Brave New Schools - Chapter 7

Silencing the Opposition

by Berit Kjos

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"...try to identify resisters before they become vocal and committed on this particular innovation. Resisters, like innovators, should be judged for relative sophistication and influence."[1] Ronald G. Havelock, The Change Agent's Guide to Innovation in Education

"It takes a whole village to raise a child." A much-quoted allegedly African proverb.

"If persecution, liquidation and the other symptoms of social friction are to be avoided, the positive sides of propaganda must be made as effective as the negative... To bring about the revolution, we require, among others...   a greatly improved technique of suggestion through infant conditioning and... a fully developed science of human differences, enabling government managers to assign any given individual to his or her proper place in the social and economic hierarchy. Round pegs in square holes tend to have dangerous thoughts about the social system and to infect others with their discontents." [2] Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

"I am making a hag doll," announced Michelle after school a few weeks before Halloween.

"What's a hag doll," asked her mother.

"It is like a witch."

"Oh!" Concerned, Grace Rhie said quietly, "I don't want you doing that."

Michelle's smile faded.  "Why not?"     

When her mother explained that hag dolls were used in pagan harvest rituals,  Michelle tearfully agreed to say no to the hag project.  She hated to be different, but neither did she want to disobey God. Michelle's teacher agreed to let her do an alternative project: create the figure of an alien. But she refused to let the sixth grader escape the embarrassment of giving an oral report on the alternative project in front of the whole class.  In spite of her plea for permission to give a private or written report, Michelle was forced to show her classmates that she and her family lived by a different standard than the rest.  That hurt.

In schools that punish non-conformity--and in a world that values compromise rather than truth--biblical obedience becomes costly. The change agents know that well.  The more Christianity is vilified and ridiculed, the more embarrassment children face when forced to admit being Christian.  On the other hand, the more children experience the fun rituals and empowering myths of idealized paganism, the more willing they are to embrace the pantheistic/global paradigm.

Based on B.F. Skinner's behavioral psychology, this manipulative system of rewarding conformers and punishing resisters characterizes the new world-class education.  Educators assume that children, like laboratory animals, will--with enough time and stimuli--accept what gives pleasure and reject what causes pain.  Naturally, the more pain associated with traditional loyalties, the more quickly children will discard the old ways and embrace the new. 

Children who refuse to conform may be considered handicapped. "Although they appear to behave appropriately," explains a NTL (National Training Labs, Institute for Applied Behavioral Science) Teacher Training Manual, "and seem normal by most cultural standards, they may actually be in need of mental health care in order to help them change, adapt, and conform to the planned society in which there will be no conflict of attitudes or beliefs."[3]          

Notice that the criteria for mental health follows the guidelines of new-paradigm sociology, not the accepted standards of psychiatry.

Nonconformists, whose beliefs clash with global standards, simply won't fit the envisioned 21st Century world. Remember what Dr. Chester M. Pierce told the Association for Childhood Education International in his 1972 keynote address:

"Every child in America entering school at the age of five is insane because he comes to school with certain allegiances toward our founding fathers, toward his parents, toward a belief in a supernatural being.... It's up to you, teachers, to make all of these sick children well by creating the international children of the future."[4]

The blueprint for "creating the international child of the future" would end parental freedom to transmit Christian beliefs to their children.  From the globalist perspective, our freedom to raise our children blocks their freedom to train all children. To them, the needs of the whole--the Earth as well as its people--would transcend the rights of the individual. 

Kathy Collins, former Legal Counsel to the Iowa Department of Education, typifies the growing hostility toward Christian parents. Ponder her puzzling assertion in the article, "Children Are Not Chattel:"

"Children... are not 'owned' by their parents.... The Christian fundamentalists who want the freedom to indoctrinate their children with religious education do not understand [that] the law that prevents them from legally teaching their kids prevents someone else from abusing theirs."[5]

In simpler words, training your children according to biblical truth is equated with child abuse. From the new-paradigm perspective, the old beliefs are handicaps which block their evolution into a global citizen, and hinders the mission of the 'brand new American school.'"[6]

To save children from the hands of uncooperative parents, the change agents have devised a clever plan: place them in the hands of the "local community." Fred Newmann, director of the Center on Organization and Restructuring of Schools, explains a small part of that strategy in his article, "School-wide Professional Community."  Where do you think parents fit in his picture?

 "It takes a whole village to raise a child."  The much-quoted African proverb says it can't be done by an individual teacher, or even by several teachers working independently. Instead, it requires communal effort of many adults, in a variety of roles, who share a unified common purpose, and who help one another to teach and socialize their youth....[7]

Newmann's article ignores the part traditional parents play in the socialization of their children. Their good intentions and wise guidelines no longer fit. The parental responsibilities of the past must be transferred to trained change agents prepared to instill new values that support the global agenda.[7]  "Roots and Wings," one of the New American Schools Development Corporation's "design teams," is federally funded model for this transformation. It states that...

