On November 4, 2023, Settlement Project president Dr. Frank Kaufmann spoke at two events in the Bay Area, California.
Universal Peace Federation (UPF) hosted a seminar on Education for the 21st Century: Challenges, Moral Dangers, and Innovation from 10 am until noon at the Bay Area Family Church, and later that evening The Alameda County Committee of Restoration (ACCOR) hosted a ceremony for graduates of its 10-week course on the US Bill of Rights in the home of Michael and Monika Kellett.
Dr. Kaufmann offered the keynote address in the morning seminar, and graduation congratulatory remarks and speech content in the evening ceremony.
The morning event was moderated by Bay Area, UPF director Wayne Hankins. Guests were welcomed by Vice Mayor of San Leandro, Bryan Azevedo, and by Bay Area Family Church Senior Pastor, Kevin Thompson.
Dr. Kaufmann’s morning keynote conformed to the seminar title, in which he introduced The Settlement Project, and then spoke about two distinct and different challenges to education, 1. Rapid advances in information technology (which requires courage to completely rethink education at foundational levels), and 2.The assault of moral sickness, abuse of children, and ideological suffocation in today’s education institutions (which requires moral and spiritual dedication, rejuvenation, and unwavering humanitarian commitment).
In addition to Dr. Kaufmann, excellent, insightful, and moving talks were given by Lisa Disbrow of the Contra Costa County Board of Education, and esteemed author and educator Dr. Mose Durst.
Here is the video of Dr. Kaufmann’s keynote address
Scroll below to read the content of Dr. Kaufmann’s keynote presentation.
Here is the video of Lisa Disbrow’s speech.
Education for the 21st Century: Challenges, Moral Dangers, and Innovation
By Frank Kaufmann, for UPF Seminar
November 4, 2023
Introduction to The Settlement Project
The Settlement Project is an educational, activist, and servant organization committed to renewing a strong and moral America to enjoy a long and healthy future as an ideal nation of prosperity and international compassion.
The Settlement Project partners with patriotic leaders and organizations, and offers three unique characteristics to help in the efforts of American patriots in our urgent time. These unique characteristics are:
- Philosophical and ideological clarity to identify and uproot new post-Marxist philosophies including postmodern, critical nihilism and malevolence.
- Local, community, person to person activism as a force to withstand digital dehumanization and surveillance totalitarianism
- Radical religious, cultural, and ethnic inclusion among all people of conscience and patriotic love of country. The Settlement Project lives in a universal and inclusive faith beyond parochial and sectarian separation.
Current Problems Facing America
We face problems of extreme degree which seem to have popped up and taken over American life seemingly overnight.
Problems of this magnitude are far down the road to establishment and government enforcement but reflect positions that no normal thinking human being can even imagine. Five random examples include open borders, sexualization of children, defund the police, cashless bail, criminalization of holding an opinion, state enforced violation of bodily autonomy, men in women’s sports, men in girl’s bathrooms and girl’s locker rooms and much more.
The Settlement Project explains just how all of these views arise and gain purchase among vulnerable college students, and blind, unthinking consumers of establishment media. We explain clearly where these problems came from, how they are related, and how they suddenly infiltrated every institution all at once.
We must know exactly what is the basis for this all-out assault, and we must know precisely how to replace it.
In broad strokes, the clash of ideologies has two sides. Life seen as related to a loving God as expressed clearly in the US Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights, and the US Constitution. These are politics and society built on the Divine-Human relationship. Inalienable rights to freedom and happiness come from nature and nature’s God.
The second view comes from seeing religion as superstition. In this second system human hubris replaces the Providence of a loving God. In this second view, a self-appointed elite seeks totalitarian control. God is replaced by various forms of human power, and the individual is reduced to a mere cog in a machine enslaved by a totalitarian elite.
In this second view, a self-appointed elite seeks totalitarian control. God is replaced by various false gods such as reason, humanism, materialism, and transhumanism. Evil overtly attacks the purpose of our existence by removing freedom, attacking family, and corrupting the possibility of love.
The Bases and Characters of Evil
There are four bases of evil, two soft and two hard.
