Part Two - By Sharon Sebastian – Website: http://www.DarwinsRacists.com

A radical environmentalist of the 1700s wrote in the Temple of Nature that man should eye with tenderness all living forms, including…his brother-ants and sister-worms. That man was Erasmus Darwin, a virulent anti-Christian Pantheist who was grandfather to Charles Darwin. As revealed in the book,Darwin’s Racists – Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow (http://www.DarwinsRacists.com) – influenced by his grandfather’s writings, Darwin conceived the theory of evolution. It is a “theory” that replaces God as Creator and worships the god of nature or natural selection. It is hardcore environmentalism and is being taught in schools across America today.

Indoctrination by environmentalist in America’s schools is girded by Darwin’s “theory” of nature, which continues today to lack empirical scientific data to support it as fact. Yet, as with global warming, advocates like to insist that the debate is over. Though man-made global warming is heavily tainted with fraud, the United Nations and radical environmentalists are now desperate to discredit the scandal that discredited their “scientific data” as a scam. But, the word is out making it a hard sale even to the most gullible. Nonetheless, hundreds of millions of dollars, donated to the U.N., are funneled into school systems to indoctrinate students in support of Climate Change. Persuading or frightening young minds is vital, because much is as stake.

The U.N.’s Green Charter, based on a radical environmental agenda reliant on “global panic,” seeks to transfer world power to a world body, such as the U.N. It sets out to “redistribute global wealth” from the wealthier nations, such as America, to less developed nations. It advocates creating “green jobs” through abandoning coal, oil and gas in favor of renewable energy sources such as wind and solar. It seeks to elevate the rights and protections of animals, fish and insects in their natural habitat above that of humans. It seeks to nationalize lands and seize personal property, including farmlands.

The strategy to take down America, as we know it, is spelled out in the U.N.’s Green Charter. Crucial to the Green Charter’s goal to accommodateunderdeveloped countries is to overhaul, to effect a “change,” to America’s system of government and economic prominence. In short, Americans’ hard work, innovation, creativity and initiative undermine countries that have not kept up. Those who support the U.N.’s Green Charter seek to dissolve individual rights through health care regulations, to control and allocate energy resources to individuals through government control via mechanisms like Cap-and-Trade, to control individual ownership and rights to property through processes like imminent domain, and take control of middle class lifestyles involving food intake, health decisions, size of families, use of appliances, use of air conditioning at home and at work, and restrict single family housing in favor of a stack-and-pack plan.

The Green Charter warns that America’s “refusal to act now on global warming would represent a crime against present and future generations.” In other words, America would be considered a criminal enterprise if it did not respond to the threat of man-made global warming. The ecological fly in that ointment, however, is the damning revelation of climate-gate’s bogus data. It should be noted that the U.N.’s Green Charter as drafted at the Rio Earth Summit in 1992 was a guideline for Al Gore’s documentary film, “An Inconvenient Truth.” The Rio Earth Summit demanded that industrialized nations must ante up 600 billion dollars to underdeveloped countries as penance for their sin against nature and the environment. If history is any indication, accountability for and application of the $600 billion may easily disappear through the sieve of the U.N.’s notoriously inbred corruption. World power is the bottom line, a Teutonic shift to take down America as a dominant economic leader to a nation answerable to the demands of concentrated global control in the hands of an elite few. That the U.N.’s Green Charter consists of an almost identical blueprint as Barack Obama’s Health Care and Cap-and-Trade plans is undeniable and highly problematical.

Consider that members of Congress may need to be bribed or promised sought-out committee appointments or comfortable ambassadorships to accomplish the deconstructing of America. The President has taken action that weakens both Congress and his Cabinet’s relevance vis-à-vis his power-laden Czars. That he already “ignores” the very Constitution he swore to uphold, seems to be lost on members of Congress as they jostle for bones being tossed by the White House. The success of the U.N.’s Green Charter (available online) is based on Climate Change, control of energy resources and control of health care. It diminishes America’s power and surrenders it to global interests.

Every one of us is an environmentalist who wants cleaner air and cleaner water for all people who share the globe. But, Americans recognize a scam, even one of global proportions, especially when they are the primary target. That our multi-national companies and leaders in the upper echelons of our government are positioning themselves to cash-in at the expense of American liberty and sovereignty is a crime against this great nation and the people who have worked and died to build and protect it. America did not elect a president to oversee its decline.

