By Christine de Marcellus Vollmer.
As has been so tellingly documented in The Natural Family, marriage, married happiness, large families, and the culture of the natural family have been under successful attack for 70 years. In three generations the effects of this relentless destruction of a family culture founded on JudeoChristian principles have become obvious to all.
This is not to say that immorality, hedonism, and the excesses of the French Revolution were not ever-present in the margins of society, but they had not taken over Western culture as they seem to have done now. Giant steps have been taken—and unfortunately tolerated—by Western society since World War II, and have inexorably brought down the social and moral norms which had stood as the standard in the civilized world for nearly two millennia. These seismic shifts have been accomplished through young people and through the deformation of facts regarding life, family, and happiness.
These steps are not exhausted, but more are to come, and they will bring down the civilization in which we live if not arrested and put into reverse. And yet, there are reasons for hope that this destruction can in fact be arrested, and that a reverse is altogether possible.
Disintegration of the Culture of Marriage
The first major damage to marriage and the family was perpetrated by those who instigated and financed Alfred Kinsey to publish his bogus conclusions of a criminally executed study concerning The Sexual Behavior of the Human Male, in 1948.[1] This was followed by the equally disgusting The Sexual Behavior of the Human Female,in 1955.[2] Both were marketed as “best sellers,” and were indeed read by enormous numbers of people.
The shocking and degrading contents of these books have been successfully shown by Dr. Judith Reisman to be the product of a deranged and cruel man. Her initial study, called Kinsey, Sex and Fraud, the Indoctrination of a People,[3] followed by Crimes and Consequences, and Stolen Honor, Stolen Innocence, all demonstrate chillingly the criminal experiments on children and prisoners which Kinsey performed under the aegis of the University of Indiana. Dr. Reisman deserves enormous credit and gratitude for her study of Kinsey and his methods, and for her courage in publishing these important books. Her work debunks the “science” and demonstrates the fallacies of his claims of the rampant immorality and deviance of Americans, which Kinsey had successfully foisted as fact upon both the media and society.
In 1968, when “the pill” was established on the market, Paul Ehrlich was financed to write The Population Bomb,[4]which also reached bestseller status. A gullible public became convinced that too many children were being born and that responsible parents should limit their families to two children. Famously challenged by the economist Julian Simon,[5] Ehrlich lost the bet that by 1986 millions would die of starvation and that essential minerals would no longer be available.
The publication and aggressive marketing of these pseudo-scientific books were instrumental in convincing the postwar generation that morality was hypocrisy and that children were a threat to the world.
Important, of course, in the corruption of the culture of morality in America was the contrivance of “sex education.” Sex education was pioneered by Margaret Sanger, largely funded by John D. Rockefeller, and spread through their project, Planned Parenthood. Pushed in schools, sex education convinced parents that sex was too complicated and best left to the “professionals.” Many families lost their children to the new morality in this way. The “generation gap” being touted by Planned Parenthood convinced many that the immorality of the “hippie” culture, developing fast, was inevitable. Consequently, the children and adolescents of the 1960s and 1970s lost the transmission of family values. What was worse, they also lost the habits and customs of family meals, family prayer, and the respect, obedience and consideration that had made families strong and happy for generations. Bowing to the spirit of the times, parents neither helped their children to strengthen their character, nor insisted upon the practice of virtue. The notion of universal values was almost completely demolished in this period.
Disintegration of Culture
The degrading influence that hard rock and other types of new music has had is hard to describe. The primitive and rousing rhythms and the pornographic lyrics inciting to sexual crimes have added to the destruction of morals, and even of love itself.
At the same time, young people are now submitted to truly unimaginable immorality in movies and TV. Rape and sexual violence enliven a constant menu of casual sexual encounters of heroes and heroines seemingly without families or natural attachments of any kind. These models are hammered into the consciousness of young people and their parents until such a life is thought to be “normal.” Many young people manage to keep their morality and honor intact, but the social fabric of customs pertaining to finding a suitable marriage partner has been lost. The result is that many good young people cannot find spouses and are resorting to dating agencies.
