Completely Random fact: On this date back in…many years ago… I had my junior high school graduation. Wow. Before it was called middle school, before milk and gasoline broke $2.00 a gallon, during the reign of Ronald Reagan (sigh) was the good ol’ days.
The good ol’ days. What exactly are the good ol’ days? Do they really exist or is it just a figment of our imaginations–a longing for an elusive utopia that really never has existed and never will . Until the Lord comes back.
My mom talks about the good ol’ days. Her childhood was of a simpler time. I do believe that but I also believe things still happened. Nobody talked about them but that doesn’t mean they didn’t happen. The subjects were taboo. The media coverage was so limited that we only had time to talk about the most scandalous of the days events. I’ve never been able to figure out why we focus more on the bad news than the good, but it’s all about ratings right? So some of us must want to hear about the awful things happening out there. I know I don’t. I’d be much happier if the news went back to just being at 5 and 10 pm. Which in our house it is (we don’t have cable). You gotta try it. It’s great. Free TV. Just like the good ol’ days.
So my question of the day (QOTD) is: are the good ol’ days just propaganda? I’m starting to think they are. Things in the bible sound far from idyllic: “The show of their countenance doth witness against them; and they declare their sin as Sodom, they hide it not.” Isaiah 3:9. Hmm…kind of sounds like the USA today. Maybe even the world. The Bible also says back in Genesis that the days of Noah were so bad, that “every imagination of the thoughts of [mankind’s] heart was only evil continually. (Gen 6:5)” Doesn’t sound like Smalltown, USA portrayed on television, cable or otherwise. Even today as my nine year old and I read an autobiography from 1908, a tender nine-year-old protagonist and his family in rural Colorado were shot at over water feuds between ranches. A true drive-by shooting, if you will. 1908! The more I discover about the good ol’ days, they sound maybe a little better than today but not so very much. At least we were still hiding our sin in America in the recent past… there’s no hiding it today and if you speak out against you are a “hater”.
Take a simple topic like early childhood education. Much evidence has been suggested that young children who enroll in Head Start and other programs designed to improve academic performance amongst the disadvantaged (or the privileged for that matter) have had just the opposite effect. Children who develop a distaste for school largely consist of those who have been in it since they were 3 or 4 years of age. As the government tries harder and harder to nab more children under it’s umbrella of social indoctrination earlier and earlier, the results are truly disastrous. Anxiety and aggression characterize children who go to school before they are ready to learn in a formal academic setting. Study after innumerable study proves it to be true. We look at Finland as some kind of educational guru and even Finland does not teach children to read until the age of 7–so why are we not emulating them? Why do we not listen to the the true experts who conduct scientific research. Are all of them politically motivated? I have a hard time believing this is so. Dr.and Mrs.Raymond Moore were not looking for evidence supporting homeschooling,but what they found in their research suggested that homeschooling is a healthy academic environment for many children.(Homeschool Court Report 1st quarter, 2016)
Even the Department of Health and Human Services authored a report back in 2012 concluding the following:” Looking across the full study period, from the beginning of HS through 3rd grade, the evidence is clear that access to HS..had few impacts on children in kindergarten through 3rd grade…In summary, there were initial positive impacts from having access to HS, but by the end of 3rd grade there were very few impacts found for either cohort in any of the four domains of cognitive, social-emotional, health and parenting practices. The few impacts that were found did not show a clear pattern of favorable or unfavorable impacts for children.”
Ahem.
So why is it then, four years later,as attorney William Estrada faces California representative Lynn Woolsey, a member of the U.S. House Education Committee, he receives what he describes as the Meryl Streep Devil wears Prada death stare just because he questioned the benefits of Head Start or programs like it? Inflicted with the status of “Hater” because he did not support “Quality education, healthcare, [and] support services for parents…” Woolsey went on to argue such programs “need to be expanded so that we can ensure that every one of these little kids that are born in the United States of American has an opportunity to be successful.” I wonder if Ms. Woolsey in all of her research bothered to read the HHS’s study? Or anything of dissenting opinion.
Forgive me for being dubious that the success of small children and their parents is truly being championed by the government. I’m a bit more cynical in tending to think this lends itself to the reshaping of America into something utterly unrecognizable? To talk to young people these days who support Bernie Sanders or Hillary Clinton, you’d think that Socialism isn’t all that bad. And that capitalism is nothing less than pure selfishness. Perhaps it’s not really their fault they think that? After all, they probably weren’t taught about Capitalism in school unless it was to tout how selfish it is to think that everyone should pull his own weight (Think All in the Family theme song). Or that success might actually take a little hard work and ingenuity.
Our great president Abraham Lincoln said, “The philosophy of the school room in one generation will be the philosophy of government in the next.” This may be one of the favorite quotes of those who wish to make our society one which “redistributes wealth” because it is the responsible thing to do. To make the ground level for everyone. Wow that sounds charitable, doesn’t it? The problem is we have a sin nature. Yes all of us. Republicans. Democrats. Independents. Atheists. LGBT.Traditionalists. Socialism would be a beautiful thing, if we all voluntarily agreed to do it, free from government compulsion. If it were a matter of the heart and not a system of corrupt government. But since that is not the case let us not despair. Remember we are living in the temporal. In actuality, the ground is level. At the foot of the cross, “Whosoever will…” may come. He will turn away no one. He is no respecter of persons. And He loves the whole world so much that He sent His only son to die so that we might spend eternity with him in a flawless world that no one can imagine.
I have a feeling that the good ol’ days weren’t really as good as many of us remember. People don’t change. We are all sinners… there is none righteous… no not one. But don’t take it too hard…it’s far from a hopeless case. In fact, I’m convinced that for those who trust in Jesus for their salvation, the best days are yet to come.
The only antonym I could find for propaganda? Truth. Truth with a capital T. And contrary to popular belief, Truth isn’t a thing. It’s the Son of the living God.
“I am the way, the Truth and the Life. No man comes to the Father but by me.” John 14:6
Decidedly Different 