The Weekly Sam: “The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America” A Review by Sam Blumenfeld
Charlotte Iserbyt has put her great exposé of the dumbing-down agenda of American education on the Internet, so that anyone
can now read it and download it free of charge. The DeliberateDumbing Down of America is a big book and so very importantthat anyone interested in the future of this country must read it. I wrote a Foreword for the book that basically explains what Charlotte achieved by her incredible research based on documents she took out of the files of the Department of Education in Washington, where she worked as a Senior Policy Advisor in the Office of Educational Research and Improvement (OERI) during the first Reagan administration. She is
the consummate whistleblower, with an overwhelming sense of responsibility as a public servant and a parent. Here’s the essence of what I wrote:
Charlotte Iserbyt is to be greatly commended for having put together the most formidable and practical compilation of
documentation describing the “deliberate dumbing down” of American children by their education system. Anyone interested in the truth will be shocked by the way American social engineers have systematically gone about destroying the intellect of millions of American children for the purpose of leading the American people into a socialist world government controlled by behavioral and social scientists. Mrs. Iserbyt has also documented the gradual transformation of our once academically successful education system into one devoted to training children to become compliant human resources to be used by government and industry for their own purposes. This is how fascist-socialist societies train their children to become servants of their government masters. The successful implementation of this new philosophy of education will spell the end of the American dream of individual freedom and opportunity. The government will plan your life for you, and unless you comply with government restrictions and regulations your ability to pursue a career of your own choice will be severely limited. What is so mind boggling is that all of this is being financed by the American people themselves through their own taxes.
In other words, the American people are underwriting the destruction of their own freedom and way of life by lavishly financing through federal grants the very social scientists who are undermining our national sovereignty and preparing our children to become the dumbed-down vassals of the new world order. It reminds one of how the Nazis charged their victims train fare to their own doom. One of the interesting insights revealed by these documents is how the social engineers use a deliberately created education “crisis” to move their agenda forward by offering radical reforms that are sold to the public as fixing the crisis which they never do. The new reforms simply set the stage for the next crisis, which provides the pretext for the next move forward. This is the dialectical process at work, a process our behavioral engineers have learned to use veryeffectively. Its success depends on the ability of the “change agents” to continually deceive the public which tends to believe anything the experts tell them.And so, our children continue to be at risk in America’s schools. They are at risk academically because of such programs as whole language, mastery learning, direct instruction, Skinnerian operant conditioning, all of which have created huge learning problems that inevitably lead to what is commonly known as Attention Deficit Disorder and the drugging of four million children with the powerful drug Ritalin.
Mrs. Iserbyt has dealt extensively with the root causes of immorality in our society and the role of the public schools in the teaching of moral relativism (no right/no wrong ethics). She raises a red flag regarding the current efforts of left-wing liberals and right-wing conservatives (radical center) to come up with a new kid on the block -“common ground” character education — which will, under the microscope, turn out to be the same warmed-over values education alert parent groups have resisted for over 50 years. This is a perfect example of the Hegelian Dialectic at work. (Karl Marx’s communist philosophy is called “Dialectical Materialism.”)
The reader will find in this book a plethora of information that will leave no doubt in the mind of the serious researcher exactly where the American education system is headed. If we wish to stop this juggernaut toward a socialist-fascist system, then we must restore educational freedom to America. Americans forget that the present government education system started as a Prussian import in the 1840’s–’50’s. It was a system built on Hegel’s belief that the state was “God” walking on earth. The only way to restore educational freedom, and put education back into the hands of parents where it belongs, is to get the federal government, with its coercive policies, out of education. The billions of dollars being spent by the federal government to destroy educational freedom must be halted, and that can only be done by getting American legislators to understand that the American people want to remain a free people, in charge of their own lives and the education of their childrenAnd since finally conservatives in Congress are seeking ways to reduce the size and cost of government, a good place to start is in dismantling the U.S. Department of Education. That’s one way to stop financing the deliberate dumbing down of America.To get to the free download of Charlotte’s book, click here. https://archive.org/details/DeliberateDumbingDownOfAmericaCharlotteIserbyt
You can still buy the book if you prefer to have a hard copy that you can read at your leisure and pass on to friends and relatives. And if you still have children in the public schools, you’ll know exactly what is going on inside those walls
(Here is a link to a PDF version of the article:
Camp Constitution at the 2018 Mass HOPE Homeschool Show
Since 2010, Camp Constitution has had an information table at Mass HOPE’s annual homeschool convention held at the DCU Center in Worcester, MA. This is the largest homeschool show in the region. In the eight years we have attended, we have made numerous friends-many of whom have attended our annual summer camp. We offer those who stop by our table a 10 Question quiz on the U.S. Constitution, free copies of the U.S. Constitution, books, DVDs, introduce them to the Sam Blumenfeld Arechives, and offer a free drawing for a week at camp. This year’s convention took place over this past weekend. Thanks to all who helped to make this possible. Here is a link to Mass HOPE’s web site: http://masshope.us/index.php?sub=About_Us
Our next homeschool show will be in Lancaster, PA hosted by the Christian Homeschoolers of Pennsylavnia June 1-2.
