Building on the American Heritage, How Education Shapes Generations:Â In today’s episode, we are discussing the influence that has school on our children. As Abraham Lincoln wisely states, “The philosophy of the school room in one generation is the philosophy of government next.” It is our duty to make sure the right history and philosophy get passed onto the next generation, because one day they will grow up to be our leaders. Tune in now to hear exactly how it is possible for you and me to change a generation through education. Â
Air Date:Â 06/27/2017
Guests: David Barton and Rick Green.
- WallBuilders | American historical events, founding fathers, historical documents, books, videos, CDs, tapes, David Barton’s speaking schedule.
- Building on the American Heritage Series DVD, CD, Book, and set.Â
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Transcription note: Â As a courtesy for our listeners’ enjoyment, we are providing a transcription of this podcast. Â However, as this is transcribed from a live talk show, words and sentence structure were not altered to fit grammatical, written norms in order to preserve the integrity of the actual dialogue between the speakers. Â Additionally, names may be misspelled because of the difficulty in understanding the speaker at times. We apologize in advance.
Welcome
Rick:
You found your way to the intersection of faith and politics, WallBuilders Live with David Barton and Rick Green. Also found online at WallBuildersLive.com, WallBuilders.com, and also on Facebook you could follow us there as well and comment on the shows as you get a chance to listen to them.
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As The Twig Is Bent, So Grows The Tree
So, David, we know that the philosophy of the school room in one generation will be the philosophy of government in the next.
David:
That’s a great point. Jesus said the same thing in Luke 6:40, “Every student when he’s fully trained will be like his teacher.” The old axiom in early America, Ben Franklin, and others, “As the twig is bent, so grows the tree.” You know, if you take a little sapling and pull it over here it’s going to lean to the left or lean to the right or whatever. So, it becomes very important.
Rick:
But who determines what the philosophy taught in the classroom is going to be?
David:
The way that’s decided, there are actually several things involved. You have the local level education, you have state mandates, every state has a state board of education or some type of State Education Agency, and then you have the federal stuff where the federal government says, “Here’s what you’re going to do. Here’s the law that we passed on education.” So every time you look at education you’re really having to look at a multi-tiered strategy.
In addition to laws that address strategy, you also have the content you have to be concerned about. Because if you have really good laws and education and really bad textbooks you can have trouble.
Rick:
So even if they’ve got a good process for how the classroom will work, how their school system is going to work, if you’re putting bad textbooks with bad information, or lacking good information you”re still going to get bad results.
David:
One of the recent national textbooks that we used, a lot of states now mandate by state law that you have to teach the benefits of the free market system.
Rick:
Because you want the young people coming out of the classroom to recognize free market, not communism or not socialism, you want free enterprise.
David:
Well, one of the big national textbooks that was used was about mandate, it said, “Well, we’re teaching the benefits for-“ And then went through and taught the benefits. But at the end, they said, “By the way, history has proven unequivocally that the best form of economics in government was communism.”
Rick:
This was an American textbook?
David:
Yeah, this was America just a few years ago. They showed the mandate of state law but the content was terrible. So you can get the right kind of laws- and that’s where Texas has become so very important.
How School Textbooks Are Made
A lot of national attention is focused on this in recent months, in the last few years in Texas really has an influence on driving the standards of the nation. You”ll go, “Oh, that”s just Texas. It”s one of 50 states.” No, it’s really not. When Texas comes out with standards, it actually affects the entire nation. Texas and California, the two states have 26 percent of the nation’s public school students.
Rick:
Just between those two states.
David:
Two states have one-fourth of the nation’s public school students. So, when either one of those states right standards that’s what public schools do. In the end the case of history, we write standards in Texas on history. It’s going to take a publisher but $20 million to create the textbooks that go from K through 12, they’re going to invest $10-20 million to write that.
Rick:
They don’t want to do that for every state.
David:
How are they going to get the money back? So if Kansas creates standards, there are not enough kids in Kansas to buy enough textbooks to pay back the $20 million. So they write their textbooks to match either California or Texas standards because there are enough kids in those states that they’ll recover their 20 million dollars.
