On Saturday, my husband and I had a meeting with our priest. He is a good and holy priest, filled with gentleness and wisdom. We met with him because our teenage son is rebellious, more so than we can handle, and we hoped for some guidance. While we did get just that, we also came away with a greater understanding of why we are having this trouble in the first place.
Our oldest two sons were raised by and in the culture. In those early days, I worked, they went to the babysitter or daycare. As they became school age, they went off to public school. The schools were good, we believed, and they had programs and activities before and after school to accommodate most schedules. Finding a place to live with a good school system was imperative because public education by trained teachers was important and necessary. It mattered and we believed in it.
And it's a communist lie.
Before you dismiss me as some McCarthian nut, please hear me out.
See I didn't believe it myself. Oh, yes, I have known for a long time that the public school system is wrought with problems. I know that the schools are failing, students are failing, money is being wasted. Everyone knows that. We all know they eliminated prayer in the classrooms, they've instituted diversity programs, they've emphasized sports. But these are good things right? Not all children share the same religious beliefs, not all children share the same cultural background, not all children are physically active. These are all things that children need to feel comfortable about. If they feel comfortable, then learning is made easier, right? We also know that our society is increasingly technological. We need more scientists, more science, more technology. And where are children going to get that when their parents aren't so inclined? We need the public school system, right? We need the educated to educate. The children need to learn, need to think about their futures, need to join the workforce, need to be healthy and fit, right? The sooner they begin learning, the better, right? And all little children have a right to this, a right to learn, a right to be guided, a right to be treated equally and fairly? Yes! All of us agree on that, right?
Keep all these thoughts in mind. Keep these ideas of fairness, equality, science, religious freedom, and diversity in mind when you read what I am going to share with you. Keep all of it in mind when your 9 year old daughter is practicing her hip-hop dance moves. Keep all of it in mind when you drop your 3 year old off at pre-pre-school. Keep all of this in mind when your 5th grader is working on his Earth Awareness Project. Keep this in mind when your teenager tells you that your values are not the same as hers. Keep this in mind when your son invites you to his wedding at the Elvis chapel in Las Vegas.
It is the task of the new school to adapt the mentality of adults to the changed social conditions. It is the task of the new school to train up a younger generation whose whole ideology shall be deeply rooted in the soil of the new communist society. The attainment of this end must be promoted by all our educational reforms, some of which have already been inaugurated, whilst others still await realization.
In bourgeois society, the child is regarded as the property of its parents - if not wholly, at least to a major degree. When parents say, 'My daughter', 'My son', the words do not simply imply the existence of a parental relationship, they also give expression to the parents' view that they have a right to educate their own children. From the socialist outlook, no such right exists.
The child, therefore, belongs to the society in which it lives, and thanks to which it came into being - and this society is something wider than the 'society' of its own parents.
To society, likewise, belongs the primary and basic right of educating children. From this point of view, the parents' claim to bring up their own children and thereby to impress upon the children's psychology their own limitations, must not merely be rejected, but must be absolutely laughed out of court.
Society may entrust the education of children to the parents; but it may refuse to do anything of the kind; and there is all the more reason why society should refuse to entrust education to the parents, seeing that the faculty of educating children is far more rarely encountered than the faculty of begetting them.
Social education will make it possible for socialist society to train the coming generation most successfully, at lowest cost, and with the least expenditure of energy.
Hundreds of thousands, millions of mothers will thereby be freed for productive work and for self-culture. They will be freed from the soul-destroying routine of housework, and from the endless round of petty duties which are involved in the education of children in their own homes.
That is why the Soviet Power is striving to create a number of institutions for the improvement of social education, which are intended by degrees to universalize it. To this class of institutions belong the kindergartens, to which manual workers, clerks, etc., can send their children, thus entrusting them to experts who will prepare the children for school life. To this category, too, belong the homes or residential kindergartens. There are also children's colonies, where the children either live permanently, or for a considerable period, away from their parents. There are in addition the crèches, institutions for the reception of children under four years of age; in these the little ones are cared for while their parents are at work.
