Why Would WOW Suddenly Be Against Title IX?

“Just tell them you’re a girl if they ask you anything and they’ll leave you alone.” This is what my son’s soccer coach told him a couple of years ago when he was told to play on the girl’s soccer team a few times so that they wouldn’t forfeit. (Coaches stop at nothing to get a win.) My son didn’t want to disobey his coach so he went on the field with the girls. He reported to me, “It was so easy Mom. At first, it was fun to be so much better than them, but then it was boring, and felt like we were just being mean. I didn’t like it. And, after a bit, the coach told us not to score, but just set up the score by passing it to a girl for the point.” This is happening to our girls. No wonder so many girls are stopping sports.

Title IX, adopted in 1972, known for disallowing the discrimination of women based on sex in education programs and activities, has historically helped women have access to sports and was a reason for the creation of women-only sports teams and clubs. Over the years, the Worldwide Organization For Women [WOW] has referred many legislators and leaders to Title IX as a standard to follow for the non-discrimination of women in educational settings. So, why now, after 46 years as a women’s and girl’s advocacy organization, would WOW be against Title IX?

Even though Title IX isn’t perfect, in its current state it has been protecting women and girls from harassment and discrimination in educational settings. College campuses have Title IX offices to take complaints to and to help women and girls navigate social and academic situations that target their sex on campuses. However, now, under the Biden administration, Title IX has been attacked, thereby actually attacking women.

Proposed Changes 

In October, the Biden administration and the Department of Education are planning to make the following changes to Title IX.

“The proposed regulation would be in the Title IX regulations at section 106.41(b)(2):

If a recipient adopts or applies sex-related criteria that would limit or deny a student’s eligibility to participate on a male or female team consistent with their gender identity, such criteria must, for each sport, level of competition, and grade or education level: (i) be substantially related to the achievement of an important educational objective, and (ii) minimize harms to students whose opportunity to participate on a male or female team consistent with their gender identity would be limited or denied.” (ed.gov press release)

What is this saying?

This addition says that so long as a person says that they identify as a certain gender they can play on that gender’s school sports teams. This would include full participation involving locker room and restroom access for that specific gender. It says that the only way a student can be denied is if there is a reason related to an “important educational objective” and that students shouldn’t be denied based on gender. “Important educational objective” is a very subjective term that would be hard to prove in court.

These changes eliminate vital protections for women. Gender isn’t the same thing as sex. Previously Title IX protected women and girls because of their biological sex. Now, Title IX would protect people based on their declared gender. If this occurs, women and girls will no longer have safe spaces to engage in sports. Not only will men and boys feel it’s an easy way to poach the girls’ matches and get the win, but women and girls will get hurt and not make the teams they hope to make. Putting the emphasis on gender instead of sex excludes women from sports by forcing them to unfairly compete with biological males. These changes will be bad for the physical, emotional, and social health of women and girls.

The Department of Education [DOE] says that these changes need to be made to clear up “uncertainty” by coaches related to students of other genders playing sports. This is overreach! The states are tackling this issue independently of the DOE and feel good about their local laws. Federal control of education is unconstitutional, therefore mandating policy related to gender should be a state issue. Additionally, creating a Title IX gender mandate attempts to undermine laws that states have already made that disallow biological males in women’s school sports.

The DOE Is Behaving Unethically 

The creation of the DOE was unconstitutional, and the DOE has overstepped its bounds multiple times. WOW has historically opposed governmental overreach due to our desire to protect state sovereignty. So, it isn’t new that WOW would oppose the US national government on an educational issue. However, this time WOW feels that an attack on women and girls is not just overreach, but unethical conduct for a government department.

As the president of WOW I take women’s sports seriously. I know that without playing on volleyball, basketball, and softball teams in my youth, I wouldn’t be the woman that I am today. Thanks to the Title IX movement of 1972 I had no limitations to my sporting aspirations. Society empowered so many girls and women just like me as they supported equality in sports.

Now, women and girls are pulling away from sports again due to men and boys choosing to claim they are female and then poaching on the girls just like my son did in those unfair soccer games.

The changes to Title IX must be stopped soon. Put pressure on the DOE by sharing this article and posting your positive stories about Title IX or negative stories about the proposed changes to Title IX on social media.

If Title IX is corrupted with these proposed revisions, we will have no choice but to call for the abolition of the US Department of Education.

WOW Africa Future Initiative Programs

WOW Africa women in Anambra state are investing in the future of the next generation by hosting programs to prepare youth for better futures.

WOW Africa was asked by local schools to give a message of hope and purpose to boys and girls.

WOW Africa leadership sees the wisdom in putting their focus on the youth to prepare them to pave a better way forward for their society.

WOW Africa has a history of working with community leaders to improve health care, education, helping those with disabilities and helping widows and women financially. Their future initiative is just another step forward for creating positive change for Nigeria.

WOW Africa Leadership Program

The women of WOW Africa Nigeria in Anambra state are making waves as they train the next generation of young people to be leaders. WOW Africa knows that to create a better future for Nigerian woman the men must be educated too.

WOW has provided principled leadership materials and training to youth in Nigeria and the results have been warmly accepted.

School leaders and parents have praised WOW Africa’s Leadership Training as some of the best they’ve seen. And, they can’t wait to get more youth there again next year.

Here are some photos of their latest event.

Insidious Sexual Targeting Of Children At School

We can’t afford to serve two masters anymore because our children’s hearts and minds are a prize to be won. For years now, society and media have dually honored both animalistic sexual license as well as humanely nurturing the innocence of children and admiring the goodness of God. Unsurprisingly, basic nurturing and some of God’s truths have been mixed with depraved sexual messaging thereby creating confusion. While many mature adults aren’t fooled by this incongruent doubled speak, children are regularly convinced that the untruths presented are true. The bipolar social messaging literally targets our children for moral and psychological take-over by the reigning philosophies of the times. Children are the target for a new and improved sexual revolution, and the enemy is hitting the mark through the schools right under the busy noses of parents and teachers.