"...all persons, agencies and institutions with whom 0-6 year-old children interact should be held responsible for enhancing their development, thus contributing to their preparedness for school. This requires collaboration with representatives from the health and medical, child/care... education communities to identify the scope of each agency, institution or provider's responsibility and accountability..." [8]

A world-class education system.  Other change agents do mention parents. The Iowa Roundtable, a state branch of a growing nationwide partnership between schools and the business sector, shows how schools will be compelled to take charge of entire families. It has developed "eight principles that must guide the transformation of today's Iowa schools into  the world-class schools of tomorrow."  The first five items suggest that local schools will be forced to transform their students or face punishment. The last three deal with parents.  Ponder the assumptions behind the positive words:

1. Iowa's world-class education system should be based on results. The success of schools in the new system should be judged on how well students master a clearly defined, measurable core of learning.... [This is typical outcome-based education language. Within this system, proper socialization becomes more important that traditional math and academics.]

2. Student performance should be measured with a variety of tools that reflect what students are expected to learn. Setting high expectations for students who can think, understand [and embrace the new] ideas and solve problems will require the creation and use of equally complex assessment strategies. [Subjective, in contrast to objective, national student assessments will test whether or not schools did their assigned job.]

3. Successful schools, judged on the improvement of student achievement, should be rewarded, unsuccessful schools should be helped to improve, and consistently inferior schools should be penalized. [Schools, not students, are held responsible for a student's failure.]

4. Staff in individual schools must have the authority to make decisions affecting student achievement and must be accountable for results.... Site-based management and shared decision making must replace the current more-authoritarian system of managing education. [Private professional management will replace elected school boards. They can better silence the opposition.]

5. Schools must be responsible for seeking the full involvement of parents as partners in the education of children.... [and] for seeking parent involvement in all facets of children's education and development. When parents cannot or will not become involved, schools must help the child overcome that difficulty.  [What will they do? Punish parents? Remove the child?]

7. Readiness for school is critically important.  Providing a stimulating environment early in a child's life can prevent problems in the future.... Schools in the new system must provide the option of prekindergarten opportunities.  [Educators want early access to the minds of all children.]

8. Schools in the new system must be responsible for ensuring collaboration with health and human services agencies to reduce barriers to student learning. Children of all ages must be physically, mentally and emotionally healthy [compatible with the new goals and values] if they are to learn.... Hunger, stress or illness will keep students from schools success. Schools must be responsible for eliminating those barriers to success..."[9]

The last point calls for "partnerships" between schools and the various health services.  Words like "stress" and "mentally and emotionally healthy" are being defined and measured against the new mental and emotional ideals for raising "the international child of the future." Later you will see how deviation from these norms--such as refusing to let go of traditional attitudes about right and wrong, sin and guilt--could put children "at risk", induce charges of child abuse, and cause the child's removal from the home.

Sounds scary, doesn't it? It's not supposed to. Every effort is made to give restructuring a positive image, one that is palatable to the public. "Couch the language of change in the language of the status quo," wrote Massell Smith in Social Change, a newsletter from the NTL Institute for Applied Behavioral Science. "Use the stated objectives of the status quo. They are almost broad enough to encompass innovation."[10]

The myth of local control.  Since both Republican and Democratic change agents know what American parents want, they speak glowingly about parental involvement, high standards and the other misleading ideals of outcome-based education.  Few tell us what they really mean.  Chester Finn, who helped Lamar Alexander and President Bush market America 2000 to the public, promised early in 1995 that the new Republican leadership was determined to "straighten out" public education and "repair the damage" done during the Clinton administration.  He offered what parents want: "local control,"  "quality results," and "decentralization."

The problem is that Finn's own vision of  "local control" doesn't fit the nice images he paints.  In an article titled "Reinventing Local Control," Finn suggests that the state would specify the "ends" (based on national standards or outcomes) of education, while local schools determine the "means" (the classroom strategies) of learning.  In other words, local districts must figure out how to carry out the bidding of the state. What each of their students learn must match the pre-determined outcomes, which deal primarily with the beliefs, mental attitudes, and group thinking supposedly needed for global citizenship and work. If students fail, the schools will face dire consequences.

In other words, "local control" means control over how to teach, not what to teach. The question still remains: who at the local schools would make the decisions? 

Finn has a ready answer. "We need change agents in charge of those schools," he explains, "not preservers of entrenched interests and encrusted practices.... Local control is dead. Long live local control." [11]  Could he mean "out with parents and school boards that might resist change, and in with our professional 'change agents'?" 

Finn's 1991 book, We Must Take Charge: Our Schools and our Future,  puts local control squarely into the hands of professional educators. He writes, "[M]any conservatives have a charming but antiquated devotion to 'local control' of schools that bears scant relationship to contemporary reality.... If we want revolutionary changes in American education we have to overhaul its power structure and its ingrained practices."[12] He continues,

[T]hough the ends [outcomes] of education are the responsibility of society in general to prescribe through the familiar processes of democratic government, the means by which we reach those ends are the province of expert professionals.... The school is the vital delivery system, the state is the policy setter and nothing in between is very important."[13]

The "nothing in between" includes parents and elected school boards--the main barriers to "learning".  Finn calls them "superfluous" and "dysfunctional."[14]

Where, in this new system, would there be public accountability to parents whose children will be forced to participate in the new system?  True, there will be local partnerships, carefully planned alliances with selected parents and community leaders who support the new agenda. But parents who oppose Outcome-Based Education would be excluded.

