Excerpt from the NEW AMERICAN  8/8/94 edition

MIND CONTROL

Dr. Thomas Sowell, a senior fellow at Stanford University's Hoover
Institution, claims that government schools in America today are
carrying on "unrelenting guerrilla warfare against the traditional
values of society and against the very role of families in making
decisions about their own children." Sowell is not exaggerating. More
than a decade ago, The humanist magazine (January/February 1983) ran
an article in which John J.  Dunphy, summa cum laude graduate of the
University of Illinois-Edwardsville, bluntly declared that "the
battle for humankind's future must be waged and won in the public
school classroom by teachers who correctly perceive their role as the
proselytizers of a new faith." Such teachers, Dunphy stated, will be
"utilizing a classroom instead of a pulpit to convey humanist values
in whatever subject they teach, regardless of the educational
level--preschool day care or large state university." Classrooms,
Dunphy maintained, "must and will become an arena of conflict between
the old and the new --the rotting corpse of Christianity ...  and the
new faith of humanism...."

Humanism in Action Education analyst Samuel Blumenfeld contends that
school programs supposedly intended to assist students in
"clarifying" their values are instead enticing students "to discard
the values and religious beliefs of their families and create new
sets of values reflecting their own personal desires and leanings,
particularly those regarding sex." Many youngsters, for example, have
"been encouraged by values clarification to reject the traditional
Judeo-Christian prohibitions against sexual perversion and adopt an
open and assertive homosexual lifestyle."

Values clarification, Blumenfeld asserts, "is humanism in action."
One of its exercises, the lifeboat survival game, has students decide
who must die on an overcrowded lifeboat so that the others might
live. In his book The Leaning Tower of Babel, Richard Mitchell
explains that "the verdict must be 'relevant,' conducive to 'the
greatest good for the greatest number,"' and focus on "accepted
notions of 'social usefulness.'..." Which means that the "children
who 'play' the game usually decide to dump an old clergyman, a man
who is supposed to be prepared for that sort of thing," whereas a
"young country-western singer will be preserved. She has many long
years ahead of her in which to maximize her potential and serve the
greatest good by entertaining the greatest number."

 Another scenario, described by Blumenfeld, has 15 persons alone in a
bomb shelter after a nuclear holocaust. They have food and other
supplies sufficient to keep only seven alive until it is safe to
emerge from the shelter.  Each is delineated by age, race, religion,
education, profession, and lifestyle, after which students are
required to determine which seven deserve to live.

A process that pressures impressionable youngsters to make such
decisions based solely on the social utility of those involved is
truly Hitlerian in its implications. It tends to bolster support for
such lethal real-world policies as abortion and euthanasia, two of
the stated objectives (along with the "right" to suicide) of major
humanist declarations and manifestos.

Desensitized to Death Menninger Foundation senior psychiatrist Dr.
Harold M. Voth has noted the abundance of evidence suggesting that
"children are being scarred" by values clarification exercises "that
spread pessimism, depression, and a hatred of life." Likewise, many
are being harmed by instruction in "death education." As explained by
Samuel Blumenfeld in The Blumenfeld Education Letter for June 1990,
"the purpose of death education is to 'desensitize' children to
death--to remove or reduce that reasonable, ratio- nal, and useful
antipathy to death that helps us preserve our lives. It is when
children begin to see death as 'friendly' and unthreatening that they
begin to be drawn into death's orbit and lured to self-destruction."

Virtually every school subject is vulnerable to such death
conditioning, from reading and math to shop and art (where children
draw death-related pictures). Blumenfeld notes that typically,
components of the death edu- cation curriculum entail "questionnaires
delving into the child's view of death and dying; the writing of
obituaries, eulogies, epitaphs, and wills; planning funerals; visits
to cemeteries and mortuaries; reading stories and books about death;
and discussing abortion, euthanasia, and suicide. The whys and hows
of suicide are discussed, and suicide notes are written. In some
visits to funeral homes, children try out coffins; in math they
measure each other for coffins, and in shop they build model coffins.
Children also study the death customs of other cultures and develop a
death vocabulary.  In one second grade class in Lowell,
Massachusetts, the children used the information in an obituary to
work out arithmetic problems. Some death education exercises include
fantasizing about dying."

On June 15, 1994 the Gallup Organization released a poll indicating
that five percent of American teenagers say they have attempted
suicide and 12 percent say they have come close to trying it. The
reported suicide rate for adolescents has tripled since 195(). In
December 1991, the Journal of the American Medical Association
reported that school suicide prevention programs, supposedly intended
to help teens, were instead increasing depression in teens who had
tried to commit suicide, some of whom told researchers that "talking
about suicide makes some kids more likely to try to kill themselves."

