See also Humanism vs. Traditional Values

By J. Edward Pawlick, Publisher

The Superintendent of Schools in Acushnet, Harold G. Devine, is attempting to accomplish two goals as a result of the Fistgate controversy:

• All areas of the schools will continue under his strict control, with the help and guidance of the teachers' unions and the educational establishment - and with as little involvement from the parents as possible.
• The worldview of religious humanism will continue as dominant over the traditional Judeo-Christian worldview.

Although Devine was a puzzle at the beginning of the month, it has become clear that he is a creation of the professionals in the education establishment; and it is to them, not the parents, that he looks for guidance.

It was strange when he announced to the 50 parents who arrived for his meeting last month that he would talk only about Massachusetts News that day. He would talk about nothing else. Why, everyone wondered, would he limit the meeting to only a scathing discussion of our newspaper when he had already agreed with the principal to scuttle the entire project we had written about? Why wouldn't he be thanking us?

Was there more to this than we could see? Did he have some guilt which he was afraid would bubble to the surface? One had to wonder what caused this curious behavior.

It Is Now Clear
It is now clear what concerns him. He and his friends in the education establishment have known about Massachusetts News for the entire year of our existence. And they've also known about our desire to put parents back in charge of the schools. This is something the establishment will fight with every fiber of their being.

The parents lost the right to control their schools back in the 1970s when teachers were allowed to unionize, and any dispute between them and the school committees was decided by a single bureaucrat in Boston, even including salaries. The school committees were reduced to helpless anachronisms.

(When I was Chairman of the Teachers Committee of a 10,000 pupil school district in the early 1960s, it was clear that if the teachers were ever allowed to unionize, they would be running the schools, not the parents. It happened in Massachusetts about 1974 and the schools have deteriorated ever since. We have tried band-aids such as charter schools to put the parents back in charge, but we will continue to have serious problems until we admit the mistake of teacher unions.)

Devine is obviously well aware that we have written articles in favor of phonics and against whole-language. And we have also written in favor of old-fashioned math programs that are being reinstated in schools all across the country, including Massachusetts. Plus, we've written many other articles that the teachers and the educational establishment see as a threat to them, including support for home schooling.

Devine wrote an article while Superintendent of Schools in 1998 for the teachers union's journal in Massachusetts in which he "compares charter schools to greedy and inefficient HMOs," according to the Pacific Research Institute. Devine wrote, "Like with the HMOs, competition from additional service providers will force this new industry to seek greater economies and, of course, greater profits." He said he rejects any data which purports to "document the failures of public education." That does not sound like an open mind.

Started Attacking Immediately
Massachusetts News has not attacked any person in our articles about Acushnet, but Devine is not about to follow the same rule. We went out-of-our-way to say in a large headline that the occurrence in the Ford Middle School was not unique to Acushnet because all middle schools were being forced by the Governor and his staff to act in this manner.

We did not make any personal attacks against Christine L. Hoyle, the school teacher. All we did was report in accurate detail what she did and said at the Fistgate conference. It was her choice to appear there, not ours. 

Devine, however, has made only personal attacks against us from the beginning. He apparently knows nothing different. He doesn't know the meaning of a civil discussion. He still has not said anything that is substantive. It has all been personal.

For example, before he held the first meeting on Wednesday, August 9, there was a large headline in the Standard-Times quoting him that our article is "scurrilous." He told the paper that we are completely wrong but he still hasn't revealed where we are wrong. In fact, at the meeting, he was unable to tell parents, who demanded to know, what in our long article is not true. He said we are "anti-government, anti-school" and that we have "an agenda." He said, "They're true zealots."

How would he have made that determination unless he has been checking with his ultra-liberal friends at the teachers' union and the other leaders of the education establishment?

Devine was also handing out with approbation large piles of articles from the Times, one of which indicated the level of discussion when it said this about us, "[T]his state's first, dyed-in-the-wool, ultra-Right Wing, incredibly homophobic, intolerant, hate-mongoring rag in the guise of a newspaper."

It apparently is a lot of fun for Devine to help spawn such venom, but what does it have to do with Acushnet Middle School? 

Who Is In Charge?
It was clear at the meeting that Dr. Devine is accustomed to being in charge in Acushnet. It is not known whether he and the members of the School Board agree on most issues. However, there is no doubt that any member of the Board who wishes to challenge him and to represent the view of the parents will have a formidable opponent who has all the power at his command, including a secretary and other minions. 

The code words are already there. There is to be no discussion. No debate. All you will continue to hear are words such as, "ultra-Right Wing," "hate-mongering" and the like.

One unidentified mother told the Times that she thinks it's "fantastic" if the prejudice class teaches children not to "pick on anyone because they're different." And we heartily agree with the statement from that mother. But there's a big difference between teaching tolerance and promoting a lifestyle.

It has become painfully clear that this whole matter involves much more than Acushnet - in the eyes of Harold G. Devine. It is embarrassing to me that even I was unable to see this before now.
 
 

Humanism vs. Traditional Values It is clear that Dr. Devine knows that Massachusetts News has written extensively about the tremendous conflict between the religion of Humanism (which is dominant in our schools) and the traditional beliefs of Judeo-Christian thought. The debate over Fistgate goes back to that fundamental principle. The explicit sex that was taught at Fistgate is a natural evolution of Humanism, which is in sharp conflict with Judeo-Christian values. Both the Boston Globe and WGBH agree with the religion of Humanism. That is why they have no outrage over Fistgate and continue to support what occurred there. And it is why they oppose us so vehemently. This is no mere debate about the Acushnet Middle School. It is a debate about two opposing worldviews. And although most parents will say they do not want to enter into such a debate, Dr. Devine does not leave them with a choice. Everywhere we look, the religion of humanism surrounds us. And it is a "religion."  If there are any who oppose this new religion, they must start to realize that and demand "equal time" in the schools and elsewhere.  The humanists agree that they are a religion. A scholar has written on their website, "Humanists have been debating the question of whether humanism is a religion for years, and many are now tired of that debate, considering it only a semantic question." They're correct that it was a question of semantics - until the humanists chased every other religion out of the schools in the last few decades. Now it is no longer "semantic," it is a very important question. Their website also quotes one of the thirty-four signatories of the 1933 Humanist Manifesto as saying, "Religion is primarily a thing, not of beliefs or organizations, but of the deepest emotions of human life, of emotional drives, attitudes, aspirations....Religion is a way of life, not a kind of belief or a particular organization." How can we disagree with them? The religion of Humanism has become our "national religion" just as they planned in 1933. The U.S. Supreme Court may be closer to agreement than we realize. Back in 1963, the Court wrote, "We agree, of course, that the State may not establish a 'religion of secularism' in the sense of affirmatively opposing or showing hostility to religion, thus 'preferring those who do believe in no religion over those who do believe." Although the Court did not believe that this had occurred in the case before it, it definitely said that there is such a thing as a "religion of secularism." Although we may not have had Humanism dominating our culture back in 1963 when the Court wrote that decision, can anyone deny that it does today?