Recently dozens of major articles have appeared warning readers about Citizens for Excellence in Education (CEE) and what a threat we are to public education. In any scenario, this seems like an overreaction to a small group of sincere, conservative Christian parents, who have risen up against a grave injustice to their children—what might be called child abuse in the classroom. For years, we have expressed our concerns over harmful elements in our schools, only to be told by school officials: “We are trained professionals who know what is best for your children. Trust us.” Parents did! Look at the mess we have today and the increasing denials from school officials.
What Are CEE's Goals?
The goals of Citizens for Excellence in Education are simple: (1) to return academic excellence to our public school classrooms, and (2) to return moral sanity to our schools, in all subjects. To accomplish these goals, CEE parents have encouraged an academic program similar to that described by the 1983 National Commission on Excellence in Education Report, A Nation At Risk.
Many districts have responded positively to this report; others have used it to promote their own social and global agendas and to capitalize on the megabucks that flowed freely for reform. After literally billions of dollars were invested, SAT scores leveled for three years and then began a creep downward again.
No permanent change—no reform worth shouting about. Where did all the money go? To creating an avalanche of “affective” (psychological, social, behavioral change) curriculums—instead of what the public expected: cognitive learning. CEE parents are striving to return academic learning to the front burner.
Does that threaten public education? It does to those with a personal agenda to turn schools into institutions of psychological manipulation and to produce robotic students on political correctness. While claiming to teach our students critical thinking, schools have trained them in the anti-American principles of atheistic socialism. In the process, our nation has outdone even the Soviets in the subtle but systematic destruction of children's faith in God and their sense of right and wrong. Of course, this is done under the guise of “neutrality” in religion and morals.
CEE parents have had it! A national injustice is being done to children and their future families, which must be corrected. Where we need to teach “critical thinking” is among educators. Read these damaging programs. Analyze the resultant products. Just because it has an appealing title like “self-esteem” or “critical thinking” does not make it a healthy curriculum. We are on a self-destructive course.
What Has CEE Accomplished?
- Their children's faith in God will be subtly destroyed.
- Their children will learn New Age religious practices, falsely equated with Christianity, through hypnotism (called “relaxation exercises”), the occult, necromancy, and Eastern religious practices.
- Their children will be subjected to the negative messages of current sex activities. Many such programs, including Planned Parenthood classes, force boys to hold bananas while the girls practice putting on condoms. Many girls throw up in class, according to our parents' reports. Kids begin to think sex anytime is okay—just use condoms and pills. Further, an overemphasis on AIDS teaching opens the door to homosexual/lesbian recruitment of children in the classroom, into that deviant lifestyle, through curriculums like PROJECT 10.Children are taught that condoms will prevent sexually transmitted diseases and AIDS infection—allowing safe sex. Yet the condom manufacturers themselves claim a high failure rate of 12–40 percent (Roland 1992). Even worse, scientists tell us that the best condoms have microscopic holes of five microns in diameter, while the AIDS virus is only .1 of one micron in diameter. That makes the condom hole 50 times larger than the AIDS virus (Roland 1992). Such “safe sex” teaching is condemning our children to death by AIDS. Is that not of concern to educators? What does it take?
- Their children will be denied a prosperous future because of the continuing decline in academic achievement. The behavioral change agendas of psychologists and social scientists are slowly replacing the time used for academics. When you add up all the time devoted to (so-called) “self-esteem”; “critical thinking” (including biased information rather than genuine debate); “multiculturalism” (producing racial division, instead of the American “melting pot” ideal); and “global education” (teaching world government, world army, and world currency)—just to mention a few programs—where is time found to teach the academics needed for a successful life?
Considering previous experimental programs such as sight reading and whole language failures—which have helped produce 25,000,000 illiterates in our nation, about 10 percent of our population (according to a 1989 research report from Harvard University)—CEE parents will not stand by again and suffer such damage to their children and to our American institutions.
Of all education's experimental failures, none will affect us more than attempts at “Reinventing America's School,” with the plethora of “restructuring” and “outcome-based education” proposals now in uses or being considered. This debacle is yet another of many manipulative maneuvers CEE parents are fed up with.
What Do CEE Parents Want?
- Who works for whom? Who pays the bills for our education system? Parents and citizens do!
- Who has the most to lose when public schools go off on another change binge? Parents, that's who! And, of course, the innocent children who are being experimented with.
- Who owns the children—the state or the parents? Parents do! They delegate but do not abdicate their rights and responsibilities.
- Local control is the backbone of American education. Local citizens must energetically and politically reject state mandates concerning curriculum or finances tied to curriculum.
- Discipline and character development are essential to any quality education. America has a well-established set of standards on ethical and moral behavior, based upon our judicial system of Old English Common Law—which is based on the Ten Commandments. That is our culture. And you can teach the Ten Commandments. All values are of religious origin—even atheistic, secular humanistic nonvalues.
