Educating for Revolution or Revolution in Education

By Rev. Dr. Joe Renfro - Posted at The Christian Observer:

Rudyard Kipling, who received the Nobel Prize in 1907, the first Englishman to receive that prize, believed very much in spreading justice, adherence to the law, and Christian enlightenment in faraway lands. His slogan for learning was: “I keep six honest serving men, they taught me all I knew: Their names are WHAT and WHY and WHEN and HOW, and WHERE, and WHO.” (The New Learning Revolution, Network Educational Press, Ltd, p. 192) But sad to say, honesty is often presented from the left as a slanted half-truth or not truth at all, but it has become the motivation of demonstrations to spread their cause all over our nation, and much of this relates to the educational establishment, since often our schools are educating for revolution rather than really seeking a revolution in education.

Many are watching the demonstrations by students from elementary school through college, contesting the election of our new president who happens to be a conservative or at least a moderate conservative. Many of our schools are often more concerned with educating for revolution instead promoting the rule of law. The goal in education often is more for seeking to change the culture to what is esteemed desirable (the mythical classless society) rather than to see education become a revolution of real learning.

Motivation is a vital ingredient in learning! But to have the demonstrations associated with educational institutions motivating, promoting, or at least allowing them to appear educational gives a note of truth to them. It would seem to many that if the school supports it, it is good. The Bible well says in Proverbs 14:12, “There is a way which seems right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death.”

Thinking from the right is condemned as hate speech, whereas thinking from the left is applauded as absolute truth. The great sins that the left has cried about as being characteristic of the right are things like sexism, racism, homophobia, xenophobia, and Islamophobia, to which the more liberal presidential candidate referred to as a “basket of deplorables.” Our schools and public education in America are often more concerned with destroying these artificial stereotypes of bigotry, sexism, racism, etc. that often might have a degree of substance to them, but are themselves stereotypes and thus are most prejudicial, something they profess to be very much against! Proverbs 55:21 speaks well to this, as it says: “The words of his mouth were smoother than butter, but was in his heart: his words were softer than oil, yet were they drawn swords.”

Many of these students carry signs saying things like, “Electing Donald Trump is an act of violence.” Colleges call pro-Trump comments a… HATE CRIME! Anti-Trump demonstrations have and are taking place on eighty-plus college campuses, and many are in process in high schools and in earlier secondary education, often with the approval and motivation from the academic institutions themselves. A Trump-assassination threat was displayed in one school’s trophy case in a middle school in Duluth, Minn. for at least 24 hours before being taken down, and it said in a coded manner the caption, “You’re a dead man.” This seems like nothing but educating for revolution!

Read more...