Rabid environmentalism may also be contributing to the problem.
Beginning in the earliest grades, schoolchildren in many schools are
being indoctrinated about the supposed dangers of asbestos (unsafe
classrooms), radon (unsafe basements at home), cancer-causing
chemicals (unsafe food), lead (unsafe water), ground-level ozone and
carbon monoxide (unsafe air), etc. Many scientific studies have
confirmed that stress resulting from continuous, gnawing fear not
only generates the sort of emotional problems often associated with
suicide, but also erodes the immune system in a way that opens the
door to serious physical health problems as well.  Environmental fear
mongering may be doing more long-term damage to the physical and
emotional well-being of our schoolchildren than any alleged
environmental threats could do.

"Safe Sex" In their 1968 book The Lessons of History, historians Will
and Ariel Durant warned, "No man, however brilliant or well-informed,
can come in one lifetime to such fullness of understanding as to
safely judge and dismiss the customs or institutions of his society,
for these are the wisdom of generations after centuries of experiment
in the laboratory of history. A youth boiling with hormones will
wonder why he should not give full freedom to his sexual desires; and
if he is unchecked by custom, morals or laws, he may ruin his life
before he matures sufficiently to understand that sex is a river of
fire that must be banked and cooled by a hundred restraints if it is
not to consume in chaos both the individual and the group."

Concerns about teen pregnancy and AIDS have served as the catalyst
for an explosion of "safe sex" courses that are ignoring that crucial
lesson of history and loosening the few restraints that still exit.
They are predicated on the ethically obtuse proposition that, while
it is best not to rob banks, those who just can't resist should pull
ski masks over their heads to reduce the chance of getting caught.
Such courses not only condone, but in many instances serve to
encourage, premarital sex, homosexuality, and other sexual
experimentation and aberration.

The award-winning video Sex, Drugs, and AIDS, narrated by actress Rae
Dawn Chong, has been used in many junior and senior high schools. Its
central message is that premarital sex is 'cool," even expected of
adolescents, but that "hip" teens will "play it safe" by using
condoms. An emotional interview with a young man whose homosexual
younger brother is dying of AIDS underscores the point that
homosexuality should be viewed as an acceptable alternative
lifestyle.

So devoted are some public school systems to promoting homosexuality
that "National Coming-Out Day" is celebrated with as much enthusiasm
as graduation day. In February 1993, the Massachusetts "Governor's
Commission on Gay and Lesbian Youth" produced a report recommending,
"Learning about gay and lesbian people, including their experiences
and contributions to society, should be integrated into all subject
areas" including "literature, history, the arts, and family life."

In New York and Massachusetts, public school programs supposedly in-
tended to promote "tolerance" for homosexuality are actually designed
to reeducate children and wrest them away from the values taught by
their parents. Typical of such efforts was the controversial
"Children of the Rainbow" curriculum, which (like the Massachusetts
program) sought to indoctrinate children in the "gay rights" ideology
by saturating classroom subjects with pro homosexuality messages. New
York Assemblywoman Deborah, a open lesbian who supported the Rainbow
curriculum, explained, "I think that the reality is that most of the
parents themselves have tremendous prejudice and bigotry that have
been passed on for generations.... And the reality is that we as a
society ... must provide a counterbalance to what kids are obviously
learning at home."

Reaping the Harvest In 1970, prior to the sex education and condom
craze instigated by the AIDS scare, two-thirds of all births to teens
between 15 and 19 were within the confines of marriage. By 1988, the
ratio was reversed, with two-thirds born outside wedlock. According
to one study, girls using birth control devices under the guidance of
a Los Angeles clinic increased the number of their sexual encounters
by 50 percent. Similarly, psychologist Dr. William R. Coulson,
director of the Research Council on Ethnopsychology, reported that
students exposed to public school sex education programs are 50
percent more sexually involved than students who are not. According
to Coulson, the "experienced kids started teaching the inexperienced.
It never flows from the virgin to the non-virgin."

Public schools in the District of Columbia were first in the nation
to imple- ment kindergarten-through- 12th-grade sex education
programs beginning in the late 1950s. They were so "successful" that
by 1975 DC became the first major city in the country to have more
abortions than live births and more births outside wedlock than
within. And when Dr. Joseph Zanga, chairman of the Division of
General Pediatrics and Emergency Care at the Medical College of
Virginia, surveyed the results of "safe sex" programs around the
country, he too concluded that they encourage, rather than prevent,
teenage sexual activity. California, for example, introduced a "safe
sex" curriculum in the 1970s, after which the state's teen pregnancy
rate soared from close to the national average to 30 percent above,
and teen abortions tripled. In contrast, teen pregnancy rates fell in
such states as South Dakota and Utah after "modern" sex education
classes were replaced with more traditional tutelage.