Camp Constitution Honors the Memory of the Men Who Answered the Alarm April 19, 1775
Today marks the 243 anniversary of the Battle of Lexington and Concord. Over the years, Camp Constitution has been on hand to participate in the celebration of that glorious day, and to videotape the various events of the day. Here is a link to a video of the Lexington Minutemen honoring the memory of the men who fought on that day:
The Weekly Sam: A Short Uncensored History of Sex Ed
By Samuel L. Blumenfeld
The dictum that ideas have consequences is nowhere better demonstrated than in the
ideas that have led to the introduction of sex education in American schools. The first
idea of consequence was Sigmund Freud’s notion that sexual repression causes neurosis.
If sexual repression makes you ill or creates dysfunction, then the remedy, of course, is
free sexual expression. That was not the cure that Freud recommended, but Freud’s idea
so strongly influenced American culture that clothes for women went from the trussed up
sexually repressed fashions of 1900 to the loose liberating flapper skirts of the roaring
twenties-in only twenty years!
The second idea came from Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood, who
launched a campaign in 1916 to promote contraception and abortion in order to free
women from the burdens of unwanted pregnancy. Sanger later adopted the views of the
eugenicists who promoted the idea that the fit should be encouraged to have children and
the unfit to not. Sex education became an indispensable part of Sanger’s birth control
movement. As a result, Planned Parenthood has been one of the pioneer advocates of
comprehensive sex education in the schools. In 1953, Planned Parenthood staffer Lena
Levine wrote: “[Our goal] is to be ready as educators and parents to help young people
obtain sex satisfaction before marriage. By sanctioning sex before marriage, we will
prevent fear and guilt. … we must be ready to provide young boys and girls with the best
contraception measures available so they will have the necessary means to achieve sexual
satisfaction without having to risk possible pregnancy.”
The third idea came from sexologist Alfred C. Kinsey, head of the Institute for Sex
Research at Indiana University, subsidized by the Rockefeller Foundation. Dr. Kinsey’s
best-selling report, Sexual Behavior in the Human Male, published in 1958, promulgated
the idea that human beings are sexual from birth. The data on 317 infants and young
boys was supposedly the source of that idea. This controversial data was obtained from a
pedophile who had actually masturbated infants and boys and kept records of his
experiments. All of this was exposed years later by Dr. Judith Reisman, who accused
Kinsey of complicity in the sexual abuse of young children. Her book, Kinsey: Crimes &
Consequences (1998), provides all the sordid details.
The fourth idea came from Dr. Mary Calderone, past Medical Director of Planned
Parenthood. She and her colleagues launched SIECUS, the Sex Information and
Education Council of the United States, at the Kinsey Institute, specifically to teach
Kinseyan sexual ideology as sex education. Dr. Calderone transfonned sex education
into sexuality education, presently taught in American schools. SIECUS has provided the
public schools with a wide variety of sex education materials: films, slides, books, and
pamphlets.
The fifth idea came from the Humanist Manifesto of 1973, which challenged the views of
orthodox religion on sexual behavior and proclaimed total sexual freedom among
consenting adults as the new moral standard for sexual behavior. The Manifesto was
signed by many academicians, including Dr. Lester A. Kirkendall, a director of SIECUS,
as well as by Dr. Alan C. Guttmacher, president of Planned Parenthood.
In 1976, Dr. Kirkendall published A New Bill ofSexual Rights and Responsibilities,
signed by 37 leading sexologists and authors. The book states: “Humanists have had an
important role in the sexual revolution. Although Humanist Manifesto II contains a brief
section on sexuality, we thought a more detailed statement would be useful.”
Out of this interlocking directorate of humanist sex education organizations came the
ideas that have formed the ideology of the sexual revolution and the curriculum of sex
education in American schools. The results have seen dramatic changes in teen sexual
behavior with its tragic consequences: more pre-marital sex experimentation, more teen
pregnancies, more teen abortions, more teen venereal disease, more teen emotional
unhappiness leading to an increase in drug addiction. Inevitably, pre-marital sex leads to
abusive jealousy among teens as they change sex partners. This has resulted in physical
abuse and even murders.
There is little doubt that pre-marital sex is the cause of more social problems than any
other activity in America today. Yet, pre-marital, recreational sex is heavily promoted by
music, television sitcoms, movies, books, and other products of popular culture. All of
this is legitimized by the so-called liberating ideas of Freud, Sanger, Kinsey, Calderone,
and others, while attempts to return to the moral standards based on religion are rejected
as reactionary, repressive, outmoded, and authoritarian.
Meanwhile, the sexual revolution changed America’s views on sex as reflected in actions
by government and the courts. In 1965, the u.s. Supreme Court, in the case of Griswold
v. Connecticut, ruled that Connecticut’s law prohibiting the use of contraceptives by
married couples violated a newly defined right of marital privacy. As a result, ten states
liberalized their family planning laws and began to provide family planning services with
tax funds.
In 1970, Congress enacted Title X of the Public Health Services Act, which provided
support and funding for family planning services and educational programs, and for
biomedical and behavioral research in reproduction and contraceptive development. Title
X also authorized funding for a Center for Population Research within the National
Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD).
