National Chairman's Letter

Platform - Education

August 2003

Dear Independent American friends,

I desire to comment on the Education section of our IAP National Platform. The fifth belief point of the Introduction section of our Platform says:

5. [Education] We believe that Christian principles originally were the foundation of our educational system; and that they should again be made the center of American education.

Our forefathers were educated and concerned citizens. They revered -- and schools promoted -- those values that made our nation great. Our early schools taught Christian heritage and good citizenship, as well as academic knowledge.

The Education or fifth numbered section of our Platform, includes the subtopics Values, Stewardship and Nongovernment Schools, and begins:

5. EDUCATION

Values. We favor the advancement of patriotism, vigilance, allegiance, and an awareness of the duties, rights and privileges of citizenship, along with the rights and limitations of government. We urge promoting awareness and understanding of current political threats to our Constitution, national sovereignty and independence, and to our personal rights and freedoms.

We believe that our educational institutions must be founded upon faith in God and upon moral law, and a respect for all religions without advancing or suppressing any. We favor the elimination from our schools of Secular Humanism, which undermines faith in God, religious loyalties and family values, and attempts to eradicate all concepts of right and wrong by claiming there is no God to account to. We favor teaching abstinence from all sexual activity outside the bonds of marriage.

Our early school textbooks included "The Lives of the Signers" -- about their lives and their sacrifices for freedom; and "Washington’s Farewell Address" -- which emphasized the importance of religion and morality. But today there is a distorting of American history and a downgrading of American heroes. School kids read that our forefathers were atheists, agnostics or deists; and land-owners with selfish interests. The subjects of government, history, geography and economics have been compressed into a single course of Social Studies.

Schools once promoted morality and abstinence. But pamphlets are distributed in schools today that inform teens of their "right to have sex." The message "everybody is doing it" is powerful when coming from school teachers and administrators. Sex-ed classes (apparently designed to destroy American moral values) promote pornography, "free love," homosexuality and abortion.

Stewardship. We assert that parents have the fundamental right to choose the type and location of school they deem best for their children. We maintain that parents have the right to inspect or challenge school policy, textbooks, subject matter, and privacy-invading surveys, etc. We encourage parents to take a more active part in their children's education.

We maintain that education is a parental and local responsibility. We support local determination of education standards, curriculum, textbooks, library books, and election of education leaders.

We assert that there are no provisions for federal or international involvement in schooling or education found in the Constitution. We favor abolishment of all federal and U.N. education programs that have a mandatory effect in the United States, and any organizations which usurp parental or local control, and favor the repeal of all legislation for such. We therefore call for the abolishment of the U.S. Department of Education.

A century ago, the US literacy rate was 98%. But today there is a "dumbing down" in our schools, fostered by Progressive Education. Outcome Based Education (OBE) curriculums focus on behavioral goals rather than academic ones. Schools focus on vocational rather than scholastic training. This Spring, America’s high schools graduated 580,000 students (or 20% of their class) who couldn’t read their own diplomas.

Humanism, rather than traditional values, are taught in public schools. Personality tests are designed to shape rather than measure student attitudes. John Dewey, the father of modern education, opposed teaching any absolutes of morals, government or ethics. His primary goal for education was to destroy children’s individualistic traits. Because, said he, "You can’t make socialists out of individualists."

A modern trademark of totalitarian government is the control of education, so that the nation's children can be taught what is "politically correct" rather than to think for themselves. This was true in Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, and is true in all Communist countries where an educational establishment serves as the "thought police" for the nation. The National Education Association (NEA) serves as a forerunner of that role in America. In Psalms 11:3 we read: "If the foundations be destroyed, what can the righteous do?"

Nongovernment Schools. We maintain that returning the control and financing of education to localities and families, and opening the system to choice and competition, are the only viable options to guarantee the freedom and upward mobility of our students. We encourage participation in home schools, private or religious schools, charter schools, and public-private partnership schools.

We support English as the official national language, and favor nonfederal funding of bilingual tutors to assist as needed. We favor eliminating from the school curricula all grants, controls, mandates or agendas sponsored or promoted by national or global organizations.

Drugs, sex and violence are the most frequently cited reasons for parents wanting to keep their children out of public (or government) schools. Other reasons include non-teaching of religious and moral values, poor academic achievement, and lack of parental control in the education of their children. We favor the removal of government restrictions against home and private schooling, so as to allow more parents the "means" of educating their children in non-public schools. We favor the return of parental and local control over public schools and the end of federal and international influence over the education of our children.

For God, Family and Country!

Bruce Bangerter
IAP National Chairman