Part One - By Sharon Sebastian – Website: http://www.DarwinsRacists.com

LEAN being the times Americans will face, MEAN is the method of implementation of great hardship on America, and GREEN is the radical environmental agenda sold to the world as the shill to implement the aforementioned two. Green also relates to the vast billions that a hierarchy of global elites plans to pocket specifically from Americans. So, why is President Barack Obama so obstinately determined to get his versions of Health Care and Cap-and-Trade into law over the overwhelming objection of Americans?

President Obama insists that America must be “transformed.” The President’s educational mentor, Saul Alinsky, writes that in order to gain true power to make those “transformational changes,” you must first “destroy the middle class.” That includes small businesses, farmers, elimination of individual rights and property rights, nationalizing land to protect the environment and nature, abandoning a Constitution that protects the people from tyranny, and retaining power at any cost. There also must be mass redistribution of wealth. Legislation must be enacted to bend the people to the will of government, specifically through “mandates” in Health Care and Cap-and-Trade, all of which will be enforced by fines and penalties of imprisonment. Heavy regulations are to be enforced on corporations and people alike to reduce carbon emissions. This all-too-familiar formula to regulate and control populations, pointedly Americans, appears right out of Barack Obama’s playbook. It summarizes the Progressive ideology that originated with the President — Obama’s transformation of America by his own design, right?

Wrong. It is also the blueprint set out in the “Green Charter” of the United Nations whose goal is to redistribute global wealth in order to control energy, population and power. Is it mere coincidence that Obama appears in lockstep with the U.N.’s agenda to subjugate Americans to international law and global mandates? Congress knows the plan. Members of both parties have signed on to it. A courageous few members of Congress are rising to stand against it. They rise up only because the people of this great nation are themselves rising up. This war began before most Americans knew we were engaged in it. Under attack is the sovereignty of America as a Constitution based, free market society that imbues both personal and property rights to its citizens. Forces against the American Republic have increasingly gained power over the course of the last 80+ years and now stand ready to strike a lethal blow.

Clearly, for the U.N.’s Green Charter to work (under U.N. Agenda 21), Americans must come under the jack-boot regulations of Health Care and Cap-and-Trade legislation that, when enacted, will destroy the American economy. The U.N.’s goal is for Americans to use less energy, water, food supply and other natural resources that can be shifted to the third world. That the President’s agenda appears aligned with the U.N. indicates a higher calling for the President beyond America’s best interest. For the most part, the U.N. is supported politically primarily by third world dictators, Arab nations, and international players, such as George Soros, who know if you can control energy and health, you control everything.

This socialist-globalist agenda also explains a great deal about the people with whom the President surrounds himself. Obama’s handpicked appointments include his initial “Green Jobs Czar,” Van Jones, a self-described communist who held powerful oversight as “green jobs” advisor to the President. A 9/11 Truther, Jones advocated redistribution of wealth and accused “white polluters” of steering poison into minority communities. Obama’s Manufacturing Czar Ron Bloom states, “We agree with [Communist Dictator] Mao that power comes largely from the barrel of the gun” and “We know that the free market is nonsense.” Obama chose Diversity/Media Czar Mark Lloyd who openly admired Hugo Chavez’ socialist revolution in Venezuela. Czar Cass Sunstein wrote a radical environmental view that “animals could be plaintiffs and sue humans in court,” Science Czar John Holdren wrote of putting steralents in drinking water to control human population, political strategist Anita Dunne claims irony when she stated Communist Dictator Mao (who killed millions to stay in power) was “one of her favorite political philosophers.” There is globalist Harold Koh, Obama’s Chief Council at the State Department who represents the U.S. in matters of international law. Koh has reportedly stated a preference for the international rule of law over the U.S. Constitution, whereby Americans and the American military would be tried in international court for violations. Koh, meanwhile, entertained the possibility of Shariah (Islamic) Law’s place in America’s legal system. Then, there is the President’s political ally and Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel, who has said on-camera that he considers the 1^st Amendment to the Constitution that guarantees freedom of speech and freedom of religion “to be highly over rated.” The list goes on. Putting people in power with communist, socialist and globalist backgrounds indicates to Americans that maybe this President’s motives are not pure.

