Religion in the Schools
The history of man is inseparable from the history of religion. This Nation is a religious people, in fact, 64% of its people have church membership[Levicoff]. The founding fathers, themselves, believed devotedly that there was a God and that the unalienable rights of man were rooted in Him [Levicoff]. This is clearly evident in their writings, from the Mayflower Compact to the Constitution itself. Like this quote from the Mayflower Compact, "...having undertaken, for the glory of God, and the advancement of the Christian faith, and honor of our king and country, a voyage to plant the first colony in the Northern parts of Virginia,..."[Bradford]; President Abraham Lincoln once said "I have been driven many times to my knees by the overwhelming conviction that I had no where else to go"[Y2Pray]. What has happened to this nation collectively that such brutality can take place among its children? This Nation has removed the Ten Commandments from its schools. In exchange, it has reaped selfish indifference and glorified hedonism. This Nation has told its Children that they were nothing more than a highly-evolved amoebae, accidentally brought forth from a mud pool somewhere in time. And wonder why so many of them see no inherent value to life. This Nation has removed prayer from its school and has reaped violence hatred and murder. The Duke of Wellington said "If you divorce religion from education, you produce a race of clever devils"[Porter]. This nation is a religious people whose institutions presuppose a Supreme Being therefore, it should now as in the beginning teach its children the way of their Forefathers. This Nation's public schools are the only way it can guarantee that its children will learn the ways of this country, Americans are responsible, therefore, to teach their children of the religion that this Nation was founded on.
"To secure the people's right to acknowledge God according to the dictates of conscience: Neither the United States nor any State shall establish any official Religion, but the people's right to pray and to recognize their religious beliefs, heritage, or traditions on public property, including schools, shall not be infringed. Neither the United States nor any State shall require any person to join in prayer or other religious activity, prescribe school prayers, discriminate against religion, or deny access to a benefit on account of religion" [Amendment to be a Substitute to H.J. 78]. The opinion of many is that education is to prepare minds according to secular knowledge not religion but they seem to forget the words and knowledge of our Forefathers. This whole country was based on religion, from the phrase 'in God we trust' on our money to the opening prayer provided by a chaplain in the House of Congress. It is also argued that public school students are perfectly free to pray individually or collectively in their free time. But the problem is that many children have never heard of the religious founding of this country or of the God that it was formed reliant on. Many are screaming out for answers whether by the way they dress or the things they say or do; as a country based on God, this Nation should point them in the direction of our Forefathers. It should be the job of parents to instill religious beliefs in their children but with all the broken homes, dead-beat parents and children raising themselves it becomes the Nation's responsibility.
People are a three part being; body, mind and spirit[Thomas]. If one part is ignored then a void is created that can harbor evil, prejudice and hatred. This country has refused to acknowledge and honor God and in doing so has opened the doors to hatred and violence. Spiritual influences were present within our education systems for most of our nations history, in fact, most of our Nation's major colleges began as theological seminaries[Scott]. In 1963 this Nation took God out of school and stopped dealing with the third part of its children and reaped cold hard hearts full of hatred[Levicoff]. More restrictive laws are not what we need to keep the schools safe, we need to deal with all three parts of the human. It's so simplistic to try and remove all the weapons of destruction and not deal with the hardness of the heart. The way to stop the violence in this generation of youth is to put the third part of the human being back into place. One school principal who survived a Nazi concentration camp wrote to the teachers in his school:
Dear teachers, I am the survivor of a concentration camp. My eyes saw
what no man should witness-gas chambers built by learned
engineers, children poisoned by educated physicians, infants killed by
trained nurses, women and babies shot and burned by high school and
college students. So I am suspicious of education.
My request is: help your students become humane. Your efforts must
never produce learned monsters, skilled psychopaths, educated
Eichmanns. Reading, writing, arithmetic are important only if they serve
to make our children more humane. [Porter]
No amount of gun control or security would stop a planned out attack by an enraged person. Legislators had laws in place that should have protected the students who have died already, and the laws didn't protect those students. The violence at Columbine and the other schools was a wake up call, the students that died there should not have died, this Nation failed them. "God is using this tragedy to wake up not only America, but also this world... answers to school violence lie not in gun laws but in a simple trust in God" [Scott]. It's time to stop the violence and death and return back to this Nation's heritage and bring God back into the schools.
Secular drug rehabilitation programs have a 1-15% cure rate while Teen Challenge a Christian drug rehabilitation program has a 70-88% cure rate, for which 80% credit a relationship with Jesus as a major influence of them saying off drugs [Teen Challenge]. The facts here are outstanding, denying that God has a major role in a person's life is ignorant. School violence is a major problem, 1 in 12 high school students is threatened or injured by a weapon each year[virtual library]. Since the early 1960s, the teen pregnancy rate has nearly doubled, juvenile violent crime is at epidemic proportions, and the teen suicide rate continues to spiral upward. In addition, teenage drug use is once again on the rise[Thomas]. Schools started a decline at the same time God was taken out of them, by looking at the statistics of Christian vs. non-Christian programs this Nation should see that God needs to be put back into the public schools. Why must so many children be hurt emotionally, physically and spiritually when the answer to the problem is so blunt? Satan has a hold on the public schools in America, this Nation must let God take over again or things will just get worse and worse.
As always proves true history repeats itself. There is a common cycle in history and if no lesson is learnt and no changes happen then the same thing happens over again. From the rise and fall of nations to the way a child grows up to have the attitudes and flaws of their parents. All the shootings follow the same pattern and if nothing is learnt from those in the past then there will be more in the future. This Nation must learn from the warning signs of the past and create a safe future for their children. Schools must stop ignoring the void in the youths life and fill it with the love of God. Only God can break a cold hard heart and fill it with love and forgiveness. Schools have created a place of fear and violence, the youth growing up in this environment are going to be contaminated by those things and the only way to get rid of that is to start over again with the way this nation was founded. God needs to become the focus again or this cycle of death and destruction will keep on getting worse, when will this nation learn that history repeats itself and start over again.
The United States of America was founded as a Nation 'under God' and has now become a Nation of corrupt, sinful people longing more to fulfill their own greed than to follow the plans God has laid out. The violence is rooted in the hatred and cold indifference in the people's hearts and must be handled by bringing back the teachings of all three parts of the human. More laws, restrictions, teachings or medicines cannot change the human only dealing with the heart of the matter can, and that can only be accomplished by dealing with all three parts of them. Must another incident like Columbine happen before this Nation realizes its need of God, must more innocent children die, history will repeat itself again if action is not taken. God must be brought back into the schools, the consequences of taking Him out have been costly. This nation must return to the ways of its Forefathers, it needs God again from its public schools to its politics.