Obama's Social Engineering Of America's Kids Continues Through The Radical NEA Teachers Union
September 23, 2015
NEA’s Plan to Indoctrinate School Children
Source: The Eagle Forum, August 2015, On The 2015 New School Year
But First, Webmaster's Note, Freedom Is Knowledge
The NEA's leadership continues to push the political correctness of sexuality as more important than America's world ranking in the 3R's, the NEA's name an oxymoron in itself. The Obama-backed, progressive behemoth union seems to not mind that the results of its policies are continuing to help spread the misery of more STD's on America's youth.
The Illinois Department Of Public Health reports, "Sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) are among the most common infectious diseases in the United States today. More than 20 STDs have been identified and they affect an estimated 19 million men and women in this country each year. The annual treatment cost of STDs in the United States is estimated to be in excess of $14 billion." - IDPH.
So what should an educational organization be interested in? How about a list of the top 20 educational systems in the world. In this posting, one U.S. school ranks 18th.
"The poll’s statistical data is compiled from 6 international organizations – the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), the United Nation’s Economic and Social Council (UNESOC), The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) and Progress in International Reading Study (PIRLS). And then send to each countries Ministry of Education Department to assure the data is accurate.
The World Top 20 Education Poll mission is to serve as a single body to oversee every child is afforded the opportunity to reach their full potential; by working with nations to strengthen their education system. The poll’s creator, the New Jersey Minority Educational Development organization (NJMED), is also the programmer for the 100% Graduation Rate Program, which works with hardest to reach student population, at-risk minority males, in the United States. The 100% Graduation Rate Program raised high school graduation’s by 49% in one of the U.S. poorest and most violence cities, Camden, New Jersey, from 1996 to 2006." - WorldTop20
Note: I realize the NJMED is a small organization in Camden, NJ, trying to do great things with minimum budgets probably working out of a home. Here is a bioof the two directors who want to make a difference in poor communities. Unlike the NEA, the struggling NJMED is focused on achievement and jobs and not who has a penis, who has a vagina, how they're used, or what pronoun each wants to be called in the classroom. OMG, how did we get here?
Preston S. Brown: Trust Yourself, Never Give In, Program Director of NJMED- YouTube, November 2010
- Eagle Forum's Article Continued Below -
If you want to stay on top of what’s going on in schools, watch the policies adopted by the National Education Association (NEA) which attracts nearly 10,000 delegates to its annual convention over the Fourth of July weekend. The NEA’s 3 million members include most of the nation’s public school teachers, who fund its half-billion dollar budget with their mandatory union dues.
NEA convention resolutions typically recycle every liberal buzzword you can think of: diversity, inclusion, sexual orientation, pluralism, stereotypes, reproductive freedom, racism, sexism, homophobia, equity, multiculturalism, undocumented immigrants, and global interdependency. At this year’s convention in Orlando, several propaganda terms appeared for the first time: marriage equality, gender identity, and institutional racism.
Until this year, the NEA had refrained from explicitly endorsing same-sex marriage, although it was on record in favor of equal benefits for domestic partners, repealing the Defense of Marriage Act, and other tenets of the gay-rights agenda. In 2008, the NEA’s California affiliate donated $1.3 million of teachers’ dues money to the campaign against Proposition 8, which defined marriage as the union of a man and a woman.
Prop 8 nevertheless passed by a 600,000-vote margin, largely due to ads warning parents that schools would soon begin teaching first- and second-graders that boys can marry boys and girls can marry girls. Teachers complained about the ads when they were aired in 2008, but this year’s convention declared that teachers should tolerate no dissent from so-called marriage equality, even for sincere religious reasons.
The teachers union adopted this New Business Item A: “The NEA will develop educational materials for its state affiliates and members about the potential dangers of so-called ‘Religious Freedom Restoration Acts’ or RFRAs, which may license individuals and corporations to discriminate on the theory that their religious beliefs require such actions.”
Religious Freedom Restoration Acts offer a way for Christians to live their religious beliefs without being sued for not providing their services or facilities to same-sex marriage ceremonies. The Christian belief that marriage is an institution blessed by God to unite a man and a woman is just a “license to discriminate,” according to official NEA policy.
When the same-sex marriage case was argued before the U.S. Supreme Court decision earlier this year, the U.S. Solicitor General was asked whether even private religious schools would have to change their teaching if the Supreme Court changed the public definition of marriage. General Verrilli replied with the chilling non-answer, “It’s going to be an issue.”
