“The Class”

Reaping the Rewards of Disobedience…

“The Class” is a movie about a French school teacher and his attempts to impart knowledge to a group of pubertal students. Filmed in French with English subtitles it does not fit my definition of a good movie but it is, nevertheless, interesting. As with most of the trash that is inflicted on entertainment seekers by the closely held Hollywood studios, it has no plot or storyline but consists of a detailed depiction of segments in the lives of this French teacher and his students in a French Language class at a French school. The usual Hollywood propaganda is included. There are Black and Chinese students and a startling homosexual confrontation. The Chinese and Black students are central figures.

Few parents understand the problems our secular culture has created in the classroom. The teacher’s ability to control students has been marginalized allowing disruption and penalty free defiance.

This valiant teacher is working to edify a group of undisciplined, rebellious, inattentive, arrogant, students in spite of the lunatic restrictions the secular legal system has placed upon him. Unlike many modern classrooms he is able to create enough order to do some teaching. His method involves attempting to get students involved in discussion where learning might take place. There is a cynical, intellectually gifted White French girl with a sharp tongue; a pretty Black girl with an attitude; two potentially explosive Black boys; and a Black girl who claims she has failed to learn anything.

As discussion progresses the class seems to become more aggressive. A Black male student asked the teacher if he likes “men”. The class snickers; he denies it. An attractive Black girl refuses to respond to the teacher’s request. A girl accuses the teacher of manipulation. A fight erupts and a Black male student swings a school bag hitting one of the girls in the head. The teacher warns some of the girls they do not want to be like “skanks”.

A parent/teacher’s conference is held concerning the unruly Black boy. His mother accompanies him dressed in tribal array and unable to speak or understand French. The student who faces expulsion interprets for his mother who in spite of her lack of understanding seems disdainful of the entire proceeding. Ultimately the student is expelled and we are led to believe his father, who was absent, will have him returned to Africa.

A teachers meeting is held at the school where the behavior of individual students is discussed. The epithet, “skank”, resulted in a complaint and the teacher must face a board of inquiry.

The movie is without resolution, ending with the teacher back in the classroom sans the violent African student but with the same familiar cluster of problems. It offers an authentic peek at the interior of godless classrooms with a real sense of the hopelessness involved. There is toleration, but no hint at solution.

On the heels of the Reformation, Western society began rebelling against Christianity and God’s authority over His creation. Descartes’ “Discourse on the Method” published in 1637 helped usher in the Enlightenment which became a full blown travesty by the end of the Eighteenth Century and exerted a defining influence on the founding documents of the United States.

The rise of secular thinkers like Descartes was closely preceded by a massive humanization of Christianity that centered on the teachings of a Dutch college professor named Jacob Arminius. His challenge to the doctrine of predestination put a humanistic foot in the rebellion door and set the stage for the slow deterioration of human support for Godly dominion.

The Industrial Revolution was both a blessing and a curse. It produced a host of labor saving devices and made life easier. Though it did not sever dependence on the earth since the materials used to create the manufactured devices came from the earth, it separated hundreds of thousands of laborers from their land. Henceforth, bereft of property, their labor became their sole capital.

The magnificent machines produced by the Industrial Revolution fostered a belief that the horizons of men were unlimited and the God of their fathers was expendable. A new intellectualism glorified the product of the minds crowning reason with divinity.

he and most viewers fail to understand that he is promoting another religion and another god. While it appears that Maher is agnostic or atheistic and does not believe in God, Maher has actually set himself up as god by denying and mocking the existence of the Creator – he is promoting the religion of humanism. The same humanism Christ condemned in the Pharisees is alive and well. His defiant opinion is that the godhead resides in him. Humanists begin by appointing themselves god and denouncing any authority above them. There is no god, they say. When that opinion is worked out in society, tyranny results. The plethora of opinion must be subdued in order to maintain order. Human power prevails over human weakness. The fittest survive.

Dr. R. J. Rushdoony points out that man was created to exercise dominion over the earth but has distorted that mandate by seeking control over his fellows. The tragedy of humanism is the misuse of energy attempting to subdue others while the pristine mandate to subdue the earth under God’s perfect legal system is ignored.

When I state that man was not created to govern himself I am referring to the fact that without an overarching legal authority, humanists, acting as individual deities, create anarchic contentions that can only be resolved by mortal conflict or tyranny. The most sanguine solution to this inevitable crisis is universal obedience to the Law God gave to Moses.

While I share the Libertarian quest for freedom I do not believe their humanistic approach is viable. A puerile quest for personal control has inhabited the spirit of men since the consumption of the apple in the Garden and without a willing subjection to the Will of God power will centralize and tyranny will result. Man was not created to govern himself and cannot enjoy the blessings of freedom without the overarching Law of God. God’s perfect Law is the ONLY road to lasting peace, freedom, and prosperity.

Students educated in the chaos shown in “The Class”, will fill society with undisciplined, rebellious citizens that will not and cannot live together in peace.

Both Christians and Pagans are aghast that the God of the Bible would pronounce the death penalty on unruly young people. Deuteronomy 21:18 addresses the rebellious son: “If any man has a stubborn and rebellious son who will not obey his father or his mother, and when they chastise him, he will not even listen to them, then his father and mother shall seize him, and bring him out to the elders of his city at the gateway of his hometown,” and tell the elders their son is incorrigible. All the men of his city shall put him to death and “you shall remove the evil from your midst and all Israel shall hear of it and fear”. This important law is confirmed in Matthew 15:4 where Jesus quotes His Father, “For God said, HONOR YOU FATHER AND MOTHER, and, HE WHO SPEAKS EVIL OF FATHER OR MOTHER, LET HIM BE PUT TO DEATH.” God has provided His own system of Eugenics, quite different from that of Margaret Sanger and her Godless associates. Human eugenics attempts to improve the race by exterminating those less capable while God’s eugenics seeks to bless His creation by removing disruptive evil. No society can enjoy freedom and prosperity when its citizens are prone to defiance and rebellion. It is of utmost importance that children learn to obey first their parents and then God’s Law.

Christians have allowed the pagan god of humanism to centralized power and the death penalty is now a function of the high priests of paganism. Once the chaos they have created reaches a point where tyranny is the only solution, arbitrary death for dissenters will be a frequent sentence as it was in Russia and China. Humanism is a competing religion and it will not exercise the evil leniency that has marked Christianity. Death will be common and capricious.

We are living in a time that showcases the results of hundreds of tiny conciliations with evil. God’s Law is to be administered with mercy but it is never to be subjected to negotiation.

“The Class” provides an instructive on the results of secular humanism. God’s pattern for education is decentralized in individual families while humanistic education is centralized in the government. Children educated in their own families are surrounded by adults and quickly mature, while children in public schools are surrounded by other children promoting childish behavior and restricting maturity. Home schooled children have adults as peers while public school children have other children.Grouping children tends to create a “we and them” division contending with adult authority; a result glaringly apparent in “The Class”.