A Year in High School US History

After a year of following my son's public school US History curriculum I am thoroughly convinced that the "study of history" in schools today is nothing more than progressive indoctrination. 

His school curriculum has called into question the integrity and motives of our founding fathers and the sincerity of their commitment to liberty. It has demonized our nation as a purely imperialistic colonial power with the blood of millions on our hands. It has characterized American foreign policy as parasitical, teaching students that American influence in the world has exploited the resources of other nations to enrich ourselves. 

The curriculum admitted that Capitalism has worked to create great economic growth and technical advancements but also taught students that it did so at a very heavy price. They were taught that Capitalism causes greed, social injustice, manipulation of the government, social divisions, and corrupts society through materialism.

The curriculum managed to accentuate every detail of the World Wars that would lead students to believe that we were ultimately responsible for the rise of dictators throughout the world, that we were responsible for sparking the Cold War, and that we fueled a nuclear arms race.

The final culmination of this curriculum is to undermine the morality, prosperity, and general happiness of the 50's by drawing parallels between fascist movements in Europe and the "conformity" of 1950 America. The cohesive culture, intact families, and rising prosperity of that time are represented as an outgrowth fanciful panic caused by the great "red scare" and a national patriotic need to inculcate conformity to oppressive social norms.

I have tried hard to find the good in this curriculum, and while at times there is some lip service paid to a stray virtue of our Republic, Capitalism, and Christian culture, these instances are immediately undermined by the constantly present filters of moral relativism and multi-culturalism.

The good news -- my son is seeing the duplicity and fallacies in the world view that governs this curriculum. Today he schooled me on exactly how his classmates are able to draw parallels between fascism and traditional cultural values. He then pointed out the crafty deception that exists in a curriculum that delegitimizes the best contract for individual freedom ever created, the constitution; topples the cultural pillars that sustain this individual liberty, namely adherence to moral law; and tears apart the fabric of our culture, which is fidelity to traditional family life; only to replace the values of freedom and morality with counterfeits that will lead to cultural destruction and tyranny of collectivism.

While I am greatful to have a mature 15 year old capable of sorting out this mess (aided by a constant vigilance at home to education in the principles of freedom and morality), I greatly doubt there are very many American youth who will escape this thorough secular progressive indoctrination. This should be a serious concern for every American who believes in the greatness of our constitutional republic, free market, and traditional family culture. Abraham Lincoln's words that, "The philosophy of the school room in one generation will be the philosophy of government in the next," should be a sobering warning in our generation.

U.S. History They Teach in School: Did You Know the U.S. is Responsible for the Cold War?

My son came home from school today and said, "Today we learned the US was responsible for starting the Cold War." I asked him to tell me how the US started the Cold War, he said that the USSR was so frightened by the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki that it prompted them to intensely pursue nuclear weapons. I'm really getting tired of this kind of junk history being taught to my child. It is evident that the only way ideas like this can be passed off as credible is to intentionally omit critical historical context and otherwise twist world events.

The assertion that we started the Cold War by using the Atom Bomb makes many assumptions that discount significant facts. Perhaps my son's teacher naively assumes Stalin had not come in contact with atomic science before he saw it on display or that he would not have been enticed to use it's extraordinary potential for military dominance once he did. Both are ignorant assumptions that place blame on the US simply because we "fired the first shot." This is a tragic simplistic view of the effect World War II, and it's convergence with the known scientific discovery of atomic fission, would ultimately have on world powers.

I am not in favor of the juvenile reasoning used in his class lesson but to illustrate it's deficiencies let's apply this logic to the facts his curriculum omits:

In the first decades of the 20th century, physics was revolutionized with developments in the understanding of the nature of atoms. Hopes were raised among scientists and laymen that the elements around us could contain tremendous amounts of unseen energy, waiting to be harnessed. In a 1924 article, Winston Churchill speculated about the possible military implications: "Might not a bomb no bigger than an orange be found to possess a secret power to destroy a whole block of buildings—nay to concentrate the force of a thousand tons of cordite and blast a township at a stroke?" Perhaps if we apply the logic of my son's school lesson, we could blame the Cold War on the imaginations of Winston Churchill. Or perhaps we can blame H.G. Wells and his 1914 novel that incited the imaginations of nuclear war 50 years before kids would duck under their desks in terror.

The fact that Nuclear fission was a known scientific theory as early as 1898 would alone suggest that Stalin wasn't caught unaware of the potential. The first experiment confirming the atomic bomb theory was conducted in Germany, not the US, by Lise Meitner and Otto Robert Frisch on January 13, 1939. Years before the Manhattan project, nuclear fission was sparking the violent imaginations of Hitler, who had world supremacy on his mind. The collaboration of the United States, United Kingdom, and Canada during World War II, known as the Manhattan Project, was put in place to counter the suspected Nazi German atomic bomb project. Even if such a project did not exist, the cost of assuming Hitler wasn't developing the capacity was too great a gamble to simply wait and see. Applying the logic of my son's school lesson here you might easily conclude Hitler was to blame for sparking the chain of events leading to an arms race and the Cold War, after all, Hitler had the whole world on the defensive.

By the time Nazi Germany invaded Poland in 1939, beginning World War II, many of Europe's top scientists had fled the imminent conflict. Physicists on both sides were well aware of the possibility of utilizing nuclear fission as a weapon, but no one was quite sure how it could be done. In August 1939, concerned that Germany might have its own project to develop fission-based weapons, Albert Einstein signed a letter to U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt warning him of the threat. Applying the logic of my son's school lesson we might conclude Albert Einstein trigger an arms race, or perhaps it was FDR for believing him.

But wait, it was only after the bombing of Pearl Harbor that FDR devoted significant resources to a serious atomic project. Applying the logic of my son's school lesson, we could conclude that Japan is responsible for the Cold War by dragging America into the war. But then again, progressive logic might lead us to conclude that there was no other nation besides the US capable of making a bomb and had it not been for the exceptional intelligence of scientists in America no one would have ever figured it out. Once again applying the logic of my son's school lesson here we might conclude that talented scientists are to blame for the Cold War.

The Soviet project to develop an atomic bomb was launched as a top secret research and development program during World War II, after evidence of German and western nuclear programs was collected by the Soviet atomic spy ring and presented to Stalin. Also adding to Stalin's awareness was Soviet physicist Georgy Flyorov who noticed that in spite of the progress German, British and American physicists had made in research into uranium fission, scientific journals had ceased publishing papers on the topic. Flyorov deduced that this meant such research had been classified, and wrote to Stalin in April 1942. Applying the logic of my son's school lesson here we might conclude that the arms race was caused by America's unwillingness to share atomic advancement with Russia.

