





Education According to the Texas Republican Party: Straight Outta Christian Reconstruction ulyankee print page Fri Jun 29, 2012 at 11:47:35 AM EST Over on Daily Kos, a few diarists have Over on Daily Kos, a few diarists have pointed out that one of the planks on the current Texas Republican platform states that the party opposes teaching "critical thinking" skills in schools. Those who don't follow the Christian Right might understandably believe this means that they want to dumb down and disempower the masses so that they don't have the critical thinking skills to question the dominant-minority Republican world-view... and that it reflects the "stupid" at the heart of the Republican party. This may well be the end result, but how we get there is a bit more nuanced than that. But no less scary. In fact, quite a bit more scary. Unpacking a few key terms and phrases show that this and most all the other planks are organized around the Christian Reconstructionist, "theonomist" reformulation of covenant theology. This is the view that God has established several "governments" or spheres, including civil, ecclesiastical (church), family, and individual or self-government (that last one can only be exercised by Christians--the right kind of Christians). Christian Reconstructionists have adopted this from the Westminster Confession of the English Civil War and Cromwellian Puritan commonwealth. All the spheres of government are under God's authority, not the state's. And who determines and exercises God's authority? The super-duper "Christians" who are appropriately educated outside the civil system, either through homeschooling, "classical" Christian schools, or as supplemented by their families and churches. Everyone else gets just enough education to submit to and serve the God-by-proxy authority over them. My old cult taught this. Remnants of my old cult still teach this. Not to get into seven degrees of Maranatha Campus Ministries, but I say this because what used to be considered fringe, cultish, crazy, outright insane by even evangelical and charismatic/Pentecostal Christians 30 years ago is totally mainstreamed and is now on the verge of becoming public policy (if not already so in some places like my fair state, Louisiana)!!! First indoctrinate the pew sitters, then the churches themselves (largely done), then finally take over the state. More below the fold... First, the plank that is getting all the attention: Knowledge-Based Education - We oppose the teaching of Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) (values clarification), critical thinking skills and similar programs that are simply a relabeling of Outcome-Based Education (OBE) (mastery learning) which focus on behavior modification and have the purpose of challenging the student's fixed beliefs and undermining parental authority. What does "knowledge-based education" mean anyway? Well, since I recognize this bit of conspiracy from George Grant, a Christian Reconstructionist friendly with My Old Cult who also champions Christian "classical" education, I figured I'd see what Christian "classical" proponents might say about this. Hit the jackpot on a proponent of the "trivium" method of education which apparently has made the rounds among the homeschooler crowd... or at least those who (think they) have the intellectual werewithal to teach beyond the A Beka and Bob Jones books... I'm including an expanded quote here since it covers the entire conspiracy theory. Federal legislation essentially requires that all school teachers in the socialized schools be examined, endorsed and sanctioned by the Federal Department of Education. Holding to moral absolutes is declared by some to be insane and demented and absolutes are not allowed to be taught. Socialized schools are effectively turned into centers of amoral pagan religion. Outcome-Based Education (O. B. E.) is mandated in all socialized schools. Federal legislation was formulated to forbid the teaching of the Trivium, declaring it to be a "disproven theory." "The Congress declares it to be the policy of the United States that...this title builds upon what has been learned: [including]...The disproven theory that children must first learn basic skills [=GRAMMAR & LOGIC] before engaging in more complex tasks [=RHETORIC] continues to dominate strategies for classroom instruction, resulting in emphasis on repetitive drill and practice.... A school wide program shall include the following components: ...help provide an enriched and accelerated curriculum [=RHETORIC BASED] rather than remedial drill and practice [GRAMMAR & LOGIC]." Such things as learning phonics and the math facts would be federally outlawed. The Trivium, which has worked for millennia, is now considered a "disproven theory" while O. B. E., which has not worked anywhere it has ever been tried, is now the officially sanctioned method. O. B. E. is "outcome-skills based." It teaches "rhetoric" level skills without teaching the basic "grammar" and "logic" level skills.