So what happens is they”ll write the Texas or California standards and Louisiana’s got standards and then say, “Well, let’s put two pages into Louisiana.” But is still the core of what either Texas or California gave it.
Rick:
So what we do in Texas or what they do in California is not going to affect just those kids.
David:
That’s right, it’s even different from that now because California is so bankrupt, they’re so under economically they haven’t been able to purchase textbooks. So they’re not going through that process of rewriting and buying new textbooks?
David:
They go through but they can’t- so publishers do not want to publish for California. And by the way, the politics are so goofy in California, I was appointed in California to their standards. And so they have so many commissions and everyone erects its own standards.
One of the things in California is that they use what”s called “the Trial Division of History.” In other words, “In elementary school, we’re going to study from pre-Columbus all the way up to the Stamp Act, 1765. “In junior high, we’re going to study from the Stamp Act all the way through Reconstruction, so that’s 765 all the way through 1877 or 1876. And then in high school, we’re going to study from Reconstruction to the current time.”
So what happens is they have standards that say, “If you violate any of that tri-division you’ll lose your funding for your textbooks.” So if over here when I’m talking about Columbus I’ll also talk about President Reagan, or President Carter, or President Clinton, or President Bush, we’re going to lose the funding. And so publishers won’t do that.
They also have a Civil Rights Commission which has created a regulation that says, “Every single textbook has to address Martin Luther King.” Now wait a minute, if I address Martin Luther King and the American Revolution now I violate- And so textbook publishers they don’t even want to go to California anymore because there are so many conflicting government regulations that you could put 20 million out to invest in the textbook and you find that you’ve violated regulation.
Removing The Greatest Heroes From Public School Textbooks
Rick:
So that makes Texas is the main game?
David:
What happens in Texas will go everywhere in the nation in the way of textbooks. The legislature creates the rules and then those elected State Board of Education that comes up with all these standards.
Rick:
So that’s the decision maker?
David:
Yes. There are 15 elected members in the state of Texas. Each elected member of the State Board of Education has a district twice the size of a congressional district. Texas has 32 U.S. congressmen of only 15 board- that”s a big district. You’re talking about a million and a half people in each State Board of Education, that’s why they elect one person from that million and a half to go represent them at state board.
The state board gets there and says, “Ok, we’re writing standards this year on science. We’re writing standards on health” or whatever. Well, it was a cycle to do history. And so the 15 members on the State Board of Education get to elect experts to come in and those experts say, “Here’s what you should look at in your standards, here is what you should include. Here’s what needs to be there.” And I was chosen as one of those six experts.
Now, when we got there and looked at the standards, the standards were really, really ugly. They reflected what we call, “Deconstructionism and post-structuralism.” Everything that’s ever gone wrong with America was in the stands.
Rick:
So focusing on all the negative?
David:
Anything that went right? No. And we didn’t talk about individual achievements we had to talk only about group achievements. You can’t talk about what great Americans have done you have talked about what blacks did, or what gays did, or what whites did, or what Hispanics did, or what Indians did. Can”t do it individually, we”ve got to do everything in groups. We’re going to divide the state in all of these different groups.
And the standards, you have examples you pull out for heroes to say, “Here’s what we should be teaching you.” And you have different holidays that you teach about and celebrate.
Well, in the standards they took Christmas out. They”re not going to talk about Christmas in the history. Wait, 72 percent of the nation claims to be Christian and 93 percent of the nation say they celebrate Christmas, and we’re not going to talk about it? But they put the holiday to Diwali in and it’s a Hindu holiday-
Rick:
See, I don”t even know what that is.
David:
Exactly, but that’s what we’re going to teach our kids is Diwali but we’re not going to talk about Christmas. “And by the way, while we’re at it, we’re going to take Davy Crockett out of the textbooks. We’re going to take Nathan Hale out of the textbooks. We’re going to take General George S. Patton out of the textbooks. We’re taking Albert Einstein out-“
Rick:
These are some of the greatest heroes in American history.