Not content with the redefinition of marriage, the NEA moved right along to endorse the “transgender” agenda for the nation’s public schools. In New Business Item 30, the NEA says schools must provide “transgender student and staff access to facilities consistent with his or her gender identity, irrespective of the gender listed on the employee’s or pupil’s records.”
The trans nonsense doesn’t stop there. According to the NEA’s New Business Items 45 and 74, schools must allow students to dress in the gender of their choice, and should not require students to “obtain a court-ordered name and/or gender change as a prerequisite to being addressed by the name and pronoun that corresponds to their gender identity.”
New Business Item B, considered so important that it was introduced by the NEA Board of Directors and passed unanimously at the Orlando convention, declares that “we acknowledge the existence in our country of institutional racism” which “manifests itself in our schools.” Since the existence of institutional racism is not open to debate, the delegates called for “partnering” with like-minded groups, “particularly in areas of cultural competence, diversity, and social justice in order to address institutional racism.”
This is what Dinesh D’Souza calls “the shame narrative” of American history, famously advocated by the best selling left wing historian Howard Zinn, which presents American history as a cavalcade of oppression by the white Europeans who stole the country from Indians, Africans and Mexicans. Is that what you want your children and grandchildren to be taught?
Every presidential candidate has (or will soon have) a position paper on how best to reform public education, and both houses of Congress have passed bills to rewrite the law that provides federal aid to schools with strings attached. All these reform ideas depend on teachers to implement them in the classroom, but most teachers pay dues to a union whose policies are diametrically opposed to what parents and the public want children to learn.
There can be no positive change in America’s public schools as long as teachers unions have the power to collect mandatory dues from school employees whose salaries are paid by the taxpayers. The National Education Association must return to what it was for the first 100 years of its existence: a purely voluntary association of individual teachers who willingly choose to support the organization with voluntary contributions.
Planned Parenthood, the nation’s leading abortion provider, is also the leading provider of K-12 sex education in public schools. Students are reminded of their legal right to an abortion, and how and where to obtain one.
As the organization itself boasts on its website, “Planned Parenthood is the largest provider of comprehensive sex education in our communities. Each year, Planned Parenthood affiliates reach 1.5 million young people and parents with effective sex education and outreach in programs run by professional educators and youth peer educators.”
But now, following the stunning admission by a top Planned Parenthood official that the organization harvests and sells the organs of aborted fetuses, critics are calling on lawmakers and school officials to ban it from the classroom.
“Planned Parenthood is in the abortion business and doesn’t care about our daughters’ best interests,” said Karen England, executive director of the Capitol Resource Institute. “We’ve known for a long time they encourage abortion and sell body parts.”
Valerie Huber, president of the National Abstinence Education Association, says her organization has always opposed Planned Parenthood’s presence in public schools. “Any group that normalizes or encourages teen sexual activity should not have access to students,” Huber said.
"The Fairfax County School Board, in the Virginia suburbs outside Washington, D.C., voted on June 25 to adopt the controversial new Family Life Education Curriculum. The meeting was crowded with angry parents, many of whom spoke out against the sudden changes.
After learning to define heterosexuality, homosexuality, bisexuality and gender identity in seventh grade, students in eighth grade will delve deeper into 'individual identity.'
The eighth grade curriculum says individual identity will be described 'as having four parts — biological gender, gender identity (includes transgender), gender role, and sexual orientation (includes heterosexual, bisexual, and homosexual).'
In ninth grade, students will be taught that 'sexuality evolves from infancy to old age.' By tenth grade, 'Sexual orientation and gender identity terms will be discussed with focus on appreciation for individual differences.'
The school board passed the changes to the curriculum to angry cries from those gathered. The vote was 10-2. The board disregarded motions to postpone the vote so that board members and parents would have more time to consider the proposed changes.
In addition to their concerns about the changes to the sex-ed curriculum, parents voiced objections to the school board moving controversial items from the Family Life and Education Curriculum to the mandatory Health Curriculum, which would prevent parents from opting out. The board compromised on that issue by voting to move some of the curriculum objectives back to the FLE curriculum."