This sounds ominous, right? I wish we could ignore the sexual grooming problem and it would just go away. Sadly, because this mixed messaging and serving of two masters has been ignored for too long, we now find ourselves losing the hearts and minds of many of our children. Regularly parents ask me for advice on how to reach their children’s hearts and help them return to their foundational family values. This family problem is an epidemic.

For any leader, business, or influencer, the hearts of the children are the prize and the power for change. After all, it’s always been the young who’ve pushed forward the causes of social bondage or liberty. Any power-hungry tyrant or virtuous leader wants the hearts and minds of the children.

Adults, on the other hand, have historically been the voice of temperance and virtue to the young in order to lead future generations toward peace, love, integrity, and moral virtue. Since children naturally see adults as protectors, they easily follow adult suggestions and see adults such as teachers and librarians in positions of influence. Because of the underdeveloped pre-frontal cortexes of children and the unquestioning trust that they often put in the adults who surround them, they are incredibly easy to groom for sexual, social, and emotional manipulation.

Waking Up

In Disney Pixar’s movie A Bug’s Life, the grasshoppers know that they can only continue to take advantage of the ants as long as the ants don’t realize that they out-number the grasshoppers and could easily be more powerful and stop the oppression. Luckily for us, just like the ants in A Bug’s Life, many parents, teachers, school board members, and lawmakers are waking up to the realization that they can do something about the sexual and social oppression targeting our children through school library books and digital resources, such as curated research databases. Here are just a few examples.

This past week, Texas governor, Greg Abbott wrote a letter directing the Texas Education Agency [TEA] “to investigate any criminal activity in [their] public schools involving the availability of pornography.” Abbott explained that parents had been angrily contacting him and showing him graphic examples of pornography content found in school libraries. He admonished the TEA, “During this investigation, I ask the agency to refer any instance of pornography being provided to minors under the age of 18 for prosecution to the fullest extent of the law.” (foxnews.com)

Also, this week, the Spotsylvania County School Board in Virginia offered a directive to remove pornographic school library resources. “After a parent raised her concerns, the school board voted 6-0 to pull “sexually explicit” books from the libraries and asked for a report on the process by which books are selected for inclusion in digital and hard copy collections at different school levels. The board also opened the door to a division-wide library audit.” (the blaze.com)

Utah Parents United, The Worldwide Organization For Women, and Academic Integrity Matters, as well as numerous other concerned parent groups and organizations, have been bringing the school library pornography problem to light in Utah as well.

“No one is auditing the dirty databases that children are getting pushed toward to do their reports, and they should. The database vendors claim the databases are clean, but they aren’t. Some sources, such as Follett Destiny Discover, GALE, and EBSCO databases, even openly promote torture sex and pedophilia to children. The erotica found in local school physical and online libraries in the state of Utah is very concerning. Someone needs to audit all of this and hold distributors accountable for sexually grooming our children and putting them at risk for sexual and social harm. These sources violate Utah obscenity laws found in criminal code and health education code. Parents need to start auditing what their children see at school and report illegal findings to the police.” (Y. Averett, Worldwide Organization For Women)

Two Masters

It’s time to choose what master we will serve and point our children toward. Robin Patterson, a concerned parent from Colorado, said, “I was horrified when I found XXX pornography on my child’s school issued tablet. I couldn’t believe it was on the school database.” When Robin saw those graphic images, she chose. She knew that she had to prioritize her allegiances. She was more dedicated to the safety and protection of her child than she was to the school system.

My father was a lifetime public school teacher. I appreciate teachers. But, I never forget what my father told me: “the school is always pushing programs and resources at teachers and students that get in the way of real, useful educational content.” The pornification of our children and other socially and politically charged content matter are distractions to real, useful education. We don’t serve the children well if we passively accept the social, political, and sexual grooming of our children. Children were born to parents, not schools. Therefore, it’s the parents who are the primary stakeholders in the lives of the children.

It’s good that voices are being heard and elected officials are listening and taking action to protect the most vulnerable among us; the children. The children are the prize in this sexual/social battle. Whoever wins the hearts and minds of the children ultimately wins the power to control the future. We can’t serve two masters anymore. It is for this reason that WOW supports bills to remove obscene content from schools and libraries, like Utah’s HB 374, “Sensitive Materials In Schools,” by Utah Representative Ken Ivory.

WOW Africa Debate For Girl Schools Was A Huge Success!

WOW Africa celebrated the International Day of the Girl Child by hosting a debate about women and girls. Vital discussion was had and lives were improved. WOW Africa is continuing to work with under-privileged schools to help them develop the skills they need to raise women out of poverty and to become leaders.

Are You Teaching Children Discernment?

An online school teacher was recently giving me the highlights of his career. He proudly told me that his favorite part of his job was that he gets to teach children discernment. I could see how this would be exciting for him but was also instantly concerned. A series of “what if” questions came to mind.

  • What if the teacher had a different moral compass than the child or the child’s parents? Couldn’t that confuse discernment?
  • What if the teacher taught discernment solely through the lens of science and fact finding instead of incorporating the spiritual/inspiration element?
  • What if the spiritual elements the teacher brought in weren’t in alignment with the family’s spiritual truths?
  • What if the parents didn’t know the teacher was focusing on teaching their child discernment and so didn’t detect what the child was discerning?
  • What if the child didn’t know that there are multiple ways for a person to feel like they are discerning truth and was led down a blind path?
  • What if the child wasn’t aware that a person’s worldview influences their discernment and fell away from their family’s worldview?
  • What if the child didn’t know the teacher had a different worldview than their family and got confused or misled?