Despite the fact that Stalin launched a full blown atomic bomb project in September 1942, after gathering intelligence on the German nuclear project, progressive historians point to the fact that Stalin made a decision to accelerate his program in the wake of the atomic bombing of the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, as evidence supporting the idea that America launched the nuclear arms race and the Cold War. Besides other logical explanations for why Stalin's expanding nuclear program might coincide with the bombing of Japan, I suppose you might conclude Stalin was merely protecting himself from Germany and the allied powers, but only if you willfully ignore who Stalin was.p

How about we apply some grown up logic to this curriculum:

My son's class will study the "Cold War" in the next chapter, but today's commentary is not a stray thought from a careless teacher, it is straight out of the text book. I've been reading my son's US history text book, a Pearson published text titled, "The American Journey." This is not the first historical distortion I have encountered in this book, however, it is astonishing that any history text taught widely to US students can so distort the record of the Soviet Union as to shed doubt on the fact that Russia had aims to spread world communism. The text book claims that "Truman and the 'wise men' who made up his Foreign policy circle ignored examples of 1945 Soviet conciliation," which they evidence by the fact that the Soviets "demobilized much of their army," and credited Russia with "allowing a democratic Finland and free elections in Hungry and Czechoslovakia." Further the book charges the boldness of the Truman Doctrine and Marshall Plans with putting Russia on "the defensive" and undoing any hope there might have been for peace with Russia. Both assertions are misleading at best but if these inferences are suggesting that the world would have been a more peaceful place without US "boldness," then it is only fair that the curriculum explore the question, "Would world peace have been achieved had the Americans simply left war torn Europe in shambles and retreated to our own shores?"

The astonishing deficiencies in this analysis has at its root an attempt to draw moral equivalency between oppressive regimes, like Russia, and America's influence on the world stage. This faulty foundation saturates this text book from cover to cover. It is outrageous to suggest that Russia's aggression in Eastern block countries was justified self-defense as a reaction to US designs to liberate and establish free societies in Europe. This is a sickening mis-characterization of the nature of communism and Stalin's totalitarian regime and what was in reality the lowering of an Iron Curtain of totalitarian control and deadly oppression over Eastern Europe. Russia's atrocities during World War II, their brutal administration of East Berlin, and their provocations beyond their own boarders were enough to cause series concern to the free world. The Soviets blockaded Berlin, annexed several occupied countries, and converted Poland, Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania, Albania, and Czechoslovakia into Soviet Satallite states with oppressive communists governments.

Despite the 1949 tests of Soviet nuclear bombs, the Communist leader Mao Tse-tung taking power in China, and a fierce war with communist North Korea, the text book claims it was the US that "accelerated a forty-year race with the Soviet Union." The explanation of the causes of the Cold War put the heavier burden for the escalation on the US. The book details Truman’s dislike of Stalin as exaggerated suspicion, blames Truman's pursuit of the hydrogen bomb for locking the US into the Cold War, portrays American fear of communist attack as sensationalized, and faults the US for the mistrust between nations because of their refusal to share nuclear secrets.

The text book makes no attempt to imagine how the world might have looked had it been left to the bold plans of Stalin's worldview? Where are the mentions of the deplorable dictator who personally made death lists and ordered whole groups of his own people to die. After all, Stalin was the dictator who systematically exterminated 30,000 Red Army officers so he could work plans for military conquest unimpeded by Russia's national heroes. He used murder as state policy executing 90% of the Russian Parliament, he sent 14 million to die in slave labor in the Gulags, and his campaign of murder was so endemic that historians struggle to estimate the millions who died at his hands, estimates ranging widely between 30 and 60 million people.

It is a fact that in the rubble of World War II he sought to expand his brutal regime of absolute control and murder, and it is irresponsible for any text book to infer that he did so purely motivated by "self-defense." The Western powers foolishly placed their trust in Russia's goodwill at the 1945 Yalta Conference only to watch in horror as their Polish Allies were executed and the relocation of tens of thousands of Poles, already victimized by Hitler, were forced into slave labor in Stalin's gulags. The British parliament was so ashamed of betraying their Polish allies that they allowed liberal immigration to Polish refugees. Both FDR and Churchill expressed deep regret over their naive trust in this brutal dictator. Stalin was never a man who acted on the honorable virtues of self-defense and his view of world dominance left no room for America's commitment to world liberty.

Weighing all the evidence: The fact that it is not only impossible to hold back scientific progress, but foolish. The fact that there have always been men in this world bent on the evil domination of others. The fact that the world was gripped in the jaws of evil by the rise of the most despicable dictators the world had ever known; dictators who were seeking these weapons, who would eventually acquiring them, and who were entirely capable of using them to oppress the world. Based on the evidence, it is far more accurate to conclude that the Cold War was caused by Communist designs to dominate and control the world, then to place the blame on the shoulders of the US who was working against extraordinary odds to secure liberty in the world. Now that's applying grown up logic based on the facts which seems to have no place in my son's US History curriculum.

Is Public School a Healthy Place to Socialize a Child? (Part 3)

I believe that children are highly impacted by the socialization they receive at home but to pretend that the values parents work hard to inculcate at home, can’t be significantly undermined by a degrading social environment at school, is a dangerous type of denial.

In part one of this series, I discussed the sexual abuse that is becoming a serious threat in our public school systems, affecting 10% of students. In part two I discussed the increase in negative peer interactions due to a disintegrating of family culture. This would be enough to undermine trust in the idea that public school is a healthy place to socialize a child, but this third subject is the primary cause for concern in my book. There is a growing inability of school administrators to set and model exemplary conduct standards and to make competent and moral judgments over content and discipline.

While deviant student behavior it is not entirely the fault of schools, the school system plays a powerful role in enforcement of standards of conduct for students and staff. There is a wide spread rationalization among parents and educators as to what defines appropriate behavior when related to those things that lead to sexualization of youth; such as basic modesty, speech, media, dance, and music. In most cases the standards are well defined in student handbooks but go unenforced. The neglect of enforcement of exemplary standards by school administrators is sending the message, “do as I say, not as I do.” This neglect is exposing the entire student body to risky behaviors.

Examples are so numerous and sickening it is impossible to share them all, here is a short list: A recent controversy was sparked over an ‘oral sex’ and ‘anal sex’ poster that was supposedly part of an ‘abstinence-based’ sex-ed lesson. A drama teacher had his students perform a play in which one of the characters falls in love with a goat. The play includes sexually explicit content and vulgar sexual terms." Third graders were given a lesson on adultery that included specific questions designed to make the child curious about what adultery. A federally funded sex education program being piloted in Hawaiian promotes homosexuality to middle school students and presents “medically inaccurate” information, redefining the anus as a “genital.” A Michigan father was angry when he discovered a biology assignment that normalizes "sleeping around." A middle school teacher and part-time actor showed his students a risqué video of himself “partially clothed and in bed with a woman.

School handbooks instruct students to wear appropriate clothing, to speak in clean language, to be respectful and then the school administrators expose our kids to crass sexual content. They expect young men to show respect to young women and are then lax in enforcing dress codes which results in these young men being surrounded daily by bare breasted cleavage and extremely short shorts. A very tall handsome and honorable 16 year old son of one of my friends once expressed his frustration with the revealing clothing girls at his school wore, he said that he often avoided looking down as he walked through the hall because it was impossible to avoid looking straight down their shirts. His shorter buddy joked that he’d like to have that problem.

