use the bathroom or locker room of their choice.
What do they mean when they say students should have access to gender affirming health care? Do parents get to be involved in this "gender affirming" health care? Do these people support the mutilation of small children whom they have confused (gender dysphoria) with their "lessons"? Are they coming at innocent children during a time of their natural development when they prefer playing with children of their own sex and confuse them into thinking this is a "trans" issue? They admit to intentionally using constructivist methodology to create cognitive dissonance in children.
Please note here that Constructivist teaching relies upon CREATING COGNITIVE DISSONANCE. Is it any wonder we have confused, often violent children BECAUSE of the constructivist methods and curriculum that is forced upon children at an inappropriate age? They know what they are doing. They WANT children to challenge the fixed beliefs of their parents.
NEA C-47 Does this mean that a boy who decides he is a girl can compete with the girls? Just make sure the funding is there.
V. Solution?
a. Pass legislation barring the National Education Association and the Alabama Education Association members from using taxpayer funded buildings. Bar taxpayer funded book keepers from payroll deductions for Association dues or donation. Bar Association representatives from free access to the schools because their presence is in itself a form of intimidation to those who do not want to join. Legislate certification for teachers that will bypass the influence of the NEA and AEA through their certification controls.
b. Remember the old adage: Those who can -do, those who can't- teach, those who can't teach- teach teachers. We must return to the traditional teacher directed classes with the old knowledge in content areas using teacher directed methods that got us to the moon. (in contrast the guide on the side using inferential methods, thematic instruction, reinstitute drill and repetition as accepted methods, especially in math, and systematic, intensive, direct and early phonics instruction.)
Please notice that traditional grades were objective. the Standards-based grading is extremely subjective.
What was it we had before this misguided union gained control of our schools and the minds of our children?
PAIDEIA--Paideia, a Greek word that means both instruction and enculturation, was invented by the ancient Athenians who knew that they could not preserve their democracy without passing down their culture to morally self-regulating citizens who could think logically and act nobly.
WESTERN CHRISTIAN PAIDEIA (WCP)--The Greeks accomplished WCP through an educational system steeped in tradition that shaped its pupils in accordance with universal standards of reason and virtue.
“Paideia, simply defined,” Pete Hegseth explains, “represents the deeply seated affections, thinking, viewpoints, and virtues embedded in children at a young age, or, more simply, the rearing, molding, and education of a child.” On the basis of this paideia, the Western world established a “vision of ‘the good life’ [that] went virtually unchanged and unchallenged for centuries. It was tied to traditional families, church, communities, industriousness, and a virtuous population.” It was that vision, and the WCP on which it was founded and sustained, that the progressives systematically rooted out of American schools. (Battle for the American Mind)
CLASSICAL VIRTUE--Virtue, properly understood, is rooted in the affections of a person as they align to God’s affections.”
This is what made America the shining light upon the hill that still beckons immigrants from around the world. But that light it is fading fast and must be reclaimed.
Either provide parents the funds to send their children to the school of their choice unencumbered by federal regulations instituted by the National Education Association and their minions, or radically change public education and teacher training. We must defund the National Education Association/Alabama Education Association throughout Alabama and the nation.
August 8, 2022
THREE DAYS OF DARKNESS PROPHECY
https://www.kingjamesbibleonline.org/bible-verses-like_Revelation-8-12/
“And the fourth angel sounded, and the third part of the sun was smitten, and the third part of the moon, and the third part of the stars; so as the third part of them was darkened, and the day shone not for a third part of it, and the night likewise.”
Isaiah 13:10 - For the stars of heaven and the constellations thereof shall not give their light: the sun shall be darkened in his going forth, and the moon shall not cause her light to shine. (Verses like Isaiah 13:10)
Joel 2:10 - The earth shall quake before them; the heavens shall tremble: the sun and the moon shall be dark, and the stars shall withdraw their shining: (Verses like Joel 2:10)
Joel 2:31 - The sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before the great and the terrible day of the LORD come. (Verses like Joel 2:31)
Zechariah 13:8-9 - And it shall come to pass, that in all the land, saith the LORD, two parts therein shall be cut off and die; but the third shall be left therein.And I will bring the third part through the fire, and will refine them as silver is refined, and will try them as gold is tried: they shall call on my name, and I will hear them: I will say, It ismy people: and they shall say, The LORD is my God. (Verses like Zechariah 13:8)
Revelation 6:12 - And I beheld when he had opened the sixth seal, and, lo, there was a great earthquake; and the sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and the moon became as blood; (Verses like Revelation 6:12)
Revelation 8:7-12 - The first angel sounded, and there followed hail and fire mingled with blood, and they were cast upon the earth: and the third part of trees was burnt up, and all green grass was burnt up.And the second angel sounded, and as it were a great mountain burning with fire was cast into the sea: and the third part of the sea became blood;And the third part of the creatures which were in the sea, and had life, died; and the third part of the ships were destroyed.And the third angel sounded, and there fell a great star from heaven, burning as it were a lamp, and it fell upon the third part of the rivers, and upon the fountains of waters;And the name of the star is called Wormwood: and the third part of the waters became wormwood; and many men died of the waters, because they were made bitter.And the fourth angel sounded, and the third part of the sun was smitten, and the third part of the moon, and the third part of the stars; so as the third part of them was darkened, and the day shone not for a third part of it, and the night likewise. (Verses like Revelation 8:7)
Revelation 9:15 - And the four angels were loosed, which were prepared for an hour, and a day, and a month, and a year, for to slay the third part of men. (Verses like Revelation 9:15)
Revelation 9:18 - By these three was the third part of men killed, by the fire, and by the smoke, and by the brimstone, which issued out of their mouths. (Verses like Revelation 9:18)
Revelation 12:4 - And his tail drew the third part of the stars of heaven, and did cast them to the earth: and the dragon stood before the woman which was ready to be delivered, for to devour her child as soon as it was born. (Verses like Revelation 12:4)
Exodus 10:21-29 - And the LORD said unto Moses, Stretch out thine hand toward heaven, that there may be darkness over the land of Egypt, even darkness which may be felt.And Moses stretched forth his hand toward heaven; and there was a thick darkness in all the land of Egypt three days:They saw not one another, neither rose any from his place for three days: but all the children of Israel had light in their dwellings.And Pharaoh called unto Moses, and said, Go ye, serve the LORD; only let your flocks and your herds be stayed: let your little ones also go with you.And Moses said, Thou must give us also sacrifices and burnt offerings, that we may sacrifice unto the LORD our God.Our cattle also shall go with us; there shall not an hoof be left behind; for thereof must we take to serve the LORD our God; and we know not with what we must serve the LORD, until we come thither.But the LORD hardened Pharaoh's heart, and he would not let them go.And Pharaoh said unto him, Get thee from me, take heed to thyself, see my face no more; for in that day thou seest my face thou shalt die.And Moses said, Thou hast spoken well, I will see thy face again no more. (Verses like Exodus 10:21)
Joel 3:15 - The sun and the moon shall be darkened, and the stars shall withdraw their shining. (Verses like Joel 3:15)
Isaiah 24:23 - Then the moon shall be confounded, and the sun ashamed, when the LORD of hosts shall reign in mount Zion, and in Jerusalem, and before his ancients gloriously. (Verses like Isaiah 24:23)
Jeremiah 4:23 - I beheld the earth, and, lo, it was without form, and void; and the heavens, and they had no light. (Verses like Jeremiah 4:23)
Ezekiel 32:7-8 - And when I shall put thee out, I will cover the heaven, and make the stars thereof dark; I will cover the sun with a cloud, and the moon shall not give her light.All the bright lights of heaven will I make dark over thee, and set darkness upon thy land, saith the Lord GOD. (Verses like Ezekiel 32:7)
Amos 8:9 - And it shall come to pass in that day, saith the Lord GOD, that I will cause the sun to go down at noon, and I will darken the earth in the clear day: (Verses like Amos 8:9)
Matthew 24:29 - Immediately after the tribulation of those days shall the sun be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars shall fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens shall be shaken: (Verses like Matthew 24:29)
Matthew 27:45 - Now from the sixth hour there was darkness over all the land unto the ninth hour. (Verses like Matthew 27:45)
Mark 13:24 - But in those days, after that tribulation, the sun shall be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, (Verses like Mark 13:24)
Mark 15:33 - And when the sixth hour was come, there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour. (Verses like Mark 15:33)
Luke 21:25 - And there shall be signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars; and upon the earth distress of nations, with perplexity; the sea and the waves roaring; (Verses like Luke 21:25)
Luke 23:44-45 - And it was about the sixth hour, and there was a darkness over all the earth until the ninth hour.And the sun was darkened, and the veil of the temple was rent in the midst. (Verses like Luke 23:44)
Acts 2:20 - The sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before that great and notable day of the Lord come: (Verses like Acts 2:20)
2 Corinthians 4:4 - In whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them. (Verses like 2 Corinthians 4:4)
2 Thessalonians 2:9-12 - Even him, whose coming is after the working of Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders,And with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish; because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved.And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie:That they all might be damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness. (Verses like 2 Thessalonians 2:9)
Revelation 16:8-9 - And the fourth angel poured out his vial upon the sun; and power was given unto him to scorch men with fire.And men were scorched with great heat, and blasphemed the name of God, which hath power over these plagues: and they repented not to give him glory. (Verses like Revelation 16:8)
THE WORMWOOD PROPHECY?