Already, facilitators in communities across the country are training  local committees to operate by the rules of consensus. They will recognize no dissenting voices.  After all, from the new-paradigm perspective,  Western culture and Christian values represent intolerance.  Those who perpetuate these obsolete views must be ignored or intimidated into silence.  Gen Yvette Sutton, Educational Analyst with the Pennsylvania Coalition for Academic Excellence, describes her experience with local attempts at building consensus:

Minority opinions are totally ignored. Having participated in the preliminary  hearings for Outcome Based Education in this state [Pennsylvania], I can tell you how it works. You can stand up in a meeting and say anything. You can  disagree... but all that is recorded is the consensus... the agreement, so that it  looks like they reached a consensus. When this is done regionally, the state sends secretaries to record these meeting... They don't transcribe... they only  record what they choose, censoring anything that doesn't fit. Several superintendents raised very legitimate concerns, but these concerns were ignored in the state reports. It was a sham and scam.[15]

Parents as Teachers.  Parents as Teachers The popular slogan, "It takes a whole village to raise a child" begs the unanswered question: what part is left to the parent?  If globalists have their way, parents may have little choice outside the guidelines provided by the new school-based "village".

The village idea has been brewing in the minds of international change agents for decades. Back in 1967, an experimental day-care center had opened at the University of North Carolina. Founder, psychologist Hal Robinson, who served on a presidential task force charged with recommending improvements and innovations in young children's education, sought to find the best possible mix between the family and the society as child-rearing institutions. Funded by the Carnegie Corporation as well as the U.S. government,  the project was named after United Nations mediator, Frank Porter Graham.[16]

A few years later, Kurt Waldheim, Secretary-General of the U.N., said in an address to the Executive Board of UNICEF,   

Until fairly recently, in most societies, the responsibility for child development rested entirely with parents.... This is still largely true, but it is changing... The process of child development has to be the concern of society as a whole--on the national and international level.  From the very beginning, the leaders of UNICEF... clearly understood this...."[17] 

In 1981, American educators began to implement UNICEF's vision.  The Missouri Department of Education launched the first government program to actually tell parents how to raise their children. Under the misleading title, Parents as Teachers (PAT), it was introduced as a voluntary project to help disadvantaged children.  That the state mandated PAT for all children in all schools in 1985 came as no surprise.  Five years later, it had been introduced in 40 states and "at least eight foreign countries,"[18] according to Laura Rogers, a mother whose research exposed the horrendous deception.  Her report, "In Loco Parentis," explains how PAT works:  A "parent educator" bonds herself to the young family through home visits. Then,  

Once that bond.... is established, the children and parents are eased into school programs that deliver a battery of services. First, under the guise of educational screening, parents and children are evaluated, the child is given a personal computer code number, and a computer record is initiated that will enable Missouri to track each child for the rest of his life....

The next step of the PAT program is to change and usurp the relationship parents have with their children. The change agent, the "significant other," will be working with the children in a "mentoring program" or perhaps as a "certified parent educator." This new "certified parent educator" delivers free medical care, free nutrition counseling, free mental health services and free food--all things formerly provided by the parents.

As time goes on, children spend more time at school than at home. Services are increased...  the schools will provide free daycare, free overnight care, and free camps, as well as free education.

All these free services come, however, at the price of sometimes significant interference in family life. One young mother, Gabrielle Copp, reports that she was outraged at the arrogance of the "state certified parent" who told her husband he could not spank their children....[19]

The parent educator is responsible to the state, not the parents. She functions as a child abuse investigator as well as parent trainer, and must report "suspected" abuse or neglect to the child abuse hotline.  In Missouri, failure to report carries a punishment of $1000 fine or a year in jail.[20] The definition for child abuse is broad enough to include actions that many consider normal, such as spanking or "yelling" at a rebellious child. Restricting television viewing became grounds for child abuse in Florida, and the parents of a learning-disabled boy were found guilty for allowing their son to miss a week of school while competing in a news-making cross-country run.[21]                 

The Parents as Teachers National Center has developed a set of "Risk Factor Definitions" used to identify possible child abuse or hindrances to a child's early social development and learning. Open to interpretation by the parent educator or social workers, they include

PAT has been promoted as voluntary. Yet, "if the parent refuses the recommended services, the state can remove the child from the home, place it in a residential treatment center, and force the parent to take psychological counseling for an indefinite period,"[23] says Laura Rogers.

