Introducing Laurie Higgins -- Director of IFI's New DSA
[Editor's Note: The Illinois Family Institute (IFI) is proud to announce the hiring of Laurie Higgins, a pro-family champion who will be heading up IFI's new Division of School Advocacy.
Laurie Higgins is a courageous person of godly character and a gifted orator and writer. Because of her past ten years of experience in a public high school, Laurie will be able to persuasively make the case against the insidious anti-family agenda and the morally corrupt environment that permeates too many of our public schools.
Please keep Laurie and our new Division of School Advocacy in your thoughts and prayers!] I would like to express my deep sense of thankfulness to IFI, its Board of Directors, and all IFI supporters for this opportunity to work full-time in the service of preserving and protecting the mission and legitimacy of public education. I want to help restore to public schools a respect for essential Judeo-Christian values, beliefs, and principles upon which healthy children and healthy societies depend.
During the past decade of employment in a prestigious North Suburban public high school, I witnessed firsthand the abandonment of any pretense of neutrality or academic objectivity on a number of issues, chief among them the issue of sexuality.
Activists show little to no regard for academic freedom, academic integrity, intellectual diversity, respect for diverse faith traditions, or a proper understanding of their roles as public servants, particularly when those principles conflict with their desire to promote biased, unproven theories on homosexuality, gender identity disorder (i.e. "transgenderism"), heterosexuality, and gender. They believe that the use of public money and public education to advance their ends is justified; and they believe that the ends of promoting cultural change in the direction of their beliefs and values justifies pervasive censorship of conservative scholarship on these and other issues.
IFI's experiences working with parents across the state have resulted in the creation of the Division of School Advocacy (DSA). Our hard-earned tax dollars are being allocated to curricular resources and activities that advance controversial theories that stand well outside both the beliefs of many parents and the legitimate purview of public education, including the following:Sex education programs that in their content and structure undermine the virtues of chastity and modesty
Resources that promote fallacious views of homosexuality as equivalent to race and morally legitimate
Resources that fallaciously equate principled moral opposition to homosexual practice with hatred
Resources that mock traditional or conservative religious traditions
"Social justice" resources that advance racist views and Marxist/socialist theories The absence of fair and balanced presentations of diverse views on controversial topics undermines the legitimacy of the academic enterprise, diminishes the knowledge base of students, and compromises their capacity to think critically. While crying out relentlessly for "diversity," activist educators hypocritically prohibit the most fundamental form of diversity in academia: intellectual diversity. The radical ideological views that dominate public education on a number of topics transform education into indoctrination.
Compounding the problem is that all too often expenditures for the promotion of these theories remain well concealed from the public. For example, many school districts provide professional development opportunities to their administrators, faculty, and staff that promote unproven, radical social theories with the goal of having these theories incorporated into curricula. The ultimate goal is even more troubling: it is to effect social change in the direction of the cultural vision of radical activists.
The efforts of activists to foster radical social change are, unfortunately, facilitated by the ignorance, apathy, and cowardice of many Christians. What too many Christians fail to see is that it is not merely our children's knowledge base and capacity to think critically that are undermined by the arrogant usurpation of public education. Parental rights, fundamental First Amendment speech and religious rights, respect for the authority of Scripture, and truth itself are threatened by biased curricula, and activist teachers, administrators, and school boards that engage in pervasive censorship of conservative scholarship.
IFI recognizes that public schools actively engage in propaganda that is deceiving Christians into believing that lies are truth. To counter this propaganda, the DSA will help parents and concerned taxpayers understand and respond to the radical ideas that academic activists are instilling in our children. The DSA will also help parents and other concerned citizens understand the persuasive but deceitful arguments used to promote these theories through biased curricula and censorship.
In order to help change the face of public education, the DSA will provide educational and training workshops and seminars to parents, other concerned taxpayers, religious leaders, educators, and students, as well as provide resources and individual consultation.
My hope and fervent prayer is to be used by God to exhort and equip parents, religious leaders, educators, and concerned taxpayers to respond courageously to the corruption of their local public schools. They need to understand the nature and extent of the problem and its implications if not addressed; they need to understand the deceptive secular arguments they will encounter and be provided with appropriate responses; they need to understand that their silence is not an act of love; they need to understand that the vacuum created by their silence is filled with lies, including the lie that Christians hate homosexuals; and they need to understand the importance of courage and perseverance.
In short, I hope to join parents and other concerned Illinois citizens in an urgent effort to restore academic integrity, protect parental rights, and preserve fundamental First Amendment rights.
As we commit to this effort, it is critical to remember that we as Christians should "Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds," (James 1:2), for this is not an easy battle.
I fervently desire to please God through my labors, always speaking the truth in love, and to be found worthy of the confidence that IFI has expressed through offering me this remarkable opportunity.
Support IFI's New Division of School Advocacy!
 Would you prayerfully consider pledging a monthly gift of $25 or more to support this new division of IFI? A promise of this kind will help us form a strategic plan that budgetary constraints often makes impossible. You can become a Sustaining Member with automatic monthly deductions from your checking account or credit card. Click HERE to access the Sustaining Member form.
If a monthly pledge is not feasible at this time, perhaps you could send a one-time, tax-deductible gift. Click HERE to donate today!
If you believe in the mission and purpose of Illinois Family Institute, please send your most generous contribution today. IFI is supported by voluntary donations from individuals like you across the state of Illinois.
Donations to IFI are tax-deductible.
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