In 1970, New York state enacted the most progressive abortion law in the nation, and
Planned Parenthood of Syracuse, New York, became the first affiliate to offer abortion
services.
In 1973, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Roe v. Wade that the constitutional right of
privacy extended to a woman’s decision to have an abortion, thereby legalizing abortion
throughout the United States. In 1976, the U.S. Supreme Court, in Planned Parenthood
of Central Missouri v. Danforth, struck down state requirements for parental and spousal
consent for abortion and set aside a state prohibition against saline abortions.
In 1976, the Alan Guttmacher Institute, named after Planned Parenthood’s president,
published 11 Million Teenagers, which focused attention on the problem of teen
pregnancy and childbearing in the United States.
In 1979, the U.S. Supreme Court found the Massachusetts statute, restricting minors’
access to abortion, unconstitutional. It ruled that if states required minors to obtain
parental consent for an abortion, they must also give minors the alternative of obtaining
the consent of a judge, in confidential proceedings and without first notifying their
parents.
In 1979, the California State Department of Education published a draft of its new sex
education curriculum, Education for Human Sexuality: A Resource Book and
Instructional Guide to Sex Education for Kindergarten Through Grade Twelve. The new
program was developed with partial funding from the U.S. Office of Education. It called
for explicit instruction in human sexual intercourse, alternative sexual life styles,
abortion, masturbation and other issues involving sexuality.
Beginning in preschool or kindergarten with mixed-group visits to restrooms, these visits
are followed by a description of male and female genitalia. The children read two
pamphlets from Planned Parenthood which tell them that “masturbation is a perfectly
acceptable, useful, comforting thing to do with sexual feelings” and “masturbation cannot
hurt you and it will make you feel more relaxed.”
At age nine, children begin their study of methods of birth control, including “all the
contraceptive methods and services available.” At age 12, children “visit a local drug
store to check the availability of contraceptive products.” They study the law regarding
emancipated minors who are “making their own decisions.” They learn that “pregnancy
prevention services are available to young people without parental consent.” They take a
field trip to a “family planning clinic” and they go through it “from beginning to end” and
fill out a patient’s form for such a clinic.
Also at age 12, boys and girls study “unplanned pregnancy” and discuss whether it is best
to have the baby, offer it for adoption, or have an abortion. They discuss the “support
system” that is available to them and they listen to a guest speaker from Planned
Parenthood. They learn that the decision for an abortion is theirs alone to make requiring
no consultation with their parents.
The curriculum recommends ten days of sex instruction in each school year from preschool
through the 12th grade. The program calls for the development of “decision making
skills” through exercises in “values clarification.” It should be noted that this
program in sexuality has been implemented throughout the United States in many school
districts.
In 1981, the Alan Guttmacher Institute published Teenage Pregnancy: The Problem that
Hasn’t Gone away, an analysis of teen sexuality, contraceptive knowledge and use, and
pregnancy experience. It emphasized the need for making confidential contraceptive
services accessible to sexually active teens.
In 1982, Planned Parenthood published “Sexuality Alphabet,” a tool for sex education.
George Grant, author of Grand lllusions, writes of this publication: “Planned
Parenthood’s sex education programs and materials are brazenly perverse. They are
frequently accentuated with crudely obscene four-letter words and illustrated by
explicitly ribald nudity. They openly endorse aberrant behavior-homosexuality,
masturbation, fornication, incest, and even bestiality-and then they describe that
behavior in excruciating detail.”
In 1983, the National Education Association included the following resolution in its
Handbook under the title of Family Life Education:
The National Education Association believes that the developing child’s sexuality
is continually and inevitably influenced by daily contacts, including experiences
in the school environment. The Association recognizes that sensitive sex
education can be a positive force in promoting physical, mental, and social health
and that the public school must assume an increasingly important role in
providing the instruction. Teachers must be qualified to teach in this area and
must be legally protected from censorship and lawsuits ….
The Association urges its affiliates and members to support appropriately
established sex education programs, including information on birth control and
family planning, parenting skills, sexually transmitted diseases, incest and sexual
abuse, the effects of substance abuse during pregnancy, and problems associated
with and resulting from preteen and teenage pregnancies.
In 1993 it added “information on sexual abstinence, diversity of sexual orientation,
prenatal care, and sexual harassment” to its list of sex education programs. In other
words, the scope of sex education keeps getting larger and larger. For example,
information on homosexuality has developed into a course of its own within the sexuality
curriculum.
In 1985, the Alan Guttmacher Institute published its report on Teen Pregnancy in
Industrialized Countries, indicating that the U.S. teen pregnancy rate of 96 per 1,000 was
the highest in the developed world. A two-year study by the National Academy of
Sciences agreed with the AGI study and concluded that “prevention of adolescent
pregnancy should have the highest priority,” and “making contraceptive methods
available and accessible to those who are sexually active and encouraging them to
diligently use these methods is the surest major strategy for pregnancy prevention.”