While administrators are reportedly cracking down on t-shirts with political and even patriotic messages, they are ignoring low cut see through blouses and shorts so short that they reveal the butt cheek when sitting. Students at school dances show off more and more skin as they dance in sexually suggestive ways and administrators are increasingly losing their will to clean it up. Meanwhile teachers and administrators find time find to enforce the really important stuff, like this story from Lucy Elementary School near Memphis, Tenn.: an assignment required each student to pick an idol and write an essay about him or her. A 10-year-old girl chose God as her idol, but the teacher found this unacceptable and demanded that the girl write about someone else. So I guess God’s out as a role model but our kids should find value in morally bankrupt art and language content.

My first public activism and the beginning of my involvement in education politics was as the organizer of a parent's society in my Nebraska school district (where the culture is far less degraded than here in Maryland). Feeling strongly that our district wasn't doing enough to set and enforce higher behavioral standards for students and teachers alike, our goal was to promote policies in our school district that preserved a wholesome environment to foster quality educational and social experiences for our children. We wanted school district administrators and teachers to be committed to preserving our children’s innocence and dignity by effectively implementing exemplary standards. 

The concern that kicked our efforts into gear was a high school football mock striptease act done with administration support in a mandatory student pep-rally. The football players came into the gym bundled up in winter clothes and striped (imitating strippers) to rowdy music until they were in their boxer shorts with their chests painted in school spirit colors. One young man who was there was brave enough to tell his mother how uncomfortable he was, he observed a young woman in front of him blush with embarrassment as one of the players moved close to her during the dance and thrust his hips in her face repeatedly. The student body roared with applause at the whole screen as admins and teachers approvingly looked on. In fact, the act was repeated many times over that year at booster events.

Increasingly administrators and teachers are making content choices that embrace a degraded culture and even run contrary to most student codes of conduct. For example, a recent high school play at my son’s school featured scenes that made comical reference to pornography and masturbation, made light of marital infidelity, and made sex before marriage the norm. Time and again I have watched as music directors and theater departments at high schools across the US pass up the vast quantity of quality wholesome musical and theatrical content in lieu of content that portrays immoral and risky sexual behavior and demean wholesome family relationships.

Parents who are bothered by these trends know just how common it is. A friend of mine felt the need to complain when the music teacher at his daughter’s school made an unbecoming song choice of "Don't tell mama" a song sung by Cabaret girls. Show choir students were encouraged to play the part of "bar hussies “and sing a risqué song while flaunting their stuff. 

A high school near my home chose "Rent" as their high school musical which delves into drug abuse and portrays homosexuality. When parents complained about this choice the response from administrators was that it was not a good for students to be exposed to "real life". I hear this a lot, I also get this one; "it's no worse then the culture at large." A poor argument in my opinion it simply excuses poor behavior in our schools because the behavior in the culture is so bad. How do they think it gets that way, this is the next generation we are socializing after all. 

In Nebraska, even the school board president's complaints about the choice held no sway over administrators. He said, “When we start asking them to depict in character a lifestyle in New York ... that deals in drugs, that deals in same-sex relations, that deals in provocative dress, I don't know that high school is the appropriate forum for that.” For my part, these things are not the kind of "real life" I am trying to build for my children, these things have no part in my "real life," and they certainly aren't the values and norms I want my children to build their future on.

This stuff starts innocently enough which prompts parents to ignore the problems. A parent contacted me one day disturbed by the choice of choreography in her child's choir concert. The middle school music teacher had the children wag their bottoms at the audience at the conclusion of a musical number. It was made worse by the fact that parents in the audience hooped and hollered, giving the students cat calls. The parent was disturbed that other parents in the room could not perceive the problem with teaching the students to use their bodies to get that kind of attention. Another parent had to complain when she discovered a teacher was using the "flip the bird" obscenity to teach students to hold their pencils correctly, a lesson plan that was repeated the following year despite the complaints of parents.

Social media has enabled this poor judgment to come to light on a scale that shouldn't be ignored. What school administrators continue to portray as isolated incidents many parents are coming to realize are common place. Inappropriate content sometimes comes to the classroom from curriculum published far from it, but this is no excuse. Socialization is a natural part of education, it is the way in which a society disseminates the norms, customs, and ideologies that are the means by which social and cultural continuity are attained. What norms and ideologies are educators disseminating to children today? The problems discussed in this series are not getting better, they are getting worse, and I believe it calls into serious doubt the idea that public school is a healthy place to socialize a child.

Is Public School a Healthy Place to Socialize a Child? (Part 2)

In addition to comments about "sheltering" their children, homeschoolers all to often get comments from people concerned their children aren't being properly socialized. In part one of this series I talked about the worst of the sexual abuse that is becoming a serious threat in our public school systems, a threat that 10% of students fall victim to. However, while most parents are concerned when they hear stories of sexual abuse, they tend to believe it is isolated and that their child is safe. In this part two we will explore how peer interactions at school contribute to the way children are socialized in public school.

In response to part one in this serious, I received some feedback from parents who questioned the premise that public school is the place where a child is socialized. One mother commenting that public school "isn't a means for socialization, that it should be for educational purposes only." So, before I get started with my part two discussion of this topic, let me take a moment and defend my premise that children are socialized at school. First, I believe that children are highly impacted by the socialization they receive at home, but I also believe that education plays a significant role in this process and that it's impossible, not to mention irresponsible, to expect that it won't. For thousands of years education was not seen only as the acquisition of a narrow set of skills but rather a life long process leading to the development of a mature mind and a moral character.

Thomas Jefferson described the purpose of education as one beyond acquiring the basic skills of reading, writing, arithmetic..." and the outlines of geography and history." He explained that the purpose in acquiring skills and knowledge is to improve "by reading" a persons "morals and faculties; To understand his duties to his neighbors and country; To know his rights... and in general to observe with intelligence and faithfulness all the social relations under which he shall be placed." This sounds a lot like socialization to me.

So what is socialization? It is "a term that is used to refer to the lifelong process of inheriting and disseminating norms, customs, and ideologies; providing an individual with the skills and habits necessary for participating within his or her own society. Socialization is thus the means by which social and cultural continuity are attained." Even if you take away the true nature of education, of which socialization is a part, the reality is that schools do view socialization as part of their mission and they are heavily involved in providing it; whether or not we like the way the go about it. Even if we were somehow successful at separating socialization and education in modern schools, not that I believe that is the answer, an education that is merely the training of skill sets would be terribly deficient and would ultimately result in a type of socialization by default; meaning "a child left to [his peers] bringeth [his nation] to shame."

In an ideal world our society would be a place where wholesome social values inculcated at home are nurtured and expanded during a child's education at school. With that critical continuity weakened an increasing number of parents are choosing to educate at home, as to be able to provide a complete education, one that contains healthy socialization. However, these homeschool parents are constantly challenged by friends and strangers who express concern that homeschooled children are not being properly socialized. In this part two perhaps we can shed some light on why more parents have doubts about whether public school is still the best place for a child to establish thinking about 'cultural norms, ideologies, and habits'"?

Just as most parents believe their children are not at risk for sexual abuse at school, most likely parents believe that negative social interactions at school will have a negligible effect on their child. However, I believe the risks are stacking up against that belief.