Discernment means, “…distinguishing one thing from another, as truth from falsehood, virtue from vice; acuteness of judgment; power of perceiving differences…” (Webster’s 1828 dictionary) The power to discern is not to be taken lightly. It’s one of a human’s greatest powers. Discernment defines our morality, values, and beliefs, and is the root of our decision making and problem-solving ability. So, whoever teaches your child discernment, whether it is you, the media, peers, or teachers, is literally wielding the power to form your child’s beliefs, values, morality, passions, and actions.

In order to teach your child discernment and prepare them to discern what other sources are teaching them, I recommend the following 8 principles.

8 Principles That Influence Discernment

1- Develop a valuable, bonded relationship to maintain position of influence in your child’s life. Whoever, or whatever, is bonded the most closely to a child/person has the greatest influence on the heart and mind of the child. Both heart (spirit) and mind work together for discernment.

2- Identify and understand different belief systems. Fully understand worldviews and how your worldview differs from others. Then teach worldviews to your child too through simple comparisons that point back to principles. If you only know your own worldview, but not how it compares to other worldviews, then you can’t come across as fully knowledgeable to your child. This lack of understanding points them toward other sources for more truth and can mislead them. If you need help with your worldview research, I recommend the latest edition of, “Understanding the Times” by David Noble.

3- Stay spiritually connected to real truth. Parents who spend a portion of each day studying scripture/prophetic counsel and inspired sources become confident in their own morals and beliefs and have a tendency to live what they believe more than others who don’t immerse themselves in inspired texts.

4- Live what you believe, no matter how inconvenient or different it is. Children are looking for truth. Even though truth can and should be told to someone, it is best taught through action. A person who lives according to truth is always the best teacher. So many children fall away from their parent’s morals because the parent doesn’t consistently live the morals they profess and seems inconsistent with the truths they share. Stay committed to living pure truth and your children will more likely develop the confidence to do the same. This isn’t to say that if a child falls away from their parent’s beliefs that the fault is automatically in the parent. There are many forces working on our children. But, confidence is born through a confident and deliberate leader, so working on becoming that leader allows that principle to work in our favor.

5- Talk opens the mind and heart. Discuss deeper than you think you need to about why you do things, what is happening around you, and what you are exposing your mind to (ie. videos, books, etc.). Read and discuss, watch and discuss, live and discuss. That old adage that children should be seen and not heard is a recipe for disaster when it comes to teaching discernment. I think it was most likely an adage born out of selfishness and assurance that society would uphold family values. Well, society is not upholding family values, so we must see them and hear them as much as possible.

6- Listen to the true voice of discernment. Help them understand that they have multiple voices within themselves, heart (spirit), brain (logic), and body (emotions/sensations/cravings). Teach them that any of these three voices could lead them, but only one voice will consistently lead them to truth and freedom: the heart/spirit voice. Children must know what these voices do to get their attention and what voices will lead them to following others or appetites, and which voice will lead them to following goodness and truth.

7- Pray often with your children. As you teach your children to turn to God, you will be teaching them that there is always a higher authority than the people around them who are activists for their feelings and desires. Set the example of honoring the highest power so that they will not forget He is there.

8- Self-government is possible. In a world where being “broken” is the new trend, teach your children that they have the power to fix things in their lives and their behaviors, even if it takes time to do so. When a person learns to govern themselves and plans for better behavior and healthy mental/emotional processing, then that person becomes freer and more confident. It is only when we feel others are in charge of our destiny that we feel powerless, broken, and out of control permanently. Every person, even a child, can learn the basics of self-government, which are rooted in simple, every day decision-making skills and calmness.

The teacher I met isn’t the only one hoping to teach you and your child discernment. There are many people and movements that are hoping to influence how you relate to and process the world around you. But, most importantly, they want to be the authority on truth. If truth is changing or originates from man, then truth isn’t truth. Truth is greater than us all and comes from a source greater than us all. Focusing on deliberately teaching our children discernment will bring them closer to the real truth, so that they won’t be fooled by so many voices telling them that truth is found by going their way or buying their product.

Learn more about self-government from Nicholeen here.

Free Curriculum: Teaching Children To Stand Up and Speak Out!

Parents and school administrators have requested that I make a short, free curriculum that parents can use to help their children navigate some of the social issues children are often forced to encounter at young ages.

This curriculum is basic but deep, and it’s a principle-based lesson plan to help parents prepare their children to be free-thinking, discerning, loving, and confident during these times of ideological warfare.

The goal of this lesson plan is to initiate parent/child discussions that lead to families deliberately living by principles, better parent/child bonding, and create an environment where children are prepared to stand out and speak up when needed in loving ways about hotly-debated topics or differences of opinion.

The lessons build upon each other and are meant to be implemented in order, although they don’t have to be.

For additional insight on these lessons intended to create uniting and empowering family cultures for our times, please be sure to listen to Teaching Self-Government Podcast 68, “Stand Out & Speak Up – Self-Government Principles For Our Day!”

Foundation First

In order to understand and apply the lessons, it is vital that the term self-government be understood. Self-Government is being able to determine the cause and effect of any given situation and possessing a knowledge of your own behaviors so that you can control them. This means that a person makes a plan for her life, analyzes her progress toward her desired version of herself, and then willingly makes course corrections to align with her goals and principles.

All of the lessons here are built upon the understanding that the principle of self-government leads to free nations, united families, and increased personal success. When outside forces try to control an individual or decrease the motivation for self-government, then the individual is disempowered and most often loses freedom. Government or social systems that embrace forcing individuals ultimately lead society to entitlement, apathy, lack of trust in others or the government, and widespread fear.

Self-government is born in the family and needs to continually be nurtured there if society is going to recover from the current social/political wars. Parents, the most influential decision-makers in society, have the power to reverse social trends and lead children toward truth by deliberately transforming their family cultures into academic and ideological gymnasiums. It used to be that we looked to schools to provide the intellectual gymnastics that opened thought. However, in modern times, many families are seeing that the best, well-rounded dialog is better suited to home life.

