Posted on 03/01/2013 4:46:37 AM PST by Kaslin
Texas is a right-minded red state, where patriotism is still a virtue and political correctness is out of vogue. So how on earth have left-wing educators in public classrooms been allowed to instruct Lone Star students to dress in Islamic garb, call the 9/11 jihadists "freedom fighters" and treat the Boston Tea Party participants as "terrorists"?
Here's the dirty little secret: Despite the best efforts of vigilant parents, teachers and administrators committed to academic excellence, progressive activists reign supreme in government schools.
That's because curriculum is king. The liberal monopoly on the modern textbook/curricular market remains unchallenged after a half-century. He who controls the textbooks, teaching guides and tests controls the academic agenda.
That is how the propagandistic outfitting of students in Islamic garb came to pass in the unlikely setting of the conservative Lumberton, Texas, school district. As Fox News reporter Todd Starnes noted this week, a 32-year veteran of the high school led a world geography lesson on Islam in which hijab-wrapped students were banned from using the words "suicide bomber" and "terrorist" to describe Muslim mass murderers in favor of the term "freedom fighter."
Madelyn LeBlanc, one of the students in the class, "told Fox News that it was clear her teacher was very uncomfortable lecturing the students. 'I do have a lot of sympathy for her. ... At the very beginning, she said she didn't want to teach it, but it was in the curriculum.'"
But the headline-grabbing injection of moral equivalence into social studies and American history is just the tip of the education iceberg.
Top-down federalized "Common Core" standards are now sweeping the country. It's important to remember that while teachers-union control freaks are on board with the Common Core regime, untold numbers of rank-and-file educators are just as angered and frustrated as parents about the Big Ed power grab. The program was concocted not at the grassroots level, but by a bipartisan cabal of nonprofits (led by lobbyists for the liberal Bill Gates Foundation), statist business groups and hoodwinked Republican governors. As I've reported previously, this scheme, enabled by the Obama administration's "Race to the Top" funding mechanism, usurps local autonomy in favor of lesson content and pedagogical methods.
One teacher described a thought-control training seminar in her school district titled "Making the Common Core Come Alive." A worksheet labeled "COMMON CORE MIND SHIFTS" included the following rhetorical muck:
--The goal of curriculum should not be the coverage of content, but rather the discovery of content. ... If done well, Common Core will elevate our teaching to new heights, and emphasize the construction of meaning, while deepening our understanding of our students."
--"In our classrooms, it is the students' voices, not the teachers', that are heard."
Blah, blah, blah. In practice, Common Core evades transparency by peddling shoddy curricular material authored by anonymous committees. It promotes faddish experiments masquerading as "world-class" math and reading goals. Instead of raising expectations, Common Core is a Trojan horse for lowering them. California, for example, is now citing Common Core as a rationale for abandoning algebra classes for 8th graders. Common Core's "constructivist" approach to reading is now the rationale for abandoning classic literature for "informational texts."
Claims that Common Core bubbled up from the states are bass-ackward. A shady nonprofit group called "Achieve Inc.," stocked with federal-standards advocates who've been around since the Clinton years, designed the materials. They were rubber-stamped by the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) and subsidized by the Gates Foundation.
In states like Texas, which (SET ITAL) rejected (END ITAL) Common Core, similar secretive alliances prevail. The Texas Education Service Center Curriculum Collaborative, a nonprofit group led by government officials, designed the "CSCOPE" curriculum now used in 80 percent of the state's schools. The state Board of Education, local schools and parents were denied access to the online CSCOPE curriculum database -- which was exempted from disclosure rules. In fact, dissemination of the lessons was considered a crime until earlier this month. Only after parents and teachers across the state blew the whistle on radical CSCOPE lesson plans (including designing a new flag for a socialist lesson) did the state take steps to rein in the CSCOPE zealots.
Grassroots activists in Indiana, Alabama, Utah and nearly a dozen other states are now educating themselves and their state legislatures about the centralized education racket, whether it's under the guise of Common Core or any other name. Last week, in response to a passionate parent-driven protest, the Indiana state Senate passed legislation to halt Common Core implementation. Anti-Common Core bills are moving through the Alabama state legislature, where lawmakers are especially concerned about how Common Core's intrusive database gathering would violate student privacy.
