Indoctrination Disguised as Education Reform
Apparently, $4.35 billion is not enough for education reform — at least, not the kind that President Obama and U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan are pushing. With the first $4.35 billion coming from the stimulus package, Obama has asked for $1.53 billion more in his 2011 budget — all for Duncan’s Race to the Top competition. This educational experiment, designed “to dramatically reshape America’s educational system,” allows states to compete for a piece of the $5 billion in cash prizes by making educational reforms dictated by the Department of Education (DOE). The more DOE reforms they enact, the more money states “win.” Currently, 40 states have applied.
Despite the vast expansion of federal government mandates on state and local schools, Race to the Top has received relatively little resistance from proponents of smaller government. But the reality is that this plan not only usurps state rights; it also introduces a whole new program of indoctrination.
According to the DOE’s website, “integrity and transparency drive the process” of Race to the Top. In truth, it’s about as transparent as a blindfold, causing many school districts to opt out. Although states like Iowa, California, and Wisconsin applied for the grant money, many of their school districts are not choosing to participate. Citing an inability to get adequate information on the regulations that would be imposed on the schools, districts “struggled with unanswered questions about how tightly the funds would be tied to mandates.” Karl Paulson, a Missouri school district superintendent, wrote, “It is irresponsible for officials from the State Department of Education or State Board of Education to coerce local districts into a commitment through politics and press releases without the districts having the full design and requirements of that commitment being detailed.”
Texas Governor Rick Perry, one of the few staunch opponents of the program, stated that it would be “foolish and irresponsible to place our children’s future in the hands of unelected bureaucrats and special interest groups thousands of miles away in Washington, virtually eliminating parents’ participation in their children’s education.” He added that if Washington truly cared about education, it would give the money to the states with “no strings attached.” Among those “strings attached” is a commitment to abandon local curricula to adopt unproven, national curriculum standards.
Still, the focus on charter schools has duped many on the right to support the program. But before cheering for charter schools, parents need to be reminded that the camouflage-clad, militant youth chanting and praising President Obama came from a Kansas City, Missouri, charter school. In reality, that school’s model much more closely resembles the vision of both Obama and Duncan.
Charter schools by definition are free from many of the rules and regulations of public schools. Although they have accountability standards, they set their own curricula and programs. But since the foundation of Race to the Top is setting a core curriculum determined by Washington, the reality is that these so-called charter schools will not set their own curriculum. The DOE is simply redefining the term “charter school” with the hopes that its program can sail through with little right-wing opposition.
With their newly defined charters, they’ll not only be able to change what students are learning, but more easily change who is teaching them. Traditionally, charter schools have been free from the burdens of teachers’ unions so that they can more easily fire and replace bad teachers. When a school becomes a charter school, its teachers even have to reapply for their jobs; enter AmeriCorps.
One of the most startling facets of Race to the Top is its attempt to get rid of as many traditionally educated teachers — i.e., those who go to a college to earn a master’s degree in education — and replace them with “alternatively” certified teachers; and, not just any alternatively certified teachers, but those certified by AmeriCorps’ Teach for America (TFA) and Teaching Fellows, which it runs jointly with the New Teacher Project (TNTP).
Many school districts are already adding AmeriCorps workers with hopes of appearing more competitive for the federal dollars. For example, Colorado agreed to “more than quadruple the number of Teach for America teachers in classrooms, from 175 to more than 800.” And in Indiana’s Race to the Top application, the state agreed to “double the number of teachers entering each year from Teach for America and the New Teacher Project.”
Replacing traditionally educated teachers with AmeriCorps-certified teachers is not a new idea to Duncan. Despite laying off hundreds of teachers during his tenure as CEO for Chicago Public Schools, he still managed to add hundreds of TFA teachers to Chicago schools.