August 3, 2022
YOUR NOVEMBER 8 MIDTERM ELECTION VOTE MATTERS!
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2 Timothy 3: 1-5
3 This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come. For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy,
Without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good,
Traitors, heady, high-minded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God;
Having a form of godliness but denying the power thereof: from such turn away.
Ephesians 6:10-13
10 Finally, my brethren, be strong in the Lord and in the power of His might.
11 Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil.
12 For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places.
13 Therefore take up the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand.
Your word says to “stand our ground,” and that’s what we will do, in the power of your Name. The enemy has no control over us, and we bring your word of Truth as weapon against his schemes. We know that we do not fight alone, for you are constantly at work on behalf of your children, shielding, protecting, strengthening, exposing deeds of darkness, bringing to light what needs to be known, covering us from the cruel attacks we face even when we’re unaware.
We ask that you would give us wisdom and discernment to recognize the schemes of the enemy in our lives and to stand strong against his work. We ask that you would remind us to pray, constantly, for all believers. We ask that you would help us to stay alert in a dark world that tries hard to make things look “not so bad.” We ask that you would equip us to be salt and light, that we would be loving and gracious, yet unyielding to sin.
We ask that you help us to remember to put on your armor daily, for you give us all that we need to stand firm in this day. We thank you that though you remind us in your word that the whole world lies under the power of the evil one, you are still far greater and we have overcome, because you have set us free.
We ask you to guard, guide and protect those whom you have called. They answered “Here am I, send me, Lord.” They stand in the gap for us and our precious children.” Grant them wisdom and courage.
We thank you for your truth, “no weapon formed that is formed against you will prosper,” and that you tell us this is our “heritage” in you, our inherited blessing, place of possession, and gift straight from your hand. We love you Lord. We need you. We stand together in your great and powerful Name. In Jesus’ Name, Amen. (Debbie McDaniel)
July 24, 2022
THE LEFTIST INVASION OF READING INSTRUCTION BY DR. Patrick Groff
Dr. Patrick Groff was professor emeritus at San Diego State University. He was author of numerous books and articles. He also was consultant for the Right to Read Foundation and was a frequent contributor to that newsletter. This article was refused by professional journals for obvious reasons considering the political climate in those education circles.
THE LEFTIST INVASION OF READING INSTRUCTION
BY
PATRICK GROFF
Purposes of Reading Instruction Challenged
A new, exceedingly radical approach to reading development, called "Whole Language," (WL) has insinuated itself into the nation's schools. Even the critics of whole language concede that it is "a very active and prominent movement. More and more, it dominates journals, conferences, agendas, workshop and inservice opportunities, course offerings, and even basic design and marketing strategies" (Adams, 1991, p. 40). "Never have I witnessed anything like the rapid spread of the whole-language movement," exclaims a college of education dean (Pearson, 1989, p. 231).
Some Definitions of WL
That those who write about WL have difficulty defining it was substantiated by Bergeron's (1990) study. She examined sixty-four journal articles, published between 1979 and 1989, in which WL was defined. Bergeron discovered on the one hand, that WL was identified as a theory, a philosophy, a general attitude by teachers, or a generic approach or orientation toward teaching. However, other journal articles viewed WL differently, that is, as a program or a curriculum. "One cannot draw from the literature a concise definition for whole language because no such definition was found to exist," she concluded (p. 318).
Nonetheless, there are some distinctive features of WL described by its leaders. They view learning to read and to speak as the same process, one no more difficult to learn than the other. Therefore, it is said, there is no need for direct and systematic teaching of reading. No controls over the vocabulary presented young learners is necessary. Furthermore WL adopts the "deconstructionist" view of written language, that is, that its meaning is decided by the individual reader, rather than its author. A common assumption of WL is that reading is a "guessing game." The fact that the experimental research on reading development does not support these WL tenets is dismissed by the
heads of the WL movement. Empirical evidence is invalid, they assert. Only the anecdotal data we gather is authentic.
The Political Agenda of Whole Language
The kingpins of the WL scheme protest that descriptions of WL may fail to report on another vital aspect of WL. This sometimes overlooked feature of WL is said to be the political nature and ramifications of WL. This omission has been rectified by the Whole Language Catalog (Goodman, et al., 1991), a volume that comes as close as any other to being an "official" statement about WL. Two of the editors of this book were founders of the WL movement. The Whole Language Catalog provides space for three interrelated explanations of the special political conformations and goals of WL.
To become a full-fledged, bona fide member of the WL undertaking, the political commentators of the Whole Language Catalog emphasize, teachers are required to work not just for "a change in the social and political structures of schooling and society" (Altwerger & Flores, 1991, p. 418). Reflected here is the contention that "whole language teaching, in its best sense, can be seen as a political activity"
(Rich, 1989, p. 226).
Thus, to gain the status of an authentic WL teacher one must "engage daily in a political battle" (Altwerger& Flores, 1991, p. 418). In practical terms, this means teachers must "join with others in the wider social movements that aim at democratizing (i.e., socializing) our economy, politics and culture" (Apple, 1991, p. 416). It is necessary, then that WL teachers "openly acknowledge" politically "progressive
views of literacy" (Giroux, 1991, p. 417).
The political activity by WL teachers called for the Whole Language Catalog, the volume makes clear, is not that designed to buttress a politically conservative view of schools and society. To the contrary, the message here is that WL must be used as a means to aid and abet politically leftist goals and policies. Political action by the WL teacher thus should aim at the realization of radically new values and ideals, the Whole Language Catalog stresses. By all means, therefore, WL must avoid shoring up or perpetuating certain traditional or historically venerated socioeconomic mores or precedents. In the ordinary senses of the terms, politically "left" and "conservative," the WL teacher should associate with the former camp, the Whole Language Catalog declares.
Political leftism or socialism essentially is concerned with making changes in the world. The main goal of literacy is to prepare people to make changes, the political writers in the Whole Language Catalog maintain. In fact, literacy "can only be addressed in the context of social movements which wish to make serious social changes," Aronowitz and Giroux (1985, p. 64) insist. It is held inevitable, therefore, that those
who gain literacy through WL instruction will rise up to challenge "the interests and values of the Anglo, white, middle and upper classes" (Giroux, 1991, p. 417).
So, as WL "self-consciously connects itself to political, economic and cultural issues," it is destined to come into opposition to "the political right of the United States" (Apple, 1991, p. 416). By so doing, WL will use its "collective powers to change the world so that democratic (i.e., socialist) power replaces corporate power" (Aronowitz & Giroux, 1985, p. 66). Clearly, it is "the economic, cultural, and social policies of business and industry" (i.e., capitalism) that WL must be dedicated to eliminate, Apple (1991, p. 416) announces. Courts (1991, p. 4) agrees that to be "literate in the full and finest sense" means that one is eager to "disrupt the political status quo." Whole language teachers thus are expected to get involved in socioeconomic class warfare whenever and wherever it is ordained.
It is vital, therefore, for WL teachers to understand that the "view of reality as fundamentally revolving around profit and loss, of accumulation and profit," must be discarded (Apple, 1991, p. 416). In like fashion, schools that have fostered "the promise of individual success in competitive global markets" to their students must be redesigned so that they discourage this practice (p. 416). In this manner, WL can become a prime factor in the resistance toward an overturning of the capitalistic notion that a main function of the schools is to help their graduates "hold jobs" and thereby become "productive members of the community” (Rich, 1989, p. 227).
Whole language leader Shannon (1989) also deplores the intrusion into reading instruction of the capitalist ideas that this teaching "should be organized to produce students with verifiable levels of reading competency (p. 110), and that "hard work and personal involvement are the keys to success" (p. 114). Such notions lead to the "rationalization of reading instruction (which) has a destructive impact on teachers, students, and literacy," Shannon (1989, p. 114) warns. "Students, especially lower-class and minority children, do not fit easily into the structures and routines of rationalized (reading) lessons," he contends (pp. 115-116). Emphasis on the accomplishments of
the individual must be abandoned in favor of WL teaching aimed at "building a society based on the common good" (Apple, 1991, p. 416)
(emphasis added).
