A feel good moment about teaching, farming, eating and giving kids what they really need

From John Klar, one of our Door to Freedom team members

Being Mr. Greer

Being Mr. Greer

What I teach at Christian School..... and why.

This past year, I have been teaching two days a week at Websterville Christian Academy, including two classes in agriculture – one for middle schoolers and one for High School students. I had taught during college as a substitute teacher in inner-city schools but went on to law school because I saw even then (1986) that the public schools were becoming bureaucratic messes, and if I was to become a teacher, I wanted to teach, not play games with administrations.

I was taught in public schools from kindergarten through 10th grade. However, in High School I encountered a lot of conflict – there were bullies and “identity groups” all around me. I belonged to no group, and by that time had decided I would stand down to no bully. This meant I got into a lot of fist-fights, my grades suffered, and school in East Hartford, Connecticut had become a daily battle.

My mom struggled financially as a single parent but found the means (I think she borrowed the money) to send me for a year to East Catholic High School in Manchester, Connecticut. It was a long bus ride, and I had to wear a suit for the first time in my life, but this brief episode was seismic in my education.

I had two very devoted teachers at East Catholic: Mr. Weinstein in biology and Mr. Greer in English. Both had a deep passion for their subjects, which infected me. I wish to share my experience with Mr. Greer here.

Mr. Greer was a heavy-set man and initially seemed somewhat severe. He was strict I suppose, in the sense that he kept order in his class. But over time I realized his deep passion for English literature and his love for his job is what fueled him. We studied a number of writers, but one of those was a reading and analysis of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby.

I was raised a devout secularist – there was no God in my life, and I did not embrace Catholicism while at East Catholic. But I did “see the light” of literature in an entirely new and life-shaping way through Mr. Greer’s teaching of The Great Gatsby.

Interestingly, we had studied the same book the previous year in public school. Mr. Greer showed me we had not actually studied it at all – we had merely read it, like pretty much everything else we read in public school: uncritically. Mr. Greer gave life to the work. He explained alliteration, and then read passages as if he was orating poetry. He then extrapolated into the symbolism, metaphors, and profound themes Fitzgerald was conveying. This was far beyond just “studying” the plot line – he brought the book to life before my eyes and heart, and I never read anything the same again. 

‘I am not a teacher, but an awakener.’ –Robert Frost

Later in life, I studied how J.R.R. Tolkien taught in his lectures. He was obsessed with ancient languages, particularly Old English. He reportedly would walk into a lecture hall and embark on a booming rendition of Beowulf in Old English, a dramatic exposition that profoundly impacted his students. Like Mr. Greer, his passion for his subject was something he wanted to impress upon and infect his students with.

Mr. Greer was articulate, demanding, and deeply passionate about his subject and the children in his charge. He would boom like Tolkien when reading Gatsby, his passion for the words and language evident in his own. He was also passionate about his faith, but never pushy. We all respected him. He was like a college professor in a small high school, just doing his part.

I realize that at Websterville Christian Academy, I have become something of a Mr. Greer, especially in my agriculture classes. I have a strong passion for my subject, and I have been given the gift of creating my own curriculum. 

Before school started, I was emailed an agriculture text for use in the class. When I went to use it, it was a teachers’ manual only, with no resources to offer the kids. When I inquired of the school, it was suggested I create my own curriculum. This is a lot more work, but also a creative invitation. 

I began with the basics: animal husbandry, the economics of farming, Vermont’s diary and sheep farming history, basic soil science. I had just published a book on the importance of local agriculture, which includes chapters on the steady destruction of America’s soils, water supplies, food quality, and food security, so I certainly had plenty to draw from. 

But I had eager faces looking up at me for knowledge, much like Mr. Greer would have seen my young, impressionable eyes back in 1979. I wanted to impress something worthwhile and life-guiding onto them, and I am aware of just how important their eating habits are to their physical, mental, and emotional health.

About a month into the school year, I observed to another teacher how I’d really love to teach them about the globalist effort to enslave humanity to industrial food dependency, and how that is the real threat to their future. She responded enthusiastically, “Oh, the kids would LOVE that! They are already studying that stuff on their own, especially the middle schoolers.”

I sampled the waters of interest, and the children were enthralled. Most did not know about the World Economic Forum and Klaus Schwab, an unelected organization touting plant-based diets dependent on soil-destroying GMO monocultures that in turn rely on synthetic fertilizers and a scourge of toxic chemicals that kill microbes and the human microbiome, toxify drinking water, and sicken humans with cancer, autism, and mimic human hormones (especially estrogen). 

The kids didn’t know the history of the federal government becoming the regulatory tool with which multinational corporations extinguished small family farms, including Vermont’s farms. They had not heard of Wendell Berry, Joel Salatin, Aldo Leopold, or Wes Jackson. They did not know that after 911 the “Department of Homeland Security” subsumed and controls the Department of Agriculture. They were unaware of how the EPA, FDA, CDC, and USDA were used to bolster industrial agriculture ate the expense of human health and independence, disguising as healthy substances that are toxic.

They know now. At first they shrugged their shoulders and boasted about the crappy processed foods they liked. Young people think they will live forever, so I showed them the impacts on their lives now – depression, acne, obesity, anxiety, cancer. I am careful to teach them not to be afraid, but informed – I teach them the CRAP test, a college-level analysis that examines in all studies the “currency, reliability, authority, and purpose” of the material. They are to apply this to all subjects in all things, but we do so with food and agriculture.