From average citizens to news analysts, Americans are puzzled by the inexplicable. Americans are perplexed at how the Obama administration finds unprecedented ways to drain the U.S. treasury, while on-camera the President declares straight-faced, “We have to finds ways to cut spending.” Unable to contain the waste and corruption erupting out of his own current TARP and Stimulus plans, how can Obama be trusted to track down half a trillion dollars in Medicare fraud? If he turns a blind-eye to reports that TARP money, that was to be returned to tax payers, is reportedly being used as campaign slush funds to elect members of his own party – can he be taken at face value? This president, in reality, is not a chameleon though he seemingly changes at will. He has a goal. Is Obama’s desired legacy to be the President, the consequential historical figure that “changed America,” unhinged it from its founding…no matter the consequences? In the face of this “change,” Americans need to do a lot more than “hope.”

Part Two: LEAN, MEAN & “GREEN”: Takedown of America by Sharon Sebastian

By Sharon Sebastian - Website: http://www.DarwinsRacists.com

Along with health care, Cap and Trade legislation still looms large over American households and businesses despite the outcry that both Cap and Trade and its birth mother, global warming, are predicated on bogus science. Hence, a cautionary tale of two frauds that have been perpetrated on a global basis. Due to their reported fallacies, I have labeled them “agenda-science.”

First, a look at global warming and climate-gate.  Global warming guru, Al Gore, has reportedly said his goal is to become the first carbon-credit, global warming “billionaire.” In order for that to happen, President Barack Obama says American families will have to pay energy bills that will necessarily “skyrocket.” Gore’s success appears to rely on imposing budget breaking expenses on American families and businesses.

You, after all, are to blame. You breathe in and out - you and your pesky biologically produced carbon dioxide are at the root of the problem - so say the scientists who insist the debate is over before the facts are in. Their bizarre logic being that you cannot survive if the planet is to survive. Stop exhaling or pay the piper or at least pay huge corporate entities stocking up on carbon-credits representing potential billions. But, wait.

Enter climate-gate’s fraudulent science. Weekly, news reports are exposing that scientists are reportedly manipulating global warming data. It is now being reported that there is no Himalayan glacier meltdown as the UN claimed, there are more polar bears now than in decades and the onslaught of deadly hurricanes that Al Gore predicted did not happen. The Norwegian Polar Institute reports that Antarctica is not melting and has actually, for the most part, been cooling since 1979. Cancel the panic over rising seas and flooded shorelines. Science today tells us that we are in a mini-cooling pattern and that the sun’s solar cycles control the warming and cooling of the earth - not humans. Could it be that, all along, at the bottom of the man-made global warming scare is a would-be billionaire and socialistic goals to impose government controls on small businesses and Americans? Global warming is “agenda-science” at its best. But, wait.

Topping that agenda-science is one better. Frustrated by the monkey-to-man chart as a student, I was determined to find out why schools teach the theory of evolution when there is no empirical scientific data to support it. The “theory” took root in the mid-1850s when there was no speed of the Internet or advanced science to report its fallacies early on. It was conceived by naturalist Charles Darwin, a man without the advantages of modern science. It proposes that people of color are less evolved, that God is not Creator and, according to Karl Marx, the father of Communism, it became part of his Communist Manifesto as revealed in the book, Darwin’s Racists -Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow by Sharon Sebastian and Raymond G. Bohlin (http://www.DarwinsRacists.com).

Evolution’s ugly offspring is Social Darwinism. It separates people by class and race. It pits the “fit” versus the “unfit” regarding who should receive society’s resources and devalues the life of the unborn, disabled and elderly. Darwin’s theory pleased elites whose goal was to control the masses. Along with early admirer Karl Marx were mass murderers Stalin, Mao and Hitler who all wrote of Darwin’s influence through natural selection, eugenics and Social Darwinism. The Marxists/Socialists/Progressives’ goal is elitist control of resources, wealth and the people. Darwin’s theory supports their need for a hierarchy to rule over those they deem less “evolved” and, therefore, less intelligent.

DNA and modern science expose the theory of evolution as non-science. Yet, it is so entrenched that it is being taught in American schools today. Students are told the “debate is over” even as advanced 21^st century science exposes the fallacy of Darwin’s 1850’s theory of evolution. Science should not be prostituted; deception should not be tolerated.

