The Battle For The Mind
America’s educational system became the main focus of America’s humanists for the obvious reason. The educational system offered the opportunity to mold and shape the worldview of young students when worldview formation is the most important.
In 1930, Charles Francis Potter, in his book, Humanism: A New Religion wrote:
"Education is thus a most powerful ally of Humanism, and every American public school is a school of Humanism. What can the theistic Sunday schools, meeting for an hour once a week, and teaching only a fraction of the children do to stem the tide of a five-day program of humanistic teaching?" (Footnote #1)
John J. Dunphy, a proud humanist wrote the following words in a paper he submitted as part of an essay contest conducted by the Humanist magazine. Dunphy was one of the essay contest winners writing:
"I am convinced that the battle for human kind’s future must be waged and won in the public school classroom by teachers . . .These teachers must embody the same selfless dedication of 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 the education level ― preschool, day care, or large state university. The classroom must and will become an arena of conflict between the old and the new; the rotting corpse of Christianity, together with all its adjacent evils and misery, and the new faith of humanism. Humanism will emerge triumphant. It must if the family of humankind is to survive."
Brooks Alexander hit the nail on the head when he said:
"In the ideological contest for cultural supremacy, public education is the prime target; it influences the most people in the most pervasive way at the most impressionable age. No other social institution has anything close to the same potential for mass indoctrination."
If you don’t want to take my words for the specific and strategic targeting of America’s educational system by the liberal humanist then consider the words of well known New Age author Marilyn Ferguson.
For her book, The Aquarian Conspiracy, Ferguson surveyed many followers of the New Age movement, also known as Cosmic Humanists, in which she says, “more were involved in education than in any other single category of work. They were teachers, administrators, policy makers, and educational psychologists.”
Well known feminist and humanist, Gloria Steinem said, “By the year 2000, we will, I hope, raise our children to believe in human potential, not God.”
A few years ago, then Nebraska State Senator Peter Hoagland, who later became a U.S. Congressman debated a Nebraska pastor who administrated a Christian school. Peter Hoagland bemoaned the influence that a Christian School education has on children:
"What we are most interested in, of course, are the children themselves. I don’t think any of us in the legislature have any quarrel with the right of the revered or the members of his flock to practice their religion, but we don’t think that they should be entitled to impose decisions or religious philosophies on their children which could seriously undermine those children’s ability to deal in this complicated world when they grow up." (footnote #2)
In March of 1992, I was speaking in Lincoln Nebraska. In my presentation, I quoted then U.S. Congressman Peter Hoagland, who by the way was up for re-election that year.
The next Tuesday morning I received a phone call from Hoagland’s press secretary. The press secretary was not happy with what I had be saying concerning the congressman and wanted to chastise me and tell me the comments I had attributed to the congressman were not true.
After a few minutes of discussing whether or not the Congressman Hoagland had made the statement or not, I informed the press secretary that I had in my possession a tape of the television interview on which Hoagland had made this statement. I never heard from the congressman again.
In 1986, Paul C. Vitz conducted a study of America’s schools and textbooks. The study was funded by the federal government’s National Institute of Education, which is part of the Department of Education.
Vitz documented that the secular humanist worldview dominated the nation’s textbooks and that the Christian worldview was excluded.
In his report Vitz writes: “[A] very widespread secular and liberal mindset . . . pervades the leadership of education (and textbook publishing) and a secular and liberal bias is its inevitable consequence.
Concerning the censorship of the influence that a Christian worldview has had on America, Vitz writes:
[QuoteHigh school books covering U.S. history were also studied, and none came close to adequately presenting the major religious events of the past 100 to 200 years. Most disturbing was the constant omission of reference to the large role that religion has always played in American life. This fact has been seen as a fundamental feature of American history by foreign observers. Since de Tocqueville.
A total of 670 stories and articles from grades 3 to 6 were also analyzed. A very small number of stories have religion as a secondary theme, but no story featured Christian or Jewish religious motivation, although one story does make American Indian religion the central theme in the life of an American white girl. Again, there was not one reference to Protestant religious life.
One social studies book has thirty pages on the Pilgrims, including the first Thanksgiving. But there is not one word (or image) that referred to religion as even a part of the Pilgrims’ life. One mother whose son is in a class using this book wrote me to say that he came home and told her, “Thanksgiving was when the Pilgrims gave thanks to the Indians.” [End quote] (Footnote #3)
In his study Vitz writes about the large influence that secular humanism is having on America’s educational system: “Whether one calls it secular humanism, enlightenment universalism, skeptical modernism, or just plain permissive liberalism, the bottom line is that a very particular and narrow sectarian philosophy has taken control of American education.” (Footnote #4)
While Vitz acknowledged that many public school teachers possess traditional American values, he made it very clear that the leadership of today’s educational system is less than traditional in their worldview, and they oversee curriculum and textbook development:
Given the overwhelming secular philosophies characterizing American education in the last fifty years, it is to be expected that leaders in education will differ markedly from the general American public in the area of basic moral values. (Footnote #5)
Footnotes:
1. Charles Francis Potter, Humanism A New Religion (Simon & Schuster, New York, 1930) p.128.
2. Television Interview In Nebraska I have a recording of
3. Paul Vitz
4. Paul Vitz
5. Paul Viitz