12 Lessons for Teaching Children Self-Government Principles that help Children Stand Out & Speak Up 

1. People who follow true principles are happy.

There is a difference between rules and principles. It’s imperative that parents teach their children the difference between these so that they can identify truth and manipulation. Two TSG podcasts have been dedicated to comparing principles and rules; podcasts 36 and 60.

Principles are components of broader truths, provide direction, do not change, are not behavior-specific, and provide basic guidelines for behavior and action. When a person lives by principle, they do a better job of self-governing themselves and they rarely need an overabundance of rules/applications.

Rules/applications are behaviors, steps, practices, and procedures by which the principles are enacted. However, some rules are not based on principles and just lead to control. Rules/applications change by situation or circumstance.

Activities:

  1. Teach the principle of self-government to the family and discuss what it means. For additional insight read “Parenting A House Untied” chapter 1.
  2. Tell stories to the children of heroes who had self-government.

 Possible books to read aloud and discuss: Teddys Button,” “Red Scarf Girl,” “Little House on the Prairie” books, “The Hiding Place,” “The Little Maid” series, “Caddie Woodlawn,” “The Oracle Sphere,” “Little Men,” “Little Women,” “Little Britches”series, “Little Princess,” “The Alliance,” “Lonesome Gods,” “The Hobbit” & “Lord of the Rings,” Narnia books, “Sign of the Beaver”…

2. Maintain Identity and Honor
Who are you? Who are they? Our true identities are NOT a list of things we’ve done or things we like and enjoy. True identity is based on self-evident, non-changing truths. The moment I had a child, I was a mother, and the moment my child was born, he was a child. These truths are self-evident even if we didn’t have a good relationship or live together. One self-evident truth my mother taught me when I was young was that I am a child of God. She taught me this simple lesson through a sweet song and discussion and by treating me as a person who had value, even though I was small.

Teach the children that their family roles and identities lead to peace and empowerment. When a family doesn’t honor basic family roles, then parents don’t teach and children don’t learn. This is the recipe for family dysfunction.

It’s important to remember that history can inspire us forward or hold us back. How we process our history can have a lasting impact on our happiness. Our past, or the past of our family members and friends, isn’t our identity, but it’s our journey instead. A journey can produce a hero. But, a person trapped in the past only produces more and more victims.

The word honor means “dignity, exalted rank, distinction, reverence, true nobleness of mind.” (Webster’s 1828 dictionary) When a family culture honors each individual, then that family encourages the children to honor themselves as members of the family. People live more with dignity when they learn to honor themselves.

One way we honor ourselves is by making standards to live by that match our morals and principles. Standards are rules that help us behave in a more principled way so that we can act in harmony with our ideals.

Activities:

  1. Read the book, “Roles: The Secret To Family, Business, and Social Success,” and discuss it as a family. Optional: read “The Dream Giver” and discuss.
  2. Identify family standards you can live by. For a list of standards, you may want to consider reading, “Parenting A House United” chapter 15.

3. Examine Your Heart

We all have freedom to choose who/what we follow and give allegiance to. A person has allegiance to either goodness/God, evil, self, or others. Only an allegiance to goodness brings peace and the acceptance of others.

What is the desire of your heart? Who do you want to be like? What is your definition of good? How does that relate to the real meaning of good?

Good means God-like, or of high moral qualities.

Activities:

  1. Teach them about their moral agency to choose and have them write down what their heart desires most for their life.
  2. Teach them the difference between good and bad, right and wrong, true and false.

Identify when characters in stories do the wrong thing by reading and discussing, “Peter Rabbit,” (teaches right and wrong), “Little Red Riding Hood,” (teaches good and bad), “The Little Boy Who Cried Wolf,” (teaches true and false), “Three Little Pigs,” (teaches true and false), and/or AESOP’S Fables (teaches multiple morals and good decision making).

4. Turn Heart To Goodness and Away From Selfishness

Discuss selfishness with your children and help them to see how an individual who exclusively focuses on what they want or how they feel in a situation is likely being selfish. Teach them about mental traps people can fall into that lead to selfishness, such as thinking, “Nobody cares about me,” “I can’t do that hard thing or help those people,” or, “If only I could _______, then I’d be happy.”

Focusing on goodness and truth are the opposite of selfishness because goodness leads a person to take positive social action.

Dive into goodness each day by setting time aside for studying principles of goodness. Diligently study your family’s core book in order to infuse your life with core beliefs and principled morals. Many families study and discuss religious and gospel truths during this time. When parents need to become the students of truth, then the children will follow their parents’ example.

Core books and principles become a standard of truth for the family and allow the family to repeatedly compare all their other studies to their core book.

Activities:

  1. Immerse yourself in truth-seeking by setting a goal to do daily/weekly study and by studying truths and principles as a family.
  2. Set a goal to search core books and discuss each day as a family. Write your start day on your calendar.

5. Making A House United

Unity at home must occur before social unity can happen on a larger scale. Unity heals, empowers, inspires, and motivates. For our children to thrive in society, we need to give them a foundation of unity. If they don’t know what unity feels like from home life, they can’t promote it in the broader culture.

Plan for family unity by creating a family vision, improving communication, increasing problem-solving abilities, and lovingly correcting problems.  Families who pre-plan their family culture and deliberately live according to their plan always find more unity and success because the family is consistently reminded of who they are and where they are headed.

Activities:

  1. Talk about what a united family feels like and does. Write down your thoughts and key ideas.
  2. Make a family vision for 10-20 years in the future. The process for making a lasting family vision is contained in “Parenting A House United” chapter 3.

6. How To Communicate Effectively

Another key ingredient to make a house united is planning how the family will communicate. Good self-government communication means having a calm and loving voice tone, while firmly and consistently teaching, correcting, and praising the children.

