My recent post arguing that schools are Unconstitutional because they actively promote a Secular Humanist worldview has spiked the traffic on the site. Apparently, the topic is of interest. (being linked on the Carnival of Education certainly helped)

For starters, one of my detractors asked for a more recent “quote”, implying that something from the 30s and 70s might be too old. Here is one from the 80s.

John J. Dunphy, in his award winning essay, The Humanist (1983), illustrates this strategic focus, “The battle for humankind’s future must be waged and won in the public school classroom by teachers who correctly perceive their role as the proselytizers of a new faith: A religion of humanity — utilizing a classroom instead of a pulpit to carry humanist values into wherever they teach. The classroom must and will 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.”

There you have it. Of course, this isn’t proof that every teacher is on board with expunging the “rotting corpse of Christianity” from our culture. It is merely evidence that some of these teachers/administrators are doing so.

It is also my view that every instance of such attacks on religion be immediately counter-attacked in court. It is simply too obvious that they are engaging in “religious teaching,” for if you are teaching against some religion, you are engaged in “religious teaching.”

It is my position that this alone is Unconstitutional, and there should be some case law to back that up. If not, it is in society’s strategic interest to create that case law. (the left does it all the time)

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Regardless, I’m hoping to put these series of posts (along with my readers’ excellent commentary) together into a longer essay and place it on the essay portion of the site. While I’m working on that, I thought I’d put up some links on the research that I’m doing.

[NOTE: As I go through this research, I'm struck once again by the fact that; with the internet (Google, etc.); a good 80% of the education infrastructure is obsolete. Teach kids to read, write, and understand basic mathematical and scientific principles, and the vast majority of them will be able to self-educate up to college - which could start much earlier than 18 for many.]

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This post is copied directly off of “Best of the Web Today’s” daily e-mail.

The Associated Press reports on the amazing story of Farris Hassan, a 16-year-old Florida boy “who traveled to Iraq on his own without telling his parents”:

Hassan, a junior at Pine Crest School, a prep academy of about 700 students in Fort Lauderdale, recently studied immersion journalism–a writer who lives the life of his subject in order to better understand it.

The teenager, whose parents were born in Iraq but have lived in the United States for about 35 years, says he wanted to travel to Baghdad to better understand what Iraqis are living through.

“I thought I’d go the extra mile for that, or rather, a few thousand miles,” he told AP in an interview earlier this week.

Skipping a week of school, he left the country on Dec. 11, telling only two high school friends of his plans. His travels took him to Kuwait and Lebanon before he arrived in Iraq on Christmas Day. He left without telling his family and sent an e-mail after his departure. . . .

The teen traveled to Kuwait, where a taxi dropped him in the desert at the Iraq border, but he could not cross there because of tightened security ahead of the Iraqi parliamentary elections on Dec. 15. He went to Beirut, Lebanon, to stay with family friends, and flew from there to Baghdad.

In Baghdad, despite his Middle Eastern looks, he found that he was out of his element. He presented himself at the Associated Press bureau, which contacted the U.S. Embassy on his behalf. The AP quotes an essay he wrote, apparently before going to Iraq:

There is a struggle in Iraq between good and evil, between those striving for freedom and liberty and those striving for death and destruction. You are aware of the heinous acts of the terrorists: Women and children massacred, innocent aid workers decapitated, indiscriminate murder. You are also aware of the heroic aspirations of the Iraqi people: liberty, democracy, security, normality. Those terrorists are not human but pure evil. For their goals to be thwarted, decent individuals must answer justice’s call for help. . . . So I will.

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When I balance out his naivate with his courage, I find myself thinking I’d be a proud father if this was my son.

Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936) cannot be summed up in one sentence. So go here to find out more.

Below are few great quotes of his. To wallow in hours of great quotes, go here.
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“A dead thing can go with the stream, but only a living thing can go against it.” – Everlasting Man, 1925

“Fallacies do not cease to be fallacies because they become fashions.” – ILN, 4/19/30

“[Marxism will] in a generation or so [go] into the limbo of most heresies, but meanwhile it will have poisoned the Russian Revolution.” – ILN, 7/19/19

“He is a very shallow critic who cannot see an eternal rebel in the heart of a conservative.” – Varied Types

“The whole modern world has divided itself into Conservatives and Progressives. The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of the Conservatives is to prevent the mistakes from being corrected.” – ILN, 4/19/24

Bruno’s comment:

That last line sound suspiciously like the first Mayor Daley…

“The police weren’t there to create disorder, they were there to preserve disorder.”

I’m using this post as way to recycle and remind my readers of the power of quotes. As I place a new quote at the top, I will move the older quotes in the “Continue Link”

I view “great quotes” as a great way to communicate ideas. If you remember your favorites, and sprinkle them in your own conversation, you will notice that they lubricate the communication of your ideas.
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Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936) cannot be summed up in one sentence. So go here to find out more.

Below are few great quotes of his. To wallow in hours of great quotes, go here.
__

“A dead thing can go with the stream, but only a living thing can go against it.” – Everlasting Man, 1925

“Fallacies do not cease to be fallacies because they become fashions.” – ILN, 4/19/30

“[Marxism will] in a generation or so [go] into the limbo of most heresies, but meanwhile it will have poisoned the Russian Revolution.” – ILN, 7/19/19

“He is a very shallow critic who cannot see an eternal rebel in the heart of a conservative.” – Varied Types

“The whole modern world has divided itself into Conservatives and Progressives. The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of the Conservatives is to prevent the mistakes from being corrected.” – ILN, 4/19/24

Bruno’s comment:

That last line sound suspiciously like the first Mayor Daley…

“The police weren’t there to create disorder, they were there to preserve disorder.”

I’m using this post as way to recycle and remind my readers of the power of quotes. As I place a new quote at the top, I will move the older quotes in the “Continue Link”

I view “great quotes” as a great way to communicate ideas. If you remember your favorites, and sprinkle them in your own conversation, you will notice that they lubricate the communication of your ideas.
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[Read more...]