Are GMOs good or bad? What are they? Are eggs, red meat, butter, and breakfast cereals healthy? Why or why not? Are cows good or bad for the ecosystem, and is replacing them with fake soy burgers an upgrade? Is local food important for the local economy, culture, soils, and planet – why or why not?

‘Education is not the filling of a pot but the lighting of a fire.’ –W.B. Yeats

Like a booming Tolkien, I sometimes get caught up in the passion of my teaching. I do not want my students addicted to toxic food, sickened by high fructose corn syrup and chemical additives, or enslaved by corporations who see them solely as profit-making “consumers.” I provoke them with critical questions, test them on lists of chemicals, show them how lacto-fermentation and nitrogen-fixing plant biology works, dazzle them with soil and gut microbes, read to them from UN, WHO, and WEF websites.

The kids are alright. They get it. They take their knowledge home to their parents and friends. They know what atrazine and neonicotinoids are. They read ingredient labels. I teach them not to be purists, but to stay informed. We study “climate change” alarmism used to divorce humanity from its food supplies. We study farming culture and how alienation from the human community seeds isolation, fear, and addictions. 

I have become a Mr. Greer, of food and farming. I teach that God provided us a means to obtain healthy food from the soil (Genesis 3:17-19) and that fresh, nutrient-rich, local foods are healing cures and antidotes to toxic things that taste good but sicken them. We watch videos about different farming techniques in different cultures, including cumquats, cranberries and daikon radishes, chocolate, and goji berries (I brought some to class – organic!). One day I brought in a pile of local cheeses from Vermont Creamery – some liked the chevre; others liked the aged hard cheeses. 

I teach them that the bible warns (Isaiah 2:8) against industrial-agricultural idolatry – worshipping the industrial farming and processing technologies that humans have concocted to make agriculture “easier” and make food cheap, less nutritious, and even toxic. I teach them about food security – local food supplies, not oil-dependent canned garbage that’s factory-processed in faraway lands. I show them videos featuring farmers, soil scientists, and great thinkers, and then compare those to videos of Klaus Schwab, Bill Gates, John Kerry, Al Gore, and Tedros Ghebreyesus – who do they think is telling the world the truth?

I show them old TV commercials claiming factory margarine is better than butter, that “Tricks are for Kids,” and where Count Chocula and Franken Berry vie for their tastebuds – that a multi-billion-dollar advertising industry strives every day to bypass their parents to lure children into unhealthy eating choices. I teach them that cornflakes sprayed with vitamins are about as healthy as cardboard sprayed with vitamins. I show them how food is made addictive, deliberately, by triggering their tastebuds and making them keep eating when they are full — with laboratory chemicals.

Farmer/teacher Mr. Klar, with Belle and a small load of hay.)

I teach them about annual lists of the vegetables and produce most likely to contain harmful chemical residues – the “Dirty Dozen” and the “Clean Fifteen.” I show them that certain foods are better purchased as organic, especially berries and ground roots; and that other foods are comparatively safe when covered with a thick peel or skin. Always I teach them that we must not be purists – if we get overwhelmed by all these threats, we humans will resign ourselves to Doritos and Coca-Cola. They are navigating through life and must steer with their own rudders.

I read to them from legal cases about court decisions (and settlements) of cases asserting that glyphosate causes lymphoma, that baby food contains toxic metals, and that federal labeling requirements were designed to confuse. I read studies to them about endocrine disruptors, PFAS in drinking water and consumer products, microplastics in the seas, and phthalates in plastics (and fast-food restaurants). I teach them that women and children are at much higher risk from these toxins, and that corporations and their government will do less than nothing to protect them. They must make informed choices to protect themselves – just as they must make choices about whether to smoke, drink or use drugs, watch pornography or horror movies, listen to toxic music, or have “liberating” promiscuous sexual relationships versus healthy, monogamous ones. These and other choices shape their lives.

I teach them about the uniquely modern threat of unprecedented famine (foretold in Revelation 6:5-8), in a grid-dependent world that has forgotten the Great Depression and the OPEC Oil Embargo. I teach them about Vermont’s long history of self-reliance, individualism, abolitionism, and subsistence farming.  I teach them the truth, to equip them to go out into the world, shop at grocery stores, plant a garden, feed their children, and live their lives.

Then I test them. They must identify which foods are most toxic, which chemicals cause what illness, how soils are fed naturally, why cows are good for the soil and climate, and other issues that will serve them as they go out into the world.

I’m being Mr. Greer…. And I understand him better now. The gift is mine.

(Note: Websterville Christian Academy needs support. It offers pre-school through High School classes for a fraction of the per-student expenditures of public schools. Children are admitted with a flexible tuition based on income. Vermont’s public schools have become NEA-directed indoctrination facilities where children are not free to discuss race, gender, and true Vermont history. They certainly are not taught what I teach these children about food and farming. If you can afford to support this or other private schools, you will be helping children escape oppression and failure. If you or someone you know has children who have had enough of the bullying, silencing, and other stresses that burden them in public school, please consider recommending Websterville Christian Academy as a safe educational haven. They may even get a class with Mr. Klar!)