Prepare the family for communication success by teaching everyone the skills they need for self-government. The Four Basic Skills are a good place to start. These skills are: Following Instructions, Accepting “no” Answers/Criticism, Accepting Consequences, and Disagreeing Appropriately. When you make a plan for how you will communicate, meetings become the place to check up on how the family communication is happening. Giving feedback by effectively correcting and praising keeps the family connected and learning together in love each day.

Preparing for success and analyzing problems that need fixing create a motivating self-government home environment. The skills promote principles such as letting go of harmful emotions and debilitating thoughts, understanding and bonding to others, and improving calmness.

Activities:

  1. Watch the Calm Parenting Toolkit videos for FREE. Then start teaching your children about calmness.
  2. Study self-government communication skills and meetings formats in “Parenting A House United” or the “TSG Parenting Course.”
  3. Practice effective communication by role playing common family communication scenarios. (Switching roles during the role plays can be fun.)

7. Learn and Listen: Teaching Discernment

Discernment is the “power of perceiving differences of things or ideas.” (Webster’s 1828 dictionary) No discernment is more motivating than moral/spiritual discernment. Children learn this discernment from their parents or the most involved influences in their lives.

In order to learn discernment, a person has to be surrounded by truth most of the time. Identify trusted leaders to seek inspiration from. Trusted leaders can include parents, core books, grandparents, and the Spiritual Voice of Discernment. To properly discern, a person listens with their heart and mind to learn the truth. Both heart and mind should agree when you have found the truth.

Activities:

  1. Tell your children discernment stories of times when you have followed wise council or promptings, including what it felt like and the thoughts and outcomes you had. These stories will give them confidence to follow wise counsel and inspiration, too.
  2. Talk about truths and values they already know and how they can follow those in daily life. Role play common scenarios they may have. Role plays are one of the most powerful ways to learn. (Many programs are using role play to teach different values. Don’t skip the role plays because your values could differ from role plays done as part of other environments or groups.)

8. Follow Instructions & Ask For Direction

After discerning what is true, a person then follows instructions in order to bring herself into alignment with the truth she learned. From time to time, during the process of following truth, a person might need more information. This is when they need to learn how to ask trusted sources good questions.

Following instructions is a vital skill for acting upon discernment. The steps to following instructions are:

  • Look at the person, situation, truth
  • With a calm face, voice, and body
  • Say, “okay,” or ask to disagree appropriately
  • Do the task immediately
  • Check back (Report on progress)

Teaching your child to follow instructions prepares them to give themselves instructions to act in the future, which is a part of being a self-governed person.

Asking the right questions of a trusted source takes practice. Communicate with calmness and a desire to understand. Using the Disagreeing Appropriately skill as a model for communication is always effective.

If a person or news source shares an opinion or gives you information that you don’t feel good about, then this is a good practice to follow. Think, “This is where they are at.” Ask, “How does this compare to my core beliefs and truths I already know?” and, “What principles could this person not be seeing or remembering?” If necessary, research their perspective and research your perspective to fully understand the situation. Listen (discern) and form more questions as you learn. Try to see what is not seen.

Recently a woman was complaining online about her church not giving women equal talk time in a certain service. When I read her comment, I could have allowed myself to become emotional about it, like she was. But, instead I questioned, “What did she get out of the service? What was the topic?” It occurred to me that this woman might have been myopic; only seeing the issue she cared about that day, but not looking for any other good messages. I also wondered why she didn’t value all people and why she chose to assume that people had malicious intentions toward her and her important issues. Maybe they didn’t. After all, no hostile actions were mentioned. She only said that she noticed men giving talks.

This woman wasn’t accepting “no” answers. The Accepting “No” Answers skill prepares a person to stay calm and drop the subject when things don’t go their way. It could have helped her have a more fulfilling and productive church time. How many times had she focused on her one observation? Had that hyper-focus increased her happiness or decreased her happiness and inner peace? I don’t know the answers to these questions, but I do know that obsessing over one topic and hunting for violations of the one issue never leads a person to peace. When a person doesn’t have peace, they lose the ability to have positive influence on others.

The seeking to understand principle utilized in Disagreeing Appropriately could have also benefited her.

Activities:

  1. Learn the Four Basic Skills of Communication, which can be found in TSG books and courses.
  2. Read current events and analyze them from a non-biased perspective. See what is not seen in the news stories, then discuss.

9. Fight Lies, Not People

Don’t quarrel or make war at home or abroad. We learn peace through the habit of establishing peace at home through parenting and good communication.

So many homes are at war. Children’s hearts are turned from their parents and parent’s hearts are turned from their children. Sure, these war-like homes would profess loving each other, but they continually treat each other with contempt, which is the opposite of love. This shows an inner focus of self during war times.

Power struggles can be started by children or parents. Learning to identify power struggles and replacing them with calm communication puts the primary focus on each individual governing themselves, instead of trying to control everyone else.

When people don’t get along, talk about communication and the skills needed, not about the people and their shortcomings. People aren’t the enemy; people are learning. The enemy is all the lies.

Lies are all around us. When we power struggle, we are assuming lies about the other person. When we stress, we are believing a lie, too. We think we can’t do something when we probably can. Or, at the very least, trying won’t hurt us.

When the lies and wars surround us, we need to check ourselves for calmness, choose our words carefully, love others, and say the truth with compassion.

Seeking to understand, then to be understood, is a principle that is behind the skill Disagreeing Appropriately. This skill helps us govern our tongues.

My father used to say, “Master your mother tongue, and you will make a mark upon the world that will be noticed.”

Activities:

  1. Discuss making your home free from war and why corrections need to happen.
  2. Teach the children how to correct with love and use those corrections daily. (see course, etc.)
  3. Practice Disagree Appropriately role plays related to current events or current social issues.

10. Stand Upon Your Own Feet: Work

Teach the children that every person is rewarded for his own labor. Books like, “Tortoise and the Hare,” “Little Red Hen,” and, “The Little Engine That Could,” all teach us that work pays off and feels good in the end.