(Harvey Bluedorn, "Outcome-Based Education vs. Trivium-Based Education") So, essentially proponents of "knowledge-based education," who don't know first-hand how mind numbingly boring and ineffective "trivium" education really was, believe they are the champions for true, Godly "critical thinking" because their method lays the foundation needed for true "critical thinking." I'm not personally a proponent of purely outcome-based education myself, but not because I champion the trivum or think OBE is inherently eeevilll, but because in practice it doesn't jive with cognitive science, in which higher level skills are indeed built upon more basic skills. People revert to the skill level that they are most comfortable with. Get them comfortable with incrementally more advanced skills and they can move on. As an aside, I used cog sci informed teaching with decent results when teaching college freshman English--but it's hard because everyone comes in with different skill sets and you have to adjust your curriculum and syllabus to allow for different skill/comfort levels--including those who can barely put together a sentence as well as the larger mass who unintentionally parody academic writing to impress the teacher--an unintended result of OBE, IMO. But even the trivium didn't assume that students have "fixed beliefs." No, it assumed, post-Locke anyway, that children were blank slates just ready to be filled up with the right educational stuff. The education might be fixed, but the kids sure weren't. The great fear was without correct education and discipline appropriate to their station, they'd grow up to be Hobbesian animals. Higher class=more education, lower class=more of that authority and discipline stuff along with just enough of the basics (no Greek and Latin, sorry) to get by. The "fixed beliefs" that the Texas Republican Party doesn't want schools to mess with aren't necessarily those imparted by parents per se, but by the indoctrination their parents received either in churches or online, which are then passed on in a more deeply ossified form (haha, there's your "fixed beliefs") into their children. Thus my segue back into the assertions I opened with... that this is based on Christian Reconstructionist covenant theology and using education as one mode to exercise God-by-proxy control over the unenlightened masses. The key phrase in this plank is "parental authority," which is code for "family government" in covenantal terms. "Authority" was a big thing in My Old Cult which practiced a form of "shepherding/discipleship." We were supposed to submit to the authority over us, since that was the authority God placed there. That (human) authority was God's divine agent and we were to obey as if it was God, as if Jesus invented multi-level marketing. In the home that authority was the husband/father, who was himself "submitted" to another "discipler" who was submitted to the pastor, who was submitted to a bigger pastor who was secretly an "apostle" (our leaders were a mix of Christian Reconstructionists and NAR), and so on. The presumption was that Jesus was up there somewhere toward the top of the food chain, and that if we just heeded the voice of our leaders were were somehow obeying God. And are there any other similar code phrases in the platform? Well, golly gee, there's one plank in particular that pretty much summarizes CR covenant theology: The Rights of a Sovereign People - The Republican Party of Texas supports the historic concept, established by our nations' founders, of limited civil government jurisdiction under the natural laws of God, and repudiates the humanistic doctrine that the state is sovereign over the affairs of men, the family and the church. Aside from the fact that this is really historically inaccurate, asserting that "limited civil government," "affairs of men" (self-government), "the family" (family government) and church (ecclesiastic government) are all under the "natural laws of God" is the governmental view of covenant theology in a nutshell. According to The Forerunner, which was Maranatha Campus Ministries old newspaper, now a blog edited by former Maranathan and unabashedly Christian Reconstructionist Jay Rogers: All people are under a two-fold theocratic form of government (ecclesiastical and civil). The church legislates the moral law of God through the preaching of blessings and curses found in God's Word (the Bible); the state enforces the moral law of God through a system of reward and punishment. Believers obey the moral law of God out of love and are subject to church discipline; sinners obey out of constraint and fear of punishment by civil judges. But both classes of men are to be ruled by the moral law of God. One would assume that believers will get a believer's education at home and in church-run schools, and non-believers... well, not. They are to be under a "system of reward and punishment." No behavior modification for them. Just punishment and control. I invite fellow T2A readers to please read and comment on the platform. There is SO much more there I don't have the time or more importantly, the patience to go through. I often get so infuriated by these folks that I have a really difficult time seeing my arguments all the way through and making sense. I can write clearly and coherently about the seventeenth century all day long but not this. But it goes well beyond what DKos diarists have written about so far. While it may well be "stupid" just calling it that minimizes how insidious it really is.



To discuss this story, sign up for a free account



Education According to the Texas Republican Party: Straight Outta Christian Reconstruction | 6 comments (6 topical, 0 hidden) comments (6 topical, 0 hidden)











Education According to the Texas Republican Party: Straight Outta Christian Reconstruction | 6 comments (6 topical, 0 hidden) comments (6 topical, 0 hidden)