Best, brightest being indoctrinated, parents say

Critics of the International Baccalaureate program at Reston, Va.'s Langston Hughes Middle School and South Lakes High School have focused on the program's promotion of cultural egalitarianism, pacifism and what they say is its anti-Western bias.

"Administrators do not tell you that the current IB program for ages three through grade 12 promotes socialism, disarmament, radical environmentalism, and moral relativism, while attempting to undermine Christian religious values and national sovereignty," Jeanne Geiger wrote last year in the Reston Connection, a local newspaper.

Mrs. Geiger opposed her children being enrolled in International Baccalaureate (IB) classes at South Lakes. "The proposed sociological 'outcomes' follow politically correct thought and behavior assessments," she said.

Rena J. Berlin, Fairfax County's IB coordinator at Langston Hughes Middle School, said she knows Mrs. Geiger and other critics "very well," but believes "that all students who learn how to think globally, how to make connections between subjects, and how to 'learn how to learn' will be better prepared to be IB diploma students when they get to 11th grade."

"Our IB programs dig deep into education and the feeling of the community, and the programs make us part of our world.

"After all, it is our students who will change the world, and we need to allow them to be the fine citizens of America and the world that they have the potential to be," she said.

Mrs. Geiger and a friend, Anne Hall of Reston, have rallied opposition against the IB program for several years.

Mrs. Hall echoed criticisms of parents at Woodson High School in Fairfax, Va. -- where the IB program was dropped -- that most U.S. colleges and universities award course credit to incoming freshmen only for high-level IB courses "similar in difficulty to the Advanced Placement (AP) courses."

On IB exams, she noted, high school students are scored on a scale of one to seven, and Fairfax County recognizes four as a passing grade. For AP exams, students are graded on a scale of one to five, and Fairfax County recognizes three as a passing score.

"More selective institutions only award credit for AP exam scores of four and five, and high-level IB exam scores of six and seven, and will not consider any standard-level IB exam scores."

She added that "some schools will not award any IB credit unless the student has earned the full IB diploma," which requires them to take more than six required IB courses, write a 4,000-word extended essay like a college thesis, and do 150 hours of extracurricular activities or community service during 11th and 12th grades.

"Information from eight Virginia universities shows that an Advanced Placement exam score of three has a 52 percent acceptance rate, a higher-level IB exam score of 4 has a 33 percent acceptance rate, and a standard-level IB exam score of four has a 2 percent acceptance rate.

"Parents and students who do not have six-figure incomes or trust funds available for college tuitions will be interested in this distinction," Mrs. Hall said.

Sandra Wade Pauly, IB North America's university and government liaison, acknowledges that "IBNA has always faced a unique challenge" in convincing U.S. colleges and universities of the worth of its "holistic and interdisciplinary approach" to learning.

She said IBNA is funding a push to convince more colleges and admissions officials to accept its high school diploma program.

Joanie- f, I’d sure like to see your comments on this .... FBD

You picked the right topic, FBD. Had intended to take a little hiatus from posting for a while, but I can’t pass this one by. Your comprehensive communities excerpt from Mein Kampf is a perfect addendum to the article (and may well have been at least a partial resource for the program's founders).

Thing is, I don't think it'd be wise to call joanie with a "Batlight," she might get the wrong idea & both our shins would suffer the consequences .... Landru

Boy, did that reference hit a nostalgic note for me! My son, when he was a toddler, was obsessed with Batman, and had a batlight lamp in his bedroom – it shone a silhouette of the bat insignia up onto the ceiling. Whenever I would tiptoe into his room and turn the light off, thinking he was asleep, he would often say, ‘Mom! Put the bat back!’ (So, no, your shins won’t suffer (this time). You’ve given me an opportunity to indulge in a little motherly nostalgia. Thanks. :)

But I digress .... :)

Critics of the International Baccalaureate program ....

The first six words of the article have more meaning than the last 1,857. I'd be pleased to be included in the above category (anything smelling even remotely of cultural egalitarianism, and pacifism is to be regarded with skepticism. Nope. On second thought, I take that back. It’s to be regarded with contempt.)