Are the conservatives in congress asleep? It is difficult to comprehend how funding for programs like Race to the Top and ACORN can get funded with so little rumbling or explanation of the realties by conservatives in Congress. The liberals are so smooth with their sanctimounious “let’s do it for the children” then you peel away the surface and find their motives are not quite so pure. I realize that Republicans don’t have the votes to stop this stuff but they certainly could be at the forefront of shining the light on it. You can pretty much count on the Obama Administration to have one stated public goal for programs while the actual goal is nearly the exact opposite of the atated goal. Obama’s stated need for the Government to be “fiscally responsible” is a good example. Then the next day he proposes a budget with a 1.6 trillion dollar deficit. Here’s my stated goal for the next election “let’s make Obama irrelevant”.
charter aka Madrassa school
“Obama Using Public Schools To Recruit ‘Agenda Advancing Interns’ (Alinsky required reading)”
Parents need to pay more attention to schools and what is going on in the classroom. It is not a babysitting service.
The hits just keep on coming with these folks. They are effing relentless. We are attacked on so many fronts that for every insane initiative that we defeat there seems to be three more new ones that spring up to take the place of the defeated one. The Clintons look like amateurs compared to these sick, slick ideologues. I’ve never seen anything like it in my life. These effers play for keeps,the people be damned. Nonstop deception and lying. Nonstop unaccountabilty. Nonstop insanity. Nonstop evil.
This education story depresses me the most. If this program is enacted, it will be like the “Inconvenient Truth” brainwashing that recently occurred in our nation’s schools- on steroids.
The insanity is driving me insane.
Aw, who needs kids who can read, write and think? That’s for reactionary, facist teabaggers who want to exploit people. If your kids learn blind obedience, political correctness and America-hating well enough, they can be progressive, facist leftists who want to exploit people!
Sliding smoothly down the slippery slope
to the point where children are informing
on their parents.
Situation hopeless but not serious;
This movement will be overtaken by
economic events and replaced by a
conservative curriculum;
The temptation to make it a Right-
Wing-Nut equivalent should be resisted.
From my webite:
http://truthandcommonsense.com/2010/02/05/homeschooling-vs-indoctrination-of-young-minds-progressives-are-pulling-out-all-the-stops/
I’m a long term homeschooling dad with two great kids. No drugs, no STD’s, no problems with behavior. My daughter is focused, brilliant and well on her way to being somebody of value. My son is a typical boy, but without the crazy “FU” attitude I saw so much in my days as a detective. The decision to homeschool came when we could not afford a private school any longer (police salaries aren’t that great) and had to chose between homeschooling and public school. Fortunately my sister-in-law was an experienced homeschooler and author. We were able to get a lot of information from her. The journey has been a wonderful experience. Our kids are respectful and for their ages deep thinkers as they have been challenged to be so. This is what Obama fears most, free thought and free will.
Right now my daughter is taking a course studying the Constitution. She can already challenge many of the acts and words of politicians from BOTH parties. She KNOWS the original intent and history of the nation. This is something lacking from public schools- intentionally. The worse thing to happen to elites bent on a European/statist model of government is someone standing up and calling their revisionist history a lie. Free minds are dangerous.
I spent a good deal of time blogging about a book I am reading which covers Mao’s last Cultural Revolution. You would be surprised how many events, thoughts, speeches and principles are shared between them and the left in this nation. It makes you queasy.
Beware of this effort, your kids will end up socialist drones waiting for orders from elites like Anita Dunn, Obama, Kerry, Clinton and even some like McCain and Graham. Hardly what Thomas Jefferson, Paine, Washington, Madison and others had in mind.
“Texas Governor Rick Perry, one of the few staunch opponents of the program”
This is why I am voting for Rick Perry. He clearly understands that Texas must have a somewhat adversarial relationship with the politicians in Washington, DC. Perry realizes that Obama and his followers want to stab Texans in the back.
Why is any federal money going to any state schools?
Obama is the Devil. He loves education, because only a FREE mind can make mistakes. That’s why he loves Reinhold Niebuhr. He’s intentionally doing things to piss off the unthinking people, provoke them into unthinking rebellion, so that they destroy the nation. Don’t be part of his nefarious plot! Everything he’s doing is the opposite of what he really wants to do! Don’t you see, YOU are the ones being controlled into destroying America! Don’t let him get away with it, help out your neighbors, try to see how to benefit the people around you. Work hard, teach your kids from a multitude of sources, so that they learn to REASON. Don’t let your emotions take control–that’s how the Devil possesses people.
The Socialist Train is heading down the tracks to run over the Republic. If there is going to be any attempt to stop it then the American peole need to stand up and yell bloody murder now.
