Updated April 10, 2025
And there came out from the camp of the Philistines a champion named Goliath of Gath, whose height was six cubits and a span. He had a helmet of bronze on his head, and he was armed with a coat of mail, and the weight of the coat was five thousand shekels of bronze. And he had bronze armor on his legs, and a javelin of bronze slung between his shoulders. The shaft of his spear was like a weaver's beam, and his spear's head weighed six hundred shekels of iron. And his shield-bearer went before him.
- What material is it made of?
- Who made it?
- What is the makers end goal?
- What purpose does it have to fill?
- How full is its dimension?
EDUCATION
Success
The GUIDE TO SUCCESS UNDER GOD is made of a magnetic needle that can detect the Earth’s magnetic field. This needle always faces Magnetic North and can be depended upon to remain constant in times of great loss or devastating storms. Its purpose is to guide the sojourner through unfamiliar territory, especially when the way is dark and treacherous.
Real guides do not change Magnetic North because success is a destination, not a feeling. There is no such thing as an equitable and inclusive compass.
The GUIDE TO SUCCESS UNDER THE “ME” OF MDE is made of a fake needle that does not pivot freely. Its purpose is to appeal to the heart’s desire for pleasure, comfort, money, power, and fame while promising the quick fix of material success. If this is the star a lost traveler looks to for guidance, then I am sorry to say he or she will never find the way to REAL success.
Do you notice anything different between kingdom success and fortress success? For one, God provides us with a REAL compass that always points north to his truth. Compare this with Minnesota’s Due North Education Plan which provides us with a FAKE compass that always points to self (and the thousands of truths each “self” holds).
two scholarly Round table discussions frame the Introduction to This Little School+house Review.
- The first round table, as mentioned in the previous article, is Canadian psychologist and author, Jordan B Peterson and his EXODUS series, 2022.
- The second round table is Minnesota Governor Tim Walz and his Education Roundtable, 2020.
I encourage you to watch MDE’s video about The Successful Learner Equation. In it, we are told the Minnesota Department of Education is shifting its language away from the phrase “School Readiness” in favor of the more inclusive phrase “Supporting Successful Learners.”
What is going on here? To transform education in Minnesota by mobilizing all of us to break down barriers and rebuild them anew is the language of warfare. What exactly does the governor of Minnesota want to dismantle? Every year the district spends millions of dollars to purchase curriculum to conform to state standards (ARC, Flash, Discovery). Since 2018, the villain of every new curriculum’s story has been the same, and that is the nuclear family and its white Christian male. I wonder why that is … Why put so much energy into breaking down the walls of Christian family worldview?
This book has made me ponder the countless familial barriers broken down in the name of Compulsory Education. It divides children by subject and grade. It locks children away during the day and separates families. It replaces real community with a fake institutionalized version. It forces children out of real homes, away from real parents, out of real communities, and real outdoor nature in order to bus them, segregate them, class them, seat them, quiet them and grade them under a barrage of fakery.
Funding the Fortress
OF Minnesota Department of Education
at the expense of FAMILY, SCHOOL & COMMUNITY.
Tell me, where in the world is success built, brick by brick, on the foundation of ones own opinion? From a survivalist standpoint, is perceived success as good as actual success?
Ready Family
Under the state’s equation, real families must give of their time and effort, talent and money, mind and soul and heart to feed the industrial machine of “schooling”. The mass schooling of American education trains children how to consume media, consume material goods and consume pleasure … all so they can throw it away tonight and start fresh tomorrow morning: “Unplanned pregnancy? Kill it. Unwanted weight gain? Suck it out. Undesirable marriage? Abandon it. Unending depression? Drug it. Normalize it. Vaccinate it. Dismantle it’s walls and start over.”
Worldly Success has kids spinning in circles pointing the blame at a dehumanized “dominant race” of oppressor scarecrows. Meanwhile the successful state is teaching the blind (schools) to lead the blind (families) how to dig their own graves as endless consumers.
He answered, “Every plant that my heavenly Father has not planted will be rooted up. Let them alone; they are blind guides. And if the blind lead the blind, both will fall into a pit.”