First off, too many kids today aren't being socialized by vigilant parents. In general, children spend more time with their teachers and peers than their parents. Public school days and years are getting longer, parents are working more, children are eating more of their meals at school and day care. After school kids are either in constant structured activities (sports, dance, music, etc.) or mostly unsupervised in front of media during spare time. Thus the role of parenting is shifting to the shoulders of teachers, however ineffective that is, and that shift has degraded the quality of peer interactions children have at school. This effects all children whether or not their parents are active in their lives.

Secondly, those parents who work hard to create wholesome social environments for their children at home often feel their efforts constantly thwarted by the messages their kids are bombarded with at school and in the media. I believe that most parents are trying very hard to inculcate proper values in their children, and while many are successful, it is taking greater and greater effort to overcome the social environment at school as it disintegrates.

The types of negative social interactions children are exposed to are increasing in number and severity. Of particular concern are the increasing incidents of violence, inappropriate sexual conduct among children at school, crude language, sassy back talk, serious disruptive behavior, and overall disrespect of teachers. All of these are examples of peer related influences. I hear mothers often express their concerns about their kids peers at school. Unlike at home or in the community, a child does not choose the kids in their class, and often has no choice of who they sit next to in class or at lunch. So naturally parents wonder, what is the character of the kids my child is forced to associate with?

In a most extreme case that rocked parents nationwide, two Kindergarteners found by their teacher having sex in a school bathroom. I read several social media threads on this story and in general parents defended the teacher who was threatened with loosing her job, realizing immediately that the behavior is more the fault of the parents of these children who were obviously acting out what they were exposed to at home. But here is the problem, as our society looses what were once shared values of morality, trust breaks down. Children are highly influenced by their peers and it is much harder to be certain that those influences will not present danger.

Parents who talk to their kids, particularly middle and high school aged children, know that sexual conduct is increasing among students; from crude sexual speech to sexting and sexually active youth. It is becoming more widely discussed in the media that sexting trends among students are on the rise and at younger ages. An acquaintance of mine uncovered a wide spread sexting scandal at her sons high school, when she found tweets of naked pictures of students on her son's twitter feed. The students were taking naked pictures of themselves on school grounds and tweeting them out to a school wide hash tag. Hundreds of students had viewed the pictures. Even when it doesn't go this far, the sexualization of children is on display in the way students dress and talk, dance and grope; and there sometimes it seems school administrators aren't motivated to clean it up (but that's a discussion for part three in this series).

Another peer social trend that is causing parents great concern, is the increase in bulling and violent attacks among students. One alarming trend that illustrates this are the numerous stories and videos of bulling and criminal behavior on school buses? Dozens of incident reports were released by local news in my state, reports that tell stories of sex, violence and drugs on Maryland school buses in suburban districts, and not just with older kids, one report documents an incident where an elementary school student hit another kid and threatened to shoot her with his dad's gun.

The student behavior on school buses has become truly scary and is an important illustration of student character overall, because character is what comes out when a child feels no one is watching. The Washington Post reported how "school bus drivers described students fighting and kicking each other or throwing bottles, coins and pencils at them. At times, students pitch food, paper and objects out the window at people walking or driving by... drivers said they have found weapons, such as bullets and switchblades, left behind after students get off buses." School bus drivers in Texas protested because student conduct on buses was so bad, they demanded they be shown respect. A utter lack of respect and open rebellion is another part of how kids today are socialized by their peers.

Some of the worst stories that have received national attention and should be a wake up call for how the social environment at schools is deteriorating. It's not isolated to inner city school districts either, an Ohio third grader was violently beaten by 17-year old student on a rural bus. A 10 year old rural Virginia boy was viciously bullied and the video caught physical and verbal abuse that went on for 40 minutes. A bus driver who witnessed a brutal attack of a boy on his bus said he suffers from nightmares after not being able to stop the attack. Before you say, well just don't let your kids ride the bus, might I point out that whether or not your child rides the bus, they may very well be sitting next to one of these violent perps in class?

Violence in the halls at school is also a problem that is escalating in our society. An estimated 16 percent of all high school students in this country have been in one or more physical fights on school property in the course of a year. The worst cases are when it turns deadly, as it has in what seems like a rash of school shootings by mostly disturbed young boys. Overall, school shootings are still rare but they are hitting closer and closer to home for an increasing number of people.

In my life school shootings have hit close to home twice. Once when I was in high school and my sisters friend was shot in the head by a ricochet bullet after a student staring firing a gun at lunch. The second was a schools shooting that took the life of two school administrators at the high school a block from my house. Both of these schools were small town mid-western schools.

The vicious bullying that has gotten nation wide attention is another concern for most parents. This issue was propelled to national awareness because of astonishing cases like the one that ended when a 12 year old took her own life to end the torture her peers leashed out on her. Parents worry that their child might be next to fall victim to the kind of vicious bullying that can have life long repercussions. Most of us had an encounter with a "mean girl" in school, but now bullying is hitting a new level, in one case a 17-year old girl secretly posted a nude photo of a 15-year-old girl to an Instagram site without her knowledge. Of course these are the worst examples, but sit down in any moms group and strike up a conversation about bullying and you will get an earful. My own son's fifth grade year was made unbearable because of a bully who made it their mission to isolate and ostracize him socially.

These are just some of the stories that make news but I believe there is plenty of reason to be concerned at the general increase in crude and offensive language, disrespect of teachers, general lack of discipline, immodest dress, sexting, and shocking juvenile PDA that is on display in schools throughout the country. All of these things are on the rise, even in "suburban districts," and all of these things are happening at younger and younger ages. Whether or not your child has not been involved in these acts of violence or sexual conduct, they are in danger of being exposed to it, if they haven't already, and exposure has a desensitizing impact on the moral compass of children and youth. So it should be no surprise that so many parents are asking themselves, "Is public school a healthier place to socialize a child?"

Violence:

• Bus Driver suffers from nightmares after not being able to stop a vicious beating caught on his school bus
• School bus drivers in Texas protest because student conduct on buses was so bad, they demanded they be shown respect
• Las Vegas middle school girl viciously attacked at her bus stop
• Ohio third grader violently beat by 17-year old student on a rural bus
• 10 year old Virginia boy was viciously bullied and the video caught physical and verbal abuse that went on for 40 minutes
• Indiana teens were arrested when a cell phone caught a violent bus beating and the video was posted on Facebook
• Many more such reports have ended up in the national press, but we know these only represent a small fraction of incidents yearly
• Bus driver breaks students nose in school bus brawl
• Middle school boy opens fire on classmates, injuring two

Is Public School a Healthy Place to Socialize a Child? (Part 1)

Every homeschool parent has been questioned by friends and strangers and asked if their decision to homeschool isn't a futile attempt to "shelter" their children from "real life." The inference being that they are foolishly sheltering their children. I read a Facebook posting from one homeschool mom who posted a news article exposing yet another teacher of sexual assault, she wrote, "Seriously? I almost want to start a file and fill it with links to all these stories and every time someone asks me why I feel like I should "shelter" my kids, I'm going to send it to them and ask them why they don't?" This comment prompted me to write a series on the subject, "Is public school a healthy place to socialize a child?" For this part one we will start with the question about sexual abuse in schools today and explore whether more parents ought to seriously consider sheltering their children from the risk.