‘..it also introduces a whole new program of indoctrination.’
‘Indoctrination’ indeed.
Maryland public schools collectively rank very high, the crème de la crème, so to speak. Yet the politicians of both parties are angry for not involving Maryland in the $4 billion kitty now!
With these technocrats leading the way in ‘educating our children’, it should keep most parents up at night..
Find any means possible to downsize your life and home school your child/children if you can.
Here are the home school laws for each state:
http://www.hslda.org/laws/default.asp
Who wants their students thinking and/or engaged in reason? Critical thinking? Learning something and researching further to determine its roots?
Why make your kids smart when you can just go for ignorant like Texas, Oaklahoma, Kansas, etc.
@7 what “intent”? The “Christian nation” myth? Has your daughter read all of the correspondence surrounding the evolution of the Bill of Rights and Constitution? The Treaty of Tripoli, specifically Article 11 of said treaty? Did you tell her it was unanimously ratified by Congress?
I pity your irrational fears.
avoidswork (appropriate?)-
Ha! Your bringing up “Article 11″ of the Treaty of Tripoli is EXACTLY a perfect illustration of the kind of “thinking” that will pass for “engaged reasoning” if one allows the progressive/socialist/revisionist agenda to drive education reform. That it is driven from the TOP in D.C. by the DOE through programs that require coercion, manipulation, and “blackmail” to become reality only underscores the “Alinskyite” attitude and intellectual bankruptcy of our present administration…and the need for CHANGE!
What’s the REAL agenda here, after all? Doesn’t the federal government TRUST the states and PARENTS to oversee the education of their children enough to help FUND their efforts without “strings”??? Obviously, NOT!!!
At least, not enough to produce future generations of leftist Obamatrons…
The United States is NOT a “Christian Nation” in the sense that Iran is a Muslim Nation, nor are we EVER meant to be a “theocracy”! To say that America is a Christian nation founded by Christians with Christian principles does NOT mean that America is a CHURCH. That is, our government was NOT set up to rule this nation as a church. Are people really that ignorant and deceived to think that this is what is implied???
The Supreme Court which has greater authority than any international treaty, said “Runkel v. Winemiller (1799), “Religion is of general and public concern, and on its support depend, in great measure, the peace and good order of government, the safety and happiness of the people. By our form of government, the Christian religion is the established religion; and all sects and denominations of Christians are placed upon the same equal footing…”
The evidence for us being a Christian nation is overwhelming (Supreme Court decisions, references to God and Christianity in our state constitutions, quotes from our founders, etc). You would have to use VERY selective research to make a case stating otherwise. In fact, the Treaty of Tripoli is almost the ONLY thing ever heared from the “other side”, whereas there are literally thousands of evidences in favor of us being a “Christian” nation.
Those who cite the Treaty of Tripoli as evidence that this nation was not founded on the Christian religion, usually ignore the Treaty of Paris of 1783. This Treaty, negotiated by Ben Franklin and John Adams among others, is truly a foundational document for the United States, because by this Treaty Britian recognized the independence of the United States. The Treaty begins with the words, “In the Name of the most Holy and undivided Trinity… ,” and there is NO dispute about its validity or its wording, as there is with the Treaty of Tripoli and its English/Arabic variations!
Truly, a mind is a terrible thing to waste…especially on the educational “reforms” of the present administration!
Sarah-
I too am horrified about Race to the Top and the accompanying Common Core Standards Initiative. We are moving to federal mandates of a single curriculum for all that is a low threshold with little emphasis on academics.
I do not think the comments to the final regulations support your assertions that RTT is about bringing in candidates with alternative certification. In fact it’s just the opposite. RTT puts numerous burdens and obligations on alternative candidates that they do not require of ed school graduates. If you go to pages 352-354 (out of 775) you will see what I mean.
There’s so much to decry about RTT and CCSI and no conservative or libertarian should be supportive of these programs. Be more careful in documenting your assertions. Let’s talk about the real issues like the statement of the NGA Director that CCSI is “an equity issue as much as anything else” and “once and for all we have to level what goes on in these classrooms”.
Following The One’s lead, I suppose we should be careful to pronounce AmeriCorps as “Ameri-corpse”.