- School should stick to what they are intended to do: teach reading, writing, history, science, geography, English, grammar, composition, mathematics, patriotism, democracy, and our American culture.
- Courses must not be titled falsely, to sound like something everyone wants. For instance, under the name “multicultural education,” students are often taught that whites (European racists) owe minorities a living and are murderers, rapists, and bigots. Such instruction promotes racism, bigotry, murder, riots, and the burning of our cities (such as Los Angeles experienced after three years of multicultural teaching). That's all got to stop. All human beings must be seen as equal and every race respected (including the white Europeans).
- The manipulation of parents—with misinformation about abortion services, school prayer, sex education, school-based (abortion) clinics, gay rights, values clarification, evolution and creation science (nonreligious), busing, textbook and curriculum selection—must be stopped. We're not talking about stacked committees here, folks, but real involvement of parents with kids now in school.
- If schools refuse to bend, then parental choice in selecting public or private schools will become a reality. The public school monopoly will be broken. Is that the price school people are willing to pay? California recently voted about whether to accept choice. Our CEE parents easily helped obtain one half of the 960,000 signatures to put it on the ballot. And we had no trouble getting help from Excel (a coalition of CEOs and corporations) and other corporate-financed groups to allow the poor the same choice as the rich.President Clinton faced that reality and, out of fear for his child's future, put her in a private school. He could afford it! Not just a private school, but a Christian private school, which teaches values. Is there no one left in public schools willing to refuse the egghead experiments in favor of common sense?
- Schools always have been, still are, and are definitely going to become accountable to parents and the public for their actions, including high academic standards and moral and ethical behavior. Whose values? Our U.S. judicial system and laws.
- The Supreme Court has clearly stated (in Abington v. Schempp) that teaching about religion is constitutional—indeed necessary to preserve our form of government and educate our children for the future. Teaching about religion is not the same as teaching your own religion.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), with its atheistic worldview, has intimidated school officials long enough—with misinformation and anti-Christian bigotry. At least four major legal entities have now been formed nationwide to assist parents in suing school districts that follow the ACLU mandates and damage their children's lives.
In short, the schools have short-circuited their traditional ties with parents and the public. History has proven the fatality of such an error.
Parents Criticized for Caring
The National Education Association, ACLU, People for the American Way, and other new subcharters formed to do their street fighting, as it were, have used name-calling to spread hatred and bigotry toward parents. Parents are called radicals, right-wing Fundamentalists, evangelical bigots, homophobics, extremists, Nazis, and so on. When the liberal groups mentioned have nothing substantive to offer, they try to intimidate and defame any parent or any group with a legitimate concern.
As long as school people line up with these pariahs of education, they will have a losing fight on their hands with parents. Ask the United States superintendents who are getting the boot regularly. Ask the former New York superintendent in his battle over the gay/lesbian curriculum, or the Los Angeles superintendent in his battle over the teaching of New Age necromancy and hypnotism (called Mission: S.O.A.R.). While asking for parental involvement, administrators reject any parents who happen to be Christians. This is outright discrimination.
When you read articles by Janet Jones (1993), Robert Marzano, Skipp Porteous, Theodore Sizer, and John Goodlad, remember that their agenda is atheism, socialism, and an anti-democratic world globalism. To them, “critical thinking” means teaching children to empty themselves of their own values (transmitted from parents, church, and culture) and accept a set of suggested values (atheist/socialist). Is that what schools want?
CEE parents are doing what any intelligent, well-educated people would do: elect to school boards other parents who are concerned with the above issues. CEE is just one of hundreds of parents' groups around the nation. There's nothing “stealth” or “subversive” about it—the members are just participating in the democratic process: representative government.
Arthur Kropp, president of People for the (un)American Way, announced in Education Week that the National Education Association, People for the American Way, and the American Library Association had met in Washington, D.C., in January 1993 to strategize with a hundred other liberal organizations to stop the “Religious Right” (Viadero 1993). CEE is their main target. A little parents organization like CEE? Come on! Any one of those mighty groups would be able to win that battle.
But lo, I fear it's all in vain, Mr. Kropp. All America is demanding real reform—not just another false, “innovative,” “model schools” program. Yes, CEE parents still believe in our teachers, administrators, and board members, but detest their succumbing to every new “change” proposed. Let's change to what works.
Those who will not learn from history (what has really worked in the past as well as today) will learn, too late, that ignorance can often be fatal. CEE believes that curriculum specialists and administrators have fallen prey to special interest groups and university eggheads who thrive on publishing new ideas—without end—which we chase like the wind. America's children are the losers. Is that really what we want? CEE parents say NO. Please work with us. Remember, we are still for public education.