Americans are reading Darwin’s Racists - Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow, which reveals Social Darwinism and evolution’s long reach not only into schools, but into policy coming out of Washington. Holding our schools and government accountable for the damage pseudo-science wreaks on society will be a major step in avoiding Marxist/Socialist policies aimed at controlling every aspect of our lives. Addressing both sides of the evolution debate,Darwin’s Racists equips the reader and student with  history, theology and science rarely disclosed in one book. Only arrogance or fraud declares that the debate is over. In that respect - global warming and evolution have much in common as agenda-science.

Sharon Sebastian is an author, writer and contributor for various forms of media including broadcast, print and online websites. Her second book,Darwin’s Racists - Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow, addresses the global “evolution vs. creation” debate highlighting both the impact of Social Darwinism on America’s culture today and its influence on current policy coming out of Washington.

BY SHARON SEBASTIAN - WEBSITE: http://www.DarwinsRacists.com

Who lives, who dies, who decides?  Americans know it is the ultimate question when it comes to President Obama’s health care bill. What Americans want to know is the impact on family members of all ages if it passes. The question: “Who lives, who dies, who decides?” is emblazoned on the back of a book that digs into how life is valued and devalued by governments. The book, Darwin’s Racists - Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow by Sharon Sebastian and Raymond G. Bohlin (http://www.DarwinsRacists.com), reveals startling parallels between the evolutionist, Marxist, and Progressive mind-set that is entrenched deep into the platform of America’s political left.

Unelected, bureaucratic, so-called “death panels” were reportedly funded in the Stimulus bill. Wielding authority over who gets treatment based on age and value to society has Americans feeling queasy about the President’s proposed health legislation. Obama has vowed he will get his government run health care or at least get a toe in the door to expand it later. Obamacare allows actual physical control of your and your family’s lives. That warrants a look at whom President Obama has handpicked to advise him in his plan. Which brings us to the President’s Czars and a woman named Margaret Sanger.

Elitist-Progressive Margaret Sanger, the purported mother of Planned Parenthood, was a devoted Darwinian evolutionist. A foremost liberal, Sanger denounced the poor, disabled, peoples of color and the infirm as “human weeds that drained societies resources.” She advocated they should be left to die, including infants. She wrote that inferior Americans consume resources and that the “cold, hungry and sick” and the “less fit,” who were less useful to society were nothing but “human waste not worthy of assistance.” Sanger was a strong advocate of population control citing segments of society as dispensable. Sanger’s progressive ideology and writings are explored along with a root source of many of Washington’s emerging policies today in the book, Darwin’s Racists.

Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, brother of Presidential Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel, is a Chief Medical Advisor to President Obama. Dr. Emanuel’s LIFE Chart - dubbed the DEATH Chart - depicts that our very young and those over 40 have been bell-curved as being less valuable and even dispensable when resources get tight. They join our disabled, special needs and wounded warriors. The chart targets those under age 14 as being less valued. Those over 40 represent diminishing returns to the government and lose value as they age. Is a chart that pits the “fit” against the “unfit” - - very Darwinian, very Marxist, and elitist?

Obama’s handpicked Science Czar John Holdren wrote about instituting forced abortions by allowing the government to add steralants to drinking water. It is an insidious form of population control to limit human impact on the environment and weed out “those who contribute to social deterioration.” Holdren says he was influenced by educational mentor, eugenicist and abortionist, Harrison Brown, who stated that for the good of society: “The feeble-minded, the morons, the dull and backward, and the lower-than-average persons in our society who are out-breeding the superior ones at the present time,” should be sterilized. Brown asked, “Is there anything that can be done to prevent the long-range degeneration of human stock?” Holdren reportedly has never repudiated Brown’s dehumanizing, Hitler-esque views.

Obama’s Regulatory Czar Cass Sunstein appears to have a flagrant disregard for American’s rights to their own bodies.  In his 2008 book, Sunstein puts forward removing organs from terminally ill patients without their permission and presents legal scenarios that would allow a deceased’s organs to be “donated” without prior directive. This is the man who also suggests that animals could be granted rights to sue humans in court and that embryos are “only a handful of cells.”

