Camp Constitution hosted a Patriot’s Day overnight for several homeschool families at the Lane Learning Center in Lexington, MA-a few blocks from the Lexington Battle Green Sunday April 16 -Monday April 17.

The event began Sunday evening with a viewing the movie “Johnny Tremain, and then a walk to the Hancock- Clark House to watch the reenactment of the “Midnight Ride of Paul Revere” where we met up with Camp Constitution instructor and historical reenactor Rich Howell

Then back to the Lane House for a few hours’ sleep. At 4:30 AM, we took a walk to the Lexington Green to get a good spot for viewing the reenactment and the wreath laying ceremony at the gravesite of Lexington Militia leader Captain John Parker, and then back to the Lane House to warm up and enjoy a hearty breakfast cooked by Camp Constitution Director Hal Shurtleff
Camp Constitution offers tours of Lexington, Concord, Boston and Plymouth to homeschool and church groups.
One of the great advantages to being 83 years old is that I have lived through a great deal
of history and have a perspective on life that you, my younger readers, do not have. I
remember the days when I would look around and find myself perhaps the youngest
person in the crowd. I took great delight in that. Today I look around and I am usually
the oldest. But I know that God has kept me around for a purpose, and I suspect that He
wants me to keep doing what I have been doing for the last forty years: writing about
education and promoting homeschooling.
How different is education today from what it was when I first attended a public school
back in New York City in the early 1930s! That was during the Great Depression, but I
don’t remember anyone I knew being depressed. My father was in the produce business
and thus we always had plenty of food to eat. My mother actually made her own noodles
for chicken soup. I was able to walk to school and come home for lunch. I remember
admiring the smiling policeman who stopped traffic so that we could cross the avenue on
our way to school.
On Saturdays my friends and I went to the movies. Price of admission? Ten cents. In
those days a penny could get you a Tootsie Roll, a package of gum, a bun. Five cents
could get you a hotdog.
At school we all sat in desks bolted to the floor. The desks were arranged in rows so that
you only saw the back of the head of the pupil in front of you. If you coughed, you
didn’t cough in anyone’s face. Today, with kids seated around tables, they are coughing
into each others faces and spreading disease.
Back then, the teacher had her desk at the front of the class and she taught us all the same
thing. There was no such thing as an “individual learning plan.” We learned to read
with phonics because it was the Depression and the schools could not afford the new
Dick and Jane look-say books.
We were taught penmanship, cursive writing, which
helped us learn to read because it taught us directionality and manual discipline. By
connecting the letters in a word, we learned the word’s spelling and how different
combinations of letters made different sounds.
Back then in elementary school we were taught arithmetic, not math. Arithmetic is a
counting system. In addition you count forward. In subtraction you count backwards. In
Multiplication you count forward in multiples, and in division you count backwards in
multiples. The teachers knew then that only by memorizing the arithmetic facts could
you become efficient at using this ingenious place-value counting system. And so we
memorized the arithmetic tables. Mathematics, which dealt with relationships, came
later.
Of course, some of us learned the 3Rs better than others. Some of our teachers were not
terribly good at teaching. Others were great, and we loved them. I remember being
humiliated in front of a class because, for some reason, I could not remember some
simple arithmetic function, and that angered the teacher.
From that experience, I have always advised tutors and homeschooling parents to never
get angry when a child is having difficulty learning something. Be patient, and explain
what it is that you want the student to learn. The brain is a very remarkable instrument
and can do both amazing and silly things–often at the same time!
So we all learned reading, writing, and arithmetic. And because we could read, we then
learned history and geography.
We learned all about the history of New York and its
five boroughs. It was a happy time for us kids. No one had dyslexia, or ADD, or
ADHD. No one was on Ritalin. There was no sex ed or death ed, no multiculturalism,
no values clarification, no secular humanism. The schools did not try to undermine our
religious beliefs or morals. They were teaching us to become good patriotic Americans.
Since most of us came from immigrant families, becoming good Americans was very
important. The only decoration in our classroom was a portrait of George Washington.
