WHY PREACHING TO ATHEISTS DOES NOT WORK  BY DAVE MUNDY:

 

Why preaching to atheists doesn’t work

May 20, 1998

While in Houston one day last week shamelessly self-marketing my book to a small bookshop owner, I received a rather discouraging piece of information. When you look at it thoughtfully, it goes a long way in explaining why we're in the mess we're in with public education.

After doing a quick browse through the book, the shop's owner — who caters primarily to a clientele of upscale, relatively affluent suburban moms — said she probably wouldn't carry it.

"It's not that there's not a problem, and it's not that what you're saying here isn't true," she explained. "It's just that my customers don't want to hear that message."

It hit me like a brick, but the more I thought on the matter, the more I realized how that statement explains why the message from those of us actively combating educational restructuring is so roundly ignored. We're trying to send that message to an audience which has already made up its mind, in proverbial preaching-to-the-atheist-convention fashion.

It makes sense, actually. For the same reason you can't convince a welfare mother that welfare is wrong, you can't convince a "PTA mommy" that what's going on in our public schools is wrong; each, in her own fashion, sees immense benefit.

Why do messages raising objections to this national education "restructuring" agenda keep getting shouted down.

Consider the following quote from a booklet promoting the "agenda" of the National Parent-Teacher Association:

"Today, public education is under attack by well-organized and well-financed groups who do not tolerate different opinions. Groups or individuals who attempt to impose their values and beliefs on others — permitting no dissent or debate, no opposition and no questioning — circumvent the democratic process."

The words are interesting, primarily for their falsehood.

Those who oppose education "reform" are not attacking public education; in fact, they're trying to improve it by getting rid of the nonsense which — for the past 35 years — has brought it to the dubious point of being near-last in the world. They're not attacking education, they're attacking the Utopian social engineers masquerading as educators.

Well-organized? Does that mean the National Education Association, the Clinton and Bush administrations, the U.S. Departments of Education and Labor, the Texas Education Agency and all their adjunct promoters of "consensus" are DISorganized?

Well-financed? (I'm kinda hoping to reap the benefit on that one, actually, but nobody bribes reporters any more.) Perhaps we could do a comparison of the monetary resources of, say, the Citizens for Excellence in Education (an anti-reform group with a couple hundred members scattered about) with that of, say, the Carnegie Foundation, with assets in the billions, most of them dedicated to promoting "reform."

"Imposition of values and beliefs" is a good one, I have to admit. That might explain why the NEA and its allies have actively sought legislation to halt abstinence-based sex education, prohibit any public expression of religious beliefs, and to impose "globalist" philosophies on elementary students who don't even know the first thing about their own Constitution.

But my favorite is the line about limiting debate and differing opinions. Those of us battling "reform" have, for years, challenged the edu-establishment to show proof that what they're doing works — or, at the very least, the chance to show our side of the story.

We've been dismissed as fruitcakes, lectured to by school-board presidents, shouted down on school-district committees for being "argumentative," and in some instances, prohibited from even distributing written materials. Attempts to bring matters to a real vote — the democratic process — are circumvented by "consensus."

But they've never answered that basic question by providing proof that "reform" works.

I wonder why.