The new morality also brings with it a host of physical ailments. The
Centers for Disease Control reports[6] that about 30 million young people are currently infected with sexually transmitted diseases. Statistics concerning infertility are also startling. Chlamydia and gonorrhea, the most common STDs, are significant causes of pelvic inflammatory disease (PID) and infertility.7 Between the loss of interest in childbearing and involuntary infertility, the U.S. birthrate has been below replacement for several years, threatening the economy and the future worker/retiree balance.
The problems caused by the loss of both values and a culture of marriage and family is most accentuated and most tragic in the inner cities, where minority single mothers have lost control of their children. The research of Dr. Patrick Fagan, Ph.D.,8 has shown the correlation between a lack of parental marriage and the failure of young people to succeed in many ways. The resulting tendencies toward drug use, gang involvement, and teenage pregnancy continue the vicious cycle of poverty and violence. On the other hand, the statistics show without a doubt that those with intact families frequently succeed in leaving the ghetto and entering the middle class. It is most urgent that these young people are reached with knowledge and direction sufficiently robust to effectively guide them toward integrity, responsibility, and marriage, so they and their children can reach success in life.
Hope for the Future
As we are concerned with young people, we are in fact working with the world’s best material. All children are born with an innate desire to love and be loved, and to do the right thing. A child’s first years are spent learning the facts around him or her and figuring out how things and people work. This innate desire to figure out the world is enhanced by the equally innate attraction to goodness. Even a baby will be attracted to the wrinkled old face of a really good person, rather than to the perfect face of a calculating one.
After first babyhood, and between the ages of about four and twelve,
statistics/prevalence-2020-at-a-glance.htm, last reviewed January 25, 2021.
- “STDs & Infertility,” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, available at https://www.cdc.
gov/std/infertility/default.htm, last reviewed March 29, 2021.
- See the Marriage and Religion Research Institute, at https://marri.us/.
children enter what has been called the “latency stage,” when the exhibitionism and interest in their bodies cedes its place to a stage of modesty and a preference for activities with their own sex rather than with the opposite sex.[7] This is the age when ideals are formed, when boys dream of heroism and girls want to be nurses, vets, or mothers. Explicit sexual information or sights at this stage can be extremely damaging, according to psychiatrist Dr. Melvin Anchell, whose life was dedicated to warning the world of the evils of SIECUS and Planned Parenthood’s sex education programs.[8]
The onset of puberty ends this latency stage and the wonderful, although under-appreciated, adolescent stage begins. This stage is not sufficiently understood because, as well as undergoing physical growth, adolescents are limited by what is now known as a pruning back of the neuronal connections. It has been established that about 30% of these connections are eliminated during puberty. The brain reestablishes adult connections during the following six to seven years, when serious study is usually undertaken and when independent thought is built.
This period of rebuilding the brain is usually characterized by absentmindedness and a difficulty in verbalizing opinions that may work together to give the impression of having lost intelligence. However, adolescence is a stage of observation and learning, both by experience and by challenges. It is the age for expeditions, new experiences, and responsibilities. It is the age for much reading, as vicarious experience is valid, too, and has the advantage for the teenager of being unobserved. Good literature furnishes the young and re-growing brain with new connections of understanding and positive attitudes for future decisions.
Structured Character Education
Our pro-life and pro-family work, starting in 1981, was illustrative of the problems which lead to abortion and family dissolution, and also illustrative of the lamentable mental and attitudinal condition of young people who have not had the benefit of strong family values but have instead been captivated by the zeitgeist. Our answer to these problems was to counter sex education with a school curriculum which would combine character education with education for affectivity, and sexuality for marriage and family. In other words, education in the understanding and practice of the universal virtues. Courage, loyalty, justice, generosity, empathy, resilience, patience, and perseverance are but the beginning.