Funded by the Carnegie, Danforth, Ford, Rockefeller, and New World Foundations, as well as the federal government, PAT became the law of the land in 1994 as part of Goals 2000. Though many believed that PAT fit under the umbrella of the U.S. Department of Education, "the Danforth Foundation in concert with the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education exclusively control the Parents as Teachers National Center."[24]

As a private tax-exempt, not-for-profit corporation directed by powerful people like Christopher Bond, U.S. Senator from Missouri (R), Richard Gephart, U.S. congressman from Missouri (D), and Ed Ziglar, Yale University early childhood education specialist, it can easily be manipulated for political purposes with no accountibility to parents.  Ziglar's "total childcare plan is aimed for 'full service schools' that would transform schools into the central delivery point for the cradle-to-grave socialism...."[25] ]  

Laura Rogers asks some discerning questions that challenge the astounding power granted to PAT and other privatized programs accountable, not to parents, but to globalist organizations like the Carnegie and Ford Foundations: "Why does a tax-exempt state department need a tax-exempt, not-for-profit private corporation? How can we have taxpayer-controlled public schools if they are run by a private corporation whose director the taxpayers cannot vote out of office?"[26]  

As the last of the eight goals of Goals 2000, PAT has ranked high on the list of mandated musts by year 2000. Since it is cloaked in promotional literature that defuse criticism, most parents welcome the promised aid and are happy to follow the new child-raising guidelines. Besides, most of PAT's parent educators have seemed friendly and helpful. But that may change. According to Missouri Secretary of State Roy Blunt, a new brand of "Certified educator parents" are being trained at the Danforth Foundation's Teachers Pre-Service Institute. When the program is fully in place, they will replace the current "nice grandmothers from local churches."[27]  

To win public support for PAT and for countless other pieces of the global transformation puzzle, educators have begun a massive nationwide campaign to promote their vision, win supporters, and silence opposition.  Nothing illustrates this "social marketing"[28] effort better than the Community Action Toolkit, prepared by the National Education Goals Panel led by education secretary Richard Riley.  It provides local change agents with such transformational strategies as: identifying other potential change agents, building a leadership team, expanding their base of support, winning the media to their side, and responding to opponents.  Like most educational literature today, the suggested arguments for "influencing the attitudes and behaviors" of community leaders and followers are based on deceptive words and misleading euphemisms--never the actual facts.

Call it "propaganda" if you will.  The process bears an alarming likeness to the mental manipulation of the German people under Nazi leadership.              

The power of propaganda.  Webster's dictionary defines propaganda as "information and opinions (esp. prejudiced ones) spread to influence people in favor of or against some doctrine or idea."[29] Hitler knew well how to use this tool for transformation to accomplish his purpose.

"The most striking success of a revolution," wrote Adolf Hitler in Mein Kampf, "will always have been achieved when the new philosophy of life as far as possible has been taught to all men, and, if necessary, later forced upon them."[30] This "philosophy of life" was taught through propaganda--which was first designed "to fill a small nucleus of men with the new doctrine, and so prepare the material which could later furnish the first elements of an organization."

Since Hitler's scheme proved so successful--and since similar strategies are evident in the current transformation of American schools and culture--you may want to consider some of its parts below.  View them as both timeless and timely, not sensational or irrelevant. Remember that behind the visible scenes lurks the spiritual master-mind of Satan.  According to 1 John 5:19, "the whole world is under the control of the evil one."  All except those who follow Christ are susceptible to his timeless suggestions. The deceptive schemes that worked in the past, will probably succeed again, for neither human nature nor Satan's hatred for God's people ever change. If contemporary Americans were better equipped with God's Word and the lessons of history, we would not be so easily duped.  

Compare what Hitler wrote in 1925 to what is happening today:

 When a movement harbors the purpose of tearing down a world and building another in its place, complete clarity must reign in the ranks of its own leadership with regard to the following principles: 

Every movement will first have to sift the human material it wins into two large groups: supporters and members.  

The function of propaganda is to attract supporters, the function of organization is to win members.  A supporter of a movement is one who declares himself to be in agreement with its aims, a member is one who fights for them....

Understanding in its passive form corresponds to the majority of mankind which is lazy and cowardly. Membership requires an activist frame of mind and thus corresponds only to the minority of men.

Propaganda will consequently have to see that an idea wins supporters, while the organization must take the greatest care only to make the most valuable elements among the supporters into members....  

The first task of propaganda is to win people for subsequent organization.... The second task of propaganda is the disruption of the existing state of affairs and the permeation of this state of affairs with the new doctrine, while the second task of the organization must be the struggle for power, thus to achieve the final success of the doctrine.[31]  

Like Hitler, today's change agents know that propaganda is key to their success. Remember what North Carolina school superintendent Dr. Jim Causby said in his 1994 speech at the 2nd Annual Model Schools Conference [32] in Atlanta: "We have actually been given a course in how not to tell the truth.  How many of you are administrators? You've had that course in public relations where you learn to put the best spin on things.[33]  

You saw in Chapter 4 how words have been redefined.  They must appeal to the public, reflect what parents want to hear, but conceal their true meaning.  Without the corresponding facts and truths, most people are likely to be deceived by the propaganda.  They will believe the words and phrases that describe the very system designed to take control, not only of our children's education, but of their entire lives.

