Education or indoctrination

Monte Benham, Sponsor I-345 (now I-1058)

Here are answers to Chris Kenoyer (a South Ridge High School English Teacher) opposition points published in the Tri-City Herald (22 Sept. 05). (The Herald refused to publish this response)

Kenoyer’s Point: “Teachers are supposed to Educate – Not Indoctrinate.”

Answer: Students are indoctrinated when educators refuse to expose children to the written words of our founding documents. The result of this educational censorship is that most students don’t comprehend the source of their rights and the purpose of government as presented in our founding documents. The crime rate is up because a growing number of citizens don’t understand the moral basis of our laws. We must pay higher taxes to support the growing need for more police, judges, and jails.

Kenoyer’s Point: “Supporters of I-345 (I-1058) have an arrogant assumption that the God taught in the classroom would naturally conform to the God of their own beliefs.”

Answer: The words chosen in the Declaration of Independence and the state Constitution allow people to view God anyway they choose. Religious choice is preserved when teachers direct all questions about the nature of God (not stated in the Declaration of Independence and our Constitutions) to parents.

Kenoyer’s Point: The First Amendment states: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” Then she states: “Those wise men desired to keep government…out of the people’s private relationship with religious worship…”

Answer: That is correct. Sectarian religions provide methods for worshiping God. The founding documents do not proscribe methods of worship nor do they promote a religious sect. The founding fathers wanted each individual to find their own way to pay (or ignore) devotion to God. “In God we trust.” is engraved on our money. We celebrate “Thanksgiving” each year to show gratitude to God. The Preambles to all 50 state Constitutions mention thanks to God for our Liberties.

Dictators remove God from schools. Then they deny other basic individual rights. The First Amendment and the state Constitutions prohibits government from being hostile to religion.

Kenoyer’s Point: “How could this initiative not be about religion when perfectly good Webster’s dictionaries…need to be supplemented by a 177 year-old dictionary.”

Answer: Evidently, she has not tried to find the definition of “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God” in modern dictionaries. Here is the definition given in Webster’s 1828 Dictionary:

“Law of nature, is a rule of conduct arising out of the natural relations of human beings established by the Creator, and existing prior to any positive precept. Thus it is a law of nature, that one man should not injure another, and murder and fraud would be crimes, independent of any prohibition from a supreme power.”

This makes it clear that to injure another, or to commit fraud, or murder were all wrong before any civil government was established. The Law of Nature and of Nature’s God provided the justification for the founders “to declare the causes which impel to the separation” (from England).

Kenoyer’s Point: The state constitution states: “No public money or property shall be appropriated for or applied to any religious worship….” and “All schools maintained or supported wholly or in part by the public funds shall be forever free from sectarian control or influence.”

Answer: That is correct. The state constitution and the Declaration of Independence do not prescribe methods of worship and they do not promote a religious sect. These documents state the intent of our founding fathers just as the Federalist Papers do. The Declaration of Independence provides an outline for the United States Constitution and all state Constitutions.

Kenoyer’s Point: “The text of I-345 (now I-1058) would create a new law to micromanage the teaching of the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. and Washington State Constitutions.”

Answer: I-345 (now I-1058) amends an existing law because a judge ruled that “any study constitutes study.” So schools have left it up to the teacher to do the right thing. Most schools have not taught the founding principles found in the Declaration of Independence, the Washington state Constitution and the United States Constitution. I-345 (now I-1058) will allow students to read directly from our founding documents.

Initiative 345 (now I-1058) will improve education, without increasing taxes, by requiring our schools to teach the relationship of The Declaration of Independence to the Constitution of the United States and to the Constitution of the state of Washington. I-345 (now I-1058) will also require schools to conspicuously display these founding documents.