“Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray thee, Lord, my soul to keep; if I should die before I wake, I pray thee, Lord, my soul to take.”
You may remember this popular children’s bedtime prayer. You may have even been taught to recite this prayer when you were younger. Amazingly, this prayer first appeared in the New England Primer. How unconstitutional? Or is it? A school system would be taken to court for even having this thought today. However, it was not so during the founding of our nation. Instead, history records just the opposite. Interestingly, the New England Primer only used references from the Bible to teach children to read and write. This Biblically saturated textbook was also used to instill moral values and principles in the minds of children. If the founders of the Constitution and the First Amendment had desired religion out of the public school system, why did they allow the New England Primer to be used to teach school children to read, write, and learn Biblically based moral principles and values?
Below are two more pictures from the New England Primer. Notice the Biblical inspired means of education children received from the textbook. These three pictures are just a few examples. This textbook is filled with page after page of Biblical references. I have added the red circles for emphasis.
Miller, Dave. The Silencing of God. Montgomery, AL: Apologetics Press, Inc., 2008. p55.
Bedtime prayer – http://public.gettysburg.edu/~tshannon/his341/nep05pg21.htm
Picture on the left – http://public.gettysburg.edu/~tshannon/his341/nep05pg11.htm
Picture on the right – http://public.gettysburg.edu/~tshannon/his341/nep05pg12.htm
I am doing a research paper about technology in the classroom and stumbled upon your blog. It excites me to see people publicly taking a stand for Christ and educating others! I don't have time now since I'm up against a deadline(I'm such a procrastinator) but I look forward to reading what you have to share with the world!!!
ReplyDeleteYou asked: How could this Biblical saturated textbook be used to teach students if the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment in our Federal Constitution is meant to prevent the Federal Government from supporting religion in the minds of its citizens?
ReplyDeleteThe answer is simple, the federal government did not REALLY start TAKING OVER education until the 1970's. Before then and even now, very few people know about the Education Bureau that started it all... that slippery slope was started during reconstruction (during the 1860s). It started as a bureau for the purpose of paying officers to collect and diffuse STATISTICS in reference to education.
But if you read the debates carefully you soon see that federal control of education to ENSURE LOYALTY TO THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT was the goal.
One Congressman that opposed it was Mr. Rogers of New Jersey. He observed that it was unheard of to establish a centralized "bureau for the purpose of giving the principles by which the children of the different states shall be educated." Turning to the Constitution, he stated, "there is no authority under the Constitution of the United States to authorize Congress to interfere with education of children of the different states in any manner, directly or indirectly."
Congressman Rogers pointed out the inherent flaw in the Bill. It purported to give Congress jurisdiction over education. Once jurisdiction over education, however, was asserted, it could be expanded by Congress as desired. Encouraging education was no different than controlling it, if jurisdiction was once conceded.(the slippery slope)
Also much of the U.S. didn't have compulsory education until the late 1800s/early 1900s, although until the 1930s, many were unsuccessful in enforcing their compulsory schooling laws. The "funny" thing is that this happens at the same time as the child labor laws... after the great depression.
State-level child labor laws were being put into place by progressive organizations/unions who lobbied for them and they were often paired with compulsory education laws which were designed to put/keep children in school and out of the paid labor market until a specified age.
You see children were preferred because they were more manageable, cheaper, and less likely to strike, which really put a damper on adults looking for work. The economy reached bottom in the winter of 1932–33; then came four years of very rapid growth until 1937, when the Recession of 1937 brought back 1934 levels of unemployment. The federal law against child labor didn't pass until 1938, with the Fair Labor Standards Act. It was the same law that gave us a minimum wage and defined what constitutes full-time, part-time, and over-time work.
It was a very handy way to raise wages and lower the unemployment rate... simply define whole sectors of the potential workforce as unemployable.
BTW there is only one 2012 Presidential candidate who wants to get the federal government out of education because it has no Constitutional authority to be there... Ron Paul.
Thanks for these informative articles. Things are changing in education because people are ready to return to the freedom America promises. We will have The Word of God back in the classroom; that is the only way to get a real education.
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