Good morning!

Family life in Britain is seriously failing children. Parents are shipping their kids off to school at age 4 or 5 without even having taught them to use a toilet or say their own name. One in four of these students can’t eat or drink independently. About a third have apparently never seen a book. Teachers say some of them try to tap or swipe the pages like they would on a digital device.

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In an annual school readiness survey by education foundation Kindred², teachers say nearly 2 in 5 children simply aren’t ready for school, and the problem is intensifying.

Over a third of these students can’t dress themselves or comfortably hold a pencil or crayon. One in four lacks basic language skills and can’t answer simple questions.

One in four kids starting school isn’t toilet trained. Nearly an hour and a half of school time each day is being lost to dealing with these kids. “It’s definitely getting worse,” says one assistant principal. “If you go back 10 years you wouldn’t have had children coming into Reception [the equivalent of Kindergarten] who needed toilet training, and now it’s almost the expectation that schools will do it.”

That’s the real issue: derelict parents expecting schools to clean up their mess.

This has a broad range of causes. Teachers can pinpoint several: parents letting their small children amuse themselves for hours on devices, parents being more wrapped up in devices themselves than in spending time with their children, parents not reading to their children, parents not recognizing their responsibility to prepare their children for school.

Parents, meanwhile, say they’re having to work more hours to meet rising living costs. They say they were never told the schools’ expectations for readiness. Forty-six percent of British parents think it’s not their job to prepare their children for school.

Besides being absolutely appalling to me, this survey makes me deeply thankful for our book Child Rearing With Vision.

This is an invaluable book we offer freely. It is packed with practical, Bible-based instruction on how to work with your child right from birth (even before that) through to adulthood. It shows how God intends parents—not schools—to be their children’s primary educators.

One chapter details how to make the most of a child’s crucial formative years up to age 5. It describes 16 good habits parents must instill during those years before sending them to school: “correct habits of etiquette, cooperation, cleanliness, truthfulness, good posture, obedience, orderliness, proper eating, appropriate indoor and outdoor behavior, respect for adults and people in general, respect for others’ property, sharing with others, table manners, to be still and sit quietly.”

Imagine what a classroom could accomplish with students whose parents had diligently implemented those skills.

I don’t have to imagine it, because we have a K-12 school here on our campus with students whose parents work diligently to implement the standards in that book. It’s an entirely more pleasant and productive experience.

I highly recommend you get a free copy of Child Rearing With Vision. Buck the trend of letting children raise themselves and then dumping them on hapless public schoolteachers. Fulfill your God-given responsibility as your child’s primary educator, and reap the benefits.

America Is Back … ing Out of Syria

The United States confirmed Thursday it has withdrawn from the Al-Tanf Deconfliction Zone, a patch of southeastern Syrian territory the U.S. used to fight the Islamic State during the Syrian civil war. The U.S. has allowed the Syrian military, now led by former al Qaeda operative President Ahmed al-Sharaa, to take over the perimeter.

This follows the U.S. abandoning its Kurdish allies to the north and means that it no longer has any significant military presence in Syria.

• Al-Tanf Garrison is located near Syria’s borders with Jordan and Iraq.
• Under the Assad regime, Syria aligned with Iran and facilitated its interests in Iraq and Lebanon.
• Under the Sharaa regime, Syria has been treated as a trustworthy partner by the Trump administration, despite its ties to jihadism, attacks on Kurds, and a tenuous grasp on governance.
• Israel, Syria’s neighbor to the south, has vocally stated that it does not trust the Sharaa government: It actually had a more functioning relationship with Assad.

Withdrawing from Al-Tanf basically means U.S. President Donald Trump is confident Sharaa’s government is the best option to govern Syria and no longer needs any American checks. Aside from signaling to Sharaa that he can continue his consolidation of Syria with impunity, this also leaves jihadist groups like Iranian proxies and even the Islamic State an opportunity to reestablish a foothold in Syria.

In 2019, when President Trump was originally considering a similar move, the Trumpet wrote:

President Trump’s withdrawal from Syria has damaged America’s credibility in the region. In the tumultuous Middle East, reliability and predictability are essential attributes in an ally.

Arab nations and Israel will gladly accept all the weapons and financial support America is willing to give. But given that the region is a powder keg, they simply cannot risk depending on the U.S. to come to their defense in the face of Iranian aggression, regardless of speeches by a U.S. secretary of state. The search for new allies is underway.

While some may rejoice over America’s withdrawal from the Middle East, the Bible reveals that its absence portends the most destructive period this war-weary region has ever seen.

Prophecies in Daniel 11 and Psalm 83 state America’s time as the Middle East’s strongest power is numbered. To learn more, read “America Is Back … ing Out.”

Separatists Step Up Efforts to Leave Canada

Separatists in Alberta, Canada, are ramping up efforts to trigger an independence vote. According to a Reuters report yesterday, canvassers are hoping to collect 177,732 signatures by May 2—the 10 percent registered voters threshold required for a citizen-led referendum.

• Opinion polls indicate that roughly 1 in 5 Albertans want to leave Canada, so obtaining the required signatures should be easy and Albertans will then likely vote in an independence referendum later this year.

U.S. interest: Jeff Rath, the spokesman for the Alberta Prosperity Project group, has confirmed that he and other activists met with U.S. State Department officials in Washington to get a sense of how the U.S. administration would respond to an independent Alberta.

• Meanwhile, U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has weighed in on the separatist movement, saying the western Canadian province is a “natural partner for the U.S.”

Strategy: Bessent and other officials in the Trump administration know Alberta has almost no chance of seceding from Canada this year. Canada’s national legislature in Ottawa must rule that a clear majority of Albertans want independence before negotiations can even begin.