And I see that the ‘International Baccalaureate Program’ is targeted for three years old on up to college-age. Marx, and Lenin, and Hitler all believed in grabbing young minds as soon as they are capable of molding and absorbing. So I’m a little surprised that the IBP doesn’t begin its catechism at, say, eight months. There is, after all, a certain amount of processing that can be accomplished in infancy. Why waste those precious early months?

I have read a little about the IB program before. What also troubles me about it is that educators are now classifying it and AP course programs in the same breath, as the two most respected programs for ‘high achievers’.

Yet ‘achievement’ is a relative thing. When I was in school (back when dinosaurs roamed the earth), AP courses were simply more advanced courses in the basics (i.e., learning Calculus while in high school, and receiving college credit, etc.) – whereas, the IB courses are in no way more advanced work. They simply involve more unorthodox [i.e., reeking of cultural egalitarianism, pacifism, etc.] coursework. So to even talk about AP coursework and IB coursework in the same breath is ludicrous.

Also, the IB program was originally devised for children of diplomats, so that they could prove that they had received a world-class education and therefore compete with students from, say, France if they intended to attend college in that country because of their parent’s assignment. Now extrapolating the IB program to all American students is expanding its (possible) benefits (which are questionable to begin with) into territory where it does not belong.

Last spring, we visited an elderly friend in Kansas. She is not well and doesn’t often get out of the house. We offered to drive her out to see the old, abandoned farmhouse in which she grew up -- about a seventy mile drive from her home. After seeing what remained of her childhood home (now merely pieces of weathered wood, with daylight streaming through the cracks, the entire structure leaning precariously as if it might topple with the next big wind), she asked us to go down another nearby lane, and she sadly showed us the one-room schoolhouse she attended from kindergarten through eighth grade (equally weather-beaten, ghostly, and fragile). As we walked through the knee-high grass growing through the floor boards, she told us that a single teacher taught all nine grades. That single teacher also gathered the wood for the wood stove, swept the floors, and generally kept the building in good order.

She also told us that the ‘graduates’ of that little one-room schoolhouse, when she attended it, not only went into farming, but many of them became state and national politicians (back when that particular calling was honorable and duty-oriented), successful businessmen, entrepreneurs, scientists, engineers, doctors, etc.

I couldn’t help but envy the quality of education she probably received there. Sure nothing was known about the technology-related subjects that are taught today – but I’d bet the farm that the basics (math, English, history, art, music, science, and physical education) were taught simply, and well.

We don’t anymore comprehend the benefits of simply, and we don’t anymore revere well.

And I’ll bet the students who graduated from that little schoolhouse knew how to think for themselves. How to size up a situation or a problem, list the pros and cons, weigh the alternatives, and draw a logical conclusion.

IB diploma students will simply know a politically correct mantra that will no doubt require them to believe that (among other things) …. (1) Western civilization is patriarchal, violent, and oppressive, (2) music and art are constantly evolving disciplines, with new, more enlightened, definitions of excellence, (3) 2 + 2 need not necessarily = 4, (4) half-baked scientific theories are just as valuable as concrete scientific evidence, (5) English being the official language of a nation is incontrovertible proof that that nation is intolerant of other cultures, (6) participation in sports or tests of physical endurance must be handicapped so as not to injure the self esteem of those less capable, and (7) right/wrong, good/bad are outmoded concepts, or, at best, situationally dependant.

Sometimes ‘progress’ stinks.

~ joanie

When my (now) 15-year old son was starting high school in El Paso, he was accepted into the IB program as it was the only one of the magnet or "advanced" programs which suited his career goals. Within a few weeks of starting, we moved and, for good or ill, were unable to find another IB program within commuting range.

the IB program was originally devised for children of diplomats, so that they could prove that they had received a world-class education

World-class education, implying the equivalent of advanced placement courses, is the way it was presented to us and, based on the few weeks my son had in that program, it was certainly strenuous. But strenuous doesn't necessarily imply rigorous

Conceptually, I like the idea of a recognized curriculum where students from the US, Argentina, Zaire, where ever can all be judged on a common criteria. But indoctrination is not education (and I doubt it would have worked on my son).

that most U.S. colleges and universities award course credit to incoming freshmen only for high-level IB courses