Growth through partnerships.  To win grass-roots supporters in every community, the U.S. Department of Education prepared a report called "Organizing Your Community To Reach the National Education Goals."  Matching the earlier definition  for propaganda, it opens with a reminder that "There is much ground to cover, and the Year 2000 seems just around the corner.... Goals 2000 calls for partnerships across local, state and federal levels--partnerships for mustering the support it'll take to help communities and local schools do what only they together can do...."[34]  

You saw that education has bridged the gap between Republicans and Democrats. Both sides agree that the ultimate goals--what communities must accomplish in the end--are determined by the national and international goals.  To achieve those goals, "a state panel of teachers, principals, parents and others, including the governor and chief state school officer, would evolve a standards-driven reform plan" which would be communicated to each local community. After all, explains the above report, it "wouldn't make sense for communities to go off by themselves and create their own standards from scratch, especially if they're to be internationally competitive standards...[35]  (Emphasis in the original)

As Chester Finn suggested earlier, only the final, practical implementation is left to the local school. It can use its own ingenuity to find creative ways to teach the national curriculum content required by NESIC (the National Eduation Standards and Improvement Council). It can create its own corresponding curriculum and teaching programs, but if it fails to produce the required change in its students, it will be punished.  Since the goal is a new type of student with a new set of attitudes and behaviors, the transformation of our children will require total community participation.  And since everyone will apparently be tested through national assessments, there will be no hiding place from group conformity.  (See Anita Hoge's report in Part II)

To help each community accomplish its part, Riley's report described various model communities.  Each had planned their own programs and communication links, and "almost all of them found it necessary" to "identify" and organize "key individuals in the community."[36]   These vital "partnerships" were also emphasized in a list of warnings. It encouraged local school planners to "involve key players who could easily block what the collaborative hopes to do. Whenever possible, try to make allies out of adversaries." 

In order to "make allies out of adversaries", the educational establishment has formed some surprising partnerships that bridge the ideological chasms rarely crossed in our separation-between-church-and-state-conscious culture. Below, you will see how one bridge links local schools to community churches.  Considering the growing hostility toward biblical truth, it makes little sense. Yet, it's part of the plan. 

To help communities test their rate of progress, Riley and the congressmen who prepared the Community Action Toolkit provide questions they can ask themselves: "Are we creating 'a whole community' partnership to improve teaching and learning? Are we enlisting partners throughout the community... churches and media, social service agencies and law enforcement, and others?"[37]  

 Remember, the social transformation could not succeed without general consent from the public--however uninformed that consent might be.  And what strategy could better win support among the opposing forces than a friendly invitation to cooperate and seek "common ground"?    

It works because few dare even suspect what the change agents plan to do to parents. Lured by pride or propaganda, leaders in every field are accepting the invitation to join hands with a kind of deception few could imagine.  Many Christian leaders, who should be a parent's prime defender, have become part of the horrendous betrayal. Left behind, are countless Christian parents who find no church support in their attempt to raise godly children God's way.     

A few years ago, U.S. Senator Christopher Bond, one of the Missouri leaders of Parents as Teachers, told Laura Rogers that he was trying to recruit churches to support the PAT program. On December 16, 1994, his dream came true.  The U.S. Department of Education issued the official "Statement of Common Purpose of Religious Leaders."  Education Secretary Riley made the announcement: "The religious communities standing with me represent some seventy-five percent of all religiously affiliated Americans....  Our meetings led to the clear recognition that our nation's religious community can play a more active and positive role in helping parents in the education of their children."[38]  

It sounds just as promising as Parents as Teachers, doesn't it? Would you like to know who signed it? The "religious communities endorsing the statement" included the Assemblies of God, Association of Christian Schools International, Council of Jewish Federations, Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, Lutheran Church (Missouri Synod), National Council of Churches, National Association of Evangelicals, National Baptist Convention, National Church of God, Presbyterian Church, U.S.A., United Methodist Church, U.S. Catholic Conference, United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, and many others. 

If you are wondering who still shares your concern, you are not alone. Across the country, Christian parents have sought help in their churches only to be told not to worry or rock the boat.  "But I can't let my child participate in Native American rituals or make those occult Medicine Shields," said a heartbroken mother in Ohio.  Her pastor and church friends simply couldn't understand why  not.  They had already embraced the popular vision of the human family holding hands around the world--a vision that mocks the gospel but approves all "other gods." 

The Statement of Common Purpose never mentions God. It ignores His  warnings about spiritual compromise.  Look at what it does mention:

It is imperative that religious communities join together with governments, community organizations, businesses, and public and private schools in striving to provide families, parents, grandparents, foster parents, guardians, or extended family members with the information, skills, tools, and opportunities that will encourage their participation in the total education of their children, including character education. We are committed to working together to improve children's learning through family involvement partnerships.

