Living The Worthy Life: Smartphones, Modern Curriculum and Communism-What Do They Have To Do With Each Other And The Church

Here are some startling facts for you to consider: 

What are the direct results of teaching toward a standardized test, unlimited use of social media in the class, and the rise of socialism or communism among students in the age group 18-24? 

There is a 90% Daily usage of social media in the age group 18-24  in the United States (Pew Report 2019) 

YouTube 94% 

Facebook 76% 

Snapchat 73% 

Instagram 75% 

Twitter 44%  

Catholic Church Attendance was at 12%  (19-29) 2019 Gallup Poll 

Catholic never attending or seldom attending 55% (19-29) 2019 Gallup Poll 

This is bad, but when you add to this mix the concept that students today are learning more of their lessons from their social media than their teachers, maybe you can see why this is a major concern. 

Bishop Fulton Sheen explained in the early 1950s, “Communism is the final logic of the dehumanization of man. The industrial civilization of the Western world has no intent to destroy man's freedom or to deny his personality. But Communism does. Denying God, it reduces man to a robot.”  He then came up with the conclusion that Communism is an aggressive religion of the species.   

Today we are looking at a real problem.  It is the time on task concept.  What are students today spending their time doing?  The answer is they are on their phones.  So much so that the biggest issue facing many schools is the banning of cell phones from the school. Should the U.S. follow France’s lead and ban smartphones in schools? Teachers in the U.S. are struggling to keep teens engaged, as they spend record amounts of time scrolling through social media. 

Teens are reading for pleasure less than ever today, instead of spending hours of free time each day scrolling through social media on their devices, a study published in the journal of Psychology of Popular Media Culture published in August 2018 found. 

The study surveyed a sample of approximately 50,000 students from the 8th, 10th and 12th grades from 1976 to 2016, representing more than 1 million teenagers. It found in the mid-2010s, the average 12th-grader spent approximately two hours a day texting, two hours a day on social media, and two hours a day generally surfing the internet. That amounts to six hours per day online. 

Actually speaking this figure becomes even more frightening when you look at some other figures:   

• The average school day has seven 50 minute periods and seven five minute passing periods.  When you pass through in a 30 minute to 60-minute lunch you will soon see that average school day, there is about five hours of instruction thrown into an eight hour day. 
• Then consider that it takes a normal 50-minute class about 15 minutes to settle down, take roll and pass out assignments, so now you could easily figure that you, if lucky, have about two and one-half hours of instruction each day. 

• Meanwhile, one-third of students did not read a book in 2016, nearly triple the number reported in the 1970s. In 2016, only 2% of teens read a newspaper each day, do read a book or magazine daily, but by 2016, just 16% did. 

Maybe this is where the young people are getting all of this information about how Communism is –through their social media.  The results are clearly outstanding and obvious. 

• Socialism has re-entered the public discourse over the past several years, in part due to the high profile candidacy of socialist Bernie Sanders in the 2016 Democratic presidential primary, as well as the surprise victory of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America organization, in the Democratic primary in New York support grew from 33% in the early 1990s. In the late 1970s, some 60% of teens said they supported it in the 14th Congressional District. According to a news report from Axios, over 40 socialists have won in primary elections this year, and the membership to the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) has grown from 7,000 members to 50,000 since 2016. 

What Is Your Understanding of the Term "Socialism"? 

In conclusion, a rapidly decreasing Church attendance rate along with increases in student social media as well as changes in educational practices have lead the American student of today to easily accept at face value of the values of communism and socialism.  Look at the Gallup Poll study.  Socialism has been adopted by the students of today.  What was clearly seen in Bishop’s Sheen generation as evil is not considered a right. Are we asking for the wrong things from the Government.  The government is not God.  The G in Government is not capitalized on purpose.  We are the government.  The people who claim that government is god has really made the claim that we are god.  This was wrong, this is wrong, and this will always be wrong.  

Remember these words of Bishop Sheen, “Moral principles do not depend on a majority vote. Wrong is wrong, even if everybody is wrong. Right is right, even if nobody is right.”