The Communist Party, therefore, must, on the one hand, ensure, through the working of soviet institutions, that there shall be a more rapid development of the places where children are prepared for school life, and it must ensure that there shall be a steady improvement in the training given at such places. On the other hand, by intensified propaganda among parents, the party must overcome bourgeois and petty-bourgeois prejudices concerning the necessity and superiority of home education. Here theoretical propaganda must be reinforced by the example of the best conducted educational institutions of the Soviet Power. Only too often, the unsatisfactory condition of the homes; crèches, kindergartens, etc., deters parents from entrusting their children to these. It must be the task of the Communist Party, and especially of the women's sections, to induce parents to strive for the improvement of social education, not by holding aloof from it, but by sending their children to the appropriate institutions, and by exercising the widest possible control over them through parents' organizations.
The preparatory institutions are for children up to the age of seven.
Universal, equal, and compulsory education is made available for all children from the ages of seven to seventeen.
The school must be unified. This means, first of all, that the segregation of the sexes in the school must be done away with, that boys and girls must be educated together, that there must be co-education.
The unified school provides a single gradated system, through which every learner in the socialist republic can and must pass. Boys and girls will begin with kindergarten, and will work their way together through all stages to the top. This will conclude general compulsory education and also such technical education as is compulsory for every pupil.
It will be obvious to our readers that the unified school is not merely the ideal of every advanced educationist, but is the only possible type of school in a socialist society, that is to say, in a classless society or in one that is striving to abolish class. Socialism alone can realize this ideal of the unified school, although certain bourgeois educationists have entertained aspirations towards it.
The school of the socialist republic must be a labour school. This means that instruction and education must be united with labour and must be based upon labour.
Finally, for communist society, the labour school is absolutely indispensable. Labour should be a need, like the desire for food and drink; this need must be instilled, and developed in the communist school.
The unified labour school, and nothing else, can provide for the training of workers who will be able to perform the most diverse functions of communist society.
Up to the age of seventeen, all the young people in the republic must attend the unified labour school, acquiring there the sum of theoretical and practical knowledge indispensable to every citizen of communist society.
Until seventeen, the pupils at the labour school are scholars rather than workers.
The fundamental aim of the labour processes in the school is not that of creating values and of contributing to the State budget, but that of conveying instruction.
After the age of seventeen, the pupil becomes a worker. He must perform his quota of labour, must play his due part in producing goods for the human community. He can receive specialist instruction only in so far as he has first fulfilled his fundamental duty towards society.
All distinction between professors and students will have disappeared.
The transitional period between capitalism and communism has given birth to a special type of school, which is intended to be serviceable to the revolution now in progress and to assist in the construction of the soviet apparatus.
Such were the aims of the party and soviet schools which have grown up under our own eyes, in order to give brief and occasional courses of instruction, and which are being transformed into permanent institutions for the training of those who work in the party and in the soviets.
The Communist Party has to create out of the younger generation an entirely new school of educationists, consisting of persons who have from the very first been trained in the spirit of communism, and above all in the spirit of the communist educational programme.
Communist society will come to the aid of the parents. In Soviet Russia the Commissariats of Public Education and of Social Welfare are already doing much to assist the family. We already have homes for very small babies, creches, kindergartens, children’s colonies and homes, hospitals and health resorts for sick children. restaurants, free lunches at school and free distribution of text books, warm clothing and shoes to schoolchildren. All this goes to show that the responsibility for the child is passing from the family to the collective.
The parental care of children in the family could be divided into three parts: (a) the care of the very young baby, (b) the bringing up of the child, and (c) the instruction of the child.
The more the workers became conscious of their rights and the better they were organised, the more society had to relieve the family of the care of the children.
Communist society considers the social education of the rising generation to be one of the fundamental aspects of the new life.
The old family, narrow and petty, where the parents quarrel and are only interested in their own offspring, is not capable of educating the “new person”.
The playgrounds, gardens, homes and other amenities where the child will spend the greater part of the day under the supervision of qualified educators will, on the other hand, offer an environment in which the child can grow up a conscious communist who recognises the need for solidarity, comradeship, mutual help and loyalty to the collective.
What responsibilities are left to the parents, when they no longer have to take charge of upbringing and education? The workers’ state aims to support every mother, married or unmarried, while she is suckling her child, and to establish maternity homes, day nurseries and other such facilities in every city and village, in order to give women the opportunity to combine work in society with maternity.