In 1970, less than half of the nation’s school districts offered sex education curricula and
only one had school-based birth control clinics. In 1998, more than seventy-five percent
of the districts teach sex education and there are more than one hundred clinics in
operation. Yet the percentage of illegitimate births has only increased during that time,
from only fifteen percent to a mind-boggling fifty-one percent. In California, where
public schools have had sex education for more than thirty years, the rate often
pregnancy is the highest in the nation. (Grant, p. 128)
Meanwhile, the AIDS epidemic in the United States, which began with eleven cases in
1979, had grown to 24,000 cases in 1986, to 339,250 cases in 1993, to 665,357 cases in
1998. The National Education Association has recommended that AIDS education
become an integral part of the school curriculum. “AIDS education must include
education about all means of transmission, including sex and intravenous (IV) drug use.
Information on prevention options must include abstinence and medically accepted
protective devices. Instruction in decision-making skills to assist students in correlating
health information and personal behavior is essential.”
On September 15,1985, the Chicago Sun-Times reported: “Free birth control pills and
condoms are being dispensed to Du Sable High School students by a new clinic in the
South Side school. A second clinic is scheduled to open Feb. 1 at Orr High School on the
West Side for the same purpose …. William Young, director of teen health for the Ounce
of Prevention Fund, a member of a coalition of foundations fmancing the two clinics, said
the opening of medical clinics in high schools is “part of a national trend. ” Young said
that cities with clinics in high schools included St. Paul, Minn., Dallas, New York,
Kansas City, Cleveland and San Francisco …. The Du Sable clinic’s operating costs are
$225,000 a year, Young said, all being provided by the coalition of foundations, which
includes the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Princeton, N.J.; the Joyce Foundation of
Chicago; Pittway Corp. Charitable Foundation of Northbrook; and the Commonwealth
Fund of New York.”
It was inevitable that sexuality education would have to include same-sex behavior, or
homosexuality, in a very open way. On February 10, 1992, Governor William F. Weld of
Massachusetts, signed an executive order creating the nation’s first Governor’s
Commission on Gay and Lesbian Youth. The Commission was formed in response to the
epidemic of suicide by young gays, lesbians, and bisexuals as revealed in the 1989
federal report on youth suicide. That report concluded that gay youth represented “up to
30 percent of (the estimated 5,000) completed youth suicides annually.”
The Governor’s Commission made five key recommendations for schools: (1) School
systems should make public commitments to ensure that schools are safe places, free of
discrimination, violence, and harassment for gay and lesbian students. (2) Teachers,
guidance counselors, and all school staff should be trained to respond to the needs of gay
and lesbian students. (3) Every high school in the Commonwealth should establish a
support group where gay and straight students can meet each week and discuss gay and
lesbian issues. (4) All school libraries should develop a collection of literature, books,
films, and pamphlets for students seeking to learn more on gay and lesbian issues. (5)
Gay and lesbian themes and issues should be integrated into all subject areas in the
school curriculum.
In August 1994, the Governor’s Commission produced a report on the “Prevention of
Health Problems Among Gay and Lesbian Youth” and “Making Health and Human
Services Accessible and Effective for Gay and Lesbian Youth.”
It has become increasingly difficult to tell the difference between sex education and
pornography, for sex education is not about education, it’s about sex, and it’s difficult to
teach about sex explicitly without it becoming pornographic. For example, on March 25,
2000, the Massachusetts Department of Education, the Governor’s Commission for Gay
and Lesbian Youth, and the Gay and Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN)
co-sponsored a statewide conference at Tufts University called “Teach Out.” Teenagers
and children as young as 12 were encouraged to come from around the state, and many
were bussed in from their home districts. Homosexual activists came from across the
country to take part in the conference.
According to audio tapes made at the conference, participants discussed oral sex, anal
sex, vaginal sex, oral-vaginal sex, clitoral sex, and a homosexual practice called “fisting.”
Needless to say that when the public became aware of the substance of the Teach Out, it
caused a scandal that made headlines and was vigorously discussed on radio talk shows.
In February 1999, SIECUS conducted a public poll on its Internet site asking readers
‘”who had the greatest impact in bringing about a positive change in the way America
understands and affirms sexuality. The top ten, chosen from a list of 100, were Judy
Blume, Mary Calderone, Ellen DeGeneres, Joycelyn Elders, Hugh Hefner, Anita Hill,
Magic Johnson, Madonna, Gloria Steinam, and Ruth Westheimer.”
Obviously, there are many parents who do not share the views of the top ten. Judy
Blume’s novels have often been cited as too sexually explicit. But objection to sex
education is nothing new. Various parent and religious groups have been critical of
explicit sex education from the day it became known what was in the materials that
Planned Parenthood and SIECUS were providing the schools.
Since neither parents nor religious groups have been able to stop the sexual revolution or
the humanist sexuality juggernaut, they have called for greater emphasis on abstinence
and less on contraception and condom distribution. They achieved a substantial victory
when the Congress voted in favor of an $88 million “Abstinence Only” program as part
of President Clinton’s “National Strategy to Prevent Teen Pregnancy.” Starting in the fall
of the year 2000, abstinence-only programs began to receive automatic re-funding every
year for the next five years during the federal government’s appropriations process.