Relentlessly, the President continues to include public funded abortions in his own health care proposal. It is a constant reminder that Illinois legislator Obama openly advocated leaving a surviving post-abortion baby to die after taking its first breath of life. For many Americans, under Obamacare, government control would extend from pre-cradle to post death. Aided by his closest advisors, is it any wonder when it comes to health care, that a majority of Americans do not believe the President has their best interest at heart? Cutting seniors Medicare by half a trillion dollars, adding millions of the able-bodied to Medicaid roles and expanding abortion, means less care and services for our most defenseless. With the word mandate, which means “force,” listed in the health care bills hundreds of times, like Dorothy in “The Wizard of Oz,” Americans need to know who and what’s behind the curtain.

Sharon Sebastian is an author, writer and contributor for various forms of media including broadcast, print and online websites. Her second book, Darwin’s Racists - Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow, addresses the global “evolution vs. creation” debate highlighting both the impact of Social Darwinism on America’s culture today and its influence on current policy coming out of Washington.

On the other hand, those many who now sell phonics, in every shape and color and price, help children to learn to sound out most words just fine, however, this method leads the children to no greater understanding of a word’s meaning than does sight-reading.

In the several years my wife and I spent teaching our children at home, we kept the definition that states, “It is only education if you learned something that you did not know before you started.” We tried, as time went by, to cut out of our homeschool those things that did not fit that definition.

Yes. We did teach our children to learn to read by the phonics method. We taught them phonics the way they did in the colonial days — using Scripture. But, if you phonics patriots would allow me a small infraction about what seems to be as sacred to some as the King James Bible today, we taught a bit of sight-reading also. That is, we taught them to recognize certain words that just somehow did not follow the consigned set of rules set down by phonics. Let me give you an example. Rules of vowel-consonant relationships in the phonics world teach that when at the end of a word the letter “e” follows a consonant, a vowel preceding that consonant shall have a long sound and that ending “e” shall be silent. This is a good and reliable rule in most cases; however, there are exceptions. And, what do you do with these exceptions? You have the child memorize these exceptions by “sight.” I found the same thing when I learned Spanish. There were the steadfast grammatical rules, and then there were exceptions. So you see, neither of these methods is fool proof. It might be said there is a proper time and place for the use of each.

Just as we find a deficit in those two methods, wherein they need each other, there is a bigger deficit in both methods that I wish to reveal. This deficit is that neither of these methods provides necessary instruction, for the most part, about word meaning. This bothers me, because when a child cannot understand the meaning of the words he is reading, he is not being educated. If it is supposed that he is to bring meaning to the words he reads, then the book becomes him instead of his learning from the book. Of what good use is this? There is no education there. Life is more than just an experience. A child can experience a book with pictures, but words are supposed to bring a greater dimension to his learning. If words did not have meaning there would be no use for dictionaries, but words do have meaning. These words mean something to each book’s author, and each author had the intention of conveying that meaning to the reader using those words. It would be a travesty for a child to ignore the author’s meaning and replace it with his own.

An ingenious device that has been introduced into our language is that of “root” meaning. This is an important key to understanding and to true education in reading. “Root” meaning brings to both phonics and sight-reading all the elements of reading and comprehension. A “root” is essentially that part of a word that is left when you remove the suffix and the prefix from a word. This part of the word tells the meaning in its Latin or Greek form. Most dictionaries derive word meanings from this root. Teaching your child root words will greatly enhance their self-comprehension of words. Your child will no longer ask you, “What does this word mean?” He will no longer struggle with how to pronounce words. A word will not stump him when you are not around. He will be a challenge to most students and adults in spelling.

There is a whole host of benefits in teaching your children root words, but unless you put root meaning into practice, and do it the correct way, it will not work for them. Real useful for putting roots to work would be to have or develop a list or chart of root words and their meanings. There are many ways to accomplish this, however, one of the simplest ways is to obtain a good root word dictionary. There are tools such as some common dictionaries as well as the Strong’s Concordance, for Greek roots, that are also good for this purpose.

Since root meaning is neither a method of bringing words to their meaning nor a means of concentration on pronouncing words alone, the goal is to learn roots so well that no word will be either a mystery or a challenge for your children. Unlike many word forms in the English language, root pronunciation is delineated very precisely within root word dictionaries. There is therefore no difference or question about the correct pronunciation of each root.