Moreover, Biblical religion was respected, and the Principal recited the 23rd Psalm at
each assembly.
In Third Grade, we had Music Appreciation. The teacher brought out her hand driven
Victrola from the closet and played classical music for us. I still remember some of the
pieces she played: The Swan by Saint-Saens. March Slav by Tchaikovsky. And I know
that that’s where I acquired my taste for classical music.
So I had a very decent primary and elementary education. And the public school was an
institution which instilled great patriotic values and love of country. They did not dumb
us down; they lifted us up. But those days are long gone, and today I tell parents: do not
put your child in a public school. If you want to preserve their mental sanity, teach them
at home.
Today’s public schools have become criminal enterprises where children’s brains are
deliberately crippled by whole-language and look-say, where drugs are pushed on
millions of children who must ingest Ritalin, where a child’s religious beliefs are
undermined by the practices of behavioral psychology, where pornography is foisted on
the students in the name of sex education, where money is extorted from taxpayers to pay
for the dumbing down of the future generation. Children in such a system will suffer
lifelong deficits, and that is why home schooling is so important, and why homeschoolers
should bless their parents for keeping out of such a harmful system.
(This was written in 2009. For more gems like this, please visit Sam’s archives:
https://campconstitution.net/sam-blumenfeld-archive/

It’s easy. Destroy its literacy, and you’ve dumbed it down. And once dumbed down, it
becomes the potential victim of any power that wants to dominate it.
If you look at the most illiterate nations on the planet, you find that they are ruled by
despots, their people live in abject poverty and have no hope for a better future. That
doesn’t mean that literate nations, like Germany, can’t produce monsters. But when they
do, we know that satanic influences are behind it.
America, from its beginning, was the most literate nation on earth, and the result was
positive in every respect. Why was it so literate? Because the people and their leaders
were governed by the precepts of the Bible, and biblical literacy was paramount in the
education of the country’s children.
But once we got a government schooling system, which was taken over by atheist
progressive educators, the God of the Bible was removed from the schools. It then
became possible to introduce a new socialist curriculum with teaching methods
calculated to reduce American literacy. The Bible was now relegated to an hour of study
in church on Sundays. And because it was no longer part of the curriculum, children no
longer considered it important to life.
A blatant, anti-biblical morality was introduced in the schools through such programs as
values clarification, sensitivity training, transcendental meditation, sex education, death
education, drug education, multiculturalism, psychotherapy, evolution, secular
humanism, and other such programs. Moral degeneration has been the inevitable result.
The result is that America has been greatly dumbed down.
Editor: The above was written over 25 years ago long before teachers would openly promote sodomy and so-called gender reassignment surgery. The solution is simple: Remove your children from the clutches of these atheists who hate you and your children. Please feel free to contact us if you are looking for recommended homeschooling resources:
campconstitution1@gmail.com
Christians from Communist China to Ukraine to Iraq and dozens of nations in-between have been viciously persecuting for their faith. Sady, it is also happening in the United States -a nation founded on Judeo-Christian principles.


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Slavery did not start in 1619.
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On February 3, 1790, less than three months before he died, Franklin petitioned Congress to ban slavery:
Sam Blumenfeld discovered that there was a concerted effort to dumb the American people down as far back as the early 1960s, and by the mid 1970s, Sam concluded that the look-say method of reading used in government schools was responsible for dyslexia. The government’s solution to dyslexia was to drug children. Sam’s solution was to teach the victims of the look-say method, intensive phonics. Here is a link to a speech Sam gave on the subject:
https://www.podomatic.com/podcasts/shurtleffhal/episodes/2023-03-23T15_24_07-07_00
Sam was more than a critic of government education; he was a man of action who helped create private schools and then he became a pioneer in the modern homeschool movement. He also gave us, perhaps, his most important work, Alpha-Phonics:

This book has been used by hundreds of thousands of people around the world. Camp Constitution makes it available in an on-line and PDF format:
https://campconstitution.net/blumenfelds-alphaphonics/

We also have a print version available from our on-line store: https://campconstitution.net/product/alpha-phonics-by-sam-blumenfeld/
The following is one of many of Sam Blumenfeld’s book proposals that never turned into a book. However, Sam did write extensively about the Unitarian and eventual Marxist takeover of Harvard. Many contemporary conservatives don’t realize that Harvard was taken over by the Left 200 years ago.