Avoidswork, I love your definition of “thinking and/or engaged in reason? Critical thinking”. It amounts to feeding false info to impressionable kids and suppressing other viewpoints/documentation. Much better to send unqualified “teachers” to teach one party, one view politics as learning.
I know, it might give kids a chance to actually appreciate their country in some small way. To appreciate that capitalism made the US and the world a much better place to live in. A very dangerous idea for socialist big government types.
I hardly blame you. If you were “educated” in the last 40 years your education is in question. That can be rectified if you apply yourself to reading wide ranging ideas especially other than the ideas foisted upon you in your impressionable years.
Irrespective of this, it ALL starts at home, people! My kids all went to the NEA-controlled local public schools replete with all the new Ed School tricks, bells and whistles!
The teachers were mostly solid Lib/Proggs, with the usual bias against rational thought and conservative anything, yet all three of mine graduated, when to college and have ended up as solid conservative-thing adult!
Stick with the basics at home, teach your kids to read, read to them books of your choosing(not just “Goodnight, Moon”—but real literature; mine got huge doses of JRR Tolkien, Twain and even some Faulkner!)) and make sure they get religious training as well. They don’t need to turn out as “evangelicals”, but exposure to Judeo-Christian principles at home and in a church of like-minded individuals, is the best way to inculcate Christian moral values, as well as help prevent falling victim to cults.
My kids were confident enough with what they learned at home to challenge their teachers thinking, at home and in the classroom.
DO NOT LAY THIS TASK OFF ON THE NEA brigands! You have complete control at home, use it wisely and you can take advantage of the public system’s good parts, while overcoming the crap!
Finally give your kids the “GIFT” of poverty, i.e. do NOT cater to their every whim! They want something? Make ‘em earn it! Works wonders in developing responsible “capitalists”!
And there is a really good question…… Just exactly where is the National Education Association (NEA) in all of this? Do ‘they’ agree with this agenda? Do they agree kids should be taught using revisionist history books that omit or distort relevant historic facts?
These ‘teachers’ being inserted into the education system… we are left w/ the impression they are not certified. Does the NEA approve? Why? When did the NEA drop all of the teacher certification requirements they have so long held fast? If so, why?
The teachers unions should be screaming ut loud about now. If they fail to respond, they too could end up out of work. Worse, they could end up working beside a teacher who may be teaching based on political ideology & not on actual learning of a subject.
The teachers’ unions have long fought charter schools, home-schooling, & vouchers. So now we are to believe they hold the progressive agenda so dear to their hearts that they will forgo any & all of their past objections, so that agenda can be imposed on America’s school children. Really? The NEA?
Maybe the state education departments would or are compliant in all of this. If so it simply proves what many of us have suspected for decades. The government system of education is corrupted w/ ideologues who will use any & every tactic possible to impose their agenda & to either establish greater control or re-enforce their existing control of the system they have worked so hard to create. They take care of their own. But this proposal looks to eliminate actual teachers as we have known them, in favor of re-educationists who are certified by the progressive units Duncan & others look to be establishing.
I say, lets also get to our existing teachers & enlist their support to put an end to this despicable effort to indoctrinate our children & to distort history in favor of the socialist mindset.
Dave II provides a good rebuttal to progressives steeped in ‘critical thinking’ (which amounts to cherry-picking facts without any associated logical hierarchy, in order to support your preformed conclusions). He cites Supreme Court decisions that supersede any international treaty.
There is more here, however. Progressives have taken control of the language and its definitions, in order to obfuscate a number of distinctions that Conservatives must keep in mind. This is especially true concerning the word “religion”, which should be seen as encompassing the idea of a church, and is completely different from the concept of “faith”. Although the Founders did not want a national church, they did indeed presume, suppose, and direct that the people of this nation supported and sustained a Judeo-Christian ethos. Without it, the Preamble to the Declaration of Independence is irrelevant. It is not simply a throwaway line to a list of grievances, but is instead the rock upon which this nation depends. Moreover it is the rock of the Christian faith, something that is a precursor to all Christian creeds and churches.
Don’t get sucked into the progressives deceitful misuse of language. He who controls the language, controls the dialogue.