Looking in a root word dictionary at the word “precept,” we learned that it includes the root “capere,” the Latin verb meaning “to take.” When we added the prefix “pre,” which is the Latin word “prae” meaning “before” or “in front of,” we determined that a “precept” is a rule or principle that one takes in before doing something. Once our students began to remember that “cept” in a word, from capere, means “to take,” then it became simple to know the meaning of other words such as the word “concept.” Here the word “con” means “with.” So the word “concept” was quickly recognized to mean “to take along with.” Another example using Greek roots, was the word “philosophy.” The root word “philos” means “to love” or “love of.” The root “sophos,” derived from the name of the Greek philosopher Socrates, means “wisdom or knowledge.” Together these words form the meaning “the love of knowledge.”

Adding root word study to the beauty of phonics (and sometimes “see say”), instead of having to go to the dictionary to figure out the meaning to words they read, your children will be able to determine what words mean almost instantly. Their level of comprehension will become, to say the least, remarkable. Why not give your children a valuable gift by helping them cultivate the real root of reading.

In this crucial yet brief period of time, the father establishes his role as the spiritual leader of his home. He must strive to acquire at least the following seven skills, with God’s grace, to achieve effective spiritual leadership of his family.

One: A father must demonstrate contentment. That is, he must periodicaly take a break from urging his family to do better and just enjoy their accomplishments. Otherwise, a father that always expects more runs the risk of his family becoming discouraged and thinking that they can never do enough to please him. They will just stop trying. One case in point here is the father who tries to live vicariously through his son and pushes him to be a star player at soccor matches instead of using the sport to take advantage of its more redeeming lessons of goodsportsmenship, teamwork, fellowship, humility, and those things that are truly more important than being in the spotlight or winning.

Two: A father must humble himself. He must be aware of his capability to fail and must continually revisit when he has done so. This process can be used as a vital tool to keep from being critical of family members. He must show appreciation for his family. He must be quick to admit when he is wrong. This can be accomplished by remembering past failures and allows a father to view his childrens’ failures against that backdrop. This demonstrates to his family, perhaps more than any other way, both his need for them and his lack of pride in himself. It is important to remember, once again, that all the childrens’ eyes are upon the father.

Three: A father must learn to control his tongue and emotions. Harsh words do irrepairable damage to family members. They are like cancer and produce a growing variety of complicated reactions to a father’s spiritual leadership. It takes days, months, years to build a trusting realtionship and friendship with our cxhildren that will compete with their peers, however, this can be broken in an instant by a father who does not learn to control his tongue and emotions.

Four: A father must show good manners by meeting his family’s needs before his own. A father’s manners, or lack of them, will greatly influence the family’s behavior toward each other. I have seen the good effect, in both my family and others, where the mother directs an ill-mannered child to look at his father for appropriate behavior at the dinner table or elsewhere. Good manners and courteousness, when practiced by a father, tend to permeate through the whole family. One example might be for the father to open doors for the mother. Do this and witness how your children, both boys and girls, will play these roles in a like manner.

Five: A father must learn to accept each person in his family as he or she is. He must realize that each child grows and develops at his or her own rate. It would be non-productive to bring peer pressure on a child by comparing him or her to another – even a brother or sister. The standard by which you measure your children must be one that fits within the design and purpose of each individual child. God created each child, even before they were in the womb, for His own special purpose. The achievements they make must be measured then, not against other children, but rather against the design God has planted in them to do His good purpose. You can rest assured that God is growing each one in proportion to His design, and even though we cannot always see it, the work is being done. He will finish it in His own time.

Six: A father must learn to recognize a person’s worth and potential by finding each family member’s strong and weak points. He must emphasize the strong points and strengthen the weak points through training. He must be committed to the success of each member of his family and to God’s reputation. He must give his children the sense that they will be loved, whether they have done right or wrong. A father must realize that one time or another in their life his children will fail him, however, he must do all he can to prevent it. One way is to praise Godly character instead of just accomplishments.