It takes but a few minutes to find dozens of terrifying stories of sexual abuse that would leave any parent absolutely ill, which may be one reason we choose to believe the cases are isolated. Research for this part of my article left me physically sick and I had to set it aside for a few days. It's impossible to be unaffected by stories like the 6th grade teacher charged with committing lewd acts on a child and genital penetration by a foreign object, the middle school principle who raped a student in his office while the parents were just outside, multiple cases of teachers initiating group sex with students, and teachers tweeting naked pictures of themselves to students. There are dozens more as bad or worse than these, and at the center of everyone is a child victim.

Almost as disgusting, is the number of people I've found who make comments like, "this kind of sexual abuse is the dream of every 14 to 17 year old boy." The number of people out there with warped ideas like this shouldn't surprise me, after all, we live in a nation where every 30 minutes a porn video is made and 30,000 people are 'consuming' pornography every second. I believe it is logical to conclude that in some part the pornification of America is making its way into our public institutions. It is a common argument in favor of porn, that what happens in private has no bearing on public life, but people who believe that, need to wake up and pay attention to how it is affecting our children.

I believe the sexualization of our culture is weakening the ability of adults to protect children. Before you say that adults who rationalize or ignore the sexual abuse of children, are just creepy perverts in the shadows of our society, consider the legal protections for children that are breaking down over this issue? In 2012, the Arkansas Supreme Court says 18-year old students can have sex with their teachers, a loop-hole in a Maryland law allowed part-time teachers have a sex with students, and a Texas court says sexting between student and teacher is protected by free speech. It makes you wonder if our society has the moral fortitude to tackle the rash of sexual abuse in schools today.

So, am I blowing it out of proportion? How common is Sexual Abuse in schools anyway? Is this list a misrepresentation of the danger? The best study we have to estimate the scope of sexual abuse in public schools, reports that more than 4.5 million students are subject to sexual misconduct by an employee of a school sometime between kindergarten and 12th grade. That is 10% of children, which is why it so disturbs me when parents I know are uncomfortable when I post these stories of sexual abuse. One friend felt the need to remind me that, "Most teachers are dedicated, hard-working people who wouldn't dream of hurting a child." Of course they are, but when I hear this argument I think, "What level of sexual abuse in school is tolerable? At what point should parents be concerned?" A CBS story got it right when they said, "Any institution that has allowed children to be harmed by predators deserves to be taken to task for it. No institution should get a pass. And no profession should get a pass. Not preachers, not priests — not even teachers."

I will admit that better studies are needed, but the political will to investigate the issue on a national scale doesn't seem to be there. Why not? Remember the political and media uproar in the nation when allegations of sexual abuse by Catholic Priests was uncovered? CBS news reported that, "During the first half of 2002, the 61 largest newspapers in California ran nearly 2,000 stories about sexual abuse in Catholic institutions, mostly concerning past allegations. During the same period, those newspapers ran four stories about the federal government's discovery of the much larger — and ongoing — abuse scandal in public schools." Sexual abuse of students in schools is likely more than 100 times greater in real numbers than the sexual abuse that rocked Roman Catholic Church and yet homeschool parents continue to be looked at as the backward ones because of their desire to shelter their children.

Another point of debate I have come across, is the observation that so many of these cases turn out to be false but that stigma lives on for those innocent teachers forever. There may be something to that observation. Hardly an official study, but a poll by the Association of Teachers and Lecturers (ATL) revealed that a quarter of school staff had been falsely accused by a pupil of wrongdoing – such as slapping them or inappropriate sexual conduct – while one in six has faced malicious allegations from a pupil's family. Half of those questioned said there had been at least one false allegation in their current school."

I did find a number of stories of teachers who were falsely accused (here, here, and here), but do the cases of false accusation negate the concern that schools are not fostering a healthy safe environment? The very fact that some sexual assault cases are fabricated by students as a way to punish their teachers only unmasks another disturbing proof that American children are highly sexualized. Parents who work hard to protect their children's innocence and dignity by providing wholesome environments at home want to be confident that the environment at school won't undermine that effort. That confidence is deminished by the alarming stories of sexual abuse as well as the disturbing student behavior their children may be exposed to. While student behavior is not entirely the fault of school systems, it leads us to the next subject we will explore, are the influences of peers at school providing healthy socialization for a child? And further, what role are schools personnel and policy playing in condoning deviant student behavior?

Selected Teacher/Student sex scandal stories over past 2 years (THIS IS BY NO MEANS A COMPLETE LIST):

July 9, 2012 -- Teacher having sex in hotels with students

Sept 12, 2012 -- Two teachers have group sex with students

Aug 16, 2012 -- Another teacher having group sex with students

Oct 25, 2012 -- Teachers send naked tweets of themselves to students

Oct 25, 2012 -- Male teacher punches female student who refuses to have ex with him

Feb 25, 2013 -- Teacher offers to pay students for sex on Facebook

Mar 8, 2013 -- Female dance coach accused of having sex with a female student after every football game

Mar 14, 2013 -- A male assistant high school principle allegedly has sex with female student at prom

Sept 27, 2013 -- 6th grade female teacher was charged with committing lewd acts on a child and genital penetration by a foreign object

Oct 16, 2013 -- Male middle school principle rapes student in his office while the parents were outside his office

Jan 11, 2014 -- Female teacher pleads guilty to having sex with 14 year old student

Jan 23, 2014 -- Former female teacher is accused of sexually molesting 2 former female students

Jan 24, 2013 -- Married Female teacher has sex with a student at her home

Jan 29, 2014 -- Female teacher allegedly carries on lewd electronic communication with students that culminates in bedding the male student

Feb 21, 2014 -- Female teacher allegedly has oral sex with 13 year old student

Legal protections for students breaking down:

Mar 29, 2012 -- Arkansas Supreme Court says 18-year old students can have sex with their teachers

Feb 5, 2014 -- Texas court says sexting between student and teacher is protected by free speech

Feb 18, 2014 -- Legal loophole lets part-time teachers have a sex with students

The Rise of Dictators: What They Don't Teach in School

In my son's US History unit on the rise of dictators in the mid-20th century, there are three major factors the text book sites for why these dictators were able to rise to power; Militarism, Nationalism, and Expansionism. I looked over the assignment worksheets, "The Rise of Dictators", and found no question prompts for the students to discuss the role of statism, which is the single thread that defines each of these dictators.

The dictionary defines Militarism as the belief or desire, of a government or people, that a country should maintain a strong military capability and be prepared to use it aggressively to defend or promote national interests. By that definition, any country that has a standing army ready to defend its interests is militant, but in truth, there is no comparison between a country that uses their standing Army to defend liberty and one that is bent on world domination. Further, it concerns me that a discussion of militarism as a major cause of this great evil might demonize the heroism of national armies who serve in honor to protect their nations. Both Stalin and Hitler, systematically exterminated the leadership of their standing armies and supplanted their own private political armies in the ranks of leadership. Only after they had torn down the old guard and taken political control of the army could they work their plans for military conquest.