GOD AND MAN AT HARVARD:
Chapter Outline
Chapter One – THE CALVINIST BEGINNING. Educating a learned clergy for the Biblical Commonwealth in the wilderness. Calvinism as a world view. The meaning of the Calvinist doctrines of innate depravity, election, reprobation, and predestination. God as the supreme ruler of the universe; man as the disobedient, sinful descendant of Adam and Eve. Harvard as a Calvinist institution. (1636-1700)

Chapter Two – THE EMERGENCE OF A LIBERAL HERESY.
The election of John Leverett as president of Harvard in 1707 signals the beginning of a century-long protracted struggle between Calvinists and liberals for control of Harvard. The liberals reject the omnipotent “tyrannical” God of Calvin far a benevolent rational God of limited powers. Man is elevated from the status of depraved sinner to that of a benevolent, rational and perfectible being. (l700-180~)
Chapter Three – HARVARD BECOMES THE UNITARIAN VATICAN.
The takeover of Harvard in 1805 by the Unitarians and the removal of the Calvinists to Andover (1) marks the crucial turning point in American intellectual history. Harvard becomes the citadel of religious liberalism and academic anti-Calvinism. Everett, Ticknor, Bancroft and Cogswell are sent to Germany to sop up German liberal influences. A liberal cultural elite emerges and with it, the Anthology Society, the Boston Athenaeum., and the North American Review. Andrews Norton, as head of the Harvard Divinity School is dubbed the Unitarian Pope. Unitarianism becomes the world-view of a privileged educated elite. (1805-1830)
Chapter Four – THE TRANSCENDENTAL PERIOD.
Emerson’s Divinity School Address in 1838 ushers in a further liberalization of Unitarianism which becomes known as Transcendentalism because of its Hegelian origin. God is transformed into pantheistic emanations throughout nature and Man is transformed into an expression or God., Human pride becomes the principle ingredient behind the new faith in modern statism. The Bible as religious authority is subverted; natural scientists, German scholars, and the influence of Carlyle, Coleridge, Cousin, Kant, and Hegel, leading to’ the secularization of learning. Interest shifts from the knowledge of God (theology) to knowledge of man (psychology). (1830-1850)
Chapter Five – HARVARD AND PRE-MARXIAN SOCIALISM.
The Transcendentalist experiment in communal living. Brook Farm. The influences of Robert Owen, Fournier, Saint-Simon, Auguste Comte, etc. The issues of Darwinism and natural selection divide the academicians. The liberals win. The schizoid mind of the Brahmin elite: political conservatism and religious liberalism; anti-abolitionism; the public school movement. Protestant theology in a state of anarchy. Harvard weathers the Civil War with little inconvenience. (1850-1869)
Chapter Six – THE BREAK WITH THE PAST.
President Eliot gradually breaks ties with the classical and Biblical past. Greek and Latin are no longer required for admission to Harvard. Compulsory chapel is abolished. The elective system is inaugurated. The scientific spirit takes over as material progress advance~ at a spectacular rate. The Hegelian progressive world-view becomes the world-view of the Harvard elite. Man is intoxicated with his new technological and ~scientific achievements. Eliot writes of the “religion of the future.” Secularism becomes the wave of the future, and statism is its political ~expression. (1869-1880)
Chapter Seven – THE GREAT LIBERAL PROFESSORS.
Josiah Royce, William James, Hugo Munsterberg, George Santayana. The modern curriculum is developed, psychology, sociology, history, the sciences, etc. Christianity is reduced to a system of “social ethics.” Harvard leads the transition to the modern secular world. Int influence reigns supreme. Santayana “defects” and embraces Catholicism.