Seven: A father must earn the right to be heard and not demand it of his family. Whereas, it is commanded by God for them to honor their father (and mother), children are more often resistant to this. This is for many reasons. One primary reason is that children have many growing pains and are looking to be met at their level concerning them. Unfortunately they do not always find this in their father, the authority figure, so they turn to peers. A father can earn the heart of his children by developing a personal relationship with each child. Discipline administered should be based on the father’s relationship to each individual family member. Forming relationships with children can be achieved through doing projects with each one. This is a good way for a father to open up and become “real” to each of his children.
Becoming the spiritual leader of the family is an achievable goal, for a homeschooling father. Saying that a homeschool father does not play a dominant role and does not participate in the everday schooling of his children is not only a myth, but also a short-sighted viewpoint concerning the role of the father in the homeschooling. Conversely, a lack of spiritual leadership in any one of the seven areas mentioned could cause 1) underachievement, 2) lack of self worth, 3) a variety of complicated reactions, 4) disrespect for parents and other family members, 5) feelings of rejection and a lack of trust, 6) failure, and 7) rejection of authority and out-right rebellion. To safeguard children from these errors is not only the reponsibility of a father, but a ministry and a genuine privilege.

SALEM, W.Va. — Daniel Staddon, a homeschooler from Harrison County, has never competed in a spelling bee. He’s never competed in a geography bee. But earlier this month he became the first-ever winner of the National Bible Bee - taking home a sizable trophy and $100,000.

Daniel discovered the bee while looking through a catalog last winter with his mother, Donna. They spotted a Bible study guide called “Balancing the Sword,” and noticed a blurb naming it the official study guide of the 2009 National Bible Bee. The paragraph also mentioned the bee’s $100,000 grand prize.

“I thought ‘Whoa,’” Donna said.

They ordered the study guide, and Daniel started to work. Because he turned 18 in 2009, it would be his only chance to compete.

The National Bible Bee had been in the works since 2005, after the death of 23-year-old Shelby Kennedy, a Texas woman who’d done extensive mission work in Haiti and Mexico. At Kennedy’s memorial service, speakers reveled her passion for scripture memorization, inspiring a member of the congregation to set up an endowment in her name.

“He had this idea, this vision that came to him that he wanted to launch a national Bible bee in her name,” said Mark Rasche, executive director of bee.

Rasche says children were already competing in spelling bees and geography bees, so “how much better to have the word of God memorized.”

In 2008, bee organizers put a plan together to launch. By spring of this year, the inaugural National Bible Bee was up and running with preliminary local bees scattered throughout the country.

Much like the Scripps National Spelling Bee, the National Bible Bee and its local competitions have written and oral segments. The written portion tests competitors’ Bible trivia expertise. During the oral portion, bee participants have to recite passages from the Bible verbatim.

Daniel says he preferred the written test, because he could concentrate better.

“With the oral rounds, you had to deal with nervousness and standing in front of a crowd,” he said.

But that’s not to say the written portion was easy. Contestants had just one hour to answer questions from six books of the Bible - Genesis, 1 Samuel, 2 Samuel, Matthew, Acts and Romans.

“I find it was kind of hard to read what they asked - it was so fast,” Daniel said. “You just had to put your best answers and move on.”

Donna says she didn’t doubt her son’s ability to compete.

“I knew that he would be able to not be distracted by other things. If this is what he wanted to do it would be priority for him,” she said.

And the Staddons have a pretty good background in the subject matter. Donna said her family reads the Bible together every morning, and goes through the book of Proverbs every month.

“That’s wisdom, that’s how you teach your children wisdom,” she said.

Before the Bible Bee, Daniel says he’d read the Bible through three or four times. But in the last year, he’s gone from “In the beginning” to “Amen” twice.

Daniel says he memorized the three-chapter-long “Sermon on the Mount” when he was about 10 years old, and it took him a year. But even that didn’t prepare him for the rigor of Bible Bee preparation.

“We’ve all done a little bit of memory, but nothing like this,” Daniel said.

Bee organizers told contestants which scriptures they’d be asked to recite in April. Daniel ordered a pack of cards with the passages on them and started studying. He developed study strategies to get through the more daunting passages. Daniel found a Web site that recommended highlighting verses so the mind would associate words with colors. It worked.

“When they would say James 3, I’d think purple,” Daniel said.

He also drew pictures on the scripture cards to jar his memory and underlined tricky phrases where he might get confused.

Another Web site suggested guessing at passages. Daniel said he used to learn scripture phrase-by-phrase, building until he had it all down. But now, when he comes to the end of a phrase he doesn’t know, he just guesses about what will come next.

“After a while you can finish out whole lines,” Daniel said.

Competitors were allowed to memorize passages from any of five Bible translations - the New International Version, the King James Version, the New King James, the English Standard Version and the New American Standard Bible.

Rasche says most competitors favored the New International translation, because it had the most “contemporary language,” though the 400-year-old King James Version was also quite popular.