David:
The greatest individuals with great achievements, we”ve taken them out of the textbooks, we don’t teach our kids about them. We took the Liberty Bell out of textbooks because they said, “That’s an inappropriate symbol for elementary kids to have the Liberty Bell.” So this is the philosophy we’re dealing with. So we go in and we just gut it.Â
We said, “No, Â we’re not doing post-structuralism. We’re Americans, we’re not groups. And we’re not doing deconstruction. We’re going to talk about the negative things that happened but we’re going to talk about the good things too and we’re going to put a lot of positive heroes out there.”
Protesting American Exceptionalism
Rick:
What kind of response did you get when you began to bring the rest of that history in?
David:
We insisted that we’re going to teach American exceptionalism we’re going to teach in the classroom that America is a great nation and you don’t have to go around the world apologizing for America. Yeah, we’ve done things wrong, but we’ve done a lot of things right.
We had protests at the State Capitol saying, “Oh, you can’t teach American-“ Â You know who led the protest? University professors. University professors who were so into the deconstruction said, “You can’t do that.”
We also said, “We’re going to teach free market system because that’s what brought more prosperity in America than anything else. It works in every nation where it’s been tried. If you have a command economy where the government regulates it always leads to less prosperity.” Â So we say, “We’re going to get you free markets.” We had protests at the State Capital that said, “You can’t teach a free market system.”
Rick:
You’re talking about teaching some of the greatest things about America and these are the people teaching our kids in universities are protesting?
David:
Oh yeah, protesting this stuff. As it turns out, we completely redid the standards and we got it all done, we’ve got it all passed.
Rick: Â
So over the objections of all these protesters, you still got the 15.
Raising The Standard
David:
And the whole reason we got it was only 15 people get to vote on what’s in the standards and in those 15 people we won the votes 10 to 5. Now, what’s key is yeah, we had standards but it doesn”t matter if you have good standards if you don”t have good people there to vote on them. Â
See, this is the real story of what happened with the Texas history books is you have to back up 15 years, 15 years ago in that state Board of Education when we had votes on history we would lose the votes 1 to 14. Only one person wanted to teach patriotism to get 14, “Oh no, we can’t do that.” We were losing everything 1 to 14.
Now 15 years later we’re winning at 10 to 5, what happened? We said that we need to start replacing them with somebody who has a pro-American pro-God, somebody that doesn’t think Christmas needs to come out of the textbooks.
Rick:
Isn’t there even a strategy here for this? Too often we want to just show up and say, “Ok, we’ve got good stuff.”
David:
We’re going to lobby their members-
Rick:
Right, so they’ll do the right thing. No, it’s not enough. So you had to back up 15 years-
David:
We’ve been doing this for 15 years. See, the interesting thing is nobody ever thought about the State Board of Education 15 years ago. To win a congressional race takes $2.2 million, while the State Board of Education is twice the size of a congressional district. But they were so on notice that you can win a race with $5,000.
So, you look at places in elections and think, “Oh, I don’t even know who the state- who cares what state board is? All I care is who the president is.” No, the president is not the one who created the history standards that will now go across the nation.
Rick:
Or even the local school board.
David:
The local school board has a lot of control over the textbooks to go in, and the philosophy that goes in, what’s going to happen.
Rick:
And that is usually 100 votes 200 votes.
David:
That”s right. And those are throwaway races to most people’s minds. Those are some of the most important races. So if you want to turn a state in a direction, and in this case, the state is turning the nation in a direction you don’t just suddenly show up. You have to start 15 years ago recruiting the right people for office, working for them, raising money for the right people, and then now 15 years later when you need them, there they are.
Rick:
Yeah, some people may think, “Oh, now that”s just too much work, 15 years?” I think this is very positive because what you’re telling me, David, is it’s not just the president that changes things. Sometimes people think, “I can’t make a difference because I can impact a presidential election.” Folks, a school board elections a couple of hundred votes the State Board of Education is the place we truly can make a huge difference on the future of our country if we’re just willing.