Soft evil is expressed through fear and greed. (Greed is a form of fear. It is an expression of insecurity.)
Hard evil on the other hand is expressed in A. lust for power and B. Being possessed by a spirit of vengeance. These two versions of “hard power,” are explicit and without constraints in the willingness to use force and violence.
Education
Looking at today’s topic, Education for the 21st Century requires us to take up two different types of challenges: 1. Challenges from extreme changes the world is currently going through in the rapid advance of information technology, and 2. Challenges from evil or misguided attacks on children, families, and America. Innovation is needed to meet both types of challenges. One from the natural evolution of technology, and the other from purposeful attack by a spirit of evil.
Information Technology
The first fact that requires innovation is how to respond to the upheaval being caused by extreme advances in knowledge and information technology. The second fact that requires innovation is how to respond to people deliberately contaminating children with confusion, perversion, race hatred, and other debilitating influences.
Google search had already altered the face of knowledge seeking, but now we have leapt exponentially forward due to the remarkable functions of AI. There are technologues who have sounded warnings over human redundancy related to the rise of AI. I consult with Pew Research and Elon University on the future of technology, and I take a more optimistic position. I believe the future of research, learning, and human progress can be greatly advanced by AI, but to bring education into harmony with the potential of this rapid technological advance, it will take the courage to go completely to the drawing board vis a vis what we have assumed about how humans learn, and the natural course of a good education.
I am optimistic about the future of research, learning, and human progress with the help of AI. However, we need to have the courage to rethink the structures of education. Until now, very little serious, focused thought on implications for fundamental revamping of the entire approach to human learning is being done. AI like everything else is crashing along willy-nilly, with no comprehensive reflection.
Social Media
Social media is a very important phenomenon in the arena of information and learning. I has an enormous impact on people, especially on impressionable young people.
For the sake of brevity, I will offer just superficial comments and recommendations regarding the innovation needed to address upheaval in education arising from seismic advances in knowledge and information technology, and the ubiquity of social media. I believe that education should be rewired to be more predominantly a family or community (a collection of families) affair. I believe the state is not needed in education, and that large educational institutions are passe and no longer appropriate or helpful.
Moral Challenges and Attacks on Children and Youth
The more important part of this talk has to do with the virulent and unthinkable assault on school-aged children by people who are misguided or somehow under the influence of evil purposes. Here we can look again at the breakdown of good and evil outlined above.
The reason humans are guaranteed freedom from God is so that we can give and receive love, and eventually create beautiful families.
Humans are guaranteed freedom from God so that we can give and receive love, and eventually create beautiful families. Hostility to nature and nature’s God results in the determination to deprive human beings of freedom and in this way corrupt the ideal or the possibility of family. This basic framework gives us perfect clarity necessary to be able to evaluate and assess ALL propositions related to education, at absolutely every level from pre-school to post doc.
The sexualization of children and the relativization of moral norms in early life destroys the chances for our children to grow up and have happy families. The surgical mutilation of youth makes this literally impossible. The imposition of censorship and cancel culture through the demonization of opinion (such as defining parents as domestic terrorists) is a direct attack on the individual liberties needed to make giving and receiving love possible. This is why all state tyranny always eventually tries to separate children from parents by force.
Guidelines for the Future
As we work to envision and implement sound policy for education, these simple guidelines are needed
- God-given and God-guaranteed inalienable freedoms needed to create happy families. This must be a simple north star for assessing education structures and policy. We need not be confused by each new or novel attack. No matter how complicated, the bright line of 1. freedom versus tyranny, and 2. support or attack on basic family love shows through every time.
What can we do?
- We can grow our impact little by little, day by day. We can pray personally and with others. This will have a big impact.
- We can be intentional and add these matters to our heartfelt concerns, our attentiveness and our conscious purposes day by day
- We can constantly look and be attentive for ways to help, and for ways to get help.
- We can be vocal. Kindly and respectfully try at all times to shed light whenever we can. Be courageous, and do sit silent when things are being done or said that trouble your conscience
Thank you for listening.