How One Public School Defines ‘Family’
As seen on Twitter — July 7, 2015, OnePublicSchoolDefinesFamily2
Some New Business Items at the NEA's 2015 Convention
NEA 2015 Convention in Orlando, Florida
Note: Underlines are by Webmaster to highlight NEA's Teacher Union's attempt to control our state schools through social engineering, a fascist technique used by Marxists to control societies and what individuals are allowed to think and say, forcing the population to become part of a collective.
NBI 30.
NEA will use existing media to educate members regarding transgender student and staff access to facilities consistent with his or her gender identity, irrespective of the gender listed on the employee’s or pupil’s records.
NBI 31.
NEA will include on the NEA website and other appropriate communications, an array of resources and services to help schools create gender inclusive spaces for all our youth that are provided by organizations such as Gender Spectrum (www.genderspectrum.org) and the Trans Youth Equality Foundation (www.transyouthequality.org)
NBI 42.
NEA will post a link to a guide on the NEA website for educators to use called “Know Your Rights! A Guide For LGBT High School Students on lambdalegal.org,” by the American Civil Liberties Union on aclu.org, that clearly states how to protect LGBT students.
NBI 45.
NEA will let state affiliates and members know, through appropriate communication, that school employees will allow transgender or gender nonconforming students the ability to let educators and support staff know how they want to be addressed and know these students are not required to change their official records or obtain a court-ordered name and/or gender change as a prerequisite to being addressed by the name and pronoun that corresponds to their gender identity.
NBI 74.
NEA will send a letter electronically to all its state and local affiliates about the problem with school dress codes that restrict a students’ right to dress in a manner that is consistent with their gender identity and/or gender expression and recommend that schools adopt dress codes that are gender neutral.
NBI 86.
NEA will disseminate to educators through existing publications current information regarding the methods and damaging effects of anti-gay “conversion/reparative therapies”.
New B.
Social Emotional Learning. The NEA believes that students must learn the social emotional skills of self-awareness, self management, social awareness, decision-making, and relationship management. The development of these competencies is necessary in the learning process to provide pathways for both academic success and achievement.
NBI A.
The NEA will develop educational materials for its state affiliates and members about the potential dangers of so-called “religious freedom restoration acts” or RFRAs, which may license individuals and corporations to discriminate on the theory that their religious beliefs require such actions. The materials will describe the current legal landscape at the federal and state level, provide model state legislative amendments to modify existing laws to prevent such discriminatory applications, provide talking points for advocacy, and link to existing resources for members and state affiliates to use in efforts to prevent the use of such laws as a license to discriminate.
New B.
Educational Programs in Support of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Questioning Students. The NEA supports appropriate and inclusive educational programs that address the unique needs and concerns of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and questioning (LGBTQ) students. Specific programs should provide:
Acknowledgement of the significant contributions of diverse LGBTQ persons in American history and culture. Involvement of educators knowledgeable in LGBTQ issues in the development of educational materials that integrate factual information about the history, social movements, and current events of LGBTQ people.
New I. Marriage Equality.
The NEA believes in marriage equality for all individuals. Discrimination and stereotyping based on such factors as race, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability, ethnicity, immigration status, occupation, and religion must be eliminated. The Association also believes that these factors should not affect the legal rights and obligations of the partners in a domestic partnership, civil union, or marriage in regard to matters involving the other partner, such as medical decisions, taxes, inheritance, adoption, and immigration. The Association further believes that these factors should never be used to deny any individual or couple the full rights of marriage equality.
NBI B.
We, the members of the National Education Association, acknowledge the existence in our country of institutional racism — the societal patterns and practices that have the net effect of imposing oppressive conditions and denying rights, opportunity, and equality based upon race. This inequity manifests itself in our schools and in the conditions our students face in their communities. In order to address institutional racism, the National Education Association shall lead by:
spotlighting systemic patterns of inequity–racism and educational injustice–that impact our students; and taking action to enhance access and opportunity for our students.
NEA will use our collective voice to bring to light and demand change to policies, programs, and practices that condone or ignore unequal treatment and hinder student success by:
Providing technical assistance to state, local, and national affiliates to dialogue internally and with the external community and develop plans of action to address institutional racism.
Partnering with a broad coalition of national stakeholders on campaigns and actions to eradicate policies that perpetuate institutional racism in education. Partnering on campaigns and actions on critical social justice issues impacting students and their communities.
