It is not a conspiracy theory to say that the education system, public and even private, is filled with destructive teachers of hate who aspire to crush inquisitive souls—especially if those souls belong to Christian children. We are reminded, in this crisis, that parents are the first teachers of their children and that children are not blank slates who are the property of the state. As the Catechism states, “Parents have the first responsibility for the education of their children.”
The great deceit of modernity is the outsourcing of parenting and education to the state, principally through the school system, with the expectation that children will not have divided loyalty. In this deceit, parents willingly hand the future of their children over to activists and bureaucrats seeking to indoctrinate them to become cogs of the prevailing zeitgeist. The fraud that parents must see in this is that their children are not “freed” or “liberated” but, rather, enslaved to the reigning educational activism.
This is not new. That “guttersnipe of genius,” as Jean-Jacques Rousseau was described by Isaiah Berlin, wrote the modern manual for statist education: children should be molded to be whatever the state desired. Today, we see the corrosive effects of this pernicious ideology. In school, children are turned against their parents, their country, and their God.
We have mistakenly accepted the lie that education begins and ends in the school classroom. It does not. Education is a lifelong enterprise; it begins at birth, continues into adulthood, and continues further until death. We are learning to love and understand the Good, True, and Beautiful all throughout our lives.
If there has been a silver lining in the Covid shutdowns, it is the emerging revelation of what is being propagated in schools and the exposure of the stalwart totalitarians who declare that parents do not have any right to influence their child’s education. This must be remembered by all going forward, especially in light of the collective amnesia of the American people, spirited by a media that moves from fabricated crisis to fabricated crisis to hide the malicious and pernicious spirit ruining American society. As a new election approaches, not forgetting the totalitarian teeth of the wolves who desecrate our education system is a must.
My parents read to me and told my siblings stories growing up. In many ways, our education began there. They also spent time with us on what we were learning, not so much as oversight but as parental support. In doing so, they also got to see what we were reading and learning. Today, too many parents are absent.
Rousseau and other parasites of despotism sought educational control over children because they knew children are vulnerable. Children are especially susceptible to “authorities,” and despite the pretension of egalitarianism, education is a place where authorities (the teachers) yield extensive influence and control over the students in their classrooms. Ideological teachers know this and gleefully mention that they’re able to indoctrinate students about their political fantasies precisely because of the deference students give to their teachers.
This is aimed, as mentioned, at creating a divided loyalty: loyalty to the servants of the state (teachers) vs. loyalty to parents. The purpose, of course, is even more destructive than this. The aim is to rip the child away from parents and make them slaves to the state—though the servants of the new serpent veil this with the rhetoric of freedom and liberation.
All education is a training and shaping to something. The insight of Christian education, and Catholic education in particular, is that education is a means of spiritual formation. Through Christian education and a Christian outlook, the souls of students learn prudential virtue and develop a lifelong relationship to the Good, True, and Beautiful.
This formation of the soul to love the Good, True, and Beautiful does not end with primary education. The shaping of souls to learn prudential virtue is meant to be a lifelong spirit. Once class is dismissed or when one graduates, the love for the Good, True, and Beautiful that has been awakened and shaped in the soul always seeks Transcendental Reality and finds God.
Additionally, this educational philosophy and spirit prepares souls for the turbulent storms of the city of man. Souls are equipped to see the Good and the Bad in all things. This prepares the virtuous soul to stand firm against the totalitarian spirit of lust that the majority of the population is enslaved to. To love the Good, True, and Beautiful when the majority does not is not to be extreme—it is to be virtuous and soulful where others are degenerate and tyrannical; it is to be truly free.
Knowing that parents and the Church (though we sadly know not universally so) are the final pillars that keep souls from their total enslavement to the lustful tentacles of the leviathan, the propagandists and activists of the leviathan venomously attack these final pillars because once they fall, the souls of all children are now theirs. Parents should never lose sight of this fact. Christians, especially, should not be blind to this acidic reality.
Education will either direct souls to the Good, True, and Beautiful or the Bad, False, and Ugly. It is the responsibility of parents to always be the shining lights constantly guiding souls to the Good, True, and Beautiful. It is not the first responsibility of good teachers and schools, though good teachers and good schools are doing this. It is the first responsibility of parents to seek the Good, True, and Beautiful for their children. Good teachers and good schools simply reinforce this training of the soul in prudence that starts with parents.
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