One would have thought that the sex educators would have been happy with a federal
program funding “Abstinence Only.” Instead, SIECUS has launched a no-holds-barred
campaign against “Abstinence Only,” claiming that it won’t prevent teenage pregnancies
or STDs. They call the program “fear-based.” But what’s wrong with being afraid of
getting an unwanted pregnancy or getting AIDS? Fear prevents people from doing
wrong things and foolish things. It is an important part of our self-protective instinct.
If “Abstinence Only” is fear-based, is sexuality education pleasure-based? These
increasingly hot debates over sex education will continue for years to come as humanists
and Christians struggle for control of what goes on in the public schools.
A link to this 1999 article from the Sam Blumenfeld Archives:
New Film about Ted Kennedy at Chappaquiddick Opens Friday, April 6, 2018 by John Perna
Ted Kennedy might have been president except for this scandal. If you did what Ted Kennedy did, would you be out of jail yet?
On the night of July 18,1969 Kennedy left a party with an attractive young intern en route to a private secluded beach on the far side of Dike Bridge. The party had been attended by married men and single women. Kennedy drove off of the single-lane bridge, and his vehicle overturned and submerged. Kennedy freed himself from the vehicle, but left 28-year-old Mary Jo Kopechne, to suffocate in an air pocket inside the overturned car. Nine hours later, a completely sober Ted Kennedy called authorities to report the incident, after conferring with political advisors and lawyers, Kopechne’s body had already been discovered by that time.
It took nearly a half-century to get this story told, in spite of the power of the Kennedy family, and only now that practically all of the major characters have passed away.
We should keep this in mind as we look at the current scandals involving the Clintons and Obama.
As the critic Todd McCarthy commented:
“It’s impossible to watch this film without imagining how such an incident would be covered today; very likely, the young woman would not have died had there been cellphones, as she was apparently still alive in the submerged car for at least two hours, maybe three or four. But even more astounding was Ted Kennedy’s not reporting the incident for 10 hours, then the fact that a story that otherwise would have provided endless headlines became an afterthought when the first moon landing took place two days later.”
“Chappaquiddick” by Entertainment Studios
and Starring Jason Clarke
opens Friday, April 6
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i9SCbC6HDEU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qG-c8DtOm9g&feature=yout
—————– –
Chappaquiddick Cover Up: An Interview of Diver John Farrar
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kq7NOTip31o&t=1710s
Camp Constitution
Capt. John Farrar Interviewed by Mayor Sam Yorty
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kq7NOTip31o
An interview of John Farrar, who was the first man to find the body of Mary Jo Kopechne by Mayor Sam Yorty on KGBS Radio in Los Angeles from 1972.
Capt. John Farrar was the captain of the search and rescue of Edgarton, Mass
Capt. John Farrar removed Mary Jo Kopechne’s body from Ted Kennedy’s car.
Capt. John Farrar says that he could have saved Mary Jo Kopechne if he had been called when the accident happened, instead of the next morning. Ted Kennedy walked right by the Edgarton, Mass fire department just after the accident. The undertaker said that Mary Jo Kopechne did not drown. There was very little water in her tissues. This means that she probably suffocated after using up all of the oxygen in the air pocket where she was trapped. This could have taken hours.
====
Teddy Bare: The Last of the Kennedy ClanPaperback – 1971 by
http://americanistbookstore.com/products-page/books/teddy-bare-the-last-of-the-kennedy-clan/
https://www.amazon.com/dp/0882791095
Rare and out of print, but still available.
——————–
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=teqh5Zs7Xnw
David Ivester
——————–
Dom Hemingway Official Trailer (HD) Jude Law, Emilia Clarke
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1izaIH269E
—————-
Chappaquiddick island- Ted Kennedy incident from Google
Earth.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=75SZK6PwyTY
============
Camp Constitution Wishes all a Happy Resurrection Sunday
He Gave Himself
“Who gave himself for our sins, that he might deliver us from this present evil world, according to the will of God and our Father.” (Galatians 1:4)
There can never be a greater gift than this. Our Lord Jesus Christ not only has given us forgiveness and salvation and all spiritual blessings, He gave Himself! The pure, glorious Son of God gave Himself, substituting Himself in our place to suffer the righteous judgment of God on our sins.
Six times this wonderful affirmation is found in God’s Word. The first is in our text, assuring us that when He gave Himself, He paid the price to deliver us from this present evil world into the eternal world to come.
Then, in the next occurrence, this promise is made intensely personal. Christ “loved me, and gave himself for me” (Galatians 2:20). The gift Christ gave is more than the world could ever give.
The supremely sacrificial nature of His gift is then emphasized. “Christ also hath loved us, and hath given himself for us an offering and a sacrifice to God” (Ephesians 5:2). The sacrifice has brought us to Himself, for “Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it. . . . That he might present it to himself a glorious church” (Ephesians 5:25, 27).