Convening high school students and young people to gather their perspectives to inform our work and the work of others (education stakeholders, policymakers, etc.)
Expanding the work of the Association on issues of institutional racism, including redirecting existing resources and providing grants to affiliates to lead and partner with us on site based projects, such as:
programs aimed at improving school climate and culture, particularly ending the school to prison pipeline supporting campaigns to expand the development and implementation of community schools expanding local affiliate-school district partnerships that expand educator-led professional development, particularly in areas of cultural competence, diversity, and social justice in order to address institutional racism.
Some NEA Resolutions Passed at the 2015 Convention
A-25.
Voucher Plans and Tuition Tax Credits. The Association opposes voucher plans, tuition tax credits, or other such funding arrangements that pay for students to attend sectarian schools.
A-34.
Federally or State-Mandated Choice/Parental Option Plans. The Association opposes federally or state-mandated choice or parental option plans.
B-1.
Early Childhood Education. The National Education Association supports early childhood education programs in the public schools for children from birth through age eight. These programs must be available to all children on an equal basis and should include mandatory kindergarten with compulsory attendance.
B-16.
Hispanic Education. The Association believes in efforts that provide for grants and scholarships for higher education that will facilitate the recruitment, entry, and retention of Hispanics; involvement of Hispanics in lobbying efforts for federal programs; involvement of Hispanic educators in developing educational materials used in classroom instruction.
B-25.
Education of Refugee and Undocumented Children and Children of Undocumented Immigrants. The Association supports access for undocumented students to financial aid and in-state tuition to state colleges and universities. The Association further believes that students who have resided in the United States for at least five years at the time of high school graduation should be granted legal residency status, and allowed to apply for U.S. citizenship.
B-40.
Multicultural Education. The National Education Association believes that Multicultural education should promote the recognition of individual and group differences and similarities in order to reduce racism, homophobia, ethnic and all other forms of prejudice, and discrimination and to develop self-esteem.
B-41.
Global Education. The National Education Association believes that global education imparts an appreciation of our interdependency in sharing the world’s resources.
B-52.
Sex Education. The Association recognizes that the public school must assume an increasingly important role in providing the instruction. The Association also believes that it is the right of every individual to live in an environment of freely available information and knowledge about sexuality.
B-83.
Home Schooling. The National Education Association believes that home schooling programs based on parental choice cannot provide the student with a comprehensive education experience. The Association also believes that home-schooled students should not participate in any extracurricular activities in the public schools.
C-30.
Student Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity. The National Education Association believes that all persons, regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity, should be guaranteed a safe and inclusive environment within the public education system. The Association also believes that, for students who are struggling with their sexual orientation or gender identity, every school district and educational institution should provide counseling services and programs.
E-4.
Selection and Challenges of Materials and Teaching Techniques. The Association deplores pre-publishing censorship, book-burning crusades, and attempts to ban books from school library media centers and school curricula.
F-2.
Pay Equity/Comparable Worth. The “market value” means of establishing pay cannot be the final determinant of pay scales since it too frequently reflects the race and sex bias in our society.
I-1.
Peace and International Relations. The Association believes that the United Nations furthers world peace and promotes the rights of all people by preventing war, racism, and genocide.
I-9.
Global Climate Change. The Association believes that humans must take steps to change activities that contribute to global climate change.
I-17.
Family Planning. The National Education Association believes in family planning, including the right to reproductive freedom. The Association further believes in the implementation of community-operated, school-based family planning clinics that will provide intensive counseling by trained personnel.
I-22.
Immigration. The Association opposes any immigration policy that denies educational opportunities to immigrants and their children regardless of their immigration status.
I-33.
Freedom of Religion. The Association opposes any federal legislation or mandate that would require school districts to schedule a moment of silence.
I-47.
Elimination of Discrimination. The National Education Association is committed to the elimination of discrimination based on race, gender, ethnicity, economic status, religion, disability, sexual orientation, gender identification, age, and all other forms of discrimination. The Association encourages its members and all other members of the educational community to engage in courageous conversations in order to examine assumptions, prejudices, discriminatory practices, and their effects.
I-58.
Linguistic Diversity. The Association believes that efforts to legislate English as the official language disregard cultural pluralism; deprive those in need of education, social services, and employment; and must be challenged.
I-61.