As Texas goes, so goes the nation. The fight against the federalization of academic standards is a national education Alamo.
Ping for later distribution.
I am compelled to post this again.
The “public school”, including the “charter school”, is BY FAR, the largest, most expensive, most subversive, and most destructive entitlement program in the country.
The “public school” is better understood as the “government school collective”.
It is silly to imagine that you can fix the public schools, because the very concept itself is collectivist.
Any child that comes out of the government school collective with their moral compass and common sense intact does so in spite of the government school indoctrination, not because of it.
To understand the content and compass of modern education, see ...
http://www.scribd.com/doc/54400125/Change-Agents-in-the-Schools-Barbara-Morris-1979
If you want to win the culture war, have lots of children (see my tagline) and homeschool them or form your own school cooperative with your church or synagogue and like-minded friends and relatives.
Nobody loves your children more than you do.
Nobody can teach your children better than you can.
Nobody knows your children better than you do.
Your children would love nothing better than to be taught by you, if you start doing so before they are corrupted by the government school collective.
It is hypocritical for you to submit your children to an authority with whom you fundamentally disagree. And your children will know it.
If you have children, make whatever sacrifices you must to get them out of the public schools.
DO NOT FEED THE BEAST!
Especially not with your own children.
And DO NOT TAKE GOVERNMENT “EDUCATION” MONEY!
He that pays the piper calls the tune, and that’s especially true for any government entitlement program.
Michelle could learn a lot about pressure for Texas to turn blue. It’s not like BO who is still campaigning and his minions look at it and say, ah forget it.
No, they go after it.
Watch Out!
Government schools are the engine room of American Socialism.
Thi pretty much says it all:
http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/02/the_endgame_for_the_destruction_of_the_united_states.html
government schools are a great evil . abolish the government schools, EPA, FCC , FDA, FEC etc, then no more problems. Government running so many things is socialism
There is practically nothing that corrupt evil gov bureaucrats can do better than the free market(CAPITALISM) . private roads, private hospitals , private schools ( or home schooling ), etc. is what we need. repeal laws not keep adding laws at every level every day (wtf?).
The news media keeps creating false crises to get the public to demand that politicians do something and work together to do something. so the politicians do something and that means writing more laws ( and the agencies and regulations that come from those laws) . and that grows government power and gov which is the democrats’ goal : that also decreases our rights and freedom and that is the democrats’ goal too. A side effect is the economy and businesses can't do business with the ever increasing gov regulations so they go out of business or go to China or other countries. thank you democrats/Obama for nothing you statist/socialists evil cretins , for nothing but destroying this country the USA and our freedom you IDIOTS( you democrats at all levels who voted for this
democrats believe that a single corrupt government idiot can run the millions of transactions of the free market better than the free market can. The free market is millions of expert business men working with their OWN money and OWN property) . A gov idiot is a corrupt moron working with someone else's money , working on some stupid theory or model nor reality , and usually working for some liberal goal like "Green" crap not efficiency as does the free market entrepreneur.
The bottom line here is some federal hanky-panky, which was created by blue state ivory tower types similar to those who ruined black education with “whole language English”, created by none other than Noam Chomsky. (Who should go down in history as the “most oppressively racist and destructive white man to ever keep down the black man, impoverishing and ruining tens of millions of lives.”)
The new horror is called Common Core Curriculum, and while Obama definitely does not want to be blamed for it, he has tried to force it on schools across the US.
This Texas school is now blaming this crapola on CCC, which they had wholeheartedly embraced. That everyone involved with this has not been immediately fired, and a statewide purge of CCC initiated, shows that those forces in favor of CCC are now entrenched enough in the Texas establishment to protect it.
“Only after parents and teachers across the state blew the whistle on radical CSCOPE lesson plans (including designing a new flag for a socialist lesson) did the state take steps to rein in the CSCOPE zealots.”
If you want to take back the country, conservatives must attend local village council meetings, county board meetings and school board meetings. Taking back the government from the leftists requires vigilance, and it starts in your local neighborhoods.