Teach the children to work by having regular work times as a family, as well as daily chores that are assigned. Work is a key ingredient in the recipe of freedom. So, even if they are complaining about pulling weeds or doing a family project with you, remember that you are doing them a great service. And, correct them for not Disagreeing Appropriately. (See TSG books and courses for correction steps.)

Parents set the tone on the acceptance of work and chores. If work or chores are bad in the parent’s eyes, they will be bad in the child’s eyes, too. Decide now to value and enjoy work so that your children don’t see work as a drudgery, but something that can be enjoyable.

Activities:

  1. Read, “Tortoise and the Hare,” “Little Red Hen,” “The Little Engine That Could,” and discuss.
  2. Do daily chores, family work, and projects…Schedule a family work time for this week.

11. Serve Others No Matter What

We are never truly happy when we only look out for ourselves. No great mission or life’s purpose only serves the individual. Doing good involves helping others. To counter the selfish ideological battles that are raging around us, teach the children to find joy in service.

Parents are the best example of service. If they serve and love their families and others happily, the children will see service as a component of a life’s purpose. But, it doesn’t hurt to also explain how a life’s purpose will also include impacting others for good.

“Service is love in action.” Jennifer Cleveland

Activities:

  1. Study inspiring people from history who led a life of service and discuss. (Gandhi, Mother Theresa, George Washington, Corey Ten-boom, your ancestors, and others…) Look for stories of people who belong to your faith that have really made a difference for all who came after them and study their biographies and discuss.
  2. Develop a service mindset. Plan a family service project for this week and start planning ways to serve others each month/week thereafter.

12. Doubt Not, Fear Not!

Teach them to Stand Out and Speak Up and not to be afraid. Fear can cripple a principled person because it distracts from truth and faith. No matter what religion you are, the faith you have in truth gives you the strength to doubt your fears and step forward with faith and hope. If children are focusing on true principles, then they can be confident, even when other people have different opinions.

Two ways to practice speaking up are discussing books and articles as a family and holding regular family meetings to discuss family goals and problems as a group. In family meetings, all voices are heard and everyone gets the chance to make sure the discussions show understanding of all family members. In family meetings, love and diplomacy are vital tone elements.

Having a connection to a family that acknowledges the same truths and loves them helps our children go forward with more strength to be different and stand out in a world of sameness.

Society always tries to tear down those who stand for truths, so prepare the children that they won’t always sway other people’s opinion or be liked. But, they can always rely on the skill Accepting “No” Answers when things don’t go their way. Skills such as keeping calm and dropping the subject after a conversation are skills that help a person attach to people and detach from issues when they can’t come to an agreement about everything.

Embrace being peculiar. The only people who really stand out are people who know what they stand for and aren’t afraid to take a stand on principle. If parents live intentionally by principle, that is considered peculiar in this day and age. But, if parents embrace making deliberate, peculiar choices, then children will see that being peculiar is okay, too. Peculiar doesn’t mean a person doesn’t have friends; it means that they confidently stand out in a crowd of sameness.

Activities:

  1. Set the example of standing out by living intentionally. Discuss your intentional living.
  2. Have regular meetings as a family. Start by picking a day and time to meet each week. Family meetings are not for lectures; they are for discussion. They should not take longer than 20 minutes in order to keep the children engaged.
  3. Role play possible social situations when the child may have to speak up or stand out. and how to handle them while staying true to who they are.

For the class associated with this curriculum, listen to the TSG Podcast 68 – Stand Out & Speak Up – Self-Government Principles For Our Day!

During a recent training, a mother said to me, “Nicholeen, when I took your parenting course, I wanted help for our family unity and behaviors, but now I see the world completely differently, too. I can’t unsee what I now see because my family is focused on living according to principles.”

This mother was saying that living by principle was helping her make sense of so many things that were going on around her. That is the power of living by principles. Self-government is a principle that is fading away in mainstream culture, but the principle is still there and makes a big difference in helping solve social problems. Thank you for joining with me to make self-government and seeking for true principles part of your family culture. I know that one principled person really can change the world for good. Gandhi said, “Be the change you want to see in the world.” This principle is what parents and families must do to keep families and societies connected and intact during these difficult times.

Scandal? Utah Uncovers Porn in School Databases and Tries to Stop The Porn Vendors

When Utah Legislator, Rep. Travis Seegmiller, found out that his 5 year old’s school-supplied-tablet was pre-programmed with educational databases that easily linked his child to XXX pornography and live links to pedophilia hook-up websites he was shocked! Seegmiller decided that his “top priority” as a public official was to keep Utah’s children safe from these international vendors who were “exploiting children.” 

HB 38 School Technology Amendments, a bill by Seegmiller, met with overwhelming bi-partisan support from Utah legislators. During the bill process republicans and democrats alike spoke out in favor of holding the resource vendors accountable for hurting children. The bill was pre-approved during fall interim. In the main session, HB 38 unanimously passed the House and passed the Senate with only four “nay” votes. (democrat senators Riebe, Mayne, Kitchen, and Davis)

During an interim committee meeting in November, former Rep. Eric Hutchings said that he’d like to see even “stronger action” taken against companies who expose children to pornography in such a sly way. He said that “if we found out that someone was putting poison in the school lunch we would hunt them down…and it would make international news.” He went on to say, “We have to stop saying shoots-a-dang when we find out children are viewing porn through school resources. It shouldn’t be tolerated for a second!”  

The bill requires the well-known, international, conglomerate, school digital resource providers like EBSCO, GALE, Cengage, Explora, Pro-Quest, Inspire, and others to be free from obscenities if provided to Utah school children. It also allows the state to back out of contracts with the database vendors if the vendors are found to not be in compliance with state obscenity laws. Additionally the bill requires the Utah Education and Telehealth Network [UETN] to provide proof of digital vendor compliance to the legislature each year. 