The offering was sufficient to pay for the redemption of all sin, as He “gave himself a ransom for all, to be testified in due time” (1 Timothy 2:6). This ransom is not merely to redeem us from the penalty of sin at the judgment, however, but also from the power of sin in our lives, and this is the testimony of the final occurrence of this great declaration. Christ “gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify unto himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works” (Titus 2:14). HMM
The Weekly Sam: The Benefits of Cursive Writing by Sam Blumenfeld
The teaching of handwriting has a low priority among educators these days. They believe
that handwriting is passe and that in the future everyone will be using word processors to
do their writing. But have you noticed how easy it is to make errors when writing an email?
Parents can be quite confused by the subject of handwriting. So whenever I lecture at a
homeschool convention, I always ask by a show of hands if parents think
that handwriting should be taught. Usually the response is unanimously positive.
So you agree that teaching your child to write is an important part of your homeschooIing
curriculum. The next question I raise is: If you believe that handwriting should be formally
taught. do you believe that your child should be taught manuscript- also known as ‘ball and-stick’
– first or cursive first?- Most parents assume that ball-and-stick should precede
cursive, because that’s the way they were taught in school. Besides, it is supposed to be
easier that way.
But then I tell them that when I was in primary school in the 1930s, like their grandparents,
we were all taught cursive handwriting, or what was then known as “penmanship,” using
pens dipped in real ink. That was before ballpoint pens were invented. We were actually
taught in the first grade that there was a correct way to hold a pen so that we would be
able write with ease and facility without tiring. Thus, in those ancient days, an important
part of the primary curriculum was the development of good handwriting, and we were
given plenty of time to make that possible.
This surprises most parents who assume that print script always preceded cursive writing.
But when I tell them otherwise, I then have to explain why cursive should precede print
script and not vice versa.
If you teach a child to print for the first two years, that child develops writing habits that will
become permanent. Thus when you try to get your child to switch to cursive in the third
grade, you will find resistance to learning a whole new way of writing. That child may
rontinue to print for the rest of his or her life. Some children develop a hybrid handwriting
consisting of a mixture of both print and cursive. That seems to have become the dominant
form of writing in America. And there are those children who develop a good cursive
handwrtting because they’ve always wanted to and practiced it secretly on the side.
Thus, experience dearly indicates that if you teach ball-and-stick first, your child may never
develop a decent cursive handwriting, while if you teach cursive first, your child can always
learn to print very nicely later on. In other words, cursive first and print later makes good
developmental sense.
An important and frequently overlooked benefit is that cursive helps a child learn to read.
With ball-and-stick it is very easy to confuse b’s and d’s. But with cursive, a b starts like an
I, and a d starts like an a. The distinction that children make in writing the letters in cursive
carries over to the reading process. In addition, in writing print script,. the letter ‘S’ may be all
over the page, sometimes written from left to right and from right to left. In cursive, where
all of the letters connect. the child learns displine. This helps in learning to
spell, for how the letters join with one another creates habits of hand movement that
automatically aid the spelling process.
Of course, your child should also be taught to print. That can easily be done after your child
has developed a good cursive handwriting. Another important benefit of cursive first is if
your child is left-handed. A right-handed individual tilts the paper counter-clockwise in order
to give one’s handwriting the proper slant. With the left-handed child, the paper must be
tilted in an extreme clockwise position so that the child can write from the bottom up. If the
paper is not tilted cIockwise, the left-handed child may want to use the hook. form of
writing. This usually happens when the child is taught ball-and-stick first with the paper in a
straight up position.
If you consider good handwriting or fine penmanship a desired outcome of your home
teaching, then you must teach cursive first. There are a number of good cursive programs
available on the market. The Abeka program from Pensacrna Christian College is probably
one of the best available..
I am often asked if Italic is a good way of teaching a child to write. Italic script is more in
the dass of calligraphy than handwriting, and therefore takes longer to learn and requires
more skill than a standard cursive handwriting. So, simply learn this simple principle:
cursive first. print later.
Here is a link to the original article in PDF format: http://blumenfeld.campconstitution.net/Articles/Benefits%20of%20Cursive%20Writing.pdf
The Blumenfeld Archives
UN Lobbying Group to Launch Congressional Caucus on March 13 by Granite State Futures
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The Weekly Sam: Ten Reasons Why Christian Parents Should Take Their Children Out of Public Schools by Sam Blumenfeld
In the wake of yet another public school massacre, Sam Blumenfeld’s warning to parents several decades ago is more relevant than ever:
1o Reasons Why Christian Parents Should Take Their Chldren Out of Public Schools by Sam Blumenfeld:
There has been much debate of late among Christians whether or not their children
should be taken out of the public schools and put into private Christian schools or
homeschooled. 1 firmly believe that they should be taken out, and I’ve outlined ten good
reasons why this should be done, and done as soon as possible.
The first reason is pretty obvious. The Bible commands parents to bring up their
children in the love and admonition of the Lord. We read in Deuteronomy 6:6: “And
these words, which 1 command thee this day, shall be in thine heart: And thou shalt teach
them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house,
and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up.”
How can a Christian parent obey that commandment and put a child in a school that is so
militantly anti-Christian and anti-God? The public schools represent the antithesis of a
Godly education. They should not be patronized by Christians.