Equal Opportunity for Women. The Association supports an amendment to the U.S. Constitution (such as the Equal Rights Amendment). The Association urges its affiliates to support ratification of such an amendment. The Association also supports the enactment and full funding of the Women’s Educational Equity Act. The Association endorses the use of nonsexist language.
The above text is excerpted from NEA Resolutions adopted at the 2015 NEA Convention. Much language has been omitted, but no words have been added or changed. - Eagle Forum
Source: The Eagle Forum, August 2015, On The 2015 New School Year
Source: The Eagle Forum, July 2015, On The 2015 New School Year
After spending most of the summer giving President Obama new authority (called fast track) to negotiate trade deals with low-wage countries in Asia, Congressional Republicans are now poised to give Obama new authority over education in America’s public schools. This is a big disappointment for those of us who worked hard to elect a Republican Congress last November. We expected the new Congress to take power back from the president, not give him more.
For the past 50 years, the engine of federal control over local schools has been Title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) of 1965. It was the first in a series of socialist laws that President Lyndon Johnson promised would lead to a “Great Society” after we won his declared “war on poverty.” Johnson’s Great Society legislation was speedily enacted by a Congress in which Democrats outnumbered Republicans by more than two to one (295-140 in the House and 68-32 in the Senate). Despite the trillions of dollars spent since 1965, we are no closer to achieving a Great Society. By many measures, America’s education and social welfare are much worse today than when those programs were launched 50 years ago.
Republicans had an opportunity to dismantle the failed regime of federal control when they regained control of both Houses of Congress in 1994 and then elected a president in 2000. Unfortunately, George W. Bush campaigned on the slogan “Leave No Child Behind” as his signature domestic agenda item, and John Boehner, then chairman of the House Education Committee, produced a bill that rebranded the old ESEA under the new title “No Child Left Behind.” No Child Left Behind (NCLB) promised to bring all children (including all demographic minorities measured separately) to 100% proficiency by 2014. Of course that didn’t happen, and nearly everyone now recognizes NCLB was a complete failure.
With their current historic majority in both Houses, there’s a new opportunity for Republicans to dismantle the 50-year failure of money poured into local public schools with strings attached. Unfortunately Republicans, once again, are on the verge of just rebranding the same failed programs with new and overly optimistic slogans: the “Student Success Act” (in the House) and the “Every Child Achieves Act,” ECAA (in the Senate).
Senator Lamar Alexander (R-TN), has been speaking in front of a sign saying “Fix No Child Left Behind,” as he touts the ECAA bill as a bipartisan “consensus about how to fix it.” A former Secretary of Education in the Bush 41 administration, Lamar almost didn’t return to the Senate this year after he won less than 50% of the Republican vote against an underfunded tea party challenger.
The claim that ECAA is somehow a “fix” for NCLB is laughable. Equally false is the claim that it gets rid of the hated Common Core. While it makes a great show of disavowing the name Common Core, Lamar’s bill continues and extends the standards-and-testing mandate that Common Core was designed to incorporate into the public school curriculum. The proof that ECAA will indirectly reinforce federal control is the way it requires states to force testing on students whose parents want to opt them out of that mindless exercise, as tens of thousands have already done.
One method the schools have used against students whose parents opt them out is to force kids to sit quietly at an empty desk — forbidden to read, write, or draw — while other students take the test. Parents call this form of punishment “sit and stare.”
In Oldmans Township, New Jersey, 9-year-old Cassidy Thornton, whose parent opted her out of the mandated PARCC exam, was humiliated to tears by being excluded from the end-of-year cupcake and juice-box party with the rest of her class. Cassidy’s mom called it bullying, but the school defended its decision to reward test-takers because federal rules require 95% of students to be tested. [Fascism Comes To America - Webmaster.]
Education has become a critical issue for 2016 presidential candidates. Even Donald Trump, in his speech at Trump Tower announcing his candidacy, made a point of declaring that “Common Core is a disaster. Education has to be local.”
But Jeb Bush, whose foundation took millions from Bill Gates and corporations such as Pearson to promote Common Core, remains unmoved by grassroots opposition. Two years ago, Jeb derided parents concerned about Common Core as people who are “comfortable with mediocrity.” That insult rivals Arne Duncan’s slam at white suburban moms who all of a sudden [realize that] their child isn’t as brilliant as they thought they were.