The political commentators in the Whole Language Catalog, and those cited so far who mirror their views, thus agree with Edelsky, et al. (1991, p. 45) that "whole language has the potential to be the liberation pedagogy" needed to overthrow what they consider to be the dangerous and abusive aspects of capitalism, and to correct the economic and social ills it has created. One of these distressing aspects of capitalism, Shannon (1990, p. 150) vouches, is its power to run schools "according to principles of science and business." A principle of business is to act purely in its own interests, Shannon maintains. Thus, while schools are ruled by business ostensibly to ensure "education for all and strictly meritocractic results." They actually are directed by business to maintain the present socially and economically stratified society, Shannon (1990, p. 150) contends. The current business-controlled schools, he argues, therefore are aimed exclusively at
enabling the "upper classes...to continue to enjoy their economic, social and political power" (p. 150. But WL can be instrumental in helping "subvert the schools' role in maintaining a stratified society," Edelsky, et al. (1991, p. 54) advise teachers. With the help of WL, the model classless society can become a reality.
The Freire Connection
The commentary about WL's supposed political responsibilities found in the Whole Language Catalog and elsewhere appear to depend to a great extent for their validation on Freire's (1985, p. 188) previous judgements that "education worldwide is political by nature," that "Politics is the soul of education," or that "All instances of education become political acts."
With the basic principle he expresses here in mind, Freire argues that education either must become (a) a project for undertaking a radical economic and political transformation of society toward a collectivist ideal, and thus away from capitalism, or (b) a means by which to strengthen and perpetuate free enterprise entrepreneurship, privatization, enlightened self-interest, the profit motive, market control over the production and distribution of goods and services, and other capitalist practices. Freire chooses to travel the former path, contending it is the only way by which lower socioeconomic classes can become empowered to gain a just and fair share of economic resources and political
influence.
Freire's position is echoed by the Whole Language Catalog's contention that WL is a "new admission ticket for the lower class to an economy with limited seating" (Altwerger & Flores, 1991, p. 418). It is only WL teaching purportedly that can "provide students with the skills and courage they will need in order to transform the world" (Aronowitz & Giroux, 1985, p. 157). The assumption here being, as noted, that this transformation inevitably will be toward founding a socialist state.
A Historical Perspective
Arguments in the past over the best way to teach students to read generally have ranged over the issue of how much formal teaching of reading skills should be conducted for this purpose. The now infamous "look-say" method of instruction that predominated in schools until the 1970s provided only a minimum amount of formal teaching of phonics information, for example, and ways to apply it. If learning to recognize words by "sight" (a process that never was explained satisfactorily) did not prove successful, look-say students were given remedial instruction that included added emphasis on phonics information.
As noted, WL carries this debate over the formal teaching of reading to a new extreme by insisting that no such systematic and direct instruction in reading is necessary, and especially that for the recognition of individual words. It therefore is obvious that WL promotes the most radical form of reading instruction conceived of so far. Illiterate children in WL classes simply are "immersed" in reading material, that is, they "follow along" in texts from which the WL teacher reads aloud. From this experience, WL hypothesizes, each pupil will discover at his or her own peculiar pace, what is needed to learn to read. No specified sequence of reading skills nor time schedules are set since it is held that each child employs a unique learning style when acquiring reading ability.
But as is revealed in this discussion, WL leaders view the adoption of these empirically unverified instructional tenets as only a means to a more important end--a political one. They assume that through their training in becoming WL teachers university students will come to endorse the concept of reading instruction as "liberation pedagogy." They thus will accept the desirability of educating their future students to perceive the need to replace the present capitalistic economic system with a socialist one.
Whole language holds, in short, that teachers who hold conservative political views are not only ineffective reading instructors, per se, but also stand as impediments to the attainment of the socialist economy that principal persons of the WL movement envision. Literacy is a dangerous instrument in the hands of anyone but those with left-wing political inclinations, the chief writers about WL proclaim. They therefore have set as their immediate goal the exclusion of teachers who are politically conservative from the ranks of those who are considered to be responsible professionals.
On to the Future
Whole language has gained in popularity among educational professionals in spite of its dubious pedagogical effectiveness and its denunciations of capitalist economics. The scheme is now protected from negative criticism by the journals that teachers read. There thus seems little hope at present of appealing successfully to teachers and teacher educators to reevaluate their favorable opinions of WL. Nonetheless, there are ways to manage the threat that WL poses.
The least desirable one is to allow WL to run its course. In the past, many frivolous yet voguish fads and fancies have been widely adopted by the public schools only to dissipate over time as their numerous shortcomings became obvious.
Actions to depose WL in our schools can take another, more positive route. Anyone concerned about WL can demand of local school boards that they make public statements as to whether or not their schools; reading programs will be based on experimental research evidence. Since such empirical data does not support WL, school boards then logically cannot allow the adoption of WL. There is no better way to stop the spread of this menace.
References
Adams, . M.J. (1991). Why not phonics and whole language? In Orton Dyslexia Society (Ed.), All language and the creation of literacy
(pp. 40-53). Baltimore, MD: Orton Dyslexia Society.
Altwerger, B. & Flores, B. (1991). The politics of whole language. In K.S. Goodman, L. B. Bird & Y. M. Goodman (Eds.), Whole Language Catalog (pp. 418-419). Santa Rosa, CA: American School.
Apple, M. (1991). Teachers, politics, and whole language instruction. In K.S. Goodman, L.B. Bird, & Y.M. Goodman (Eds.), Whole Language Catalog (p. 416). Santa Rosa, CA: American School.
Aronowitz, S. & Giroux, H. (1985). Education under seige. South Hadley, MA: Bergin and Garvey.
Bergeron, B. (1990). What does the term whole language mean? Constructing a definition from the literature. Journal of Reading Behavior, 22, 301-329.
Courts, P.L. (1991). Literacy and empowerment. New York, NY: Bergin and Garvey.
Edelsky, C., Altwerger, B. & Flores, B. (1991). Whole language: What's the difference? Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
Freire, P. (1985). The politics of education: Culture, power and liberation. South Hadley, MA: Bergin and Garvey.
Giroux, H.A. (1991). Literacy, cultural diversity, and public life. In K.S. Goodman, L.B. Bird, & Y.M. Goodman (Eds.), Whole Language Catalog (p. 417). Santa Rosa, CA: American School.
Goodman, K.S. (1989). Whole language research: Foundations and development, Elementary School Journal, 90, 207-221.
Goodman, K.S., L.B. Bird, & Y.M. Goodman (Eds.) (1991). Whole Language Catalog. Santa Rosa, CA: American School.
Pearson, P.D. (1989). Reading the whole-language movement. Elementary School Journal, 90, 231-241.
Rich, S.J. (1989). Restoring power to teachers: The impact of whole language. In G. Manning & M. Manning (Eds.), Whole language: Beliefs and practices K-8. Washington, DC: National Education Association.
Shannon, P. (1989). Broken promises: Reading instruction in twentieth-century America. Granby, MA: Bergin and Garvey.
Shannon, P. (1990). The struggle to continue: Progressive reading instruction in the United States. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
July 22, 2022
WAKE UP AMERICA!
Time of program: Tuesdays 9AM until 11 AM Cost for support: $25 per hour (if there are 5 Tuesdays in the month the cost would be $125 per month)4 Tuesdays $100 per month. If the sponsor wants an ad in the first hour and second hour, the cost would be $50 per Tuesday. If there are 5 Tuesdays it would be $250 per month. We will probably begin our show later in the month of August or in September. We must wait until the show is "sold". We need 18 spots sold or 9 sponsors who each get 1 spot per hour ($50 per day for however many Tuesdays there are in the month). I know many would like to be silent sponsors but because of the rules that govern radio stations that is not possible. This will be broadcast through Facebook Live and will be available throughout the world. Call Larry Williams at 334.714.7009 or 334.671.0075,WAKE UP AMERICA! Our very first broadcast from around the potbellied stove of Porter Hardware in Downtown Dothan, Alabama will be happening on Tuesday, TBD . What is happening here is happening across America. And what is happening across America is happening here. And if it isn’t already, it will be soon.
Our panel consists of Sharman Burson Ramsey, Betty Peters and Barbara Moore.
Sharman Burson Ramsey, novelist and teacher with a BSE from the University of Alabama and an MSE from Troy University Dothan. I have taught from middle school to university as an adjunct professor of History. In addition to writing historical fiction, cozy mysteries and recipe books, I maintain a website: Southern-Style: A Downhome Perspective of All Things Southern and a blog, sharmanbursonramsey.blogspot.com, focusing mainly on education.
Betty Peters graduated from Troy University Dothan with a degree in Accounting. She, has established relationships throughout America through her sixteen years on the Alabama State School Board. Some well-known and others simply well-versed on the issues will be guests on the show. Betty is one of the founders of Truth in American Education. Her website is: http://www.bettypeters.com/bettypeters/
Barbara Moore taught history and Bible at a Christian School for fifteen years in Dothan. She took students and parents on Christian Heritage tours. She founded a government club for grades 7 through 12. Barbara is president of the Dothan Eagle Forum and is the Chaplain for the Houston County Republican Women. Barbara and Betty founded Concerned Grandmothers of the Wiregrass.