This amazingly successful curriculum, which we named Alive to the World, took years and much research to put together and we took as our base known thinkers representing the various aspects of education. Developmental Psychologist Thomas Lickona, known as the “father of character education,”[9] has written seminal works such as Educating for Character[10]and many others that have been invaluable for our work. Also important to us is neurologist/psychiatrist Viktor Frankl, whose most famous book, Mans’s Search for Meaning,[11] explains for the non-specialist his knowledge of human longing,honed by his experiences in Hitler’s concentration camps. Frankl has supplied the indispensable reasoning that the human being is so wired that it is only by going out of himself or herself and giving and doing for others, or for a project more important than self, that happiness is attained. One of his aphorisms, “Happiness is a by-product” of our noble actions, is a fact all can see and feel. Frankl dedicated his life to helping people, through his method of “logotherapy,” to attain what he identified as a sense of meaning. His reasoning has permeated our work.
Alive to the Worldwas conceived as a school curriculum to cover pre-K through grade 12, and consists of 13 student texts and 13 teacher guides with 35 lessons per year each. Perhaps the main reason for the success of this work is that it is written as a continuous story about Charlie and his cousin Alice and their group of friends and companions. Third person storytelling allows both children and adolescents to experience a variety of situations, efforts, successes, and difficulties, as well as the fun of companionship. Storytelling allows children to internalize teachings without reserve or defensiveness.
The characters in the story grow with the reader, and so the incidents in each chapter/lesson are happenings typical of that age. For the preschooler, our place in nature, the concept of a family, the advantages of orderliness and even the birth of a sibling are shown as understandable and shared experiences. Later levels deal with winning and losing, sportsmanship, and fair play. Authority, obedience, and responsiblity, depicted in story format make more sense to young minds.
The Pedagogy of the Integration of the Human Person[12], a product of the elaboration of this work, endeavors to aid the student in harmoniously integrating each of the three levels of the person: the spiritual, with its intelligence and will; the emotional, with its impulses and sentiments; and the corporal, where day-to-day behavior occurs. Thus, each chapter in the story is carefully written to give certain information, to appeal to the emotions, to build positive responses, and to indicate actions for dealing appropriately with the situation. It is well-known that many young people, knowing full well the dangers of certain behaviors, will fall into them simply because they are not sufficiently committed emotionally to avoiding them. Nor are they armed with tools to resist persuasion. These are cases of non-integration of their spiritual, emotional, and corporal selves. It is vital to reach these three levels of the student at the same time, and only a story can do it efficiently.
In preparation for addressing issues of sexuality, the 4th-grade text, Book 5, “Different but Complementary,” continues the narrative. It deals with archetypal attitudes of boys and girls regarding gender superiority, well-illustrated with stories of famous men, women, and couples, all known for their contributions. The next text, for 11-12 year-olds, “Friends!”, is all about friendship. This part of our story visits the various types of unhealthy friendships and examines deeply the characteristics of true friendship. The underlying message is that a marriage must be based on friendship, rather than on admiration or fleeting erotic feelings.
Book 7, “Changes and Challenges,” for 12-13 year-olds, discusses in some depth the challenges of puberty, but carried by the narrative of the story and taking into account the different personality types represented in the story. This allows readers at different levels of maturity to feel comfortable with the information. At no point does Alive to the World offer explicit or genital information or illustrations. For this, we offer a wonderful narrative handbook for parents, “Sexuality Explained,” by our collaborator Louise Kirk. This book guides both mothers and fathers in explaining intimacy with delicacy, along with the complete biology of procreation and the marital embrace.
Book 8, “Personality Plus,” is seriously centered on the dichotomy of adolescence: the desire to be like everyone else, and the wish to be considered unique. In Book 9, “Worth Waiting For,” attraction, infatuation, and friendships tending to romance are the background for understanding the range of relationships between the sexes, as well as discussion of life plans, ambitions, the use of particular talents, and vocational possibilities. Books 11 and 12 focus on leadership abilities, decision-making, and negotiation skills (based on the famous Harvard negotiation method of “Getting to Yes”[13]). The 13th and final book, “Ready for Take-off,” introduces themes of justice and class differences, with an emphasis on responsibility and the democratic system, as the group of students all choose different valid paths for the continuation of their lives.
