Parents with backbone

townhall.com ^ | 2/26/04 | Thomas Sowell

[kattracks]

Parents in Fairfax, Virginia, have succeeded in getting 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 that it teaches students "how to think globally" and "how to make us part of the world."

One of the parents 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 a hundred years, when education guru John Dewey began promoting the idea that 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 that 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 thousand 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 is still raging in nearby Reston, Virginia, 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."

That the kinds of shallow, ill-educated and fad-ridden people who run our public schools should take it upon themselves to decide how the world needs changing is truly staggering. On the other hand, it has long been said that 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, whom they supply with money and with people to walk the precincts on election days. Some Republicans are also afraid to get on the bad side of the teachers union, even if that means watching another whole generation of poor kids go down the drain for lack of a decent education.

Among the parents who have not been 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 the states represented by Congressmen 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.

The time is long overdue for more parents to show some backbone if their children are not to continue to be used for classroom indoctrination or as pawns in the games of teachers unions.

©2003 Creators Syndicate, Inc.

Contact Thomas Sowell | Read Sowell's biography

[LiteKeeper]

read later

[Stellar Dendrite]

bump

[Prime Choice]

As another Freeper observed, this is the "Damning-Down" of American education...

[the Real fifi]

I could not disagree more. It is the most rigorous curriculum on earth. And such good preparation for college that most competititve colleges prefer it and many give as many as 2 years college credit for those who successfully pass it.

True, if you want a traditional American curriculum--this is not for you, but if you want one which emphasized critical thinking, languages, world history, math and science--this is it.

[Dianna]

Really? Here is a quote from their web site:

The Primary Years Programme (PYP), for students aged 3 to 12, focuses on the development of the whole child, in the classroom but also in the world outside, through other environments where children learn. It offers a framework that meets children’s several needs: academic, social, physical, emotional and cultural.

Now, I looked at their site for 2 seconds and will go back and look more thoroughly. But all the liberal buzzwords make me suspicious.

[Dianna]

I've looked through the web site some more and am still seeing a lot about "exploring" and the teacher eliciting what the children know, but not much of what they plan to teach (well, except concepts about what makes a family and how we should preserve our resources).

I think programs which can be designed to allow children to explore concepts concretely can be good. The problem is that public schools are under tremedous time constraint. We cannot sit around and have endless discussions eliciting what kids know and don't know and extending their knowledge because Johnny brought a book to share.

[GeronL]

Thomas Sowell always deserves a black conservative ping right? and he's talking about vouchers! Good!

[GeronL]

colleges do not 'prefer it'... colleges do not want to have to teach their new students how to read. And are remedial education courses are too common because of stupid schools doing this kind of thing instead of teaching kids how to read and write and think.

[general_re]

The devil is in the details - the implementation, more specifically. IB can be overwhelmingly liberal in its viewpoint, or it can be not much different from standard American high school fare - it really depends on the people implementing it in a given school.

Anyway, what this article isn't telling you is that the real reason that Woodson High in Fairfax dropped IB is not because of any politics or political views in the curriculum, although that may have played a small part for some parents. The real reason it got dropped is that parents discovered that it simply doesn't translate into as many college credits as a similarly structured AP program, particularly at UVa. and other in-state schools. That's it. No grand political agenda or anything, really.

[the Real fifi]

Tasting foods from around the world, learning about world economics,art,history, customs, music, languages---really that is not subversive--I served on the Bd of a premier IB school for years and my son was educated there--Kids from 60 different countries went there--everyone of them, to my knowledge, you could obtain citizenship here, did so asap...(Where do you think you will get DoS and CIA officers and CEOs of companies who must deal internationally from--kids who only study English and know nothing of anywhere but the US?)It is not, as I said a traditional American curriculum but is not subversive..

Many state universities also think it is the best education possible--Florida,i.e. gives tuition scholarships to students who have the IB diploma...

[oyez]

Students need to be taught how America can be a leader not a follower.

[ApplegateRanch]

Group 3 - individuals and societies Subjects included in this group are: business and management, economics, geography, history, Islamic history, information technology in a global society (at SL only), philosophy, psychology, and social and cultural anthropology.

This is from the Diploma Candidates level: Curriculum.

Pay attention to what is NOT offered.

Also, a LOT of emphasis on 'touchy-feely' and 'global community', etc.

Based in Switzerland.

Read the ENTIRE site, and it is very enlightening.

Note to those opposed to national standards:

Assessing student work and awarding the diploma Classroom teachers and IB examiners work in partnership to ensure that students have ample opportunity to demonstrate what they have learned. Grades reflect attainment of knowledge and skills relative to set standards applied equally to all schools. Top grades are not, for example, awarded to a certain percentage of students. Responsibility for all academic judgments about the quality of candidates’ work rests with some 4,400 IB examiners worldwide, led by chief examiners with international authority in their fields. Each year approximately 80% of candidates who attempt the diploma succeed in earning it. Examinations are offered in May for northern hemisphere schools and in November for those in the southern hemisphere.

This takes standardized achievement testing not only out of the district & the state, but out of the country!

I guess you have to be union teacher or administrato to understand why national testing is bad, but INTERNATIONAL testing is good.

[Raleigh's Golden Mountaineer]

I don't know why that school dropped IB, but my daughter has an IB diploma from a school in Florida and her IB and AP credits transferred to UVA almost equally.

I thought the IB program was excellent. We were in an "A" rated high school here and still, the IB kids were by far the best in the school.

The only liberal aspect of the program turned up when mine got to UVA and when I questioned how she was spending some of her money, she promptly informed me that we needed to develope a "community of trust." ;)

[Raleigh's Golden Mountaineer]

Not exactly -- the Florida tuition scholarships are based upon grades -- a kid with the same grade point average as an IB kid can get the same scholarship.

The IB credits get the kids into different classes in the colleges. An IB diploma does not automatically transfer into a scholarship.

Many colleges in the US do, however, take an IB grade and give it more weight than a non-IB grade.

[PayrollOffice]

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 death knell of the teachers' unions cushy jobs. Unfortunately, it will not stand. But why not? Don't "black students" deserve a chance?

Tax payer funded unions should be illegal.

[Cincinatus' Wife]

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.

Paige's outrageous terrorist charge undermines goals - (But it gets better!)***He charged the NEA with encouraging a "coalition of the whining." He called other education reform critics "nihilists" and made unflattering comparisons to French U.N. diplomats and racists. Paige impoliticly suggested last year that schools with a religious environment were preferable to public schools with diverse values. ***

[Dianna]

Tasting foods from around the world, learning about world economics,art,history, customs, music, languages---really that is not subversive-

Can they read, write grammatically correct sentences and do math? What you listed is important but reading, writing and math are essential. As long as the essentials are well covered without being compromised and indoctrination kept to a minimum, I probably wouldn't argue much with it.

[Dianna]

One of the examples in the primary curriculum was about depending upon firewood for fuel and whether or not the rainforest should be saved in that case.

[mhking]

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