As part of the Utah bill presentation school personnel and parents shared numerous stories about children seeing pornography for the first time in the school database and teachers not knowing how to stop the content from reaching the children. Because this issue hit so close to home, Utah lawmakers were inundated with complaints and pleas for them to take action and keep Utah’s children safe. The Utah PTA was also strongly supportive of the bill. 

In the fall of 2018 Nicholeen Peck, president of WOW and a mother and of 4, found out from a friend that sex toys were being advertised to children in the school database called EBSCO. She couldn’t believe that would happen in Utah and started doing some searching herself. After typing very innocuous terms into the state EBSCO database collections and finding multiple images, videos, and articles promoting risky and illegal sexual behavior Peck contacted Senator Todd Weiler, known for his Utah resolution declaring pornography “a public health crisis.” Weiler verified Peck’s findings and said that action needed to be taken. 

KUTV News did a story on the problem, and the EBSCO database was immediately disabled across the state. The UETN told EBSCO that they needed to clean up the database or they would get out of their contract. For a few weeks the EBSCO database was disabled for school children via school portals. Utah’s State Librarian, Colleen Eggett, spoke openly against disabling the  EBSCO database and said that it was up to the parents to keep their children safe from the harmful content. 

Parents in multiple states have noticed that the library associations repeatedly defend EBSCO and GALE, big businesses, and don’t protect the children from explicit content. Why? Some reasons might be that the American Library Association [ALA] has its own code of ethics about viewing content. The ALA Library Bill of Rights says that people of any age should be able to see anything they want, and the ALA also sued the US government in 2001 because they didn’t want to comply with the Child Internet Protection Act [CIPA]. The ALA lost that law suit.

After a few weeks of EBSCO scrubbing and enabling their own filters, the Utah EBSCO databases were enabled again and pronounced “clean.” But Peck was not satisfied. She said, “I can see they have done some clean up, but still within 15 minutes I was able to find live links to Penthouse magazine, multiple graphic nude images, and an article about a 6th grader having sex with his drama teacher. They are not giving us what we are paying for.” 

The database vendors market themselves as “the safe way to search.” No one questions these claims because anything that is put into a database has to be put there on purpose. Peck says, “It’s a kind of locked box on the web that a person has to have a login to access. This is why internet filters are not able to filter databases.” 

After the EBSCO shut-down didn’t really solve the problem, and some of the previously removed explicit content started appearing in the GALE database as well, Peck, other concerned parents, and a group of legislators started taking other action to see if the problem could be solved without a bill. The state auditor and the state Attorney General’s office were shown the problem, and a legislative audit was requested. They were all shocked by the blatant exploitation of children, but none of them solved the problem. 

At this point, Peck and the group of concerned legislators, including Seegmiller, knew that they had to run a bill just like Idaho did. Idaho’s 2020 bill caused EBSCO to create special databases for Idaho that are in compliance with their obscenity laws. 

EBSCO and GALE are major suppliers of K-12 online research tools across the country/world. EBSCO alone sells its school products to over 55,000 schools nationwide, supplying millions of children with products that may contain pornography. Multiple other states are now following Idaho’s example and working on protective bills too. 

In Colorado, where the dirty database problem was first uncovered, Robin Paterson, head of Pornography Is Not Education partnered with the Thomas More Law Society to bring a lawsuit against EBSCO and the Colorado Library Consortium. There have been good results of these Colorado efforts. Paterson reports, “EBSCO and certain GALE products were previously discontinued by several, large school districts in Colorado because of pornographic content.” 

After years of research, Peck, Paterson, and countless other parents around the nation now know that EBSCO’s business model exploits children. EBSCO gets paid by magazines and other media sources and sites to have their content be part of the databases for children. Then states and school districts pay millions of dollars annually for their subscriptions to the databases. The EBSCO promotional materials promise content providers that their listings in the databases will “reach your target audience,” “increase web traffic,”  and “grow your subscriptions.” These claims sound like the content providers are advertising to children, not giving them school materials. 

Schools and states unknowingly paying databases to dish up pornography to children. Media vendors pay to advertise to children through the databases. Children are being sold as the “target audience.” And, everyone seems convinced that this whole process is education. This is a good old fashioned scandal.

George Soros’ Open Society is a major EBSCO funder. 

EBSCO has been named to the “Dirty Dozen List” by the National center on Sexual Exploitation. 

The WOW database team as well as parents and clinicians all over the state of Utah worked really hard for this victory for Utah’s children. WOW calls upon other states and countries to protect their children from sexual exploitation through databases too by enacting bills that put the children first; not big tech companies like EBSCO and GALE.

Eyes Wide Open: Protecting Children From Porn at School and Libraries

“I will do something to stop this!” I thought, as a friend of mine from Colorado told me that in the school databases in her state and my state, she found XXX elicit pornography? In fact, there are two easy things that we can all do to stop this porn-pandemic in the schools and libraries. I will discuss how you can help below.

I contacted friends and leaders of organizations in my state. I arranged meetings and approached every angle to get the pornographic words, images, and videos out of the school and library databases that are used by children ages 5 and up to do their school projects and research.

After a call to a state senator, I went on the news, and the UETN temporarily shut the databases down. (This shutdown is proof the problem is real.) Sadly, after 3 weeks, the databases were declared “clean” and put back up for all to use. Within 15 minutes of that declaration, I found live links to Penthouse magazine, horrible images, and a story about a 6th grader having sex with his drama teacher in the Utah Online Library database called EBSCO.

Databases are not the same as the internet. They can’t be filtered by internet filters. They are promoted to states and school districts as the “safe way” for children to search because all the content in them has to be put there deliberately.

So, how does the content get there, you might ask? Well, the database companies like EBSCO and GALE solicit any kind of magazine who will pay to put their content in the database. The database companies promise these contributors that they will “find their target audience,” and “increase their subscriptions…”

What?!?! Our children are the “target audience?” Yes.