The teacher guides for Alive to the Worldare carefully prepared to give both information and many ideas for activities, discussion, and debate.The Objective of each lesson is indicated in its three important levels: for Understanding (with the intelligence), for Accepting (through the emotions), and for Doing (in day-to-day actions), with the desired Outcomes clearly indicated. Our success with teachers is partly due to the clear admiration shown for their vocation and for the additional information given them—anthropological, psychological, and methodological—in both a 16-hour preparatory course and the teacher guides.
Educational Tools
Our focus has also been on addressing the new scenarios our children and youth face in the coming times. In a world of great complexity, polarization, and incredibly rapid change, we need to give our children and youth the tools to face any situation, especially the immense pressure to accept imposed redefinitions of life, gender, family, and sexual behavior. In particular, the expanding role of technology in every aspect of life, and instant access to reliable as well as unreliable information, means that our young people need to possess the tools for evaluating and discerning so much material.
To answer these challenges, our values-education program has used brain-research-derived, updated educational tools such as backward planning, scaffolding, and concept-based learning to ensure that values become part of lifelong learning and enduring knowledge. The benefits of teaching through storytelling have also proved enormous in addressing the universal and timeless “big ideas” we wish our children and youth to take with them for the rest of their lives. Learning values as facts does not allow students to internalize the awareness of a value or the experience of practicing it, as it only provides a shallow approach, both intellectually and experientially. Storytelling remedies this weakness.
With backward planning, we set our objectives before writing the chapters of the story, making sure the narrative is focused on age-relevant, real-world situations that can spur critical thinking from a safe place. With the method of scaffolding, the teacher becomes a facilitator and mentor as students take an active role in their learning. In reading the stories, the students are led to engage in and develop constructive discussions regarding the plot, which addresses different aspects of a value or big concept. Every book, as well as every chapter, is designed to provide a supportive framework to solidify learning and move on to the next concept.
Today’s education is tending towards what is called 3D teaching,[14] and the “concept-based”[15] approach has also proven a great advantage in instilling values in our children and youth. These “big ideas,” concepts, virtues, or life values bring real-world meaning and greater depth in understanding, thus triggering synergistic thinking and problem-solving skills that can be transferred to any real-life situation in any time and place.
Alive to the World fosters not only the learning process, but also the experiences that will lead to good deeds and positive attitudes in life. It enables our children and adolescents to build their own cycles of virtue, which will have a ripple effect on their surroundings: an impact that will lead to their own happiness and fulfillment and that of the society in which they live.
Results So Far
The anthropological perspective underlying this program leads children and teens in all countries and conditions to feel understood, and to easily grasp how to practice and defend values on a daily basis. Because of this, in the almost 20 years Alive to the World has been available, it has been welcomed in 20 countries and been translated into eight languages. The first countries to adopt the program in South America were Peru, Mexico, and Venezuela. Academic backing soon came from Argentina and Chile with FASTA University (Fraternidad Sto. Tomás de Aquino) in Buenos Aires, and Universidad de la Inmaculada Concepción in Concepción, Chile taking on distribution. In a total of 14 Latin American countries, except Venezuela, it is used mainly in private schools so far.
In 2010, a study from researchers at the Thomas Jefferson Program of Public Policy at William and Mary College found our program to be effective in instilling true democratic values, such a vital and present need in South America. Eventually, the UK,[16] France[17], Germany[18], Brazil[19], and Korea[20] published adapted versions. The government of
Hungary has adopted Alive to the World in Hungarian schools. It is also spreading quickly in Africa, with 200,000 children and adolescents being the first students to receive it in six countries, in French, English, and Portuguese. Romanian, Polish, and Swahilitranslations are currently underway. Strathmore University in Nairobi, Kenya is implementing Alive to the World Books 10-13 for freshmen students, and subsequently has added them to the last four years of the principal secondary schools feeding the University.