It was stressed that many (not necessarily most) U.S. colleges would accept the IB courses for college credit. One or two were mentioned (University of Tulsa sticks in my mind but I may be mistaken) that would accept an IB graduate as a Sophomore instead of a Freshman. For those of us wondering how to pay for ever-more-expensive college educations, that was a powerful inducement.

and do 150 hours of extracurricular activities or community service during 11th and 12th grades

Although I am not a fan of requiring students to do "volunteer" work to graduate (if ever there was an oxymoron, this is it), for my son, this is a slam dunk. Between Scouts, church work, Red Cross, National Junior Honor Society and the Humane Society, he did more hours than that in the summer between 8th and 9th grades. (And got credit for all the hours among all the clubs required it. Talk about double dipping, two hours cleaning up after the animals in the Thanksgiving parade gave him two hours "credit" in each of 4 different organizations!)

On the notoriously liberal show "West Wing" last night, the Black mayor of DC pleaded for a pilot voucher program. After the President asked the Mayor, "When did you become a Republican?" the President's young Black male aide expounded on why he would have preferred to go to Gonzaga (an excellent private school) rather than to a DC public school. The President ended up signing the voucher bill.

Today at http://www.washtimes.com/commentary/tsowell.htm Thomas Sowell writes the following about IB:

"Parents with backbone

    Parents in Fairfax, Va., have got rid of one of the endless series of fad programs that distract American public schools from real education in real subjects. Like most fad programs, this one had a high-sounding name: The International Baccalaureate Curriculum.
    It also has a left-wing hidden agenda, as so many other fad programs do. One of the program's supporters gushed it teaches students "how to think globally" and "how to make us part of the world."
    One parent critical of the program put it quite differently. She said it "promotes socialism, disarmament, radical environmentalism and moral relativism, while attempting to undermine Christian religious values and national sovereignty."
    None of this is new. This kind of indoctrination has been going on for decades, and the kind of thinking behind it goes back 100 years, when education guru John Dewey began promoting the idea schools should be instruments of "social change."
    By substituting back-door indoctrination in place of education, John Dewey has done more damage than anyone without an army.
    What is new is some parents are finally waking up and fighting back. They refuse to be conned by pious rhetoric or pacified by bumper stickers that say things like "My child was student of the month at Jordan Middle School" or even intimidated by the standard line, "You are the only one who has complained."
    Education bureaucrats will use that line even if you are not even among the first 20 who have complained about some program or practice locally, or among the first 1,000 nationally. There may be court cases all across the country over some program or practice, and they will still tell you that you are the only one who has complained.
    While the parents in Fairfax have had the backbone to get this junk program thrown out of their school, largely because it displaced so much real education that their children would have trouble getting into quality colleges, the battle still rages in nearby Reston, Va., where the education bureaucrats are determined to create a generation of internationalists.
    "After all," a school spokesmen said, "it is our students who will change the world."
    It is truly staggering that the kinds of shallow, ill-educated and fad-ridden people running public schools should take it upon themselves to decide how the world needs changing. On the other hand, it has long been said fools rush in where angels fear to tread.
    A very different battle has been going on in the District of Columbia. Here the issue is whether any of the predominantly black students will be allowed to escape the failing and dangerous public schools by having vouchers to go elsewhere.
    The teachers unions say no — and the teachers unions are the 800-pound gorilla of the Democratic Party that they supply with money and with people to walk precincts on Election Day. Some Republicans are also afraid to get on the bad side of the teachers union, even if it means another whole generation of poor kids go down the drain for lack of decent education.
    Among parents who are not intimidated is a black woman named Virginia Walden-Ford. She has not only confronted members of Congress in hearings, her organization of parents has taken out ads in states represented by members of Congress who voted against vouchers.
    These ads point out that liberal politicians who send their own children to private schools are preventing black parents from having that same choice. These parents don't hesitate to compare liberals like Ted Kennedy to Southern segregationists of the past like George Wallace and Bull Connor, who tried to block the advancement of blacks.
    It would never occur to our more delicate Republicans to say such a thing. But their children are not at risk.
    It's long past time for more parents to show some backbone if their children are not to continue being used for classroom indoctrination or as pawns in the games of teachers unions."

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