We call upon all citizens, religious communities, community organizations to do their share.  We urge family members to become actively involved in their children's education, religious communities to work to better understand and meet educational and family needs [Do you wonder who will teach them?], community organizations to sponsor meaningful youth- and  family-oriented activities, and businesses to adopt family-friendly policies in the workplace.[39]  

Perhaps, as Jesus said on the cross, "they do not know what they are doing."  Maybe the religious leadership simply believes the propaganda and has joined a movement they don't understand--just as the German churches did during the Nazi rise to power.  Perhaps they really do believe that the educational establishment wants to support, not control, Christian parents. The vision looks so tempting--until its deceptive claims turn to calamities that can no longer be denied.

Dealing with "resisters".  In addition to the "members" and "supporters" gathered through propaganda, Hitler counted two other groups of people: the ignorant masses and the stubborn resisters.  The first, he considered too "lazy and cowardly" to take a stand.  The second, he viewed as enemies of good, deserving no mercy. 

Now as then, resisters who challenge the revolution are considered enemies of progress. "Religious Right groups and their local affiliates are conducting an unrelenting campaign of harassment an intimidation against public education all over the nation,"[40]  writes Dr. Richard Manatt, Professor of Edcation at Iowa State University, in a book full of strategies for combatting "fundamentalists".  

The labels help to discredit the opposition. Most of us have seen those labels: the Radical Right, Christian fundamentalists, book-burners....  The flier below illustrates how these hostile tags are used to identify a common enemy ("the radical right") and to join community "partners" in a joint attempt to quench opposition.  Notice the strategic mix of participants: politicians from both parties, lawyers, a pastor, a writer, the Planned Parenthood and other non-governmental organizations.... Where do you see the tolerance they proclaim?        

WHO ARE THE RADICAL RIGHT AND WHAT ARE THEIR PLANS FOR YOU?

The  Advocates of Santa Clara County Planned Parenthood 

present an important informational community forum on:

The Threat of the Radical Right

featuring:  Senator Tom Campbell

California State Senator and Co-founder of the Republican Majority Coalition.

 Tom Conry, President of the Vista Teachers Association (Vista was the first school board in California to be taken over by the Radical Right)

Dr. Ignacio Castuera, United Methodist Church Minister and board member of People for the American Way

Ken Yager, Ph.D., first openly gay elected official in Santa Clara County

Janis Schechter, Chair, Intellectual Freedom Committee of the California Library Association

Tracey Labbe-Renault, author of Without Justice for All: A Report on the Christian Right in Sacramento and Beyond.  

Forum co-sponsors: National Organization for Women; Santa Clara Valley National Lawyers Guild: AAUW; Peninsula P-FLAG; Santa Clara County Democratic Party; Democratic Activists for Women Now (DAWN)

Friday, October 14 from 1-5 p.m.

Silicon Valley Conference Center, 985 Stewart Drive, Sunnyvale

Similar combat sessions are springing up everywhere.  In 1993, a series of seven-day conferences were planned for presentation throughout the U.S. One took place in Greensboro, North Carolina,  in December. Called "Responding Democratically to Opposition Groups," it taught supporters how to identify opposition groups, their arguments and tactics, and how to plan the action needed to counter their efforts.[41]  

CTA Human Rights Department and CTA Division of Governmental Relations, "Primer on the Extremist Attacks on Public Education," June 1994, 13.

In  The Change Agent's Guide to Innovation in Education, Ronald G. Havelock offered such a plan.  "[T]ry to identify resisters before they become vocal and committed," he wrote. "Resisters, like innovators, should be judged for relative sophistication and influence."[42]  

In a report titled "Primer on the Extremist Attacks on Public Education," selected educators in Mountain View, California, learned to do just that--and more.   Designed to prepare teachers to respond to complaints from the Radical Right, it listed the issues and buzzwords "used by extremists," some of the active "Extreme Right Groups," and their key leaders: Robert Simonds, Phyllis Schlafly, etc..  A check list of ways to combat extremist attacks included:

 Prepared by the California Teachers' Association, the report included "Watchdog Guidelines" and interview questions for school board candidates. "The purpose of watchdogging school boards," it explained, is to alert "the community's mainstream" to the "influence of extreme radicals" so that "the majority's moderate, more inclusive values may be promoted and protected..."[44]  

Ignoring the fact that most of those dreaded "extremists" are actually the parents of their students, the CTA  "condemns the philosophy and practices of extremist groups and their efforts to recruit students in our schools and... censor curriculum."  To whom do they think the children belong? 

You have seen some of the answers:  the children belong to the community, to the world, to the professionals trained to prepare them for the global workforce of the 21st Century.  Many of these professionals have distorted God's timeless guidelines for families to fit a new world order where "good" is synonymous with "global" and "sin" means refusing to join the march to planetary oneness.

Seducing the children. One of the most disturbing tactics for change incites children to turn against their parents.  You have seen examples of how multicultural and environmental education are used as vehicles for change.  The various strategies for sex and AIDS education are just as effective in confusing a child's values and fueling rebellion against traditional authorities.