Jeb actually praised the heavy-handed federal role in public education:
“Look, I think Secretary Duncan and President Obama deserve credit for putting pressure on states, providing carrots and sticks. I think that’s appropriate.”
No, Jeb, it’s not appropriate.
Tell your U.S. Senators and your Member of Congress to vote No on any bill to reauthorize a federal role in public education.
Schools Don’t Teach Kids To Read
A high school English teacher at Rosemount High School in Minnesota, which was called a “top ranked school” by the Minnesota Department of Education, given the Blue Ribbon School of Excellence Award by the U.S. Department of Education, and named a top school in the nation for 2014 by Newsweek Magazine, wrote a shocking letter alerting parents and the public that her high school juniors can’t read. Her letter published by the Minnesota Star Tribune on December 4, 2014 was eloquent, so I quote it verbatim:
“We are in the midst of one of the greatest literacy crises ever encountered, and we are fighting an uphill battle. Every day I experience firsthand what it means to be illiterate in a high school classroom. Average students with average abilities can fervently text away, but they cannot read.”
She said some of her students just sleep away an assigned unit. Others resort to depression or aggression. She gave them a not very difficult test, but they couldn’t read the test. When she assigns her students a book to read, they often don’t even try to read it. Ask them why, they say “It’s boring.” She wrote that this translates into “It’s too hard to read.” The teacher appeals to parents and the public, saying, “I need your help.”
Don’t count on the shift to Common Core to teach school kids to read. Common Core will change the assigned stories and books, but it won’t change the fact that elementary school kids are only taught how to memorize a few dozen “sight,” mostly one-syllable, words, but not taught phonics so they can sound out the syllables and then read the bigger words in high school and college assignments.
Students are not assigned or motivated to read whole books. In the name of “close reading,” they are given short so-called “informational” excerpts to read over and over in class, almost until they are memorized. You don’t find the students going to the library to take out and read the classics, and students don’t acquire the vocabulary necessary to do college work.
Limited reading skill means that what the students read is tightly controlled. Common Core has rewritten the history of America’s founding to present James Madison, Thomas Jefferson and other Founders to fit the left wing narrative of gender, race, class, and ethnicity, and students have neither motivation nor skill to seek out the true history of the Founders. Common Core does, however, find space for stories that many parents find morally objectionable such as The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison.
The change from teaching school children to read by phonics, and replacing phonics with the so-called “whole word” or “look-say” or sight method, was fully debunked in the landmark book Why Johnny Can’t Read by Rudolph Flesch in 1955. Unfortunately, the truth had no impact on public schools which stuck with the new method because it was part of “progressive” education. It was brought to Teachers College at Columbia University with a $3 million grant from John D. Rockefeller Jr., who then sent four of his five sons to be educated by Dewey’s progressive ideas.
Publishers responded eagerly to the opportunity to sell new books to all elementary schools, and the Dick and Jane series seemed much more attractive than the widely used McGuffey readers. Reading suddenly appeared to become easy because the whole word method teaches the child to guess at the words from pictures, to memorize a few dozen one-syllable words that are used over and over again, and to substitute words that fit the context.
The Dick and Jane books were full of color pictures and only a couple of short sentences on every page. A typical page showed Dick and Jane on a seesaw. The kids could easily “read” the two sentences below: “See Dick up. See Jane down.”
Nelson Rockefeller, who became Governor of New York and ran three times for U.S. President, described his reading handicap in The Reading Teacher in March 1972: “I am a prime example of one who has had to struggle with the handicap of being a poor reader while serving in public office.” Rockefeller hired expensive speech writers, but he said that many times he threw away the speech and told the audience he was just going to give his “spontaneous thoughts.” He confessed that the real reason was that he could not do an adequate job of reading the speech prepared for him.
If parents want their children to be good readers, parents will have to do the teaching as I did with my children and grandchildren. When the book I used for my six children was allowed to go out of print and its publisher went out of business, I wrote First Reader to teach phonics to my grandchildren at age 5 or 6 (now available at FirstReader.com) and Turbo Reader for kids over age 8 (available at TurboReader.com).
Crimes Against Your Children
Parents are up in arms against the new attempt to federalize what schools teach called Common Core, but the even more basic “crimes of the educators” are described in the new book by Samuel Blumenfeld under that title. If you want your children to be smart and successful, rather than join the millions who graduate from high school unable to read their own diploma, or go into debt taking remedial courses in college, you need Blumenfeld’s book.