Bill Ayers is quite open about his goal for America. “I wake up every morning and think … today I am going to end capitalism.” Bill Ayers
This is the goal of the people who have taken over the schools our children attend. Don't think just because your children attend private or Christian schools they are safe. If their teachers have degrees from teachers colleges they have been injected with the Marxist ideology prevalent there. It has been intentional.
You may have heard of Social Emotional Learning, Critical Race Theory, Race and gender power and privilege, gender fluidity, collectivism, sexualization and other disturbing ideologies. But do you know what all of these really are-- and why should you care? Did you know it is ALREADY in your schools? Remember this begins in Kindergarten! As parents in one school system who dared review the SEL (Social Emotional Learning) curriculum in their school stated:
Overall Concerns – In our opinion, there is an undercurrent of social justice, critical race theory, race and gender power and privilege, gender fluidity, collectivism, sexualization and other disturbing ideologies flowing throughout this curriculum. In addition, generally, the lessons steer students away from (or don’t mention) their family. Some lessons suggest going to someone for support or help or ideas; however, if a family member is mentioned at all as one of these, family is usually the last source mentioned. The students are encouraged to “stand up”, “speak out”, “start a movement”, etc. One of the criticisms of CRT (Critical Race Theory) is that it has an objective of turning people (especially children and youth) into activists. The language and ideas in this curriculum support the link between those theories and this content. Also, the videos, pictures and cartoons are not demographically representative of our country. The white students are almost always the minority in these lessons and almost always are portrayed as the harasser, the agitator, the bully, the instigator, etc. We are certain that if the roles were reversed, certain groups would call out racism on this. Similarly, we are concerned that the “negative” roles are universally assigned to the white student. It would have been preferable for the curriculum to not portray a single ethnic group in the negative roles and for the cartoons and videos to be more representative of the demographic of our country. Meet James Lindsay. This former liberal came to see the influence of this Marxist agenda and set about enlightening the rest of us through his podcast, New Discourses, available on YouTube.
"SEL becomes a psychology based syringe to inject the Marxist theories," Lindsay proclaims. Marxism and Woke Marxism.
Paolo Freire who brought Liberation Pedagogy to America is a hero of the Whole Language Movement that we fought along with Outcomes Based Education (now Equity in learning) in the 1990s. He is now the third most cited in journals behind the Bible and Shakespeare. This is a snapshot from the Whole Language Catalog. That philosophy was overtly stated in that publication. Too many would not believe it then and now it has become full blown Marxism from the Typhoid Marys in control of the colleges of education.
July 6, 2022
CASSANDRA WARNS OF THE MARXIST REVOLUTION THAT HAS INSINUATED ITSELF INTO OUR CULTURE. IS IT TOO LATE?
Tell me. What would you do if you prayed at night and asked God to take your life and use it wherever He chose. To make you a blessing to Him. And then the next day you receive in the mail these three emails:
1. Someone sharing a blog about a woman who is receiving revelations about the coming End Times
http://thebookoftruthonline.blogspot.com/p/what-is-warning.html
2. Someone shares the New Discourses with James Lindsay that further expound upon the Liberation Theologian who brought Liberation Pedagogy to America--Paolo Freire--someone this Cassandra has been sounding the warning about for thirty years.
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=James+A+Lindsay+New+Discourses+Paolo+Freire3. Then you suddenly decide to watch the Man in the High Castle, a show that reveals what would happen in America with a Marxist state.
And you wonder if God is sending us a warning.
And you wonder if that warning is to be something you should sound.
And He wants to use your voice to do so. I wonder if those who read this will join me in sounding the alarm.
I first sounded the alarm in 2017. Call me Cassandra:
https://sharmanbursonramsey.blogspot.com/2017/02/teachers-as-liberators-produce-students.html
https://sharmanbursonramsey.blogspot.com/2022/07/esg-dei-crt-and-great-reset-theology-of.html
https://sharmanbursonramsey.blogspot.com/2022/06/paolo-freire-schools-aka-your-childs.html
https://sharmanbursonramsey.blogspot.com/2021/06/the-intersection-of-critical-race.html
https://sharmanbursonramsey.blogspot.com/2017/12/the-bigotry-of-low-expectations-profits.html
Revolutionary Pedagogy: Or, so you thought reading, writing and calculating were why you sent your child to school?https://sharmanbursonramsey.blogspot.com/2014/06/revolutionary-pedagogy-or-so-you.htmlhttps://theatheistconservative.com/tag/paulo-freire/
TEACHERS AS LIBERATORS PRODUCE STUDENTS AS REVOLUTIONARIES: Whole Language Live On!https://sharmanbursonramsey.blogspot.com/2017/02/teachers-as-liberators-produce-students.html
RADICAL POSSIBILITIES: YOUR CHILDREN https://sharmanbursonramsey.blogspot....
Response to AL.Com article "Alabama Superintendent Proposal to Raise Academic Standards."https://sharmanbursonramsey.blogspot.com/2017/11/response-to-alcom-article-alabama.htmlSECULAR HUMANISM IS NOW THE RELIGION OF OUR SCHOOLShttps://sharmanbursonramsey.blogspot.com/2017/08/secular-humanism-is-now-accepted.html
July 2, 2022
ESG, DEI, CRT and the Great Reset: The Theology of Marxism
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jsvobvG5k_c
HOW WILL YOU (EVEN INDIVIDUALLY) BE GRADED? WHAT IF YOUR MASTER CARD PEOPLE SIGN ONTO THIS. WILL YOUR ESG, CEI, AND CRT SCORE QUALIFY YOU TO CHARGE ON THAT CARD?
1. ESG
Partner at $3B Fund of Funds Leaves to Start New ESG Data Platform USA
ESG News March 7, 2022
ESGgo, a new enterprise data platform enabling next-generation ESG data collection, reporting, and analysis, launched worldwide today. The technology company, which provides customizable software solutions to sync data monitoring and optimize reporting on environmental, social, and governance (ESG) factors, also announced $7 million in seed funding, led by Glilot Capital with support from additional prominent Silicon Valley angel investors.
ESGgo is the latest venture by Co-Founders Orly Glick and Ido Green, most recently a Partner at Vintage Investment Partners and a Senior Software Engineering Leader at Facebook, respectively. The startup aims to support companies to measure and analyze their ESG efforts, serving as a central repository for ESG data points from across an organization, unifying the disparate systems and manual workflows through automated data capture, monitoring, gap analysis, and benchmarking. Customizable dashboards allow decision-makers to chart progress on sustainability and social issues material to their market or sector while measuring their performance at a granular level against past data, peers, and industry benchmarks. As product features and adoption grow, ESGgo users will gain access to AI-driven insights and tailored recommendations for enhancing their ESG rankings.
“People want to engage with socially responsible companies,” said ESGgo CEO & Co-Founder Orly Glick, “Yet, simply stating your good intentions is not enough anymore. Consumers, investors, employees, and policymakers want tangible proof. That’s why we’re launching ESGgo, a one-stop-shop platform solution that simplifies and streamlines reporting on the ESG issues relevant to your business. The team and I are building ESGO to make a positive impact, both today and for our children’s generation and beyond.”
__________________________________________________
Tesla, because of Elon Musk's current refusal to kowtow to this foolishness has lost his E(environmental) S (ocial) and G (overnmental) scores -- Good Housekeeping Stamp of Approval from the Woke New World Order leadership.
2. DEI. DIVERSITY EQUITY INCLUSION. This is hard to define. So this is from a website to show you what you must do to maintain your DEI approval by the Ruling elite.
https://bloomerang.co/template/divers...
Upholding the policy
If your organization is committed to creating a policy you need to understand that effort must be put into implementing and upholding it.
Here are some tips on how to do that:
Include your policy in your hiring, onboarding, and orientation processes for new employees, volunteers, board members, committee members, etc. Posting a salary range with a job description is an easy way to get started. Here’s a post written by Vu Lee, Writer at Nonprofit AF and Executive Director at Rainier Valley Corps, that explains this.“From my perspective, the statement is just legalese. It’s more important to focus on outreach, eliminate formal education requirement if not necessary, posting the salary range, ensuring you have a diverse hiring panel, and train your hiring team in equitable practices, those are the things that will make a difference.”
Weave the policy into your organization’s strategic plan.Consider implementing a zero tolerance policy for bullying and harassment. We can’t stress this enough. Open up a conversation with employees and volunteers about what diversity, inclusion, and equity mean to them. This will help your employees feel heard and included, and their insight will help you judge your policy. Do monthly, quarterly, or annual check-ins with employees to see how they perceive your efforts are faring.Make sure your diversity committee is keeping a pulse on tactics and goals and pivoting when necessary.3. CRT CRITICAL RACE THEORY--
The tip of a 100 year long spear meant to gore the side of Western Civilization and open us up to a Marxian Revolution.