When Kim Shaw signed a permission slip allowing her daughter to attend an AIDS-awareness seminar at Hale Middle School, she had no idea that her twelve-year-old would be exposed to explicit descriptions of sex acts. If she had known that the seventh- and eight-graders would learn practical ways to apply condoms in order to enjoy premarital sex without consequences, she never would have signed. Worst of all, the seventh- and eighth-graders were coached to hide their sexual identity from their parents and reject their home-taught values.

"I felt it went too far in giving graphic details," Shaw said, "but what I was most upset about was how they taught them to cheat and lie to their parents. They told them how to hide their condoms and their wrappers after they were done with them. They said, 'You want to make sure your parents don't find them'."

 Two pamphlets were given to the students. One showed how to use condoms. The other was titled "100 Ways to Make Love Without Doing It."

This particular seminar, provided throughout the huge Los Angeles Unified School District, was led by health workers from a county clinic. Similar programs operate across the country, as Phyllis Schlafly documents in her excellent expose, Child Abuse in the Classroom.

That premarital sexual freedom should be encouraged as part of the new-paradigm education program should come as no surprise. As I have documented in Under the Spell of Mother Earth, sexual activities played a vital part in the "sacred" fertility rituals of earth-centered cultures around the world.  While most change agents find sex education a valuable tool for severing a student's ties to home, many also view free sex as a needed vehicle for raising humanity's consciousness of its spiritual connectedness.

"Sexuality is a sacrament," writes Starhawk, founder and priestess of the Covenant of the Goddess, in her Wiccan manual, The Spiritual Dance.  "Religion is a matter of relinking, with the divine within and with her outer manifestations...."[45]

The Sin of Separateness.   We shouldn't be surprised at the success of today's cultural revolution.  The new-paradigm message began to take root soon after prayer and Bible reading were outlawed in our schools in the early sixties.  The youths who led the counter-culture became mainstream pace-setters in the seventies and eighties. Some became professors and mentors for today's young teachers, while others wrote the books and music that helped establish the new values.

Politicians as well as media leaders have joined the march.  Al Gore summarized their growing vision well.  "Seeing ourselves as separate is the central problem in our political thinking,"[46] he told his audience at the 1991 Communitarian Conference in Washington D.C.  A World Goodwill Newsletter put it another way,

The day is dawning when all religions will be regarded as emanating from one greater spiritual source; all will be seen as unitedly providing the one root out of which the universal world religion will inevitably emerge.... they will seek unitedly to co-operate with the divine Plan...."[47]  

Those who belong to God can neither condone this dangerous illusion of unity nor the religions that support it.  "What harmony is there between Christ and Belial?" asked Paul. "What does a believer have in common with an unbeliever? What agreement is there between the temple of God and idols? For we are the temple of the living God. As God has said, 'I will live with them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they will be my people. Therefore come out from them and be separate'."  (2 Corinthians 6:15-17)

Such an attitude of separation is no longer permitted in American classrooms. Students who love God will surely face increasing persecution. The NEA's well-organized opposition to Christian interference shows the growing hatred for contrary opinions.  All critics must be censored, expelled or intimidated into consensus--for when imagined unity is the dominant goal,  objective criticism becomes an intolerable offense.  

Amara Essy, President of the United Nations' General Assembly, articulated this double-standard well: "Let us vow to attack intolerance and discrimination wherever they occur.... Intolerance is unacceptable."[48]  

Essy's call to battle against those who oppose global and spiritual unity might be rephrased, "We, who embrace the new paradigm, will not tolerate  intolerance toward our views.  Those who cling to the old views have no right to disagree or oppose us. We are right, they are wrong.  We will not tolerate their views."

Recent totalitarian rulers have relied heavily on intimidation and persecution. History shows that persecution took cruel turns in pagan cultures where human nature--animated by occult spirits--had free reign.  With today's explosion of occult teaching and pagan rituals throughout the Western World, can we count on anything less?

Yet, this is no time to sit on the sidelines or be afraid. As God's people, we fight on the winning side. Jesus told His disciples, "As long as it is day, we must do the work of Him who sent Me. Night is coming, when no one can work." (John 9:4)  Our work is first and foremost to allow Him to live His life through us, so that His transforming wisdom and love can touch the multitudes who are being deceived.  Remember, "Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved." (Acts 4:12)

Do you still feel shocked by the immensity of the battle? Discouraged?  Then don't stop here.  The next chapter will help and encourage you.  As a dear friend keeps telling  me, "Nothing is  hopeless until God abdicates His throne. And we know that He will never do that!"  What He promised His people long ago through Moses, is just as true for His followers today: 

Be strong and courageous, do not be afraid or tremble at them, for the Lord our God is the One who goes with you. He will not fail you or forsake you. (Deuteronomy 31:6)     

[1] Ronald G. Havelock, The Change Agent's Guide to Innovation in Education (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Educational Technology Publications, 1973);122.

[2] Aldous Huxley, Brave New World (New York: Harper Collins, 1932), xvii.

