Parents, primary decision makers
This last summer the Maryland State Board of Education ruled against parents’ rights. Their statement as reported in the Washington Post said concerning the right of parents to determine the upbringing of their children "that right is not absolute. It must bend to the State's duty to educate its citizens." This was Maryland’s answer to parents who did not approve of the sexual curriculum that was being taught to their children.
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I believe that this is a sign of something very dangerous happening. The state, forgetful from whence the duty to educate its citizens came, now takes it upon itself to determine that the religious freedom and moral beliefs of the family are less important than the state’s agenda. An agenda which cannot define to us which direction it is going, but yet is so determined to take us there.
If we really believe in democracy then we parents need to fight and fight hard to protect our right to be the primary decision makers of what our children are going to be taught. Our children are going to be indoctrinated no matter what; we all are. It just depends on what the doctrine is and who is doing the indoctrinating. Our public schools need to go back to teaching our children what we really sent them there to learn in the first place and not cross trump the old morals that built our civilization. I think that G.K Chesterton put it best when he said, “It is the great paradox of the modern world that at the very time when the world decided that people should not be coerced about their form of religion, it also decided that they should be coerced about their form of education.”
Jason Tako
Dover
"What good fortune for governments that the people do not think." - attributed to a well-known dictator.
Public schools (in the U.S.) from the time the "Pledge" was instituted have attempted to teach childern what to think, rather than how to think. Through the fluff of modern politics we see one facet of where this utopian idea has brought us.