Chapter Eight – SOCIALISM AT HARVARD
The Intercollegiate Socialist Society if founded at Harvard. Members include Walter Lippmann, Heywood Broun, Osmond Frankel. Harvard becomes known as “the mother of radicals,” John Reed becomes a Bolshevik, dies in Russia and his buried in the Kremlin. Fabian Socialist Graham Wallas lecture at Harvard. Man marvels at his own powers. (1900-1920)
Chapter Nine – HARVARD SETS THE LIBERAL STANDARD
The academic world, for the most part, follows Harvard’s lead to the left. Through its graduate schools, the great foundations, its professors, Harvard liberalism becomes the world-view of America’s academic elite. Harvard alumni like Corliss Lamont and Robert Morse Lovett lend prestige to pro-Communist causes. The New Deal (1920-1945)
Chapter Ten: Harvard AND THE MCCARTHY ERA
Sen. McCarthy accuses the academic establishment, the Protestant clergy, the great foundations of aiding the Communist cause. Harvard men implicated in high treason: Lee Pressman, John Abt, Nathan Witt, Alger Hiss. This chapter will sow how Harvard’s prestige not only served as a cover-up for subversion but was also instrumental in stopping Congressional investigations into Leftist activities. Academic freedom for the Left (1945-1958)
Chapter Eleven – HARVARD AND VIETNAM
Harvard’s influence during the Kennedy years reaches its high-point. McGeorge Bundy, Arthur Schlesinger, Kissinger, and others flock to Washington. The Cambridge-Washington axis. Meanwhile, back at the campus, the SDS takes over. Harvard strategists lead America to its worst military defeat. (1958-1975)
Chapter Twelve – SOCIAL ENGINEERING FOR THE FUTURE
Harvard scientific las and institutes all operate on the premise that man’s power is unlimited, and that he is the center and measure of all things. Secular humanism is the philosophy guiding the behavioral sciences. The myth of moral progress permits any action in the name of mankind’s “improvement, Abortion, birth control, behavior modification by drugs, genetic transmutations are the natural products of this philosophy, Benevolent, rational perfectible man is now capable of causing hos fellow man more misery that event in history. Power is now man’s rampant passion. Skinner, Eriksin, Galbraith, Reisman, Lipset, etc.
Chapter Thirteen – GOD AT HARVARD
Atheist Harvey Cox is head of the Divinity School, Cox pushes secular, “religion less” religion. He is pro-Marxist, pro-Castro,, Christianity is dead at Harvard. The logical end of the liberal heresy is not merely the death of God but the murder of God. Religious liberalism has reached the end of the road. It now openly espouses dialectical materialism. The paradox of our time: a theological school at war with the idea of God; a theology unable and unwilling to resist Communist. Social and revolutionary action as the liberal form of piety.
Note by the editor
Please visit and subscribe to the Sam Blumenfeld Archives: https://campconstitution.net/sam-blumenfeld-archive/
Mar 17, 2023
As a result, Lemon has been used by courts to remove religious symbols and displays from the public square since 1971. In fact, Justice Antonin Scalia, joined by Justice Clarence Thomas, wrote in Lamb’s Chapel v. Ctr. Moriches Union Free School District regarding that the High Court’s invocation of the “Lemon Test” was “like some ghoul in a late night horror movie that repeatedly sits up in its grave and shuffles abroad, after being repeatedly killed and buried.”
However, all that changed last year as a result of two major victories at the U.S. Supreme Court.
On May 2, 2022, Liberty Counsel’s 9-0 victory at the U.S. Supreme Court in Shurtleff v. City of Boston involved censorship of Christian viewpoints regarding flag raisings. The High Court unanimously ruled that the city of Boston violated the Constitution by censoring a private flag in a public forum open to “all applicants” merely because the application referred to it as a “Christian flag.” The High Court unanimously rejected Boston’s use of the “Lemon Test” to censor Christian viewpoints.