Schools may not be teaching CRT. They are actually DOING CRITICAL RACE THEORY.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BED_D6Hc6TU
In the first of these lectures, Lindsay dives into a pressing question: what is Critical Race Theory? In particular, he seeks to offer answers and insights about what defines Critical Race Theory, both in terms of what it represents as a Theory and in terms of what its core beliefs are as a religious system. His answer is simple: Critical Race Theory is Race Marxism. In this illuminating lecture, Lindsay takes us through excerpts from introductory and advanced Critical Race Theory texts to make clear not only that CRT is, in fact, Race Marxism, but what that means in practice for everyone. He stresses particularly that Critical Race Theory is a belief system founded on the article of faith that racism that benefits white people is the fundamental organizing principle of society. He then details thirteen core beliefs, or tenets, of the Critical Race Theory faith and explains how they form a comprehensive, systematic system of belief around that core article of faith. Join him for this and the subsequent lectures in the series to understand Critical Race Theory like you never have before. For those interested in learning even more, Lindsay's newest book, Race Marxism: The Truth About Critical Race Theory and Praxis (http://racemarxism.com), was developed out of the notes for this series of lectures. His notes for this lecture served as the basis for the first two chapters of the book. Get the book and follow along with the lectures!
Session 2: https://newdiscourses.com/2022/02/pro...
Session 3: https://newdiscourses.com/2022/03/dee...
Session 4: https://newdiscourses.com/2022/03/how...
Session 5: https://newdiscourses.com/2022/03/wha...
4. GREAT RESET
WEF chief executive officer Klaus Schwab described three core components of the Great Reset: the first involves creating conditions for a "stakeholder economy"; the second component includes building in a more "resilient, equitable, and sustainable" way—based on environmental, social, and governance (ESG) metrics which would incorporate more green public infrastructure projects; the third component is to "harness the innovations of the Fourth Industrial Revolution" for public good.[2][3] In her keynote speech opening the dialogues, International Monetary Fund director Kristalina Georgieva listed three key aspects of the sustainable response: green growth, smarter growth, and fairer growth.[4][1]
At the launch event for the Great Reset, Prince Charles listed key areas for action, similar to those listed in his Sustainable Markets Initiative, introduced in January 2020. These included the re-invigoration of science, technology and innovation, a move towards net zero emissions globally, the introduction of carbon pricing, re-inventing longstanding incentive structures, rebalancing investments to include more (though not all) green investments, and encouraging green public infrastructure projects.[1]
In June 2020, the theme of the January 2021 50th World Economic Forum Annual Meeting was announced as "The Great Reset", connecting global leaders both online and in person in Davos, Switzerland, with a network of stakeholders in 400 cities around the world.[5] The Great Reset was also to be the main theme of the WEF's summit in Lucerne in May 2021, which was postponed to 2022.[6][7]
The World Economic Forum generally suggests that a globalized world would be best-managed by a self-selected coalition of multinational corporations, governments and civil society organizations (CSOs).[8][better source needed] It sees periods of global instability – such as the financial crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic – as windows of opportunity to intensify its programmatic efforts.
(WIKIPEDIA)
Pastor Martin Niemöller
First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out— because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.
June 30, 2022
Paolo Freire Schools aka Your Child's School (Public and Private)
I came to know Paolo Freire when I began my fight against Whole Language and saw his influence in the Whole Language Movement. I have now come to see that was only the beginning, a small part of what would evolve. Marxists with Freire's influence through his philosophy as expressed in Pedagogy of the Oppressed, came to see their empowerment would come by taking over the cultural bastions of our nation.
It began with Education. Teachers influenced by their professors who had been indoctrinated with this supposed "empowerment" of Freire's philosophies became unwitting revolutionaries in the dismantling of true education.
The most recent alarm rings out with Social Emotional Learning (SEL). And that is when I discovered James Lindsay's New Discourses.
Meet James Lindsay. This former liberal came to see the influence of this Marxist agenda and set about enlightening the rest of through his podcast, New Discourses, available on YouTube.
"SEL becomes a psychology based syringe to inject the Marxist theories," Lindsay proclaims. Marxism and Woke Marxism.
James Lindsay and the New DiscoursesJames Lindsay asserts that "a culture has developed in which only certain conclusions are allowed ... and put social grievances ahead of objective truth". In New Discourses, he presents a complete study of the basis and evolution of the Marxism that dominates our school, both private and public.
One might say it began with Liberation Theology: The theology of liberation is a combination of Marxist philosophy with certain biblical motifs. It argues that we should reconstruct the whole of Christian theology by seeing it through the “axis of the oppressor and the oppressed.”
SUMMARY
The theology of Liberation developed in the 1960s to argue for the liberation of various groups—primarily poor, black, women—from economic and political bondage. For these theologians, it is not enough to support the oppressed; one must be committed to social movements, even revolutions, dedicated to overturning the structures of society. For this purpose, liberation theologians adopt Marxism as an “analytical tool,” with which they make radical revisions to every traditional Christian doctrine.
One prominent Liberation Theologian in South America is Dom Helder Camara.
Dom Helder Camara is important for today because Klaus Schwab, founder and director of the World Economic Forum and proponent of THE GREAT RESET considers him a spiritual father. Dom Helder Camara introduced Klaus Schwab and Paolo Freire, another liberation theologian. When Boston Catholic Marxists introduced Paolo Freire to American Marxist Henry Giroux, Giroux discovered the way to spread his Marxists beliefs through Paolo Freire's concept of infiltrating education to promote the Marxist agenda.
Three bibles of the liberation theology movement are:
§ Pedagogy of the Oppressed, by Paulo Freire
§ For the Liberation of Brazil, by Carlos Marighela
§ Love in Practice: The Gospel in Solentiname, by Ernesto Cardenal
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I quote here from The Atheist Conservative https://theatheistconservative.com/tag/paulo-freire/
In its height in the late 1960s and 1970s, liberation theology– a distinctly Latin American movement – preached that it was not enough for the church to simply empathise and care for the poor. Instead, believers said, the church needed to be a vehicle to push for fundamental political and structural changes that would eradicate poverty, even – some believed – if it meant supporting armed struggle against oppressors.
In Nicaragua, priests inspired by liberation theology took an active part in the 1979 Sandinista revolution against Anastasio Somoza’s rightwing dictatorship. The philosophy also influenced leftist rebels in Mexico and Colombia, where one of the main guerrilla factions was led for nearly 30 years by a defrocked Spanish priest, Manuel Pérez. …
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(One of those defrocked Marxist Priests was Paolo Freire)
Now more from the Atheist Conservative...------------------------------------------------------------“He [the present Pope] was very critical of the liberal Marxist version of liberation theology,” said Austen Ivereigh, who has written a biography of Pope Francis. “At that time, you had leftwing movements in Latin America but in fact these were middle-class movements, which he believed used the poor as instruments. He had a phrase he used – that they were for the people but never with them.”But since his election as pontiff in 2013, Pope Francis’s insistence that the church be “for the poor”, and his pointed criticisms of capitalism and consumerism have gone a long way to rehabilitate the liberation theology movement and incorporate it within the church. Experts point, too, to Francis’s decision to name Oscar Romero, the iconic Salvadoran archbishop who was assassinated by rightwing death squads in 1980, as a martyr as another sign of the resurgence in liberation theology…
The Vatican itself has not formally embraced liberation theology. Even xc himself has denied that his appointment as prefect by Pope Francis – which was seen in some circles as a triumph of liberation theology because of Müller’s relationship with Gutiérrez – represented the “opening of a new chapter” following the papacies of John Paul II and Benedict.
Liberation theology was invented, named, and funded by the KGB, according to one of its defecting agents. Damien Thompson reports – and comments with some skepticism which we do not share – in the (UK) Spectator:
The respected Catholic News Agency has published an interview with Ion Mihai Pacepa, a former general in Romania’s secret police who was one of the Eastern Bloc’s highest-ranking defectors in the 1970s. In it, he says that the Soviet Union – and the KGB in particular – created liberation theology, the quasi-Marxist movement that flourished in Latin America from the 1960s to the 1990s and is still a powerful influence on the Catholic Left.
The interview provides fresh evidence of the infiltration of liberation theology by Russia – a subject Catholic liberals would much rather not discuss, just as they don’t want to know about the heavy Soviet investment in CND (the British campaign for nuclear disarmament). …
I don’t believe that the KGB ‘created’ a movement as complex as liberation theology and I’m far from convinced that its name was dreamt up in the Lubyanka.
But Pacepa … makes detailed claims that the Soviets kick-started, funded and moulded liberation theology … He cites as one of his sources Aleksandr Sakharovsky, the Russian agent who set up Romania’s secret police agency. Pacepa describes him as his ‘de facto boss’ in the 1950s. Sakharovsky later became head of the First Chief Directorate of the KGB.