As for Nationalism, whether or not it played a significant role, depends on how you define it. It's primary definition is a "patriotic feeling, principles, and efforts, that involves an individual identifying with, or becoming attached to, one's nation." This in and of itself is not the reason this kind of evil is allowed to prevail in the world. For example, a strong patriotic feeling among American citizens and our standing military, has for our history meant that one believes in and is willing to fight to protect the ideals enshrined in our founding documents, documents that are intended to secure individual liberty and equality under the law. Loyalty to ones country alone could not be the cause of such evil prevailing, it would have to take on the quality of being loyal to political ideologies that enslave the individual to state power. If by nationalism the curriculum aims to distinguish it from patriotism and define it as "involving the social conditioning and personal behaviors that support a state's decisions and actions regardless of their virtue and merit," then that form of "nationalism" certainly played a role in the support for such dictators and their success in working mass murder.

The dictionary defines Expansionism as "policies of governments and states for territorial or economic expansion; the doctrine of a state expanding its territorial base (or economic influence) usually, though not necessarily, by means of military aggression." Again this definition might apply to the expanding economic influence of the US during industrialization and modernization, yet these qualities alone are not responsible for the rise of dictators in the mid-20th century. The question posed to the students is, what role did expansionism play in the dictator rising to power and retaining power. This is a case where one should ask whether or not the people were persuaded to support the dictator because of excitement over the prospects of military conquest. In some cases the answer would be yes, but would it hold that a majority of the citizens of these countries wanted to conquer the world? Expansionism was in most cases the ambition of the dictator to expand their lust for power, but this came after they had subdued any dissent among their own people through terror and absolute control.

What part did Militarism, Nationalism, and Expansionism play in Stalin's rise to power and his goals and objectives?

What I would like to do is illustrate how much of history is lost when the rise of Stalin is limited to these three terms. Here are the basic facts of how Stalin came to power, highlight words are instances where Stalin's rise to power meets the three primary discussion points in my sons lesson.

First, Stalin was the successor of the communist revolutionary dictator, Lenin. To rise to power Stalin made himself indispensable to Lenin as a brutal enforcer of party loyalty, and a Bolshevik thug. The Russian people had lived under almost total state control for centuries, and the underclasses were terribly oppressed. Their absolute monarchy was brought to its knees by an enraged public with idealistic hopes of a workers utopia. The first world war brought greater suffering to the people and the conditions were ripe for the communist ideologies of Bolshevik revolutionaries. With Russians hungry, the provisional government destabilized, and loosing the war with Germany. Lenin laid in wait to high jack the revolution and place himself as dictator and communist party leader. Their was enormous resistance to Lenin even in the working class and Lenin employed French Revolution terror tactics to defend his power. As a communist theoretician Lenin held that workers could not develop a revolutionary consciousness without the guidance of a vanguard party. They institute a one party police state in order to accomplish their collectivists ideas.

The Russian people were not alarmed by centralized state power (Nationalism: social conditioning and personal behaviors that support a state's decisions and actions regardless of their virtue and merit), they had not experienced the advancement democratic reforms that had come to the rest of Europe. Under the rule of the Czar, the people were ruled by the iron hand and secret police of the absolute monarchy of czarism. The Orthodox Church propped up the rule of the Czars and the power of the aristocracy. When Stalin came to power he had no need to "convince" the people to support him, there was no general election of the people, the will of the people did not factor in, just the support of the communist party already in control of the nation. Stalin's concern was to make the party leaders believe he was the rightful heir to their beloved Lenin. Militarism (the belief or desire of a government or people that a country should maintain a strong military capability and be prepared to use it aggressively) did not play a significant role in Stalin's rise to power. He inherited a Police State, secret agents NKVD (political police), who worked the will of Lenin and would now carry out every order of Stalin. Stalin's orders were iron clad law.

What influenced Stalin to ally himself with the communist revolutionaries? Was there nationalism working to socially condition Stalin? Did Czarism shape his personal behaviors?

Stalin's mother was a traditional christian woman, she had fierce loyalty to the orthodox church, and hoped her son would join the priesthood. Certainly his mothers values did not underwrite his goals as a young man. Stalin's father was hateful toward him and an abusive drunk, perhaps an influence that contributed to Stalin's violent nature. His education financed by a wealthy benefactor, Stalin was exposed to Darwinism and Karl Marx while at boarding school, and joined the communist party as a young graduate. This choice is the one that would shape his path more than any other. His convoluted dedication to a political ideology and his thirst for power would kill over 10 million of his own people. Stalin became an agitator, enforcer, and organizer in the communist/Bolshevik revolution. He carried out bank robberies and bombings. Stalin was a hardened man even before his time in prison and exile in the arctic circle, but these years would prove him a ruthless criminal.

Stalin did not always follow Lenin's political line but he was useful to Lenin because he he was a great organize and could push men into desperate action. Stalin carried out massive executions on Lenin's behalf, he was the enforcer, and Lenin became more and more reliant on Stalin. Because of the violent revolution and the difficulty holding power, Lenin relaxed the confiscation and centralization of property, this angered idealistic Bolshevik revolutionaries and gave Stalin an inroad for political support. In the end of Lenin's life Stalin made himself his caretaker and controlled access to him. He made sure the people saw him as the heir to power.

How did Stalin hold onto power? Did he gain support from his people because of military conquest and expansion? What role did nationalism play in his holding on to power?

As soon as Stalin took power he moved his communist plans forward with rapid ruthless determination. He immediately confiscated all personal property, of both rich and poor alike. He sent armies of police (not military) to confiscate every asset, every horse or donkey, and even confiscated grain. He divided peasants into categories, those to be killed, those to be exiled, and those to be worked to death in the gulags; all part of his central plan to forcibly industrialize the nation. Land was seized and land owners were declared enemies of "the people". His mission, drag the peasants into the 20th century, if they resisted they were eliminated. The people saw the killing and the deportations but they believed it was the only way their workers paradise would come as promised by the communist. (Perhaps evidence of nationalism, except that Russians did not have a national tradition or social conditioning toward collectivism, this was a radical new social experiment.)

Stalin's revolution enslaved his people under socialist communist reform. He believed that any number of deaths was worth his collectivist paradise. He worked his people to death, 175,000 people died to build a canal that ended up a useless failure. 10 Million political prisoners were forced to work as slaves in gulags (concentration camps) for Stalin's collectivist vision. Those who were not made to work were left to starve. Parents were forced to choose to feed one child over another, choosing to withhold food from the sick ones. Stalin hid the truth of mass death in the country side from the people in the cities and propped up his collectivist utopia myth. Certainly there was social conditioning here but in large part it succeeded out of sheer fear and the nature of humans to ignore what they feel helpless to change as a way to cope.