Do not be afraid of having children. Society needs more workers and rejoices at the birth of every child. Communist society takes care of every child and guarantees both him and his mother material and moral support. Society will feed, bring up and educate the child. At the same time, those parents who desire to participate in the education of their children will by no, means be prevented from doing so. Communist society will take upon itself all the duties involved in the education of the child, but the joys of parenthood will not be taken away from those who are capable of appreciating them.
Communist society wants bright healthy children and strong, happy young people, free in their feelings and affections.
This is why we are having trouble with our oldest children. They were raised and educated by our culture in our public school system. The indoctrination begins at birth. It is preparation. The communists knew it. That's why they pushed parents to placing their children in day cares and nursery schools. To prepare them for the communist indoctrination. And that is exactly the system we have willingly instituted in the United States. And it is that system that has instilled in them the idea that we, their parents, do not have a right to them. We have no parental sovereignty. We have no obligations given us by Our Lord. We can't tell them what to do or seek to offer them advice. We are not to interfere with their actions or their judgments. We are to be silent.
They were taught that they were scholars first, tasked with learning information and data. We could not expect them to work summer jobs and save money for college or work after school to help pay for food or clothes. They could only do it, if they wanted to and only if the school board gave a business permission to hire them. They were taught that someone else was supposed to provide for their needs, their clothes, their food, their entertainment.
They were taught that their happiness comes first. We are supposed to respect their feelings, their desires, their emotions. If they love some young person, we are supposed to support it and encourage it. We are supposed to accept it if they have sexual relations, if they are homosexual, or if they "feel" they are a girl in a boy's body.
And now on this day, those sons we entrusted to the care of the state, the institutions that were made available for us to go to work and provide food for our family, come to us to tell us to leave them alone. Stay out of my business. Your values are different from mine. I don't need an education; I can just go to work. I don't believe in God. I need a new computer. They come to us and spit in our faces, disrespect us, ignore our pleas, disobey our rules, and mock us behind our backs, lie to our faces.
My husband and I are reaping what we have sown. We are getting what we deserve. We didn't know. And that's the wickedness of it all. Our society, our culture is positively evil. We became young adults when our society was beginning the transition from capitalism to communism, from Christianity to Paganism. We accepted it because our parents embraced it. We wanted it. We liked the freedom from responsibility. We liked the independence to do our own thing, follow our own paths. We accepted it as normal, as modern, as necessary, as progress. We bequeathed it to our children. But we didn't know what we were doing!
Unfortunately, our transition period is over. Our nation has already adopted communism as its ruling principle. And it happened not through war or invasion. It happened in our public school system. They educated our children with the freedom of the parents. As parents, we willingly dropped them off, day after day, into the day care centers, the kindergartens, the play groups, the elementary schools, and the high schools. We paid for them to go to colleges and universities were they were trained to take over our children and educate them in the "new ways." We did it all willingly. We relinquished our responsibilities because it was too hard, too time consuming, to much trouble to raise them and work. They told us we weren't smart enough to raise our children, to teach them, to guide. We believed them and we packed them up and sent them out. We took them to their counselors when we were troubled. We followed their advice when we were confused. We bought their books. And now we are a nation of socialists and communist sympathizers. And it happened without a single bullet being fired.
As for us, we can only pray that our two oldest children find God. They have no foundation other than the one they got from the culture. It is where they will turn by default. But Our Lord is the Lord of Mercy. We pray constantly that our sons will consent themselves to God, to His Divine Will. It is all we can do.
Our priest, on Saturday reminded us, "Train up a child in the way he should go, and he will not part from it." That gives me hope for our 5 remaining children. Will they be rebellious? Maybe. But it is we who have raised them. And we raised them at home, with Catholicism as our foundation.
Almost 100 years ago, Our Lady came to visit us at Fatima. She told the three little children that Russia had to be consecrated to Her Immaculate Heart. She left specific instructions on how to do this. She said that if this was done, Russia would be converted and the world would have peace. She warned that if it did not happen, the errors of Russia would be spread throughout the world and all the nations would be annihilated. This has not been done in the manner that Our Lord requested and therefore we are experiencing His chastisement.
May God grant His Mercy to us all!
Our Lady of Fatima, pray for us!