Here are the key quotes from the interview:
The birth of Liberation Theology was the intent of a 1960 super-secret “Party-State Dezinformatsiya Programme” approved by Aleksandr Shelepin, the chairman of the KGB, and by Politburo member Aleksey Kirichenko, who coordinated the Communist Party’s international policies. This programme demanded that the KGB take secret control of the World Council of Churches (WCC), based in Geneva, Switzerland, and use it as cover for converting Liberation Theology into a South American revolutionary tool …
The KGB began by building an intermediate international religious organization called the Christian Peace Conference (CPC), which was headquartered in Prague. Its main task was to bring the KGB-created Liberation Theology into the real world.
The new Christian Peace Conference was managed by the KGB and was subordinated to the venerable World Peace Council, another KGB creation, founded in 1949 and by then also headquartered in Prague …
During my years at the top of the Soviet bloc intelligence community I managed the Romanian operations of the World Peace Council (WPC). It was as purely KGB as it gets. Most of the WPC’s employees were undercover Soviet bloc intelligence officers … Even the money for the WPC budget came from Moscow, delivered by the KGB in the form of laundered cash dollars to hide their Soviet origin. In 1989, when the Soviet Union was on the verge of collapse, the WPC publicly admitted that 90 per cent of its money came from the KGB.
And now the bit that will really wind up Catholic liberals:
I [Pacepa] was not involved in the creation of Liberation Theology per se. From Sakharovsky I learned, however, that in 1968 the KGB-created Christian Peace Conference, supported by the world-wide World Peace Council, was able to manoeuvre a group of leftist South American bishops into holding a Conference of Latin American Bishops at Medellin, Colombia. The Conference’s official task was to ameliorate poverty. Its undeclared goal was to recognise a new religious movement …
True to the chief pretense of each parent, the priests of both the South American Church and the Kremlin claimed that the intention of liberation theology was to stand with the poor and oppressed. Its theologians declared that the cause of all poverty and oppression is capitalism, and Christians must work to replace capitalism with socialism.
The man whom Pope Francis is now welcoming to the Vatican, Gustavo Gutierrez of Peru, wrote in his book A Theology of Liberation: “The goal is not only better living conditions, a radical change if structures, a social revolution; it is much more: the continuous creation, never ending, of a new way to be a man. A permanent cultural revolution.” Gutierrez struggles manfully through some 300 pages to reconcile the Christian idea of salvation of the individual soul and its reward in heavenly bliss, with the Marxist insistence on collective salvation through revolution and the reward of an egalitarian society on this earth. He does not succeed. Whether he is aware of it or not, the Christian idea is totally overwhelmed and replaced by the Marxist idea. Liberation theology takes more after one parent than the other.
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Liberation Theology became Liberation Pedagogy in the US when Paolo Freire was introduced to Henry Giroux by a network of liberation theologists in Boston. Alongside Paulo Freire, Henry A. Giroux is widely considered to be the founding father of critical pedagogy. Critical is one of those words co-opted by the Left to make one think it is a higher level thinking process when it is actually the Marxist infusion into different areas of our culture, such as "critical" race theory, etc.
https://theatheistconservative.com/tag/paulo-freire/
Taking to heart the command to go into education to convert from within was domestic terrorist Bill Ayers and his wife Bernadine Dohrn. Ayers is an activist and curriculum specialist who hired Barach Obama to work with him on the Chicago Anenberg Project.
http://sharmanbursonramsey.blogspot.com/2017/11/the-chicago-connection-to-common-core.html
We see this already in our streets.
Critical Race Theory
I highly recommend that parents, teachers and legislators listen to New Discourses to gain an understanding of what and why the curriculum at your child's school is what it is. This has not "just happened." It is a part of a plan.
Like Cassandra, I have been sounding the alarm on Paolo Freire and Whole Language for years. Much has spawned from these dangerous people--Critical Race Theory, Social Emotional Learning, White Privilege...and on and on.
Teachers as Liberators Produce Students as Revolutionaries
https://sharmanbursonramsey.blogspot.com/2017/02/teachers-as-liberators-produce-students.html
Radical Possibilities (You wonder why Alabama is 52nd in the Nation in Education?)
https://sharmanbursonramsey.blogspot.com/2017/11/radical-possibilities-your-children.html
Amazing, isn't it how they proclaim something to be one thing when it is very definitely something else! From where do you think this is really coming?
https://sharmanbursonramsey.blogspot.com/2017/11/peace-education-conflict-resolution.html
Common Core: A Petri dish for Radicalism
https://sharmanbursonramsey.blogspot.com/2017/11/common-core-petri-dish-for-radicals.html
I hope you are not so naive as to believe Common Core is out of our Schools. Social and Emotional Learning is coming in to seal the deal!
June 25, 2022
WHEN DOES LIFE BEGIN?
When does Life begin? Perhaps the answer is in the question. Life begins at the beginning. A sperm enters an egg and becomes one cell. All the information for what comes next is included there in that cell. Amazing, isn't it?
Somehow as that single cell divides, it takes with it the directions for becoming a nerve cell, a brain cell, a skin cell, and on and on and on until that simple single cell becomes the complex creature we know as a baby. From where does that direction come?
I think of Mickey Mouse in Fantasia and imagine the grand orchestration from the Creator creating that marvelous creation of His. All of that begins with a beginning.
But that was not what I was taught. I was taught that ontogeny recreates phylogeny. That an organism, in the course of its development, goes through all the stages of those forms of life from which it has evolved. In other words, humans go through the evolutionary process from fish to man in the womb. Therefore, they proclaim, that life really has no value, is not human, is merely little more than a parasite to get rid of.
Really? Perhaps that was what they thought before ultrasound. Now you can measure the heartbeat at 8 weeks. So in 56 days after conception, God has orchestrated the symphony of that baby's life, directing one cell to be muscle, another to be a toenail, another to become a heart. You can see the embryo suck its thumb. Yet, it is the same single cell that we started with, only with directions to be something special. Incredible.
The lips of that embryo will one day give the smile or sing the song that touches a heart. Somehow words will come from the movement of special organs. That voice will have a uniqueness to it. Why? How?
Are we to think that God's direction stops there? If God could do that with a single cell, what can He do with our lives? What could WE do with our lives if we would allow ourselves to be a part of His fantastic orchestra? Instead of marching to the beat of a different drummer.
But children are not taught this wonder. They are given lessons on sex directed by Planned Parenthood. They are taught the location of the closest abortion clinic. Planned Parenthood then sells those aborted baby parts.
And yet, those who tell us they rely upon science for their climate change beliefs tell us that they do not know when life begins. They insist that whatever and whenever life begins, the mother has the right to dispose of whatever grows within her. Indeed, that belief has expanded to give the mother the right to kill a baby after birth. To what age would these people have the right to kill expanded? Susan Smith drowned her sons because they were an impediment to her date life. Did she have the right to do so according to those who disagree with the Supreme Court Decision? If so, her prison incarceration is wrong. Should we leave unwanted babies on the side of the road like the Chinese did for years with female infants?
Colorado Gov. Jared Polis signed a bill that codifies the right to an abortion in state law, according to The Associated Press. The Reproductive Health Equity Act, or House Bill 1279, guarantees access to reproductive care before and after pregnancy and bans local governments from imposing their own restrictions. We sow to the wind and reap the whirlwind.
So, why do I have any right to comment upon this? I am a woman who has had an abortion and I regret it every day of my life. My newest novel, Choices and Secrets, was 50 years in the writing. Somewhere in that book the story of that abortion is told along with what life has taught me since.
My husband, Dothan attorney, Joel Ramsey, passed away on November 20, 2020, of Alzheimer’s. I had prayed for his salvation since 1974, the year I, myself, was saved. On August 2nd, 2020, he rolled over and told me, “I need to make a public profession of my faith in Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior.” The next morning, I sent out an email to those I knew had been praying for him that read, “Hallelujah! Did you hear the angels sing?” We went to our Sunday school class the next day and he made that public profession. He later called that his "Road to Damascus Experience."
That night he rolled over once again and said, “I need to be Baptized.
"Go to sleep," I said. "I will call and talk to the preacher tomorrow.”
He persisted. "I need to be baptized," he said. “I need to be immersed.”
“Get up,” I said. “Get in the bathtub. I will baptize you.” He got up and I did baptize him. I later spoke to our pastor. He said he knew many family members who baptized those in their family.
We began praying together at night. One night I told him, “Joe, we both need to ask God’s forgiveness for killing our baby.” The abortion occurred on November 15, 1969, the Saturday after our wedding. I had already asked God’s forgiveness, but Joe had always justified what we had done. He didn't want to talk about it. I cried alone. Now, his heart was ready to ask forgiveness, which he did.