In It For The Long Haul
David:
Sometimes show up demand change. Here’s an axiom that I’ve learned in all my years in politics is that you want to elect people you don’t have to lobby. If I call my U.S. senator and say, “Hey, you need to vote for traditional marriage, don’t vote for-“ I’ve already lost the battle. I should have elected somebody who knew that traditional marriage needed-
Rick:
Backing up the process. And if I”ve got to lobby them to do the right thing we are you on the wrong side. And if I have to lobby my State Board of Education members and say, “Hey, vote to put patriotism in the textbooks.” I”ve already lost the battle. They should say, “Are you kidding?  Take patriotism, take Christmas out of the text, there’s no way-“ That’s the kind of people I want there. That meant I had to go recruit them 15 years ago. And I had to get people to work with them, and work for them, and I had to get them elected. And they had to sit on the board for eight years before we came to the districts because I was appointed in 1992 to deal with  Texas history standards.
Well, here it is 18 years later, I’m back on the board again. “It’s been a year 18 years since we did this?” Â Yes, it has been. And we had guys sitting on the board for all those years and they’re here for such a time as this.
So you can’t just show up and say, “Suddenly we’re going to take it over.” Here are the results. This is why we’ve been working for 15 years. These are the standards that will change the nation.
Rick:
In all of that time, Fifteen years of work, now the standards, we will begin to see those changes, the textbooks will start coming out, and the kids will be raised, in that. So you’re not only 15 years of doing that but now in 15 or 30 years-
David:
You go back to the quote you started with, Abraham Lincoln, the philosophy of the school room in one generation will be the philosophy of government in the next. We now have a positive philosophy of American government, limited government, constitutional government, that we’re not a democracy, we are a republic.
All these constitutional things, that’s going to be started teaching in the kids right now. Now, they’ve got to go through 12 years of school, they are going to have to get out, go to college, or whatever, it may be 20 years before there are leaders. But guess what kind of philosophy they’re going to have when they become our leaders 20 years now?
The philosophy of the school room in one generation, is the philosophy of government next. And that’s what we have to understand if we’re going to preserve the things that have made America successful. We”ve got to understand it and preserve it and that means a long-term view of what’s going on.
Moment From America”s History
This is David Barton with another moment from America’s history. Today, there are numerous documented accounts of individual students being disciplined simply for bringing a Bible to school. Fisher Ames would have been appalled at this open hostility toward the Bible. Fisher Ames was the Founding Father who authored the House of Representative’s language for the First Amendment.
In his day, he vehemently objected to any attempt to minimize the Bible schools. In fact, he declared, “Why should not the Bible regain the place it once held as a school book? Its morals are pure, its examples captivating, and Noble. The reverence for the sacred book that is thus early impressed last long and probably, if not impressed in infancy, never takes firm hold of the mind.”
Founding Father Fisher Ames, the man most responsible for the wording of the first amendment, believed that the most important schoolbook was the Bible. For more information on God’s hand in American history contact WallBuilders at 1 800 8 REBUILD.
What Can You Do If You Live Outside Of Texas
Rick:
So David, if all these other states are adopting what Texas did can the folks at home that are in states outside of Texas do anything about that?
David:
Absolutely. As matter of fact, a lot of states have seen what Texas has done and said, “Hey, we want to do some of that too.” Because in some states you”re not necessarily guaranteed to get these good textbooks.
What’ll happen is, the way process works in Texas, these publishers are going to have to come back and say, “Hey, we met all your standards in textbooks.” And we say, “Ok, we’ll buy your textbooks.”
If you go to New Mexico, they don’t have that. Any textbook that you want to use of any philosophy you can. I think they have thirty-nine hundred approved textbooks. So every state is different, so just because Texas came up with good standards doesn’t mean that’s going to show up in the classroom everywhere.
All the states are going to have to go say, “Hey, we want these textbooks.” Which means they are going to have to be looked at and reviewed and gone over. And then, in the same way, there’s a lot of things that states can do to help reinforce this. One of the things when you were in the state legislature you passed a 1776 law which says, “You’ve got to take a week every year in school to celebrate liberty.”
Rick:
But not everybody is doing it.