In Kennedy v. Bremerton School District, Liberty Counsel argued in its amicus brief that since the Establishment Clause provides no justification for suppressing Coach Joe Kennedy’s private, religious speech to silently pray on the football field after games, the “Lemon Test” should be overruled. Then on June 27, 2022, the High Court ruled 6-3 in favor of the high school football coach and also finally buried the court-made “Lemon” test, citing Liberty Counsel’s 9-0 decision handed down in Shurtleff v. City of Boston involving the Christian flag.
The Kennedy ruling stated, “This Court long ago abandoned Lemon and its endorsement test offshoot… In place of Lemon and the endorsement test, this Court has instructed that the Establishment Clause must be interpreted by ‘reference to historical practices and understandings.’”

As a result, the Ten Commandments, for example, can be displayed on government property, including in public school classrooms. That means that the 1980 Stone v. Graham Supreme Court decision is no longer valid. In this case, the High Court ruled that a Kentucky law requiring the posting of a copy of the Ten Commandments, purchased with private contributions, on the wall of each public school classroom was unconstitutional and violated the first part of the Lemon and the Establishment Clause of the Constitution.
The activist 5-4 per curium opinion in Stone v. Graham was issued without any briefing or oral argument. Incredibly, the Court wrote:
“If the posted copies of the Ten Commandments are to have any effect at all, it will be to induce the schoolchildren to read, meditate upon, perhaps to venerate and obey, the Commandments. However desirable this might be as a matter of private devotion, it is not a permissible state objective under the Establishment Clause.”
However, since Lemon has been finally buried, students across the nation can read, memorize and hopefully obey, the Ten Commandments. Now it would be nice to return to the time prior to the removal of the Ten Commandments from schools when the worst infractions were chewing gum and spitballs.
In addition, other religious symbols such as crosses can permanently remain on government property.
On June 20, 2019, even though the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the Bladensburg Peace Cross, a 40-foot cross honoring those who died during World War I, could remain standing, the High Court sidestepped the opportunity to overturn the “Lemon Test.” Liberty Counsel filed an amicus brief to the High Court in support of the 93-year-old war memorial in Bladensburg, Maryland that the American Humanist Association challenged as violating the Establishment Clause and “discriminating against patriotic soldiers who are not Christian.”
Since the “Lemon Test” is now dead and the Establishment Clause must be interpreted according to its historical intent, all the cases that relied on Lemon are no longer valid, including cases that struck down Ten Commandment displays, Nativity scenes or other religious symbols. In fact, Justice Sonia Sotomayor dissenting in Kennedy v. Bremerton School District, wrote: “The Court overrules Lemon v. Kurtzman and calls into question decades of subsequent precedents that it deems ‘offshoot[s]’ of that decision.”
Liberty Counsel’s Founder and Chairman Mat Staver said, “The decisions from the Supreme Court involving the Christian flag and Coach Kennedy send a clear message that the ‘Lemon Test’ has finally been buried and government must not discriminate based on religious viewpoint. The Ten Commandments, Nativity scenes, crosses, religious symbols, displays, expression, meetings, and performances can no longer be brushed aside. No longer can courts divorce America from religious freedom or the First Amendment from its original and historical purpose.”
Liberty Counsel provides broadcast quality TV interviews via Hi-Def Skype and LTN at no cost.
(The above was a news release from Liberty Counsel http://www.lc.org
(Professor Soon asked us to repost this important interview with Alex Newman.)
Government agencies with a vested interest in the man-made global-warming agenda along with the United Nations are deceiving mankind about global temperature records using a number of flagrant errors, explained one of the world’s leading astrophyscists, Dr. Willie Soon, in this interview with The New American magazine’s Alex Newman. Dr. Soon, one of the speakers at the Heartland Institute’s annual climate convention, exposes these tricks, including relying on contaminated temperature data from urban areas that show more heat only due to human development rather than CO2 or global warming, he said. This has been known for over a century, and yet the climate profiteers keep peddling the fraud. Dr. Soon’s published studies on this have been cited even by top UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change scientists in their own work, so they can’t claim to be ignorant. It is time for truth, Dr. Soon warns.