We have a double urn that now holds his ashes. One day, I will join him in that beautiful wooden box. Our stone in the Ramsey plot at Dothan Cemetery reads:
RAMSEY
Joel Wardlaw
Beloved husband of Sharman
May 3, 1947-November 20, 2020
Sharman Jean Burson
May 15, 1950-
Beloved wife of Joel
FORGIVEN AND ALIVE IN CHRIST
I praise God for blessing us with His forgiveness.
As long as my husband was alive, he thought we should keep our actions as a deep dark secret. But, when one has committed a grievous sin, repentance is necessary. I think God accepted Joe’s repentance.
We were married for fifty-one years. Though we got engaged in June of 1969, we had planned to have a long engagement. I loved him so much I could barely stand watching him leave when he deposited me at the dormitory. He was in Law School. And I was studying to be a teacher. I soon found myself pregnant.
Not wanting to shame our parents by having an early baby, and as I realized later, not having the courage to face public disgrace, Joe and I began frequenting bus stations, where he would query taxi drivers if they knew a doctor that would perform abortions. During that time, Time Magazine published an article on an Episcopal priest in Detroit or Chicago (I really cannot remember) who assisted in getting girls in trouble an abortion. The weekend after we got married Joe and I boarded a plane (my first) and flew to talk to that priest. We checked into the downtown hotel he recommended, got a taxi and got taken about a block away on the other side of a park to the Episcopal church where we sat in the priest’s office. He had us tell our story. He then arranged for an appointment later that afternoon. All I remember about that day was a fog shrouded city and a vastness of grey.
A knock came at the door of the dingy hotel room. One double bed, a bathroom and a TV. Joe had the Alabama football game on. The young doctor stood at the door with his medical bag. “You’ll do it here?” Joe asked. The doctor nodded. Joe looked at me questioning. So what happened next was all my fault.
I was to be a mother, the greatest blessing of all. I was to be the “keeper of the home,” the guardian of the most sacred, safest entity of all, the family. But I was young and selfish. In truth, I was a coward. I did not want to shame my parents. I did not want my sister and brother labeled with my misbehavior. I did not want Joe’s brothers to think poorly of me. Nor did I want to be an embarrassment to my friends and sorority sisters. While the abortion had never been my idea, I hated to lay the onus on Joe.
I nodded and with that I take responsibility for what happened next.
The young man (I assume he was a doctor. Probably a resident paying for his education doing abortions on the side). He and Joe struck up a conversation about the football game while I lay on the plastic sheet floating from the shot he gave me, watching from above feeling the scraping within me, then watching the doctor flush my baby down the toilet of an anonymous hotel in a strange city. A neon sign flashed red outside our window. Joe paid the man with money my parents had placed in an account for my college use. He went downstairs and got me a chicken salad sandwich.
We flew home the next morning. Joe held my hand and said, “If you had died, I would have signed up to go to Vietnam.”
We had a wonderful life. But the gift God had meant for me, my baby, was never forgotten. I always think of the baby as a she, though the doctor never said. I heard a mother in the doctor’s office where I had signed in as “Mrs.” and took a pregnancy test, talk of her baby saying if she was a girl, they would name her Heather. I liked that name and thought if this baby was a little girl, I would like to name her Heather. I guess I had not really given up on Joe deciding we should have our child. She would have been born in June of 1970. I later had a friend whose daughter was born in June of that year and every time I saw her, I would think of the baby I “lost”.
Late sixties and early seventies, pilots, soldiers and sailors were coming home from Vietnam with PTSD. I think that women who have had abortions also suffer PTSD. That is not something the feminists speak of when they say their body is their own to determine what to do with it.
My high school biology teacher taught us “Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny.” That means that during the development in the uterus, a fetus goes through evolutionary stages The theory of recapitulation, also called the biogenetic law or embryological parallelism—often expressed using Ernst Haeckel's phrase "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny"—is a historical hypothesis that the development of the embryo of an animal, from fertilization to gestation or hatching (ontogeny), goes through stages resembling or representing successive adult stages in the evolution of the animal's remote ancestors (phylogeny). It was formulated in the 1820s by Étienne Serres based on the work of Johann Friedrich Meckel, after whom it is also known as Meckel–Serres law. (Wikipedia)
So, if what was growing inside of me was just a fish or such, it wasn’t really human was my reasoning. And according to some church teachings, the soul didn’t enter the baby until the fourth month when the mother felt a “quickening”.
That was science in the 1960s. And supposedly, we are to rely upon “science.” So now we know that Roe v Wade was based on a lie, a politically expedient application of fake science for a political purpose--the supposed “liberation” of women.
Now 51 years later, ultrasound tells the truth. The picture of the tiny hand grasping that of a physician performing an in utero operation to save its life demonstrates the fact that as Albert Schweitzer once said, “I am life that wills to live, and I live amidst life that wills to live.” He had come upon a flock of birds that when disturbed by his presence flew en masse in a cloud of white to escape the danger. So too will a fetus attempt to avoid a probe during a medical procedure. Before birth we see in an ultrasound that little one cherishes life before ever taking a breath. Life that wants to live.
Am I comforted by the feminist dogma that a woman’s body is hers and hers alone to decide? Feminists say that it is about equality and giving women the right to choose and not making the choice for women.
I say it is not about equality because equality would not determine that government school sex education curricula be designed by Planned Parenthood, an organization that profits from selling baby body parts. Equality would provide young women with facts, not propaganda by radical feminists and a several billion-dollar business.
God blessed us with three children and five grandchildren.
I had an abortion. Been there. Done that. Wear the t-shirt.
I think now, after my husband’s salvation, he would be willing to share our story in the hope of helping others with their “Choice.”
Let me say, I have friends who had "early" babies. I have only admiration for these courageous women. I do not sit in judgement of those, who like me, chose to have an abortion.
I also lost a baby to an infection. I will have my children remember those already in heaven on my husband's and my headstone already in City Cemetery. The one I lost to infection would have been a little boy the nurses said when he was delivered.
I am so grateful for God's forgiveness. The lives of my unborn children should have meaning. I wish I had gotten to know my little angels. Hopefully, the choices brought out in my novel will have meaning to some other woman. Choices and Secrets is dedicated to those babies.
To those of you who made the same "choice" that I did, just remember, "God is good. His mercy is everlasting. His Truth endures to all generations." Lean on His promises. Ask His forgiveness and make your life have meaning to honor those lost to your "choice."
P.S.
Apparently, the question of life has been in the forefront of my thinking ever since I started writing. In my collection of cozy mysteries, Mint Julep Trilogy, I pondered the idea of life as a commodity, children conceived and born for their body parts.
June 15, 2022
The Giver: force children to think the unthinkable and reconsider the values they learned at home?
I must admit to being quite shocked when my granddaughter told me that her Classical Christian School assigned this book for her read. She is 11 years old. I remembered having read the book years earlier when my oldest daughter was also given the book, and again when my first granddaughter was assigned the book at another private, Christian school. I look around me at the world today and cannot help but think we parents should have been more vigilant and less trusting even of curriculum we truly think we can trust!
The book, The Giver by Lois Lowry, was reviewed by Berit Kjos and I had to look very hard to find the review. I give full credit to the wonderful author. Her website is: http://crossroad.to. A list of her articles: https://blog.moriel.org/authors-1/berit-kjos.html, Her books include:
• The cultural shift from a Christian to a global paradigm.
• The classroom shift from fact and logic to feeling and imagination.
• The growing acceptance of a code of ethics that bans biblical truth.
• How movies, television and classrooms promote a global spirituality.
• Why the "consensus process" turn young and old against absolute truth.
• Why many Christians are conforming to this transformational process.
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This article by Berit Kjos of Kjos Ministries is an extremely dynamic and flowing presentation of one of the most corruptive and destructive tools availble to public education.
Berit first accounts the book through interaction with Laura, a fourth grade student who experienced the book by oration from her teacher. Berit's relation of the horrors of the experience are inescapable -- infanticide by lethal injection to the baby's brain in the name of convenience and manipulation of entire populations for the good of the State! Shades of Hitler Germany!!!
Next, Berit identifies how The Giver parallels Hillary Clinton's Village concept: state control of entire populations, usurping of parental rights and control, inhibition of individuality, and mandatory community services -- all to the "Fatherland."
That the principal of Laura's school refused to remove the book because of his/her "reluctance to stifle academic freedom" is ludicrous. How in the Holy name of Jesus can this kind of fantasy poison be of any value. Tell me what educational objectives are served by such infectious tripe? How can presentation of infanticide and socialistic controls as acceptable and even desirable be of any traditionally educational use? And this is not to mention the fact that The Giver presents graphic murder of babies as a necessary part of life and presents it to they who were babies not that long ago!
As your brother in Christ, I beg you to do whatever you morally can to remove this book from the shelves of our schools. We are likely to pay dearly if we don't. We have enough influence by our culture to desensitize us to murder and governmental manipulations and to set the stage for moving into the village concept of general acceptance of whatever is dealt to us -- we do not need another book to help cultivate this cancer through our kids! Heavenly Father, help us. Heal our land!
