DROWNING CAN HAPPEN IN SECONDS

Driving past a number of fire stations this summer, I kept seeing the sign in front of them, “DROWNING CAN HAPPEN IN SECONDS.”  A fire department website has a video that scrolls through similar messages: “Drowning can happen at any age” and “Never swim alone at any age.”

Most of us probably know the truth of that but we don’t like to dwell on it. We want to enjoy our pool time or letting the waves of the ocean bob us up and down. Nevertheless, parents don’t let their young children play even near the pool without someone having a constant, careful eye on them. And we read of brave men and women rescuing desperate swimmers from the ocean’s grip time and time again.

Now, let’s keep the thought but switch our focus. Have you sent your fresh-faced teens, still with the glow of high school graduation, off to college, only to have them return as strangers, spouting ideas and ideologies that you have never heard from them before? Drowning in the ocean of critical race theory, the world’s end in ten years due to climate change, and opposition to capitalism (that made it possible to send them to college) can happen almost as quickly as drowning in the water you’ve been so careful to protect them from.

In my book, Who’s Got Dibs on Your Kids?, chapter one talks about who you can trust with your kids. Here’s the lead-in:

Making the Case for Knowledge

My husband and I recently visited some Civil War battlefields. Wilson’s Creek Battlefield in Missouri has a path going back a mile through woods to the site of the battle at Gibson’s Mill. The day was cloudy and cool after a light rain. We strolled, stepping over an almost-immobile turtle, breathing in the scents of damp earth and wet fallen leaves.

Then a shrub captured our attention. It grew about shoulder high, and had bright red, arching branches and stems. Fingers of berries hung in various stages of ripeness, ranging from green to hot pink to purplish-black. We had never seen a plant like this before and wondered what it was. Returning to the Visitor Center, we asked the ranger if she could identify it. She couldn’t, but offered to call a man “who knew everything about the Wilson’s Creek site.” She described it just as we had to her, listened, thanked him, and hung up.

“He says it’s sumac,” she said.

Looking at each other, we shook our heads. While some varieties of sumac do have red stems and branches, we knew this was not sumac. We told her, “It’s not sumac. The leaves of sumac along the path have already turned red. This plant’s leaves were green, not shaped like sumac leaves, and the branches and stems were very red.”

The ranger didn’t even try to hide her outrage. “He says it’s sumac, and he knows everything there is to know about this place.” She turned and went back to her desk.

Back home, a quick Internet search told us the plant we had seen was pokeberry. Not sumac.

If we had not known what sumac looked like, we might have gone through the rest of our lives believing the plant was—must be—sumac. We had to have some basic knowledge of plants to know we were being given bad information.

Are you giving your children enough information about . . . well . . . everything—at least those matters that might be misrepresented—that they will be able to recognize falsehoods?

 

This effort of providing trustworthy information to your kids can’t start as you wave them off to college. The purveyors of falsehoods start very early. Liberty Nation News reported, “Over the Fourth of July long weekend, the nation’s largest teachers’ union, the National Education Association (NEA), announced that it plans to teach critical race theory in all 50 states and more than 14,000 school districts. In addition, during its annual representative assembly, the NEA approved two items that would impose CRT into the K-12 classroom.” (Emphasis mine.)

Climate change is taught across the board as well. And here is an excerpt of what one teacher had to say about the teaching of capitalism and socialism:

Without a doubt, the most significant cause for the rise in popularity of socialism is due to the education system.

How do I know? I witnessed it first hand as a former public high school social studies teacher who taught in both Illinois and South Carolina.

During my time as a teacher, I was absolutely shocked at the way socialism and communism was taught to today’s students by so many of my peers, as well as in textbooks.

Overlooked is the mass murder and lack of basic rights that are part and parcel to almost every socialist and communist regime in human history. Instead, a historical revisionism that socialism is morally superior to capitalism is favored.

It’s not that socialism is bad, students are told, it just hasn’t been perfected, yet.

The Daily Signal carried an article dated December 01, 2020, that read:

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development further says: “The skills, attitudes and values that shape human behavior should be re-thought, to counter the discriminatory behaviors picked up at school and in the family.” The aim is to undo parents’ teaching within the family and reeducate children into ideal ‘global citizens’ who will prize equality for all. (Emphasis mine.)

Drowning in failed ideologies can happen at any age, and it can happen in the blink of an eye.

Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight. Proverbs 3:5-6