David:
No, but see you’ve got to stay. That way you’ve got to state the Declaration, and the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights, and how they’ve been applied. And you know, it’s great stuff. That’s a simple law that can be passed in other states.
So let’s say New Mexico where you don’t get a choice of textbooks in the same way, you’re going to get some crummy textbooks, just get your legislature to pass that law.
Rick:
I think like 13 or 14 states have done it now, it’s a good project.
David:
It’s a good project.
Rick:
And even if your state has passed it you can still go to your local school board and, say, “Make sure you’re implementing this. So it”s something, we can all do something.”
Why We Must Continue To Fight This Battle
David:
The federal law requires that every public school on September 17th teaches Constitution Day. Go find the good curriculum tell the school, Hey, here’s the curriculum. And by the way, I’m going to go to one of those car dealerships and some business and we’re going to raise the money to help the school district out.”
There’s a lot of things you can do either in creating policies or by the way, get elected to the local school board that you do get to help select what textbooks can end up in the classroom even though they don’t have the same adoption process in a state like Texas would have.
Rick:
Even in Texas now this is going to happen again in 10 years, right?
David:
Well, not only will it happen in 10 years but in the meantime, there’s a lot of other courses that come up. They are going to do science, do I care about the standards of science? You bet I care by the standards of science. Is it going to be completely secular? Or are we going to look at possibilities that might be intelligent design? Which is what 84 percent of the nation believes.
And then the standard are going to come up in the health textbooks. Do I care whether we promote abortion or promote abstinence? Â You bet I care. So even though it may be 15 years before we get back to the history standards again. In the meantime, there are important decisions being made every single year on some aspect of the classroom. And again, the philosophy of the school room in one generation is the philosophy of government in the next.
The way they view their own creation, science, the way they view their sexuality, and whether God gave them a body or whether it”s something they can destroy with abortion. Â Any of that stuff I care about.
So that’s why we got to be involved in this, it doesn’t matter whether this is public schools. But do I care that every kid the nation get it? You bet. They may not be all Christian schooled, or homeschooled, or parochial schooled, but I want every kid in the nation to have the right information about American founding in American history. That’s why we stay involved for the long haul. It”s history this year, maybe it will be something else next year that will be just as important.
Should We Leave Education To The Experts
Rick:
Hey, David, let”s get our first question on education in textbooks.
David:
Sounds good.
Guest:
Shouldn’t we leave education to the experts?
Rick:
So, why should I or any of our listeners be involved if we’re not experts on education?
David:
Let’s go for definitions here. I’ve got a car that’s not working. I take it to the car repair place. The particular brand that it is, the manufacturer, and they work on it and they can’t get it working.
I bring it back home, my next door neighbor says, “I used to work on cars, I”ve always tinkered with cars.” He comes over and gets it working. Who is the expert? The expert should be judged not by the title but by the fruit that’s produced.
Rick:
The result.
David:
What are the results? You have a number of different forms of education across the United States right now. Public schools, you have parochial schools, you have private schools, you have homeschool, you have charters, and all these different ones.
Let”s just take homeschool for a minute. Because that is the fastest growing form of education right now. It’s one of many forms of education. But one thing that is irrefutable is that homeschool kids average two to four grade levels higher on academic tests than their public school counterparts.
Rick:
So the results are quite down.
David:
Now, the problem with homeschool is only 9 to 11 percent of homeschool parents are certified teachers. So we’re talking 90 percent of these teachers teaching these kids are not certified, they’re not an expert but they’re getting two to four grade levels higher in knowledge. So leave education to the experts? That’s not looking real good.
We’ve had in the hands of experts now for 30 to 40 years in international competitions on science and math in the United States regularly comes in last, next to last, or are in the bottom one-third consistently. Experts aren’t doing it.
Get away from the names and titles, go back to what works, go back to the results, get the right content, get the right style and format, get the philosophy of education, it will make all the difference.
What If I Don”t See Results
Rick:
Ok, let’s go for another question from the audience.
Guest:
I’ve tried voting and volunteering but he did make a difference. Why should I put forth the effort if I don’t see results?
