OPINION:
From the Ten Commandments to the Golden Rule, there is no better teacher than the Bible for demonstrating love for God by actively exhibiting respect for ourselves and one another. The Bible provides the clearest road map for living and for human advancement that has ever been conceived. It’s simple, relevant and effective.
Christ’s teachings on tolerance, love, forgiveness, inclusion, and respecting our bodies remain the simplest way to guide people on how to live well and peacefully coexist. From these teachings sprang the very foundations of Western society, including those given full effect in the U.S. Constitution.
We don’t need new secular methods to teach people how to live. Left-wing extremists have other ideas. After helping strip God from our society, secular leftists are trying to fashion a new road map for society, including a push for incorporating equity, inclusion and diversity programs into every institution, including schools.
When Catholic and parochial schools incorporate these secular initiatives, created and supported by leftist donors at odds with biblical teaching, they legitimize the pantheon of ideas and movements that are further separating Americans from God.
Critical race theory, transgender ideology, White fragility, alternative histories, victimhood culture, identity politics, restorative justice, racially divisive equity programs, cancel culture, satanism, promiscuity, abortion, euthanasia, permissive drug use, pornography and climate anxiety are all part of the same political ecosystem of monied far-left forces that are diametrically opposed to biblical principles.
All of these extremist movements espouse values or ideas that promote collectivism, statism and authoritarianism and forcibly diminish biblical truth in our society.
The parents of parochial school students are not safe from this. They must be on guard for incorporating secular teaching tools born out of left-wing ideology in classrooms. School administrators, both lay and religious, must appreciate that parents across the country are justified in having a heightened situational awareness of this indoctrination.
Americans are watching public education collapse under teachers unions that seem to care more about transgenderism than reading. They’ve seen leftists surreptitiously insert radical social engineering into everything from classrooms to cartoons.
They’ve watched as parents have been told that they aren’t entitled to information about curriculum or even their children’s mental health.
Leftist ideologies have co-opted some of the formerly most trusted brands in education. Scholastic Books is promoting gender fluidity. The American Library Association is run by an avowed Marxist who at a conference over Labor Day weekend advocated that public education and libraries be sites of “socialist organizing.”
Some of the nation’s most prominent schools openly repress ideologically conservative, patriotic and faith-aligned speech. A student in Colorado last month was suspended because he had a Gadsden flag patch on his book bag. The school wrongly claimed the patch was racist.
Schools are allowing biological boys to use girls’ locker rooms and play on girls’ athletic teams. What most rational people would consider pornography is being placed in schools and public libraries, to say nothing about the sudden surge in drag queens reading to children.
One Catholic school in a red state recently attempted to insert something called social emotional learning into its religion class curriculum.
What administrators and teachers may not have known when they attempted to use this methodology is that the former president and CEO of the Collaborative for Academic Social and Emotional Learning has stated that the program should “actively contribute to anti-racism” and advance “educational equity” and collectivism.
Educational equity is the same rationale used to justify the elimination of honors classes, refusing to tell White and Asian students about National Merit Scholarships, eliminating grading, and other corrosive education agendas. Anti-racism is patently racist in a similar fashion to the leftist anti-fascist movement, which is decidedly fascist. The creators of the program have also been tied to critical race theory.
The Collaborative for Academic Social and Emotional Learning is supported by Bill and Melinda Gates, Mark Zuckerberg’s foundation and the Novo Foundation. The Novo Foundation, which has supported Black Lives Matter and other left-wing groups, is supported by the Tides Foundation, which takes millions of dollars from George Soros’ Open Society Foundations.
There is no legitimate reason that any program or teaching method supported by Mr. Gates, Mr. Zuckerberg or Mr. Soros should be infused into a Catholic or parochial school, even with the best intentions.
Incidentally, this is precisely why people of faith continue to lose ground in America. The left has a massive network of nonprofits that are actually highly political organizations that aim to change the DNA of the country.
Catholic and parochial schools must hold the line. This is a spiritual battle between statists and those whose road map for living is the Holy Bible. Legitimizing any part of the left’s agenda emboldens all of it.
With public school students’ test scores sinking and values-based education all but dead, parochial schools are the last stronghold against the secular, moral relativist establishment. Christ is the Good Shepherd, but that doesn’t mean we should be sheep.
• Tom Basile is the host of “America Right Now” on Newsmax and the author of “Tough Sell: Fighting the Media War in Iraq.”
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