Thomas A. Carder
President
ChildCare Action Project: Christian Analysis of American Culture (CAP)
P. O. Box 177
Granbury, TX 76048-0177
(Red for Emphasis in the excerpt)The Giver: Serving The Greater Whole
An excerpt from Brave New Schools
by Berit Kjos
Laura's fourth-grade teacher was reading a new book called The Giver. The story seemed sort of strange and spooky, but most of her classmates at Adams Elementary School in Davenport, Iowa, liked it. After all, it had won the 1994 Newbery Medal--and was dedicated to "all the children to whom we entrust our future."1 Therefore it had to be good--didn't it?
The book told about a special community where every child felt safe, ate plenty of food, took pills to stop any pain, and lived in a family no larger than four. Overpopulation was no problem since new babies were limited to fifty a year. Born to professional "birth mothers" instead of real mothers, the newborns were placed in Nurturing Centers where older children helped care for them during volunteer hours. To keep people comfortable and free from stress, handicapped babies and low-weight twins were "released" to go to a mystical "Elsewhere."
Each December all the children advanced into the next age group. At the Ceremony for the Ones, the healthy babies born during the year were assigned to selected families. Jonas, one of the Elevens, still remembered when his sister Lily was a One and came to live in his family. This December, she would become an Eight and receive her first voluntary service assignment. On the same day, all the Nines would get their first bicycle, and the Tens would get special haircuts. The new Elevens would soon have to take daily pills to quench the strange "stirrings" that came with puberty.
Each group of children--up to Twelve--learned to follow the rules for their age, succeed in school, complete their service assignments, and share their dreams and feelings with their designated family. Sometimes Jonas preferred to hide his feelings, but that was against the rules. (Social Emotional Learning SEL?, my comment)
As they neared December once again, Jonas and the other "young adults" waited anxiously for the Ceremony for the Twelves. This year, they would receive their permanent Assignments--their place to work during their productive years. These Assignments were chosen by the Committee of Elders who had been observing every child. Jonas, who had intuitive power to "see beyond," was chosen to be the Receiver of Memories - the one who would know the past. The former Receiver, who now became the Giver, would place his hands on Jonas' back and psychically transfer all past experiences and distant memories to the boy. Eventually, Jonas would become the community's source of wise counsel and secret wisdom - like a tribal shaman.
Laura and her classmates listened, imagined, absorbed, and pondered. Sometimes Laura felt uncomfortable--as when Jonas had to bathe a frail, slippery Old woman during his volunteer hours at the House of the Old. But the worst part came when Jonas' father, a Nurturer, had to "release" the smaller of two newborn twins.
As the teacher read from the book, Laura pictured the scene she heard: Jonas and the Giver were watching the Release on a video screen. They saw a small windowless room with a table and scale--the same room Jonas had seen during his service work at the Nurturing Center. "It's just an ordinary room," he said to the Giver. "I thought maybe they'd have it in the Auditorium, so that everybody could come. All the Old go to Ceremonies of Release. But I suppose that when it's just a newborn, they don't...."
Suddenly, Jonas saw his father enter the room with a tiny newchild. He put it on the scale and noted the weight. "...you're only five pounds ten ounces," he said, "A shrimp!"
A shrimp? Laura could identify with the tiny infant. She, too, was a low-birth-weight twin. Feeling shaky, she listened closely as the teacher continued to read:
His father turned and opened the cupboard. He took out a syringe and a small bottle. Very carefully he inserted the needle into the bottle and began to fill the syringe.... [Then he directed] the needle into the top of newchild's forehead, puncturing the place where the fragile skin pulsed. The newborn squirmed, and wailed faintly.
"Why's he--"
"Shhh," the Giver said sharply.
His father... pushed the plunger very slowly, injecting the liquid into the scalp vein until the syringe was empty....
As Jonas continued to watch, the newchild no longer crying moved his arms and legs in a a jerking motion. Then he went limp. His head fell to the side, his eyes half open. Then he was still...
His father tidied the room. Then he picked up a small carton that lay waiting on the floor, set it on the bed, and lifted the limp body into it.... He opened a small door in the wall... It seemed to be the same sort of chute into which trash was deposited at school.
His father loaded the carton containing the body into the chute and gave it a shove. "Bye-bye, little guy," Jonas heard his father say before he left the room. Then the screen went blank.2
Stunned, Laura stared at her teacher. Would they really kill a baby if it didn't weigh enough? The horrible image of the tiny infant, murdered and thrown down a chute like a piece of garbage made her sick. Her thoughts raced on. How could the kind Nurturer kill it! What if it had been her! She was just as tiny when she was born. And she already been thinking about death. Only weeks ago, her own grandmother had died. (Death Education?my question)
She rushed home from school and burst into the house. "Mom, Mom," she cried, "Guess what my teacher read today!" She poured out her story, while her mother, Elaine Rathmann, listened quietly.
The next day, Mrs. Rathmann, a member of the local school board, visited the school. When she suggested that The Giver might be inappropriate reading for fourth-graders, the principal indicated his reluctance to "stifle academic freedom."
Next, she told the teacher how the book had affected her daughter.
"But I didn't tell the class what I believed," he answered. "I let them come to their own conclusion. My children know fiction from nonfiction."
But that doesn't matter, thought Mrs. Rathmann. Sometimes an exciting story can transmit horrible images and socialistic messages more easily than a history lesson.
THE 21st CENTURY GLOBAL VILLAGE.
The Giver fits into the flood of classroom literature that force children to think the unthinkable and reconsider the values they learned at home. It also models many of the pitfalls and imagined perfections of the utopian school-centered community being implemented by today's national and international change agents:
State surveillance and control of health, wealth, attitudes, beliefs, values and behavior.State controlled child care, health care, training of parents, vocational guidance and work assigment.Mandatory "voluntary" service.Personal privileges conditioned on compliance.
In many parts of our country - as in the envisioned community -- teams of professional "experts" are already replacing parents as ultimate decision makers in the lives of children. As suggested by the slogan, "It takes a whole village to raise a child," they will make sure parents are trained to follow the prescribed guidelines for parenting. If this new system is implemented by AD 2000-2001 as planned, all who refuse to conform will find their parental authority usurped by trained educators and community leaders.
A sensational fantasy? Not at all, as you will see in Chapter 7. Since many of the specific strategies are hidden behind "sugar-coated" promotion and misleading labels, few see the danger. Some are silenced by the politically correct notion that discernment spells intolerance. Others simply don't believe that America could really change all that much. After all, we have our Constitution!
Could we have become a nation of listless frogs, drifting blindly in cultural waters that are nearing the boiling point? Laura's mother, a school board member, would probably answer yes. She saw the blind drifting both in her daughter's classmates and among the other parents.
"The Giver desensitized students to the new values," she told me. "Though the last part showed the downside, the book helped make the futuristic community seem normal. Their conclusions would be based on the biased information they were given."
"Did other parents share your concern?" I asked her.
"I don't think so. They didn't want to be disturbed. No one else was willing to say, 'I won't let you teach this to my child.'"
"See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the basic principles of this world rather than on Christ." (Colossians 2:8)
Note: Years ago, a young boy in Zaire named Kyosa was "chosen to know" special tribal secrets.3 He is now a scholar in African spirituality, but his mystical initiation echoes one of the many ominous themes in Lois Lowry's Newbery Award Winner, The Giver. Like all Newbery winners, this popular book can be found in classrooms and libraries from coast to coast. Some states add study questions and special programs to amplify its message.
Brave New Schools (Harvest House Publishers) is available through Christian bookstores and by calling 1-800-829-5646.
Endnotes:
1 Lois Lowry, The Giver (New York: Bantam, 1993).
2 Ibid., 148-149.
3 San Jose Mercury News, January 6, 1996. http://www.capalert.com/sexedabcdisney/thegiver1.htm
The Giver fits into the flood of classroom literature that force children to think the unthinkable and reconsider the values they learned at home. It also models many of the pitfalls and imagined perfections of the utopian school-centered community being implemented by today’s national and international change agents:
"State surveillance and control of health, wealth, attitudes, beliefs, values and behavior."State controlled child care, health care, training of parents, vocational guidance and work assignment."Mandatory ‘voluntary’ service."Personal privileges conditioned on compliance."(Excerpted from Brave New Schools by Berit Kjos.)http://www.pawcreek.org/parental-discernment/
This book is full of ideas, very dangerous and extremely dark. Those who defend this kind of literacy garbage would laugh at any possibly bad consequences. One reason is that they live in a dark world of ideas to begin with and this kind of material is the real world to them. More importantly is that these people are "change agents" and they have an agenda. If you do not learn to discern ideas and not just look at the vehicle (drama, book, television program), then all I say will be empty. The ideas behind the drama, etc. is what is most important.
https://cdn.preterhuman.net/texts/politics/NWO/nwo_0008.txt