Coprodeli, a group in Peru which runs a number of schools in the most violent and impoverished neighborhoods in the country, has reported results which have attracted the attention of the Ministry of Education. Applying Alive to the World consistently, they report 0.01% pregnancies among their 10,000 students. The average in Peruvian schools is 14-18% pregnancies per year.
Alive to the World was designed for classroom use, using classroom interaction, but concerned parents and grandparents worldwide are now also able to teach our curriculum at home using our digital format.
In Venezuela, where we are evaluating with care, the curriculum is in use in several types of schools: state, municipal, “Bolivarian,” religious, and private. All reports indicate that, particularly in the poorest and most chaotic areas, the results are exciting. The first observed effect is a total reduction in school violence and bullying. Then changes of major importance appear, including lower drop-out levels, and finally a reduction or disappearance of teenage pregnancy in the schools where Alive to the World is present. Young people begin to want to excel and have a life plan.
It is heartening to see that young people (even, or especially the disconcerting adolescents of today), truly desire to have good and orderly lives and morals. They can have both, if only they receive adequate guidance in logical reasoning about virtue.
[1] . Alfred Kinsey, The Sexual Behavior of the Human Male (Indiana University Press, 1948).
[2] . Alfred Kinsey, The Sexual Behavior of the Human Female (Indiana University Press, 1955).
[3] . Judith A. Reisman and Edward W. Eichel, Kinsey, Sex and Fraud: The Indoctrination of a People, JohnA. Court and J. Gordon Muir, eds. (Lafayette, LA: Huntington House, 1990).
[4] . Paul R. Ehrlich, The Population Bomb (New York: Sierra Club/Ballantine Books, 1965).
[5] . See Marian L. Tupy and Gale Pooley, “How Julian Simon Won a $1,000 Bet with ‘Population Bomb’ Author Paul Ehrlich,” Foundation for Economic Education (March 8, 2018), available at https://fee.org/articles/how-julian-simon-won-1-000-bet-with-population-bomb-author-paulehrlich/.
[6] . “Sexually Transmitted Infections Prevalence, Incidence, and Cost Estimates in the United
States,” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, available at https://www.cdc.gov/std/
[7] . Melvin Anchell, What’s Wrong with Sex Education? (The Hoffman Center for the Family, 1991).
[8] . Melvin Anchell, Killers of Children, a Psychoanalytic Look at Sex Education (Anastasia Books, 1988).
[9] . See the Center for the 4th and 5th Rs, New York State University, available at https://www2. cortland.edu/character.
[10] . Thomas Lickona, Educating for Character (New York: Bantam, 1991).
[11] . Viktor Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning (Boston: Beacon Press, 2006 [1946]).
[12] . Carlos Eduardo Beltramo, La Pedagogia de la Integración de la Persona Humana (Navarra, 2014).
[13] . For more, see “What is Getting to Yes?” Program on Negotiation, Harvard Law School, available at https://www.pon.harvard.edu/tag/getting-to-yes/, accessed June 16, 2021.
[14] . Stephen, “Teaching in the Third Dimension: Moving into Concept-based Curriculum,” Wayfinder Learning Lab, available at https://sjtylr.net/2012/07/24/the-third-dimensionmoving-into-concept-based-curriculum/, January 24, 2012.
[15] . H.Lynn Erickson, Concept-based Curriculum and Instruction: Teaching Beyond the Facts (New York: SAGE Publications, 2002).
[16] . Alive to the World, Gracewing, 2008.
[17] . Grandir Ensemble, Fleurus-Mame, 2017.
[18] . Leben, Lieben, Lernen, Wertevoll Wachsen, 2018.
[19] . Caminhos de Vida, FTD Editorial, 2011.
[20] . KYOYOOKKWAKSA, 2014. https://sjtylr.net/2012/07/24/the-third-dimension-moving-intoconcept-based-curriculum/.