Rick:
Some people feel that way after an election, Â maybe they did volunteer, maybe they got out there and got involved, but then their candidate didn’t win or their candidate won and they didn’t get the results. Why stay involved?
David:
There’s actually two aspects of that question. One’s duty. You stay involved because it is the right thing to do. You don’t stay involved because you get the right results, you stay involved because that’s what you’re supposed to do, it”s the right thing.
Jesus in Matthew 25 doesn’t say, “Well, done good and successful servant.” He says, “Well done good and faithful servant.” Faithfulness or doing one’s duty, or hanging in there and doing the right thing, however long it takes, that’s what you have to do.
Now, the problem we have had, partire and find a good candidate, get behind the candidate, work tails off for that candidate, a candidate gets elected and then we pick up our ball and go home.
Rick:cularly with God fearing people getting involved in politics is we get involved and we find a candidate, get behind the candidate, we”ll go out there work our tails off for that candidate, and that candidate won’t get elected and so we pick up a ball and go home, “I tried and it didn’t work.”
On the other hand, we’ll get out the
We go home no matter what.
We don’t have a sense of duty. You have to stay involved in this stuff until you win. Galatians 6:9 says you will reap a harvest in due season if you do not faint. So the key is that you don’t get involved just for one-An election is not an event. We look at the election as if it’s an event, it’s not, it”s a process. As long as I’m alive I have a duty to be involved. And I don’t care what happens in one election, two, or three, or four, I’ve got a whole lifetime of elections that I’ve got to work with. So, that’s one aspect is don’t judge it by short term.
Rick:
Isn’t it true we hear that phrase, “The price of freedom is eternal vigilance?”
David:
It”s like Christianity. “I’m a Christian, I don’t have to worry about living like Christian.” No, you do. You’ve got a duty to live like a Christian the rest of your life. You made a commitment here but that’s not an event it’s a process. You have to live that life and be a Christian for the rest of your life. Same with a citizen.
Recruiting Candidates
But there’s another aspect of that too. A lot of times we get involved in elections and we really do not have very good choices in our candidates. We”re making a choice between the bad and the worse.
Rick:
A lot of people say, “I’m not going to vote because I don’t want to vote for the lesser of two evils.”
David:
That’s right. There’s the old cowboy axiom, me being a cowboy and ranching and whatever, is you always drink on the upstream side of the horses. You know you go upstream. If you’ve got bad candidates you need to go upstream. You need to go start recruiting some candidates and get them in the process so they’ll flow downstream. So that instead of having a choice between the bad and worse you get a choice between the good and the better.
See, that”s the problem with candidates. If you wait for somebody to step forward and say, “I’m your candidate, elect me.” You usually don’t get very good results.
Rick:
Self-promoting-
David:
The guys who want to get in politics is often because they want the money, or the fame, or the name, or the power, or the perks. No, you”ve got to go recruit people to be in office and say, “Listen, you’ve got to be on the school board. Hey, we’ve got to have you on the Public Utility District, we need to recruit better candidates and get them coming down the pipeline so that one of them says, “Well, you know, I’ve been city council, I’ve been mayor, and I’ve been state rep, I”m going to  run for U.S. senator now.” We’ve already got somebody good coming.
If you wait to see who shows up, you”ve got trouble. And so part of it is if you’re not liking the results you get. You need to crawl back upstream, get further up the river, start recruiting good candidates, so that when they float downstream you can have something good to deal with.
Rick:
Do the best you can today but work hard to get a better candidate for tomorrow. Earlier in the program, you were telling me how long it took to get the results in Texas on the textbooks. So it impacted everybody, that wasn’t a one-year election.
David:
It wasn”t a one-year election cycle. You’re gonna have a long term vision.
Why Should I Get Involved
Rick:
Ok, time for one more question today, David.
Guest:
Most families in my church either homeschool or go to a private school why should we even bother with the public school textbook process?
Rick:
I”ve actually got this question a few times when challenging people to get involved in school board elections, “Well, my kid doesn’t go to the public school, why does that matter to me?”