It is under this ruse, MDE’s Successful Learner Equation will be the downfall of real people by wooing and charming them into a pit they dig for themselves.
Ready School
"The Mission Of SoWashCo Is To Educate Students For Success."
If success is simply a matter of opinion that schools grant children on the first day of kindergarten, then what is the point of this billion dollar institution? Trace the governor’s “Roadmap for Transformational Change in Minnesota Education” through to it’s logical end, and the mission of South Washington County Schools becomes fluff and fictional fantasy – a measurement of false praise. Does Walz realize he is making a farce out of his own institution of Compulsory Education?
Ready Community
John Taylor Gatto says, “It is a fact generally ignored when considering the communal nature of institutional families like schools, large corporations, colleges, armies, hospitals, and government agencies that they are not real communities at all, but networks. Unlike communities, networks … have a very narrow way of allowing people to associate … “ -pg 48
“A community is a place in which people face each other over time in all their human variety: good parts, bad parts, and all the rest. Such places promote the highest quality of life possible – lives of engagement and participation. This happens in unexpected ways …” -pg 50
Look around and try to find a real community in South Washington County. They are actually very rare. Real communities have been dismantled in America. We now live in a nation of fake networks. Community centers and fitness clubs are networks, and yet we mistake them for “communites” and wonder why we cannot come together in unity. Why?
“Networks … don ‘t require the whole person, but only a narrow piece. If … you function in a network, it asks you to suppress all the parts of yourself except the network-interest part – a highly unnatural act although one you can get used to. In exchange, the network will deliver efficiency in the pursuit of some limited aim …The fragmentation caused by excessive networking creates diminished humanity, a sense that our lives are out of control – because they are.” -pg 47
Success !
but not for the learner, as MDE claims
Under the Successful Learner Equation, it is by design that all honor and glory go to the state.
Where REAL parents nurture their children, surrogate parents of the state nurture their assets. After all, “We have affections for that which is closest to us.” says Dr. James Orr.
An 18 Billion Dollar Asset
$$, $$$, $$$, $$$
Real is melted down into the golden calf of Education which promises worldly success. In 2024, the market value of the South Washington County School District was Eighteen billion, four hundred thirty million, three hundred one thousand, nine hundred dollars https://resources.finalsite.net/…/AnnualComprehensiveFi… The business entity of SoWashCo employs more staff than any other business in the district. Last Fall, SoWashCo voters approved a bond referendum to pay for even larger schools. (See the Construction Updates page here: https://www.sowashco.org/construction )
Most family’s would say their largest monthly expense is the mortgage. Since school and home appear to be the greatest things of value to Minnesota taxpayers, it seemed fitting for my focus in 2025 top be This Little School+House… only it is not so little anymore. You might say, American education has turned into a bit of an idol.
I think it is safe to say, I wILL nOT be mobilizing people around a counterfeit fortress of education like MDE or SoWashCo. I will not help nurture their assets or dismantle their barriers. Why? Because the walls they wish to dismantle are me, my family, my faith and my community.
Funding the kingdom
OF HEAVEN
This is a chart I put together based on how I interpret Scripture to guide parents in training up their children. In fact, for four years now I have made it a priority to give intentionally to Christian ministries with my time, talent, money, and resources. I am careful to select ministries who follow the leading of the Holy Spirit, who continually pray for His guidance in their work, who spread the word of God, and who support families in doing the same.
Book of the Law
“I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. “You shall have no other gods before me..."
Lord Builds The House
Teach your child
Treasure In Heaven
Good Success
"This Book of the Law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it. For then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success."
In this age of mass production and consumption, Success takes on the shape of a giant – a Goliath of sorts. Let’s name this worldly giant “Industry” and call his food “Consumer”. In his greed for wealth, Industry requires a workforce of material consuming slaves to feed his insatiable hunger. Since the head, heart and hands of Industry are fake, and since Fake can only tear down walls and destroy strongholds, Industry must trick Real into thinking she is free to grow her own success. But in reality she is in bondage. She is starving for real bread and the sustenance Industry steals away from the womb of her harvest.