Reason two: The public schools are not only anti-Christian but represent a government
establishment of religion called Humanism. Your child is at risk of being deChristianized
by the religion of public education. Here’s what humanist John J. Dunphy wrote in the
Humanist magazine of January 1983:
I am convinced that the battle for humankind’s future must be waged and won in
the public school classroom by teachers who correctly perceive their role as
proselytizers of a new faith: a religion of humanity that recognizes and respects
the spark of what theologians call divinity in every human being. These teachers
must embody the same selfless dedication as the most rabid fundamentalist
preachers, for they will be ministers of another sort, utilizing a classroom instead
of a pulpit to convey humanist values in whatever subject they teach, regardless of
educational level-preschool day care or large state university. The classroom
must become an arena of conflict between the old and the new-the rotting corpse
of Christianity, together with its adjacent evils and misery, and the new faith of
humanism, resplendent in its promise of a world in which the never-realized
Christian ideal of “love thy neighbor” will fmally be achieved.
We already know that millions of Christian children have lost their faith because they fell
prey to humanist proselytizers who preach that God does not exist and that human beings
can be as gods. Do you have any guarantee that your child will be immune from these
lies?
Reason three: The educators have redefmed the purpose of education. Its purpose is no
longer to impart academic skills so that your child can develop independent intelligence,
and make a life for himself. The new purpose of education was defmed by Professor
Benjamin Bloom in his book, Taxonomy of Educational Objectives, published in 1956, in
which he wrote:
By educational objectives, we mean explicit formulations of the ways in which
students are expected to be changed by the educative process. That is, the ways in
which they will change in their thinking, their feelings, and their actions …. The
evidence points our convincingly to the fact that age is a factor operating against
attempts to effect a complete or thorough-going reorganization of attitudes and
values …. The evidence collected thus fur suggests that a single hour of classroom
activity under certain conditions may bring about a major reorganization in
cognitive as well as affective behaviors.
As a Christian parent you will never know-and you will never be told-when that single
hour of classroom activity will be sprung on your child. The child who returns home
from school that day, may not be the same child you sent to school that morning. You’ve
played Russian roulette with your child’s spiritual life, and you’ve lost. In addition, this
change of values between children and parents inevitably leads to intense conflict within
the family. When children adopt humanist values, they become haters of their family’s
biblical values. That’s what destroys so many Christian families.
Reason four: Public schools now teach sex education almost as a form of pomography,
encouraging children to engage in premarital recreational sex. The result is that many
Christian girls have lost their virginity, developed sexually transmitted diseases, become
pregnant, had an abortion, and lost their self-esteem. The boys, under peer pressure, are
forced into sexual intimacy long before they are ready to be fathers. The children are
considered animals with no control over their sexual urges.
Reason five: Drug education arouses interest in drugs, especially when the children are
told that they must make their own decisions about drugs. This gives children a choice,
which any Christian parent would consider the wrong thing to do. There is no decision
making when it comes to drugs. A Christian child need not know all about drugs. All he
needs to know is that drugs are unequivocally forbidden. But that’s not the message
conveyed in the public schools. The result? Many Christian children get into drugs and
become hooked.
Reason six: As you know, we are presently involved in a life-and-death cultural war
between Christianity and secular humanism. When you patronize the enemy’s
institutions you are giving tacit approval of what that institution stands for. In addition, if
you have any understanding of the forces that oppose us, you know that they have
billions of dollars with which to fight us. So why give them your children? If you want
to win this war, the easiest, least bloody way to win it is by withdrawing your children
from their institutions. They cannot succeed without your children. It’s as simple as that.
So by giving them your children you are helping them tie the noose around the neck of
Christianity.
Reason seven: It is unreasonable to expect Christian children to be missionaries in the
public schools when they have not had professional training, are unable to answer the
arguments of their enemies, gain the contempt of their teachers, and become demoralized
in the process. You can’t expect children to do the job which even adults find difficult.
Reason eight: Satanists in the public schools have targeted Christian students for
persecution and even murder. That’s what took place at Columbine High School in
Littleton, Colorado, and also in a school in Paducah, Kentucky. In other words, Christian
children are at risk in public schools where Bible reading and prayer are outlawed, but
Satanism isn’t. Satanists have free reign in the public schools and your child may
become a victim of their evil force.
Reason nine: Children in the public schools are considered to be animals, because the
behavioral psychology that now governs public education is based on the theory of
evolution which claims that human beings and monkeys have a common ancestor.
Humanist behaviorists use animal training techniques to teach your precious child who
was made in the image of God. But the schools teach your child that he or she is simply
a higher form of monkey. When children accept the notion that they are animals, they are
apt to act as animals, without conscience, without a sense of moral absolutes.
Reason ten: Because of widespread educational malpractice in the schools, your child is
in danger of becoming learning disabled, dyslexic, or afflicted with attention deficit
disorder. Your child is in danger of becoming functionally illiterate. At least thirty
percent of the children in public schools emerge at the end of the process unable to read
properly, spell correctly, or do basic arithmetic. Do you have a guarantee that your child
will not be a victim of this educational malpractice?