David:
Well, let me throw something out. The Present the United States, is he homeschooled or not? Â Oh, I think he’s a public school graduate. How about Senators? Â I can’t think of a homeschooled U.S. senator. How about the judges and the Supreme Court? I can’t think any homeschooled.
So the people who rule over us are not home schooled. That’s because 88 percent of all the nation’s students go through public school. I don’t care who rules over me, I want them having the right history and the right knowledge because if you’ve got a bad view of history, you”re going to get bad public policy.
If you think America is a really crummy nation then we’ve got to go around the world apologizing for it. Guess what kind of policy I’m going to get from that kind of person? So I don’t care whether you are a homeschool, I don”t care whether you are a Christian school, parochial school, Â public school, or charter school, I don’t care what it is, you need good history because you may be my leader.
Rick:
So, even if your kids are homeschooled or you’re going to private school or parochial school, Â if 80-88 percent of the kids that are in education are in public schools we need to be focusing on-
David:
That’s exactly right. You do not live in a world where only homeschool people surround you or only Christian school people surround you. You want everybody to have the right information.
This may sound selfish, David. But we’re also paying for that public education. I want to get the best return on my investment and have a good product there whether my kids are going to that particular school or not. You may be retired and don’t have kids at home anymore you’re still paying for it.
David:
And that’s exactly right. And so this is one of the things, “I’ll leave my kids in public school because I want to be able to change the system.” Hey, your kids will never change the system. If you pay taxes you have every right to get in their system. Your kids can be somewhere else. But if you pay tax and you’ve got the right to make every school board meeting to leverage. Every one of those guys that talk to every teacher.
“I can”t go see the curriculum because I don’t have a kid in public school.” Yes, you can. If pay taxes. It”s called taxpayer standing. As long as you’re paying taxes you have every right to participate in that system as though you had 55 of your kids in there.
I mean, it doesn’t matter. So for people who say, “I want my kids to be missionaries.” Those kids cannot change policies in public schools. It takes adults to do that. That’s why you get people recruited to run for office in school board or for the state board of education or anything else. But just because your kids are in some other form of education don’t you dare think about going and hiding from those 88 percent that need good policies.
By Federal Law, This Is What Your School Needs To Be Doing
Rick:
I was just thinking of a good action step too that you mentioned in another program, the Constitution Day and something like 85 percent or so of schools are not doing that. And yet it’s the federal law that they should do it.
In Texas and a lot of other states, we’ve got the celebrate freedom week where they’re supposed to study the Declaration and the Constitution. But a lot of schools aren”t doing it. Hey, there’s a great thing for you to go to your school board to say, “Hey, you guys need to be teaching the Constitution and the Declaration.” It’s the law.
David:
By federal statistics, 90 percent of public schools do not celebrate Constitution Day on the way that the law demands they do it, and that is to study the Constitution on that day. So if you’re a taxpayer you need to walk right in and say, “Hey, federal law, you guys want to be in trouble? Let’s don’t do that, let’s just follow the law. Let’s let’s teach the kids about the Constitution on September the 17th.”
There are so many laws that are out there that are so good. You’ve got a school that says, “Hey, I don’t want the Bible here.” I’m sorry, it doesn”t matter what you want. We”ve got the Supreme Court decisions, we’ve got a unanimous decision from the Supreme Court, saying how Bible clubs in public schools, evangelism clubs in public schools, have all these kind of clubs in schools. We’ve got groups like National Council on Bible Curriculum in public schools, that’ll get you credit courses studying the Bible in public school. I didn’t know we could do that.
Rick:
So that’s another good action. Â You could be the one to make that happen.
David:
You don’t have to have a kid in public schools to get that course in the school. And so that’s something we need to be concerned with every kid in America getting the right information historically and on everything else. We can”t just sit over here in our lifeboat and watch everything else sink on the Titanic. We’ve got to do everything we can to get everybody in a position where they’ve got good information, sound information, and regardless of what form of education they’re using.
Rick:
Thanks for listening today folks, many of you have the DVD set of The American Heritage Series. You could get the sequel which is Building on the American Heritage Series. A lot of new material some fantastic programs you want to have in your library. You can get it at our website today at WallBuilders.com.
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