Those who resisted, died. People of Ukraine resisted collectivism more than others. Ukrainians tried to flee to Europe but were trapped by Stalin who stopped the trains and barred the roads. The sheer murder of people was beyond imagination. 5 million people starved to death in the Ukraine while Stalin exported 5 million tons of grain. Stalin decided all his political opposition should die. Murder became government policy. 90% of congress was executed. 1100 party members sent to the gulags in Siberia. He turned the people against each other, planting informers among the people to report the"spies within". Under physical torture they would confess crimes they had never committed, and then the spies were executed. He decapitated the Russian Army, they were the national heroes of the revolution, he needed the middle soldiers to take command and be loyal to him. He had 30,000 officers executed. He killed every last leader from the revolution in order to gain complete control of the Red Army. Murder was Stalin's primary tool in retaining power, not militarism, nationalism, or expansionism. He murdered everyone who was even suspected of resistance, and then killed those who could reveal the truth of his bloody terror. 

While Stalin personally made death lists and ordered whole groups to die, he developed a national myth surrounding his leadership. Stalin provided the people plenty of propaganda, which they desperately needed to believe that Russia was making progress toward utopia. He was not a great orator but he was good at writing and editing, he wove a beautiful myth, he transported his carefully crafted speeches via gramophone records across Russia, he used movies to portray his myth, and he even rewrote his own history. Stalin rewarded his supporters lavishly, bestowing cars and luxury living on a select few. He did everything possible to hide the truth of his regime, his image in the eyes of millions was untarnished by his behavior. He cultivated himself as a man of the people and seized every opportunity to be photographed. He portrayed himself as the father of Russia, the benevolent patriarch. His picture hung in homes, while relics of the Christian faith were destroyed. He replaced religion, with the atheist statism, the religion of Bolshevism. Gulag prisoners wrote letters to Stalin to save them, the man who ordered their deaths, to them it could not of been his fault, he was a God. Stalin's regime was built on violence, blood, and a mountain of corpses and yet the power of the myth he built about himself was so powerful he was never held to account for the atrocities ordered by his own hands.

From what I have seen in my son's text books, I wonder how many students across the US are taught from curriculum that downplays the role of collectivist ideology and statism in facilitating the rise of murderous dictators?

LEGO MOVIE: An Analogy for Stop Common Core?

Went to the new Lego movie tonight with the family. When the villain was introduced as "Mr. Business" I thought, "Oh no, this one is going to be another progressive plot that demonizes business as the root of our problems and subtly suggests to our children that we need Big Government to swoop in and protect us." But as I watched the theme develop, I was surprised that the movie went in a very different direction. It is appropriate that a toy company that has been dedicated to the creative brain development of children for decades produced a movie script that illustrated perfectly the folly of education reform based on a blueprint of standardization.

I thought my fellow Stop Common Core activists would easily see the parallels between the themes in this story and why we so passionately oppose the federal education agenda. The villain in the movie was a great metaphor for the crony partnership between big business and government that is pushing a philosophy of standardization and micro-managed economies under the guise of education reform.

"Mr. Business," the villain in the movie, is also "The President" of their Lego city. I saw President Buisness as a clear symbol for the seamless merging of corporate interests and means with government power and force, essentially the use of private industry to accomplish the means of government. Just like Common Core. This villain wants to impose his "program" on everyone, he writes the instruction manuals, and he forces everyone to follow the instruction manuals with no deviation. Just like Common Core. He stamps out creativity and individuality, to say nothing for freedom. True to life, he uses his power as "the president" to send out his "police" to enforce his will. President Buisness  even calls his police robots his "micro-managers" and sends them out to micro-manage every detail. Just like what people fear will happen as the federal vice grip closes in on education and the federal/corporate union gains control of the instruction manuals in our local schools.

Unlike the standard progressive narrative, in the Lego movie it isn't the government that does the saving, it's the people. In fact the hero of the movie is just an ordinary Lego guy, Emmett, he is marching forward as part of President Buisness's micro-managed workforce, unaware until he falls into the truth and is thrust into action. It's funny when Emmett realizes that the President writes the instruction manuals and builds the voting machines. It's funny how Emmett is at first cheerfully placated by "President Buisness's" charisma and promises of "Taco Tuesdays". It's a spot on analogy for how Americans today have been blinded to the dangers they face.

Like so many hero stories, the villain is set on destroying the world, but it is particularly astute that the way in which he will destroy their world is that he will effectively freeze it in place, stop it's creative motion and movement forward. This is precisely what policies like Common Core will do. When government officials think they can make things "perfect" by micro-managing every detail they effectively freeze the creative endeavors that drive success and the pursuit of happiness in society.

In the end the movie forwards the idea that creativity and individuality are essential, that the enemy to happiness and progress are those who seek to control and "micro-manage" the creative process of individuals and societal development. Emmett learns that everyone is special in some way and that when they aren't limited to the "instruction manual" they can create incredible things. It is a celebration of creativity and uniqueness, the exact opposite of the creativity killing plans that are at the center of the Common Core Agenda.

As the theme applies to educating children day by day, I think the movie demonstrates what every parent instinctively knows and what educrats, politicians, and corporate-crats should wake-up to. It is simply a crime to squash the creativity and play of children in exchange for the promise of "global competitiveness." Like the villain in the movie, the Common Core Agenda seeks to build it's "perfect system" by centrally managing every student until it will destroys those characteristics of education and child development which most contribute to happy children and mature adults. The goal set by the Common Core architects will allude them as they will succeed only in destroying the dynamic, creative, and innovative abilities of a generation, effectively stalling the engine of creative progress and freezing our society in place.

Educating for Human Happiness

A list I revised from a blog post, What Should a 4 Year Old Know, at the blog A Magical Childhood. I was so inspired by this blog post that I decided that I needed to create a list for my Homeschool Planner binder to remind me that everyday my sons education contains these characteristics. It has helped me set my goals and build my curriculum.

Our family Homeschool mission statement was written before I read this post, but these points reinforce our mission:

In the Morgan Family Homeschool we will nurture the natural curiosity, spiritual capacities, and emotional intellect of our children through cultivating a lifelong love of learning in a loving home environment.

WHAT LITTLE CHILDREN SHOULD KNOW:

HE should know that he is loved wholly and unconditionally, all of the time.

HE should know that he is safe and he should know that he can trust his instincts about people and that he never has to do something that doesn't feel right, no matter who is asking.

HE should know how to laugh, act silly, be goofy and use his imagination.

HE should know his own interests and be encouraged to follow them. If he couldn’t care less about learning his numbers, his parents should realize he’ll learn them accidentally soon enough and let him immerse himself instead in rocket ships, drawing, dinosaurs or playing in the mud.

HE should know that the world is magical and that so is he.

He should know that he’s wonderful, brilliant, creative, compassionate and marvelous.

HE should know that it’s just as worthy to spend the day outside making daisy chains, mud pies and fairy houses as it is to practice phonics. Scratch that– way more worthy.

WHAT EVERY PARENT SHOULD KNOW:

Every child learns at his own pace: children learn to walk, talk, read and do algebra at his own pace and that it will have no bearing on how well he walks, talks, reads or does algebra.

Take the time every day to sit and read them wonderful books. The single biggest predictor of high academic achievement and high ACT scores is reading to children. Not flash cards, not workbooks, not fancy preschools, not blinking toys or computers.

One of the biggest advantages we can give our children is a simple, carefree childhood. That being the smartest or most accomplished kid has never had any bearing on being the happiest. We are so caught up in trying to give our children “advantages” that we’re giving them lives as multi-tasked and stressful as ours.

