Antonio Peck didn't know
his New York school wanted to change his values. So when his teacher told him to
make an environmental poster for parent's day, the kindergartner simply combined
what he had learned in class with the message on his heart. He drew:
-
People
picking up litter.
-
Children holding hands around
the globe.
-
A
white-robed man kneeling in one corner.
His poster failed the test of
political correctness. Antonio didn't tell anyone that the man in the corner was Jesus,
but his teacher guessed. Later, when his poster hung on a wall along with nearly 80
others, his picture looked different. One corner had been folded up, hiding the kneeling
man and part of Antonio's name.
Antonio felt embarrassed and
confused. Why shouldn't Jesus who created the world be in the picture?
It didn't make sense.
His parents agreed. They hired a
lawyer and sued the school for violating their son's constitutional right to express his
Christian beliefs. According to the CNS article "Poster
With Picture of Jesus Lands Kindergartner in Court,”
the unrepentant school denied any injustice.
"This is simply a case of
requiring students to be responsive to the educational curriculum," explained Paul
Battaglia, the attorney who represents Baldwinsville Elementary School in Syracuse in
the First Amendment lawsuit. "It is not at all a case of great religious
significance, but simply a case where a student was asked to... perform a particular
lesson and give back certain material and failed to do so."[1]
But Antonio did fulfill the assignment. He included the environmental
vision of earth stewardship and unity. His only "failure" was his refusal to
exclude Jesus.
"He didn't follow the teacher's instructions despite given two opportunities to do
so," Battaglia said. "It's unfortunate, but the school has particular
curriculum standards it must enforce."
Curriculum standards with no
flexibility -- even in kindergarten? Why?
In the minds of educational
change agents, kindergarten is not too early to teach world citizenship and obedience to
a global ethic. In fact, many educators would love to start sooner. So when the states finally
usher children into public classrooms at age five or six, school officials -- held
accountable to the new affective assessments (testing feelings and beliefs) -- have
little time to lose. Before a child’s home-taught beliefs are too firmly implanted,
teachers must begin to...
-
instill the new
global values
-
break down
resistance built by traditional values.
The new vision of the world
includes planetary servants who recycle and reuse the earth's resources (that's good),
clean up any litter found (I learned that as a child in Norway) and see themselves as
members of a global bio-family (that's not good). The pantheistic spirituality
taught in schools through multicultural myths and "experiences" helps build a
religious foundation for this envisioned oneness. Politically correct assignments that
force students to retell the latest lesson in global unity through journaling,
storytelling and drawing pictures help seal the new vision in the student's mind.[2]
Naturally, Jesus doesn't fit this
image of the world. His presence blurs the vision. It could confuse students who have
already learned to conform their faith to more appropriate models for a global
spirituality.
Dr. Brock Chisholm, the first chief of the
World Health Organization, a UN agency, summarized this hostility toward Christian
values in a 1946 article. Pointing to the psycho-social strategies that now permeate our
elementary schools, he wrote,
"If the race is
to be freed from its crippling burden of good and evil, it must be psychiatrists who
take the original responsibility. ...
"Can such a program of re-education or of a new kind of
education be charted? I would not presume to go so far, except to suggest that
psychology and sociology and simple psychopathology, the sciences of living, should be
made available to all the people by being taught too all children in primary an
secondary schools, while the study of such thing as trigonometry, Latin, religions and
others of specialist concern should be left to universities. Only so... can we help our
children carry their responsibilities as world citizens...."[3]
Today, students who refuse to
conform to the global indoctrination planned over 50 years ago often face increasing
pressure, intimidation and censorship. Such
punishment works well on most children. In a nation trained to crave human praise more
than God's approval, few will endure exclusion or rejection for Jesus' sake.
But Antonio stood his ground and
passed the test -- twice. He would not remove Jesus from his picture of the earth. While Jesus' friend and disciple Peter denied His Master three times, a little
boy in New York chose to face humiliation and reproof rather than compromise his faith
and deny His ever-present Lord. So Jesus stayed and Antonio won.
May we be as brave.
1.Jason Pierce, Poster
With Picture of Jesus Lands Kindergartner in Court, CCNS News, April 3, 2001.
2. See "Saving
the Earth."
3.
G. Brock Chisholm, "The Re-Establishment of Peacetime
Society," Psychiatry, February 1946.
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