• Yet the mere existence of a provincial independence movement is an opportunity for President Donald Trump to employ divide-and-conquer strategies in his negotiations with Canada over tariffs and other trade issues.

Alberta’s trade is heavily oriented toward the United States; so heavily oriented, in fact, that it exports to and imports from the U.S. significantly more than with the rest of Canada.

• As international trade becomes more combative, it is in Alberta’s best interest to side with Washington over Ottawa.

Prophecy says: This is significant considering Bible prophecies about economic sieges and civil unrest in the end-time nations of Israel (primarily the U.S. and British Commonwealth nations). In his book Ezekiel—The End-Time Prophet, Trumpet editor in chief Gerald Flurry explains Bible prophecies that these nations will descend into civil war as an alliance of Asian, European and South American nations cut them out of world trade.

We can already see the fault lines of this civil war developing as liberal and conservative regions of both the U.S. and Canada start aligning against adversaries within their own nations.

Germany Building Spy Satellites, Lasers

Germany plans to build a new network of spy satellites, as well as space planes and offensive lasers, the commander of German Space Command, Maj. Gen. Michael Traut, announced on February 3. The planned investments are part of a $41 billion military space spending plan aimed at countering threats from Russia and China in orbit.

satcom Stage 4: Germany will build a new low-Earth-orbit constellation of more than 100 military satellites over the next few years, designed to speed communications and track missile launches.

Antisatellite systems: Germany also wants to develop satellite-disabling technologies that use lasers, signal-jamming and targeting of ground-based control stations, plus small, highly maneuverable “inspector satellites” that can closely monitor other nations’ satellites. China, Russia and the U.S. have already deployed such satellites.

Space warfare technology is a high priority for world powers, including Germany. Defense Minister Boris Pistorius warned on September 25, “Satellite networks are now the Achilles’ heel of modern societies.”

Bible prophecy: Since the 1990s, Gerald Flurry has characterized heavy strategic and military dependence on computer technologies as an “Achilles’ heel.” “Computer dependence is the Western world’s Achilles’ heel,” he wrote in 1992, “and within a few years this weakness could be tested to the full.”

In “America’s Achilles’ Heel—and Germany,” Mr. Flurry wrote that the Bible forecasts technological dependence and its dangers, citing Ezekiel 7:14: “They have blown the trumpet, even to make all ready; but none goeth to the battle: for my wrath is upon all the multitude thereof.” He explained that this prophecy refers to the modern Assyrians (Germany) playing a role in disabling the military technologies of the modern descendants of Israel (mainly the United States, Britain and Israel). The fulfillment of this prophecy will likely involve the disabling of U.S. satellites, a capability Germany is currently developing.

IN OTHER NEWS

Europe launches most powerful rocket yet: Yesterday, the European Space Agency launched its largest and heaviest rocket, the Ariane 64, for the first time from its launch facility in French Guiana. The rocket successfully delivered its 20-ton payload of 32 Amazon Leo satellites into low Earth orbit. The agency stated, “The success of this launch confirms Europe’s readiness in heavy lift launch capability and is key to ESA’s efforts to ensure autonomous access to space for Europeans.” To learn the prophetic significance, read “Germany Races Into Space.”

Germany opens industrial-scale AI facility: Germany opened its Industrial AI Cloud in Munich on February 4. Deutsche Telekom, which filled the 2.5-acre facility with an estimated 10,000 advanced graphics processing units and other advanced computing equipment, said it’s powerful enough to serve artificial intelligence-level computing to all European Union citizens simultaneously. Rather than serving the average Internet user, this computational power is specifically designed for industrial digitization and AI use cases. It is also “a secure and sovereign infrastructure” and “stands for digital sovereignty ‘Made in Germany,’” meaning it gives the German government more power within the field of AI generally and industrial AI specifically. For more about this trend and Germany’s role, read “The Unknown Future of Artificial Intelligence.”

Pressure continues for harder, smaller European core: Yesterday, French President Emmanuel Macron said that if the European Union cannot agree to an economic reform plan by June, it should resort to “enhanced cooperation.” This means that a group of nine or more nations can advance a project on their own without the involvement of the rest of the union. Macron supports the creation of eurobonds (common debt), which German Chancellor Friedrich Merz opposes. Germany and Italy in the meantime are pushing to expand financing for venture capital. Disagreements continue, but Merz said there is a “strong sense of urgency” to pass reforms. The EU’s inability to agree on these and other decisions reflects its “iron and clay” nature, as the Bible prophesied. But the Bible also prophesies that these disagreeing nations will solidify into a fearsome and aggressive union led by “ten kings” with one “king of fierce countenance” wielding its power. To understand these prophecies in Daniel and Revelation, read “Europe: Where Iron and Clay Unite.”

Brussels finally has a government: The local-regional government for Belgium’s capital city was finally agreed upon yesterday, after a 613-day impasse that involved seven arguing parties, linguistic divides and confusing laws. The city, which serves as the capital of the European Union and Belgium, has a history of such political instability. This 20-month paralysis came as all of Europe struggles with the same issue: division.

Half of Gen Z applicants bring their parents to job interviews: Over 50 percent of college-age job seekers have had their parents sit with them during an interview, according to a January survey by Résumé Templates. Julia Toothacre, a career coach at the survey group, told College Fix that she has never before seen parents this involved in their children’s job searches. The survey, which polled 1,000 Gen Z adults ages 18 to 23, also found that 35 percent of respondents had their parents either write a cover letter or perform a test assignment for them. Young men were more likely to report repeated involvement by their parents than young women.