Daniel recited from the King James Bible, and says his reason for choosing the antiquated translation was simple.

“I’ve always grown up using the King James Version,” he said.

He says competitors’ choice of translation didn’t really matter (”It is all the word of God”), Daniel says using another version would have confused him, since he didn’t know the language as well.

On Sept. 12, Daniel competed in Bridgeport’s Bible Bee. He was the only competitor in his age class, but was still given the written test and all the oral recitation rounds. His results were sent to Bible Bee headquarters, where organizers compared his scores to those of bee contestants nationwide.

“We took the top 300 contestants from three age groups and invited them to nationals,” Rasche said. “They were competing against their peers nationally.”

After the local competition, Daniel says he didn’t think he made the cut. The family expected to hear something from the National Bible Bee within a couple days, but a week passed and there wasn’t any news.

Figuring his run was over, Daniel stopped studying so intensely and resumed his normal Bible study. Until he checked the Bible Bee’s Web site and found his name on a list of national competitors.

“I saw it first, and I couldn’t believe it,” Daniel said.

He let the rest of his family take a look, and when they saw his name too, Daniel says he knew it was for real.

“We all exploded,” he said.

Reality set in quickly, though. Daniel said he immediately thought “Wow, we have a lot of work to do.”

In the local competitions, senior-level participants only had three levels of passages to learn. The national competition added a fourth category - often whole chapters of the Bible.

“Dad said ‘Wow, this is more like seminary,’” Daniel said.

The National Bible Bee was Nov. 4 and 5 at the J.W. Marriott Hotel in Washington, D.C. That Thursday, the 100 contestants in each age class took a multiple-choice Bible knowledge test and competed in two oral recitation rounds. By the next day, the field was narrowed to just seven children in each class.

Daniel said the competition was nerve-wracking for everyone involved. On one of the early oral recitation rounds, he said he looked around at other contestants and thought, “Why are everyone’s knees shaking?” His knees were shaking too.

Things got even tenser when the senior-level competition wound up in a three-way tie. Even after a tie-breaker round, Rasche says no one faltered.

“There was nothing that could stump them,” Rasche said. “They were all three just incredibly qualified and really prepared to get to that level.”

Daniel finally clinched the title with Psalm 145, 331 words in 21 verses.

“It turned out to be the one I’d gone over the night before,” Staddon said.

But bee organizers didn’t tell anyone the results until the awards banquet.

“Well, it was nice to know that he was in the top three,” Donna said. “I knew he had a prize, whatever it was, and that was exciting.”

Daniel says he didn’t really get to enjoy his meal because presenters waited until the very end to announce the senior class winners. Eventually, though, they announced the third-place winner. It wasn’t him. Then they announced the second-place winner. That wasn’t him either. Daniel placed first - winning $100,00 and his first-ever trophy.

He’s crediting his victory to a higher power. He said there were too many “intangibles” in the competition to give himself all the praise.

“They could always ask the ones you don’t know,” Daniel said.

He also credits his success to his family, who constantly quizzed him and listened to hours and hours of scripture recitation.

“It definitely would not have been possible without their help,” he said.

And Daniel wasn’t lacking in help - the Staddons, who live in Salem, have eight children. In addition to Daniel, there’s Donald, 30, Michael, 28, Robert, 36, Esther, 23, James, 21, Jonathan, 16, and David, 13.

Now that the competition’s over, Daniel says he’s taking a break from hardcore scripture memorization but is trying to retain what he’s already learned.

“I’m trying to keep them up,” he said.

Daniel says there have been rumors about an adult division at future Bible Bees, but doesn’t think he’d want to participate.

“It was good for one year, but I think more that that would be too much,” he said.

As for the prize money, he still hasn’t figured out how to spend it.

“I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about that,” Daniel said.

He says he might use it for furthering his education, a car, or on a house when the time comes. But Daniel’s quick to point out that he didn’t compete for money.

Though he says the $100,000 sparked his interest in the bee, even a sum that large isn’t enough to make someone study as hard as he did.

“There has to be a deeper reason if you’re going to put that much effort into it,” Daniel said.

He says “hiding God’s word in your heart” is completely different than reading the same words on ink and paper.

“When you memorize something, it goes to a new level. There’s something about getting it into your heart,” he said.