In 1986, then-Surgeon General Dr. C. Everett Koop issued his
enormously influential (and error-laden) report on AIDS in which,
after assuring readers that "value judgments are absent," he urged
that sex education begin in "the lowest grade possible" and include
information on "homosexual relationships." He also favored
advertising condoms on network television. It has all come to pass,
and current Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders is now carrying the
message to American youth that sex is a "healthy part of our being,
whether it is homosexual or heterosexual," and has suggested that
condoms be given to children as young as eight. Indeed, the New York
Times Magazine for January 30,1994 reported that Dr.  Elders has a
"safe sex" bouquet (condoms in floral arrangement) proudly displayed
on her desk, and claims, in response to critics who have labeled her
the "Condom Queen," that if she could "get every young person who is
engaged in sex to use a condom in the United States," she "would wear
a crown with a condom on it!" Yet, as noted by a 1992 minority report
of the House Select Committee on Children, Youth and Families,
condoms not only "do not change the behavior which puts teens at
risk," but "the evidence shows that when condoms are used by
teenagers the failure rate is higher than in the general
population--as high as 30%."

Condom Conduits School-based and school-linked health clinics have
also generated their share of controversy and opposition throughout
the country, primarily because they serve as conduits for the
distribution of condoms and other birth control devices, abortion
referral information, lessons in "safe" sex, and other aspects of the
humanistic agenda favored by such groups as Planned Parenthood, the
most aggressive advocate of such clinics.

Many such clinics also undermine parental rights and responsibility
by refusing to let parents know when services are requested by, and
rendered to, their minor charges. In 1992, for instance, District of
Columbia Public Health Commissioner Mohammed Akhter announced that
all public high school students would be eligible to receive condoms
from school nurses, even should parents object by sending a note from
home, and that parents would not be notified should one of their
children request a condom.  School Superintendent Franklin Smith had
initially ruled that parental wishes would be honored, but he was
overruled by Commissioner Akhter, who asserted: "Dr. Smith has the
responsibility for the administration of the school system, and the
principals and teachers are responsible for the edu- cation of the
children. But we are the ones responsible for the health care needs
of the children. These are my clinics. When a child crosses the door
and enters into the nurse's suite, any communication between the
child and the nurse is confidential." Which led syndicated columnist
Don Feder to observe that it apparently means that "when a child
enters a school clinic, he sheds parental authority at the door."

As solutions for the many problems associated with teen promiscuity
and sexually transmitted diseases, school sex education, school-based
clinics, and school-sanctioned condom crusades are equivalent to
fighting fires with blasts of oxygen.

"Responsible" Drug Abuse Many school drug programs also appear to be
aggravating, rather than ameliorating, the problem they are supposed
to solve. As far back as 1979, education writer Barbara Morris
documented the case against school anti-drug programs which refuse to
take a firm moral stance, but instead serve mainly to stimulate
curiosity while advertising the pleasures associated with "getting
high." One National Institute of Mental Health publication cited by
Morris in her best-selling book, Change Agents in the Schools, was
entitled How to Plan a Drug Abuse Workshop for Teachers.  Used as a
model for training teachers, it asserted that at all grades "a non
moralizing presentation is essential" and urged that only "open
minded individuals, as opposed to those known to have fixed or
hostile positions [against drugs], would preferably be selected as
drug education teachers] except where in service training might
change an attitude or where an individual is included as a foil
demonstrating the disadvantage of inflexibility."

In the November 1987 Reader's Digest, Peggy Mann, author of Marijuana
Alert, reported that the "drug-education courses offered in our
nation's schools too often carry this incredible message: If you do
drugs 'responsibly,' it's okay." Note that it is the same siren song
sung by the sex educators. One "educational" filmstrip cited by Mann
extolled the medical qualities of marijuana and the "euphoric feeling
of relaxation, contentment, inner satisfaction; the sensations of
floating beyond reality" induced by the weed. And one of the three
books on drug abuse most commonly found in school libraries, Licit
and Illicit Drugs, by Edward M. Brecher, asserts that those who use
mescaline (a hallucinatory drug) have found that its "most
spectacular phase comprises the kaleidoscopic play of visual
hallucinations in indescribably rich colors ... the 'seeing' of music
in colors or the 'hearing' of a painting in music." Which led Mann to
ask rhetorically, "What adventurous youngster would not want to try
mescaline or LSD" after reading that?

A quarter-century ago, writing in the August 1969 issue of Chalcedon
Report, noted theologian and scholar Dr. Rousas J. Rushdoony
observed, in words as pertinent now as then, "We are getting today
what we have paid for: our public schools are delivering precisely
the product of humanistic education that they have been asked to
deliver. To deny Christian faith a place in education, to convert
schools into statist agencies, and then to expect anything other than
what we have, is the mark of a fool." -- -- ROBERT W. LEE