Then, the database companies solicit states and school districts to pay them millions of dollars annually to access these perfectly groomed databases. The database companies are taking money on both ends of the deal. They’re essentially selling our children to the magazine companies and paid contributors. This is called child exploitation.

Good News And Bad News

After two years of working to stop this problem, I have some bad news and some good news. The bad news is that we’ve been able to locate the database-porn problem in schools and libraries all over the world. The good news is that some states are passing laws to stop this harmful content from reaching the children, and we are conducting studies right now to help every state and nation who wants to take steps to protect children to stop this problem.

How You Can Help!

Below are links to a petition and a survey. The survey will ask if anyone you know has ever accessed pornographic content at school, through a school tablet or portal at an offsite location, or in a library. And, the petition will allow you to show your concern and support for stopping the database companies from being able to exploit our children at safe places like the school and library.

Share these links with your friends and consider bravely sharing your stories with us.

Link to Survey

Link to Petition   (When you go to the petition, it will ask you for money to fund petitions. That money does not go to us. You don’t have to donate to sign the petition.)

When mothers and fathers know how porn is finding the children, they can do something about it. Now more people know. This is a fight we can win. Please help us! Share the petition, survey, podcast and blogpost with people who would care about keeping children safe from this. 

If you’d like to find out more information about this situation and how to help, you can listen to our recent podcast.

Link to TSG Podcast With Additional Details 

And, if you want even more information, these links will give greater insight.

Secrets to a Successful Education

Recently, I revisited a contemporary, classic book on education for a discussion group I participate in by John Taylor Gatto.  This reminded me of 14 educational principles he compiled from personal  research on the top, elite high schools in the US.

Gatto’s history spans a successful career teaching public school in New York for over 30 years, and in retirement advocating with a loud voice for educational reform as a writer and public speaker.  His passion for teaching sparked a personal interest to discover what exactly, if anything was different about what is taught in the elite high schools. He learned that although each school carries its own academic mark of distinction, they all share a core that proves key to their students’ success.

Gatto summarizes the core into 14 areas, which he believes provides the foundation in determining what education for success really looks like.  The programs in these elite schools genuinely equip students with skills, knowledge and tools to launch them way beyond academic success.  These schools continue to produce a large portion of today’s leaders.  This study lends a revealing yardstick of measurement to apply to institutions of learning as students resume school this fall.

 The core list is as follows:

#1 Students form a complete theory of human nature, through theology, classic literature, philosophy, and history, and interestingly enough, not through psychology.  Students reason through  the universals and particulars of man with authors who pondered and wrote about the ultimate questions, inviting them to participate in the great conversation of human existence.

#2 All the schools provide consistent and frequent opportunity for student’s to practice in the active literacies- writing, and speaking. Writing and speaking well, reinforces thinking well and is essential  in the great exchange of ideas for commerce, politics, religion etc. Think of Bacon’s quote, “reading maketh a full man, speaking a ready man, and writing makes him exact.”

#3 Students gain insight into major institutions, and the ideas that drive them by study of their form, history and hierarchy. US public schools do include US government as part of the required curriculum, but the foundation that the government was built upon is generally missed. How many students today read John Locke, and can explain that the US went the way of Locke, rather than Hobbes, two contemporary philosophers; whereas, Western Europe decidedly embraced Hobbes’s “Social Contract.”  Other important institutions in the US that would benefit student understanding might include; universities, hospitals, libraries, the Pentagon, the New York Stock Exchange and so forth.

#4 Students behavior in all the schools is reinforced with a civil tone by repeated exercise in decorum and manners.

#5 Most of the academic work is independent, what I call active learning, as opposed to passive learning. Students do not wait around for the teacher to tell them what to do, read, answer etc., but are actively engaged in directing their education.

#6 Students participate in an energetic, physical sport that Gatto says in addition to the many obvious benefits, the important two are that it helps to confer grace upon the human form, and strengthen endurance. To carry oneself well, and with confidence benefits the person and those around them.

#7 Students apply a theory of access towards gaining access to any person or place. Gatto shares many enlightening, and successful stories of his students venturing around New York City, strategically executing their plans from his classroom.

#8 Personal  responsibility in all areas is driven into the students at these schools. In fairness, the private schools are able to provide a little more opportunity here because most are boarding schools, so house tasks are shared. However, this ethic expands into taking leadership positions in clubs and such, and promoting the ideal of personal excellence in always delivering more than is asked.

#9 By the end of their 12th year, students are expected to have arrived at a personal code of behavior and morality that they’ve decided to navigate life by.

#10 All students emerge from their high school experience with comfort in the arts, both visual and performing, and architecture.

#11 Students acquire the power of accurate observation and recording that includes accurate notes as well as basic drawing. This skill was essential for the men who laid the foundation in modern science.

#12 The schools are able to meet each student with flexibility and skill because of an understanding of the individual. Each person brings with them weakness, so the schools are able to challenge a student in their weakness, so as to strengthen it.

#13 Another practice in the schools is student development and testing of their judgement, or what might be called correct thinking. We always hear about the importance of critical thinking, but a better term is correct thinking. Reasoning demands discrimination in the evaluation of things, then mental follow up on personal predictions and consistent mental correction.

#14 The last principle is an extension of the above.  It is the developing a habit of caution in drawing conclusions instead of jumping to rash ones.

Now I’m not so naive as to not know, that it is often “who you know” that can make the big difference in certain life endeavors, but mastery in the above would certainly prepare an individual to know, who to know,  how to go about knowing them, and where to find them.  It’s also noteworthy, that many of the knowledge, skills, and understanding included in the core are relationship oriented. By the time these youths graduate high school, they understandably will be at ease with the world, and ready to lead wherever life takes them. The beauty of this type of education is that it’s not just for youth, or high school, but is an educational formula that anyone can follow at anytime in their life.