So many REAL people forget though that the battle is already won, and it is the Lord’s to fight. When we turn to the REAL Savior, He breaks the chains that bind us in perpetual failure. The walls that need dismantling are not those of the family, but of the enemy who tricks you and your family into believing in the false hope of Worldly Success.
Then David said to the Philistine, “You come to me with a sword and with a spear and with a javelin, but I come to you in the name of the Lord of hosts, the God of the armies of Israel, whom you have defied. This day the Lord will deliver you into my hand, and I will strike you down and cut off your head. And I will give the dead bodies of the host of the Philistines this day to the birds of the air and to the wild beasts of the earth, that all the earth may know that there is a God in Israel, and that all this assembly may know that the Lord saves not with sword and spear. For the battle is the Lord's, and he will give you into our hand.”
Works Cited (in addition to links in-line):
- Gatto, John Taylor. Dumbing Us Down -The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling. New Society Publishers, 2017.
- Dr. Jay Christianson. Living out Scripture. Faith Radio with Bill Arnold. Aired January 07, 2025 Begin high school level Hebrew Idiom at minute 30:43. https://www.myfaithradio.com/…/living-out-scripture-jay…
- Peterson, Jordan B. Authority from Above and Within. Dailywire+ podcast, EXODUS Episode 16, Aired April 26 2023, accessed November 6, 2024. https://images.app.goo.gl/BmRJHzLCgPLeSP667
- Minnesota Department of Education. The Successful Learner Equation. Video by MDE – Early Learning Services Division. Recorded November 2022, accessed January 2025. https://education.mn.gov/MDE/VideoNew/?group=Educ&id=PROD070510
Up Next
I’d like to introduce you to life on the edge, the fringe, or that which can only be understood from the outside looking in. How does one penetrate the tough outer layer of another… and access the soft fleshy truth of their core? How does one, with love in her heart, shine light into a brick wall? It is a wall built tall and a wall built thick around the heart suffering from abuse, neglect, starvation and betrayal. She recognizes the depth of that despair because she too once built up walls of protection. How does one who loves, transform the one who hates? Maybe destroying the walls of their home is not the answer. Maybe knocking at their door is a better solution.
For this section, I need to make it personal in order to explain the immense truth there is in the dynamics at play between the UNITED CENTER and the FRINGE. When I ran for school board, I had to find the center.
THIS SUBJECT IS GOING TO BE ABSTRACT
BECAUSE THE FRINGE IS ABSTRACT,
BUT QUITE HONESTLY THE FRINGE IS MY FAVORITE PLACE TO BE!
This Little SCHOOL+HOUSE
In 2020, the Governor’s Education Roundtable put together A Roadmap for Transformational Change in Minnesota Education that says, “We need to mobilize all of us – not just teachers and students – to nurture assets and DISMANTLE BARRIERS so every student and their family has all Minnesotans supporting their academic and personal growth.”
On the other hand, Kelly Smith, Founder of Prenda, says his micro-schools are “BREAKING DOWN BARRIERS that will make it easier for people to start their own schools.” Meanwhile, One Stone, a school with no teachers, no tests and no grades, says they are “BREAKING DOWN the one-size-fits-all nature of a conventional classroom.”
As you can see, there are a lot of proverbial BARRIERS BEING BROKEN DOWN these days, and they appear to be at war with one another. G.K. Chesterton said, “Whenever you remove any fence, always pause long enough to ask why it was put there in the first place.” Wise advice from a wise man.
My question is, which SCHOOL+HOUSE is able to BUILD UP? Anyone can break down in a world ruled by the laws of gravity. Whether good or evil , real or fake – anyone can destroy – but only REAL things grow while under this sun … only REAL is granted authority to build upward … only REAL has the soft heart needed for love … only REAL is able to truly hear His story (history) spoken … and only REAL is able to truly see the Word written into the fabric of creation.
This Little School+House will pair with the “Borders and Boundaries” series of 2025 in exploring the question, “What is education, actually?”