If you live in a strong home-rule state, you can likely throw out every leftist in your local government with recall petitions.
If you don’t have a constitutional sheriff in your county, elect one now.
If you don’t know how to organize, visit your local VFW or American Legion post. They can teach you about leadership structure and strategy.
Sounds like they’re messin with Texas.
A grassroots revolt would consist of all high skilled individuals going on strike. The problem is that not all high skilled individuals support Tea Party values. The left may just cut their losses and keep the country running on that tiny group of individuals who don’t mind spending $100,000 on education to be Obama’s personal handmaidens. It won’t matter to them if the standard of living dissolves completely. They’ll just kill whoever needs to be killed and reap the assets.
I no longer believe that conservatives are universally intelligent enough to take back this country. The smart ones will pack their bags and flee with their families to another country before the left finishes building the forced labor camps.
“The only real problem we have is government”
A government elected by legions of stupid people. Millions of mindless liberals demanding their right to rape and nearly as many mindless conservatives who didn’t know what to do about it. The country will go back to normal a few decades after the parasites finish destroying it or if they all starve to death in the land of plenty.
Any functional future government would need to be formed by the survivors of the upcoming calamity. They would need to remind future generations constantly and drill it into their heads. Then build massive fortifications along the borders and give all guards power over life and death.
Of course, the future from here on out will always be ugly. If there ever was an age of happiness and optimism, it is gone forever. Unless a miracle comes to Earth.
“Government running so many things is Socialism.”
Dontcha know that government is all-knowing, kind, loving,compasionate, incorruptible, all-good and much different from the cold, cruel, evil, uncaring
free-market system? Hmmm? Dontcha know?
Ya Know?
/S/
IMHO
School administrators endorsing, promoting, or simply allowing this crap to happen here should be deported. Certain parts of MI would probably love to have it.
I accept that curriculum should include learning about world cultures. NOT for a damn second do I think it acceptable for dressing up bedsheets and pretending that their screwed up culture is something we would want to immerse ourselves into. Let’s be honest about what goes on there in many of these islamic countries - Christians and Jews are persecuted. Hell, their own people are persecuted (honor killings, violent penalties for breaking sharia law).
The equivalent here would be 1940’s American students dressing up in Nazi uniforms during an immersion into German culture. It’s bullshit.
Which reminds me: Do we or do we not have soldiers on the ground in Afghanistan, Iraq, etc.? I find this curriculum disrespectful to those serving our country overseas risking their lives under our flag.
There was a time when the public schools worked well enough I would say but that was when financing came from county taxes and there was no meddling by the federal government. When “federal aid to education” came along it was only a matter of time until the complete ruin of the public school system. Now the ruin has gone beyond 1-12 public education, it has reached the university level. There are plenty of “university graduates” walking around where I live who could not possibly pass a high school final from 1972 when I finished high school, most of them could not pass the grade school final to qualify to even enter a public high school of that year. We have people who hold a bachelor degree with a major in history who could not pass a seventh grade history final from 1957, the year I finished seventh grade.
I am a public high school graduate, class of 1962, no further education other than purely technical and I believe I could sit down now and with no source other than my own mind score a higher grade on a history test than any recent college graduate in this area who majored in history. I say this not to brag but out of dismay.
Especially because Texas and California dominate the purchase of textbooks. The publishers (leftists also) print what these states order and offer it to the rest with little available alternative.
The fight against the federalization of academic standards is a national education Alamo.
Correct analogy. There is no way this mess can be undone from the top down, because the head is rotten to the Core Curriculum. There is a way to totally transform education from the bottom up, it costs virtually nothing to implement, it saves huge amounts of money, and the curricula already exist.
Jeanine McGregor, of the Tea Party, is going around Texas giving community meetings on what CSCOPE is realy all about. She says 70% of Texas school districts have bought into the CSCOPE program. Yes. 70%. In Texas. Unfreakin’ believable.
― Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
Keywords are our friends: “commoncore; indoctrination; publiceducation; texas;” (for a start)
They help me find it later and they make FR a huge news database, like no other on the web.
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