SOMETHING'S ROTTEN IN DENMARK

 

"Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.” That's from the great Shakespeare himself in one of the most famous pieces of literature: "Hamlet."

That was said as Horatio and Hamlet see the ghost of Hamlet’s father beckoning to his son. Hamlet’s father had been king and was murdered by his brother, Hamlet’s uncle, Claudius.

When the ghost beckons Hamlet, Horatio and Marcellus try to prevent Hamlet from following the apparition, afraid of what harm might come to him.

The comment about something's being “rotten in Denmark” was a summary of the corruption under Claudius’s rule in the home of the Danes.

The next line, which is never included when someone uses the phrase today, paints a picture of faith: he says, “Heaven will direct it," that is, "We should let God take care of it.”

Something is rotten in Denmark when it comes to an American experiment which began in July 1963, also tried in other countries--that experiment has failed. Now the results are in: American education, public and private, has failed. The experiment, still on-going, is that we can educate without morality and expect good results. 

What's the evidence of failure? William Jeynes, a Professor of Education at California State University, Long Beach with graduate degrees from Harvard and the University of Chicago, has listed the evidence of the rottenness:

Academic achievement has plummeted, including SAT scores

Increased rate of out-of-wedlock births

 Increase in illegal drug use

 Increase in juvenile crime

 Deterioration of school behavior

We might add that an American university should provide the parents of all prospective students the following guarantee: "In less than four years at our school we will teach your child to hate his country." It's only fair to state the sticker price of the education they offer upfront since the old folks at home are going to be slicing a financial vein in their savings so their child(ren) can gain such an education.

The fetid smell wafting from the groves of academe` has a historical antecedent as stated by Tova Friedman,  a survivor of the Holocaust. She said, "Education without morality is completely worthless. Hitler and the whole war was orchestrated by very intelligent people, they were psychologists, lawyers, doctors, scientists & engineers. The people on top where excellent thinkers."

C. S. Lewis wrote: "Education without values, as useful as it is, seems rather to make a man a more clever devil."

Here's a testimony from a former teacher (there are a lot of former teachers these days because they couldn't stop or stand the stench): "Having taught in the state’s public school system for the past six years, I can attest to the fact that moral values have deteriorated since I left the teaching profession in 1980 to enter the insurance business. Cheating is not only rampant, but all too often is not viewed as morally wrong."

Just how bad is it? "The Oregon Education Department has announced that teaching that there is one right answer in math [is wrong}. (Aside from the fact that my grades in any given math course would have vastly improved under this dictum, something is truly wrong in Denmark.)

Another example from history, this one from East Germany before the fall of the wall: Esther is a 13 year-old girl who came home from school crying. Esther is a straight A student, top of her class in everything. When asked, "Why are you crying?" she said, "Because I can't go to school anymore." 

She explained, saying that there's going to be a parade tomorrow and we're all to stand beneath the huge head of Karl Marx and swear an oath to the state. (Sounds like something eerily akin to Daniel 3). She said that she told the teacher she was not going to swear such an oath. The teacher told her that she would be forced to quit school and go to work in a slipper factory.  

What's going on? In schools and all over the place in the West, there's enormous pressure to keep the practice of Christianity private. This also applies to any talk about God in public. In schools, public and private, God talk is forbidden so let's call it what it is and let's call what happened to the 13 year old what is it: intellectual murder. It's nothing short of the tyranny of the mind. 

Something is rotten in Denmark. We're in Denmark.