One of our public elementary schools here in British Columbia has a Led Zeppelin poster hanging in the music room. This poster is called a “supplementary instructional resource,” meaning that it is not an official District-sanctioned learning resource, but it is a resource selected by the music teacher, at his discretion, to assist teaching the music learning outcomes to elementary students, as required by the curriculum.
There are a number of obvious problems with this poster apparent to those who care about children:
- Jimmy Page confessed that the Led Zeppelin band was about drugs from the very beginning to the very end, at least for him. People are dead because of this drug-rock era, including performers, band managers, and countless fans. The School District states that it “supports efforts designed to prevent and intervene in substance abuse among students.” Similarly, the district and individual schools are opposed to tobacco usage. It would be ludicrous for a school to celebrate the Marlboro man by hanging a poster of him inside a classroom. This would constitute implied endorsement of tobacco usage in conflict with the school’s policy against tobacco usage. The District confesses in their policies that school teachers “may be perceived as role models for pupils.”
- Said poster cannot help small children learn how to play the recorder or sing “do-re-mi.” To argue that it is an learning resource for five to twelve-year-olds is laughable.
- God help us if one of our children browses the Led Zeppelin CD section in Wal-mart or HMV– they might stumble upon the oft-banned child-porn Egyptian-god-worshiping album cover.
I brought a complaint to the school about this poster, suggesting that our goal of caring for our children’s health with regards to substance abuse reasonably includes refraining from implicitly endorsing substance abuse.
The school’s “sensitive materials” committee (principal + music teacher + one parent) reviewed my complaint and concluded that the poster was harmless, and valuable enough to remain stapled to the wall.
I then brought the complaint to the School District. After several months of letters being sent back and forth, they finally informed me that they had no official policy in place to deal with these “supplemental” resources; they would only review parent-submitted complaints about the official [and less potentially controversial] materials. This pack of unbelievers have policy papers coming out their ears, except when a policy paper might actually be useful in morality, ethics, or any such demonstration of love toward any subset of human beings in our community.
So, I brought my complaint to the Provincial ministries of Education and Health, as the ‘resource’ obviously pertains to both health and education. To my delight, the current Minister of Education in BC is also a doctor who likely has some thoughts on health. My simple question to our Provincial politicians was, “How might we reasonably understand this poster hanging in the children’s music room in the context of health, the prevention of substance abuse, and educational principles?”
I also pointed out to them that the provincial School Act calls for inculcation of the “highest morality” in school conduct.1
After several months of ignoring my letters and delegating the matter to other ministries and other MLAs, the province eventually got back to me with a letter confessing their neglect in reviewing the complaint, justifying this recklessness by referring to the very same brainless pieces of policy papers that the District had attempted to placate me with.
Now the matter is sitting on the desk of the Prime Minister of our nation. It is such a difficult one to deal with, it needed to come to this. Where is a wise man when we need one?
We understand that “the darkness has not understood” the light. (John 1:5; NIV.) I am realizing that the more immersed we are in the light, the more difficulty we have understanding the darkness. What a strange planet this is.
—
Footnote:
1. When this sentence about inculcating the highest morality [BC School Act; Section 76] was originally formulated in Ontario prior to being compromised by conspicuous modification, “highest morality” referred explicitly to the Bible. I’m curious about how many people in Canada have any clue as to where to even find “morality,” much less where to find it in its “highest form,” and then to actually take a stand for it. Canadians stand for such maniacal nonsense as the official “Gay Welcoming Whistler” for our 2010 Olympics. Hey, we’re all sinners, but do we really need official celebrations of certain variations of sin? Why do we not have a “Fornicators-and-Adulterers-Club Whistler Welcoming,” a “Teenagers-who-Do-Not-Keep-Their-Pants-On-and-Prefer-Abortion Welcoming,” or a “Shack-up-and-Ruin-a-Family-Society Welcoming” for the Olympics? My children do not really need to be exposed to a warm welcome from a particular ‘proud’ sexual group. In those ridiculous “old-fashioned” days, kids did not even learn about sex until they were teenagers. Now those parents who have some concern about strangers teaching sexuality to their children must preempt the school system to teach their six-year-olds about “homosexuality.” The so-called ’secular’ fools of our nation are working overtime to get various messages of sexual immorality to the kids in case, of course, they have that universal human tendency to be sexually immoral and require a whole lot of extra help in a culture that is so discriminatory against the perverse! Apparently, the universal strategy is to teach kids to be proud of their sin. Guess what, gays, you do not have a monopoly on sin or perversion– you are really not that special. We all need to be saved from the wretches we are.
We would really rather not be talking about sex with our tiny children, but we accept that compared to many Canadian parents, we are the strange ones– we read that big fairytale Bible that is the world’s most influential book, written across 1500 years by 40 authors, all witnessing to that One who remains the unchanging living witness in our hearts today. We would love to show unconditional love to our fellow sinners, while yet not compromising the truth or neglecting to show the kind of love that comes in the form of admonishment; meanwhile, our nation is ushering in Islam and Shariah law, which will see to it that the sexually immoral are beaten, whipped, and/or executed; they prefer not to defer wrath and punishment to their Allah-god. But Canadians do not talk about Islam, because it helps them believe that the infection really is not happening. Satan has told us that we create our own realities by dreams and wishes invented in our [deceitfully wicked] hearts. We generally appreciate that lie, because we would rather do anything than submit to the God we hate. Even feminists, of all people, find some benefit in collaborating with the preachers and victims of Islam. If they can work together at some attempt to take a swipe at Jesus Christ, they can always stab each other in the back later.
There is a problem here for the enemies of the King of kings: His kingdom is not of this world; therefore, policy/legal swipes at Christians do not touch His kingdom. Even Satan is not so stupid as to plot that kind of failing tactic. When you say that the age of Christianity is over, you will discover that it is just beginning. If this pathetic militant world has not even managed to get rid of those pesky Jews who always want their nation, how much more will it dramatically fail in attempts to stomp out Jesus Christ. He is not going away. When all is gone, He alone will remain.
No comments:
Post a Comment