Neighborhood Ministries

The Ohio legislature passed a bill to safeguard and  protect the parent’s rights and to address the growing tyranny of the educational establishment. The bill just came into effect in April, 2025. It reestablishes the parent’s right to make decisions about the child’s upbringing, care, and education and requires schools to enact policies allowing parents more say in their child’s education. It would guarantee parent’s right to know what is being taught in the school and to be heard when they voice opposition to it.  It also requires schools to accept religious education in the schools when parents request it, under certain conditions, allowing release time religious classes. Nineteen other States have already passed similar legislation. It would also require schools to notify parents ahead of time when the school was going to provide instruction involving sexual material and would protect students from being pressured by school staff to transition to the opposite sex without the parent’s knowledge. It would also require the school to notify the parents if a student requests a change in gender recognition at school. It would also protect the child’s privacy and require schools to inform parents of violent activity in the school. Finally, it would protect parent’s right to view school budgets. In 2021, the FBI created a task force to investigate threats against school board members. Under Congressional investigation by conservative representatives, the FBI stated that they would no longer use it to infringe on parent’s rights to voice their opinions.

The schools have increasingly been pushing parents out of the decision making process over the education of their children. The schools have become increasingly secretive about what is being taught because they don’t want parents to know what is being taught School boards were set up in each school district and were supported by funds from local taxes. Our schools were founded on the principle that parents would oversee the schools and Board members were elected by voters in the district. Members were known in the school district and elected based on the values of the voters. The boards held regular board meetings where parents could voice concerns and inform board members about their concerns. In addition, school districts usually had Parent-Teacher Associations (PTAs) where parents and teachers worked together to support the schools.  However, the federal department of education has increasingly been funneling money to school districts under the pretense of helping poorer districts. However money has been distributed to both rich and poor districts making them increasingly dependent on those funds. The federal department of education then began blackmailing school districts to include liberal moral and ethical teaching, by threatening to cut off funds if they did not comply and hiding it from parents. Many of the programs were instituted without notifying parents. The Covid crisis forced schools to go online and children were forced to work from home. opened the door to parents to see what is being taught in the schools. As parents learned about programs that they had not been many aware of, they were shocked to learn what the schools have been hiding from them. As a result, many of them began speaking out against them. When parents objected they were ignored or even ridiculed. Liberal politicians began labeling the parents who objected to what is being taught as terrorists and began pushing the FBI to begin investigating them.  They even opened a number of investigations on parents who have voiced opposition to their school’s liberal agenda, under the pretense that they pose a threat to school board members, in order to intimidate the parents so they will remain silent.  Parents who only want what is best for their kids are being threatened and intimidated to silence their opposition to the liberal agenda.

Boys are increasingly tuning out school. Boys like a challenge and want to find out how things work. They also thrive on competition. In addition, they need to get out and move around regularly. They don’t like long sessions sitting down. Schools in the past were ideal for boys. They involved hands on learning, stressed grading which was based  on achievement, and had regular recesses to break up the day. Unfortunately, this placed girls at a disadvantage because girls like reading more than doing hands on projects, are more interested in going along with the crowd, than competing, and don’t mind long periods of sitting. Since the 1960’s, schools have increasingly gravitated towards learning facts and figures rather than how things work because multiple choice questions can be graded by machine where essay questions can’t, saving time. Grades and competitions are being eliminated in an attempt to make all students winners and avoid leaving anyone behind. In addition, recesses are being eliminated to make more time for learning. While these changes benefit girls, they leave boys frustrated. As a result, boys are turning to sports to excel and leaving academics behind. If fact, boys are dropping out of school at an alarming rate. More girls graduate from high school then boys. The same is true for college and master’s level schools. While teachers formerly tailored learning to individual learning styles within co-ed classrooms, more recently teachers seem unable or unwilling to do so and have assumed a one style fits all approach which benefits girls but turns boys off. An increasing number of public schools, as well as private schools are finding that boys and girls actually learn better when separated by gender and learning is tailored to their different learning styles. In elementary schools, it also helps by enabling students to focus on school. While our society pressures boys and girls to spend time together, boys and girls of elementary school age prefer to separate by gender. It is a time when they are recognizing their differences and seeking to discover who they are and mixing genders creates conflict between them. By separating them, it reduces the distraction and allows them to concentrate on their studies. Many churches have known that for years and when Sunday School classes are large enough, they have found dividing boys and girls is more important to class stability than separating each class by grade level, as long as there aren’t too many grades together.

Some States are beginning to mandate that the Ten Commandments be taught in the public schools and many people are saying it violates the teaching of religion. However, the Ten Commandments are not strictly a product of Judaism and Christianity. Just about every culture has laws that forbid killing, stealing, lying, and others. The difference  between the Ten Commandments and other laws is that the Ten Commandments are given by God. It is generally accepted that those who make the laws can change them. If God made them, no man can change them. Those made by man may be changed by those that make them, or by those called to interpret them. We are seeing the difference in the United States today.  Judges who believe in the Constitution and the rule of law restrict themselves to interpreting the laws passed by Congress and the people while those who believe laws are man-made feel they can ignore the law when it interferes with what they want to do, or they can use it to harass their opponents and overlook it when it affects their friends. In the mid-1900’s, the Ten Commandments were firmly imbedded in our government and judicial system and people generally respected the law. There were those who disobeyed the law and they were usually punished but they made up a small portion of the population. Today, the Ten Commandments is banned from many schools and court rooms and the Constitution and laws passed by Congress and the people are often ignored or twisted to fit the person’s purpose. As a result, we see widespread lawlessness on our streets and in our political arena. Many judges and politicians feel they are above the law and the people follow their leaders.  The police can only do so much.  Laws may prevent killing or stealing, or lying when they are enforced, but they cannot prevent the hatred that produces killing, the greed that produces stealing, or the deceitfulness that prevents lying. Those feelings can only be contained when a person respects his neighbor, their property, and their reputation. It is that respect for man, his possessions, and his reputation that are taught in the Ten Commandments. If a person does not respect his neighbor, he will lie, steal, and even kill if he thinks he can get away with it. I wrote a series of study courses based on the values set down in the Ten Commandments to illustrate the difference between man’s values and the values God set down in the Ten Commandments.