  [3] B-Step, Teacher Training Manual, National Training Institute for Applied Behavioral Science, 1240 North Pitt, Suite 100, Alexandria, VA 22314 (800-777-5227). (Was in Bethel, ME) Cited by Cherrilyn Gulbrandson, 183.

  [4] From keynote address to the Association for Childhood Education International (Denver, April 1972) by Dr. Chester M. Pierce, Professor of Education and Psychiatry in the Faculty of Medicine at Harvard University.

  [5] Kathy Collins, "Children are not Chattel, "Free Inquiry, a publication of CODESH (Council, for Democratic and Secular Humanism), (Fall 1987), 11.

  [6] A term coined by Lamar Alexander in his address at the 1989 Governors Conference in Kansas.

  [7] Fred M. Newmann, "School-wide Professional Community," Issues in Restructuring Schools,  (Center on Organization and Restructuring of Schools, Spring 1994); 1.

  [8] "Goals 2000--Details You Can Use," Self-Evident, (March 1995); 3.

  [9] The Iowa Initiative for World-Class Schools, Final Report, prepared by the Iowa Business and Education Roundtable (December 1990); 11-12.

[10] Massell Smith, Social Change (Vol. 7, no 2, 1977). Cited by Cuddy in Chronology of Education, 61.   

[11] Chester Finn, Jr., "Reinventing Local Control," Education Week (January 23, 1991).

  [12] Chester Finn, Jr., We Must Take Charge: Our Schools and Our Future  (New York: The Free Press, 1991), 233.

[13] Ibid., 246.

  [14] Finn, "Reinventing Local Control."

  [15] Gen Yvette Sutton's comments in a private telephone conversation.

  [16] Dennis Laurence Cuddy, Ph.D., Chronology of Education (1994, Pro Family Forum, Box 1059, Highland City, FL 33846), 39. Dr. Cuddy's fuller explanation is worth reading.

  [17] Kurt Waldheim, Secretary-General of the U.N., addressing to the Executive Board of UNICEF, 

April 1972. Cited by Cuddy, Chronology, 51.  

[18] Laura Rogers, "In Loco Parentis I," Chronicles Magazine, a publication of the Rockford Institute (February 19, 1991), 42.

  [19] Ibid., 43-43.

[20] Ibid., 43.

  [21] Dana Mack, "Child-abuse bureaucracy a new parent trap," The Sacramento Bee, February 20, 1994.

[22] Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, Parents As Teachers National Center, Missouri.

  [23] Laura Rogers, 43.

[24] Ibid.

  [25] Laura Rogers, "In Loco Parentis II," Chronicles Magazine, a publication of the Rockford Institute (September 1992), 47.

[26] Ibid.

[27] Rogers, "In Loco Parentis I", 44.

  [28] "Guide to Getting Out Your Message," National Education Goals Panel Community Action Toolkit: A Do-It-Yourself Kit for Education Renewal (September 1994); 6.

[29] The New Lexicon Webster's Dictionary of the English Language (New York: Lexicon Publications, Inc., 1989), 801.

[30] Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf (Cambridge: Houghton-Mifflin Company, 1943), 582.

  [31] Ibid., 581-582.

[32] Sponsored by the International Center for Leadership in Education. For more information, see June 26-29, 1994, in "Chronology of Events" in Part 2.

[33] Cynthia Weatherly, "The 2nd Annual Model School Conference," The Christian Conscience (January 1995); 36.

  [34] "Organizing Your Community To Reach the National Education Goals," Goals 2000: Educate America (May 18, 1993), 2.

  [35] Ibid.

[36] Ibid., 14.

  [37] "Community Organizing Guide," National Education Goals Panel Community Action Toolkit (September 1994), 36.

[38] Richard Riley, "Statement of Common Purpose of Religious Leaders," The U.S. Department of Education, December 16, 1994.

  [39] From a copy of the "Statement of  Common Purpose of Religious Leaders," issued by Richard W. Riley, U.S. Secretary of Education, Department of Education, Public Affairs, Washington, D.C., December 16, 1994.

  [40] Richard P. Manatt, When Right is Wrong (Lancaster: Technomic Publishing Co., Inc.,), 2.

[41] Joy Perry, "Workshop: "Responding Democratically to Opposition Groups," Wisconsin Report, December 16, 1993, 1.

  [42] Ronald G. Havelock, The Change Agent's Guide to Innovation in Education (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Educational Technology Publications, 1973);122.

  [43] CTA Human Rights Department and CTA Division of Governmental Relations, "Primer on the Extremist Attacks on Public Education," June 1994, 13.

  [44] Ibid., 19.

  [45] Starhawk, The Spiral Dance (San Francisco: Harper & Row Publishers, 1979), 23.

  [46] Corinne and Gordon Davidson, Spiritual Politics  (New York: Ballantine Books, 1994),147.

  [47] World Goodwill Newsletter (1993, No. 4); 2.

  [48] Cover story of Parade, December 25, 1994.

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