Our children deserve to be surrounded by books, nature, art supplies and the freedom to explore them. -- Building toys, art materials, musical instruments, dress up clothes, and books, books, books. They need to have the freedom to explore – to play with scoops of dried beans, to knead bread and make messes, to use paint and play dough and glitter, to have a spot in the yard where it’s absolutely fine to dig a mud pit.

Our children need more of us. They deserve to know that they’re a priority for us and that we truly love to be with them. Our children don’t need Nintendos, computers, after school activities, ballet lessons, play groups and soccer practice nearly as much as they need US. They need fathers who sit and listen to their days, mothers who join in and make crafts with them, parents who take the time to read them stories and act like idiots with them. They need us to take slow walks with them. They deserve to help us make supper even though it takes twice as long and makes it twice as much work.

Frozen Fans Get Stuck on the Wrong Message

First off understand me, I loved the movie Frozen, it may even be my favorite Disney movie to date. I loved the movie because of the beautiful message that in love is the power to overcoming our challenges. I loved the layers of spiritual truth in the story and the opportunity that it presents to use the appealing movie to teach my children timeless truths.

What is bugging me is that so many people I observe on social media and in my personal acquaintance seem to be latching on to the absolute wrong message from the story. Rather than perceiving the transcendent truth that we are all flawed individuals whose weaknesses are only overcome through love and faith, it appears that many are caught up in the message of the title song that celebrates a deceptive freedom that comes from "testing the limits" where there is "no right, no wrong, and no rules." I understand why the song is so popular, it is very catchy, and really fun to sing; one of those songs that just gets stuck in your head and you can't stop singing it. Perhaps that's another reason it bugs me.

Unlike other Disney movies, the evil the heroines fight in this movie is much more like that which each of us fight within ourselves in real life. It is not a fire breathing dragon, a wicked sorcerer, or an evil witch, rather it is the subtle lies of the devil that cause us to respond to our human weakness by turning away from faith, obedience, and the love of God. Elsa has an extraordinary power that is also a great challenge to her and her family. Afraid of her strength her parents teach her to hide away and fear her power.

We are all like Elsa in a way, we all have God given gifts (talents) that used properly give us extraordinary power and bring great joy to us. What is also true is that most often our greatest strengths are on the flip side our greatest weakness. My mom used to say that these talents are like coins with a heads side and a tales side. Too often we focus on the tails side, the down side, and wish we could eliminate it because we fear that we will never overcome or learn to control our weakness. Too often we respond to this weakness by attempting to throw out the whole coin. Unfortunately, when we do, we throw out the good with the bad. As a result our personal growth is stunted, not only do we never learn how to control our "flip-side", we don't develop our strength. We succeed only in making ourselves miserable and pushing away the people we love as we lose what we love most about ourselves. This is what happens to Elsa as she responds to her power and weakness by hiding in fear.

When we respond to our challenges and weaknesses the way that Elsa learns to it almost always leads to disaster. Elsa meets that disaster when she seeks "freedom" from years of confusion by turning her back on her home and any sense of obligation. Here is where the title song "Let it Go", that is propelling a pop culture sensation over the movie Frozen, steps into the story. In Elsa's desperation to feel in control of her power she succumbs to a subtle lie, the lie that you can be free by simply throwing off the confines of right and wrong and letting go of your obligations and concerns. She turns her back on her sister's love, her obligations to her kingdom, and her home and runs away. The song that describes this moment of emotional release from her burdens has become a hit. I understand why the sense of liberation and freedom is appealing, but I think most people don't realize when their singing the song and feeling triumphant about it that they are celebrating a true deception. Perhaps they do not internalize the lyrics as I do.

Here are some choice words from the song:

Be the good girl you always have to be. [implying that being "good" is an unwanted obligation]
Conceal don't feel, don't let them know... [representing the way her parents wrongfully taught her to respond to her challenges]

Let it go, let it go.
Turn away and slam the door. [representing her choice to turn away from her home]
I don't care what they're going to say.
Let the storm rage on.
The cold never bothered me anyway... [making a choice to ignore the pain her actions will cause to those who love her most]

It's time to see what I can do,
to test the limits and break through.
No right, no wrong, no rules for me. I'm free!... [The ultimate lie. That life with no right, wrong, and rules is true freedom]

My soul is spiraling in frozen fractals all around... [Captures the truth of what happens when we throw off our moral compass]
I'm never going back...

That perfect girl is gone...
Let the storm rage on!
The cold never bothered me anyway.

When I watched the movie this song stirred painful memories of my own poor choices to rebel in my youth, to turn my back on my faith and my family, and to pretend it didn't "bother me anyway". It was a time in my youth when I didn't understand how to access the grace of Christ in tackling human weakness and was tired of trying to be a "good girl". I bought into the lie that turning my back on my moral compass and my family obligations would set me free. For a short time I felt a sense of liberation but that feeling was fleeting and empty and the result of my choice was the greatest misery I have every known. So I hope you can understand why it is so disturbing that this song was chosen by the producers as the title song, the song to represent the message of the movie, and marketed to be a smash hit when in reality it represents the evil that threatens to tear us away from that which matters most.

I understand why my four year old latches naively onto the title song but how can so many adults I know seem to miss the meaning of this song? The words "Let it Go" by themselves could in some context be good but in the context of the story one should ask, "What is Elsa letting go of and whether it in reality will set her free?" The pop version of the song has 49+ million views on YouTube, is nominated for an academy award, and it's deceptive message is glorified in posters that race around social media as a song of triumphant liberation.

The tragedy of it all is that the beautiful truths in the story are lost in an almost singular focus on the wrong message. Elsa's little sister never gives up on her, she embarks on a perilous journey to bring her home, to show her she is loved. Her character is a symbol of Christ's love that is ever constant, ever knocking at the door. Elsa learns that her challenges can be faced and conquered because of that love and in the end she chooses love and faith over fear and doubt. There are deep spiritual messages and Christian themes in this wonderful story and for that reason it is very disappointing to see so many people fail to realize these themes and instead pick out the lie and take it for truth.

For this reason I wonder about the intent behind the marketing of this catchy song as the title song. Every time I hear my four year old singing the impressionable tune and belting out the words, "no right, no wrong, no rules for me, I'm free!" I wish the producers had not chosen to sell this message so craftily. For parents wondering how to help their little children pick up on the moral of the story, there is another song in the movie that is worth celebrating, the song "Fixer Upper". These lyrics are worth repeating over and over.

"Everyone’s a bit of a fixer-upper,
That’s what it’s all about!
Father!
Sister!
Brother!
We need each other to raise
Us up and round us out.

Everyone’s a bit of a fixer-upper,
But when push comes to shove.
The only fixer-upper fixer
That can fix up a fixer-upper is
True! true!
True, true, true!
Love (True love)"



Like I said, Frozen may be my favorite Disney movie of all time, the story tackles the true enemy we all face, an enemy that seeks to confuse us and twist truth until we throw away those that have the power to help us realize our true potential. I only hope that the depth of this story isn't lost on a pop culture infatuation with a hollow feeling stirred up by the false freedom of "letting go" of what matters most.