I’m sure that I could come up with many more reasons. But these ten I hope will give
Christian parents enough food for thought so that they will make the right choice in favor
of God’s commandment. The public schools cannot be saved by Christians. Nor should
Christians want to save them since they have been rendered morally dangerous by
Supreme Court decisions and the likes of the National Education Association.
By withdrawing your children from the public schools, you will be making your own
declaration of independence from the satanic institutions that the public schools have
become. You will be exercising the precious freedom you still have to take control of
your children’s education. And by doing so, you will be preserving the heritage of
freedom to pass on to your children, and your children’s children.
Here is a link to the above article in PDF: http://blumenfeld.campconstitution.net/Articles/Ten%20Reasons%20Why%20Parents%20Should%20Take%20Their%20Children%20Out%20of%20Public%20Schools.pdf
The Blumenfeld Archives
The Weekly Sam: How Harvard Went from Calvinism to Unitarianism
How Harvard Went from Calvinism to Unitarianism
By Samuel Blumenfeld
Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, is the oldest and most prestigious
university in the United States. It was founded by Puritan settlers in the Massachusetts
Bay Colony in 1636 as a college to train up a learned clergy. A Puritan minister was
expected to be able to quote and expound Holy Scripture from the original Hebrew and
Greek and to have a good knowledge of the writings in Latin of the Church Fathers, the
Scholastic Philosophers, and the Reformers.
In 1639, the college was named after John Harvard who, upon his death a year earlier,
had bequeathed to the infant college his library of over 400 books and a large sum of
money to be used for building.
The first Harvard president of note was Henry Dunster, a thirty-year-old graduate of
Cambridge University who arrived in Boston in 1640. He expected the new college to
live up to the standards of England’s two great universities, Oxford and Cambridge. A
three-year course in the Liberal Arts, the Three Philosophies, and the Learned Tongues
was instituted for the Bachelor’s degree.
In 1650 President Dunster was able to obtain from the General Court, the colony’s
legislature, the Charter under which Harvard University still operates. The President and
Treasurer and five fellows were incorporated as the ruling body of the College. In later
years they became known as the Overseers. Samuel Eliot Morrison writes in Three
Centuries of Harvard (p. 23):
“A learned clergy was the immediate and pressing social need that Harvard was expected
to supply; but the advancement of learning was the broad purpose of the College.
Harvard students were reminded that the object of their literary and scientific studies was
the greater knowledge of God; and that the acquisition of knowledge for its own sake,
without ‘laying Christ in the bottome, as the only foundation’ was futile and sinful.”
Such was the basic philosophy of the College. There was always the fear among the
colonists that without religious education, their children would become barbarous. Which
is exactly what has happened today. Secular education without Biblical religion is indeed
creating an ignorant and barbarous youth.
By the 1690s, liberal, anti-Calvinist influences began to infiltrate the governing body of
the college. And by 1701, Harvard’s liberal tendencies had become so pronounced that a
new orthodox college was founded at New Haven, Connecticut, which became Yale
University. All the founders of Yale were Harvard graduates in the Connecticut Valley or
on Long Island Sound.
On October 28, 1707, John Leverett became President of Harvard. This was the first time
that a layman and a liberal was elected to an office hitherto held by an orthodox Puritan
minister. Although Leverett instituted no changes in the curriculum, his liberal policies
began to be reflected in student behavior. He wrote in his own diary in 1717 that the
Faculty was having trouble with “profane swearing,” “riotous Actions” and “bringing
Cards into the College.” Many college clubs were formed by students, which encouraged
questionable behavior.
By 1800, the liberal seed, first sown by Leverett, became the full-blown fruit of
Unitarianism, which rejected the Trinity, rejected the divinity of Christ, and rejected all
the tenets of Calvinism. The final battle that ended the ongoing war between the orthodox
and Unitarians took place in 1805 when Reverend Henry Ware, a Unitarian minister, was
elected Hollis Professor of Divinity. Morrison writes (p. 189): “Thus the theological
department of New England’s oldest university went Unitarian. Orthodox Calvinists of
the true Puritan tradition now became open enemies to Harvard.”
Actually, it was the other way around. It was the Unitarians who considered Calvinists to
be their primary enemy, setting Harvard on a secular course that would become
increasingly non-Christian. The distaste that Harvard liberals today show toward
Christian fundamentalism is a continuation of their war against Trinitarian orthodoxy. It
should be noted that Secular Humanism is a direct outgrowth of Harvard’s Unitarian
philosophy.
Unitarianism is not a revealed religion. It is a social movement based on the notion that
man is basically good and morally perfectible, and that all that is needed to achieve this
moral and social utopia is a good secular education. And that is why the Unitarians
became the major force in the public school movement.
It should also be noted that Unitarian liberalism is at the core of American political
liberalism, for the chief practice of Unitarians was and still is social political activism
based on the belief that government could solve all of our problems. And that’s the liberal
political philosophy that prevails today
A link to this article in PDF: http://blumenfeld.campconstitution.net/Articles/How%20Harvard%20Became%20Liberal.pdf
The Blumenfeld Archives