Education is such a huge topic that everyone falls into generalities quickly. If the FEDERAL government insists that all states have high-stakes testing for graduation, that is not a sign of softness or the nanny-state, but rather a bit of tough-mindedness on standards.
Righties tend to grumble about education, but no one wants to enter the profession and change things. One would have to be smart enough to go through the process, say what has to be said, and then start to work on change, and any righties smart, subtle, and tough enough to do that, evidently, would rather do something else. So it goes.
And yes, you do have to be smart enough to “control the language,” but it is one thing to do that from a keyboard at home, and another thing to run the gauntlet of college, ed school, and all those students and then also argue that your salary should be less, your union weaker etc.
For what it’s worth, I was a teacher, liberal by your standards, conservative by ed. school standards, who believed in rigor and skills, as well as ethos and class-building.
There is so much bs thrown around by both sides on the education piece, but, I guess that’s where I started from, back at the generalities. But teaching history, or getting history standards in place is endlessly political, because some people want memorization and exposition of the founding documents and other want immigration, oppression, and social justice. Hell, it is ALL relevant, but there is only so much time. I was lucky; I taught English and my responsibilty was at least as much SKILLS as content, whereas with history, you can’t finesse content.
The US education system started to freefall in the late sixties when guys like Bill Ayers realized they could do more damage to the country with less personal risk if they could “reform” education…it continues today.
I’m afraid the freefall started long before Ayres. Track it from The Bolshevik revolution in ’17, and through ’20s and ’30s with Dewey and his humanist buddies.
And what was the name of the guy that started out as an intern at the UN and ended up writing a core curriculum for global education that was based on Alice Bailey’s occultic teachings of a new world order.
I’m pretty active and I hadn’t heard of this thing untill last night… we’ve got a townhall on it here tonight and will see what can be done to stop this… but this didn’t start with the 60′s… at least not in the 1960′s, it only came blatantly out into plain view in the 1960′s. This whole mess started in the 1860′s with the Morrill Act, which was the first proregressive success in getting the Federal govt involved in local citizens lives, taking advantage of American’s thirst for Education… and over the objections of College Presidents who saw what would follow, it passed… and govt, and the proregressive leaders who put themselves up as the ‘X-spurts’ to guide ‘educational progress’, have taken progressively more and more control of our educational system ever since.
They broke out of the straightjacket of traditional American’s ideas of what an Education should be in the early 1900′s, and it’s been the inverted hockey stick ever since.
I put up a couple posts on this a few years ago, “What never was and never will be” and “Spreading The Flames“.
If this passes and is implemented unopposed… we’re toast. It won’t matter what legislative victory we manage to make… unless homeschooling takes off bigtime, there won’t be anyone left around to see liberty as being worthwhile.
See if it’s in your area yet, if it is, fight it, if it’s not, fight it – it’s coming, either way fight this one folks… it’s happening at your local schoolboard level where we can all still have a say.
Fight this.
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The public school system and DOE is the most corrupt system in our gov. We moved to a top school district in Missouri, thinking schools would be worth the horrific taxes. Every person on our street did same thing. NONE of us made it more than 1 year with our first child in public school. The school board got angry at my neighbor, who has her Master’s in teaching ironically, for asking questions at a school Board meeting about the math curiculum! The district used a math program that REQUIRED 1st graders to use a calculator for every problem! They got angry that my son had gone to preschool and asked me to teach him to read….it took 3 weeks! When the K teacher found out she told me I probably “ruined” him LOL Had to tell her that it was only phonics and I’m pretty sure there’s no evidence that phonics “ruins” children LOL Go to Rainbow Resource Center (not affiliated in ANY way) and you can buy anything your school can get. Get the book, “The Well Trained Mind” (not affiliated in ANY way) and they give you all the options for a program that will get your kids into Ivy League schools. Don’t put up with people telling you that you “can’t teach your children as well as a certified teacher” My kids take Latin starting in 3rd grade and Spanish in K. We don’t worry about bullies or peer pressure, and it’s made our family life awesome! Best part, we can do half days in spring and late summer, go 6 days a week in nasty winter, and go on family vacations when the lemmings are all sitting in public school LOL I can take 8 kids to Walt Disney World the first week of December for what I could take 2 during Christmas vacation, and no lines either:)