If your child is not a good reader, chances are he is not stupid or afflicted with some brain disability. It’s much more likely that your child was never properly taught how to read. The failure to teach schoolchildren how to read in the first grade means that they fall farther behind with each passing year and soon become bored and resentful of school. By the time they get to the fourth grade, American students are scoring below children of many other nations.
Blumenfeld’s book details the process by which this happened, and it wasn’t any accident. It was planned that way by the socialists who believe that the way to undermine the U.S. capitalist system is to get rid of high literacy and independent intelligence so that the younger generation will accept Big Brother in the driver’s seat of our economy. Blumenfeld traces the evolution of this system from an 1898 article called “The Primary-Education Fetich” by the father of so-called progressive education, John Dewey. In that article, Dewey wrote: “The plea for the predominance of learning to read in early school life . . . seems to me a perversion.”
Under Dewey’s progressive system, children are no longer taught phonics (how to sound out syllables so they can read big words), and instead are taught what is called the “sight” or “whole-word” method. That means they are taught to memorize a few dozen frequently used words, guess at other words from their shape, and predict the content of the article from pictures on the page. If children don’t catch on to this system, parents are falsely told that their children were born with a disability called dyslexia. Students who become disorderly are given drugs such as Ritalin and Adderall.
John Dewey wrote in 1896, “It is one of the great mistakes of education to make reading and writing constitute the bulk of the school work the first two years. The true way is to teach them incidentally as the outgrowth of the social activities at this time.” According to Blumenfeld, “To Dewey, the greatest obstacle to socialism was the private mind that seeks knowledge in order to exercise its own private judgment and intellectual authority. High literacy gave the individual the means to seek knowledge independently.”
So Dewey developed and propagated the system that discouraged high literacy and inflicted children with a method that would prevent them from reading the great books and from developing high levels of independent intelligence. Dewey introduced his theories at Johns Hopkins University. Dewey’s study of individualism led him to believe that we could develop the socialized individual by first getting rid of the traditional emphasis on language and literacy in the primary grades and turning children toward socialized activities.
John D. Rockefeller Jr. became Dewey’s sponsor with a $3 million grant. His sons, who were then subjected to the Dewey system, later admitted how handicapped they were as public officials. Both Nelson and his brother David admitted that they were poor readers, which school officials blamed on dyslexia. Nelson admitted he could not read the public speeches written for him by high-priced speech writers and had to toss the scripts aside and speak off the cuff.
Blumenfeld recognizes Common Core as “an educational fraud.” Instead of reading the literary classics, Common Core students are given portions from tiresome government documents and technical manuals instead of great literature.
Blumenfeld’s use of the word “crimes” in the title of his book is not too strong a word to describe what the progressives have done to America and to our children. Don’t let them do it to your children or grandchildren. Immediately get Crimes of the Educators by Samuel Blumenfeld from WorldNetDaily.com. The accurate subtitle is How Utopians Are Using Government Schools to Destroy America’s Children.
No Free Speech to Criticize Common Core
A teacher in Louisiana named Deborah Vailes has been teaching junior high in Louisiana for the past 2 years. She has a stellar record and is especially passionate about helping special needs kids become readers. One day she posted a criticism of the Common Core curriculum on her personal Facebook page. She then was faced with disciplinary action, suppression of her right to free speech, retaliation from school officials, and possible loss of her job.
When the school principal discovered the post, she gave Deborah a written reprimand and ordered her to remove her anti-Common Core post from the website. Deborah was also ordered to refrain from expressing any opinion about public education on social media in any public forum. Two days later, the principal informed the school faculty that Deborah had been reprimanded due to posting a negative opinion about Common Core on Facebook, and ordered the rest of the faculty not to share their personal opinions or speak out in any way.
Deborah had never received any reprimand before. Since her criticism of Common Core, she has received three additional written reprimands, and school administrators are now constantly visiting her class. She has been shifted to a job category that will be eliminated at the end of the school year, which means Deborah’s employment will be terminated.
The Thomas More Law Center, a national public interest law firm, filed a lawsuit on her behalf against the school district and the school principal. We don’t yet know how this will all turn out, but it certainly demonstrates that the imposition of Common Core on public school children is highly controversial, and it’s no wonder that moms and many teachers are up in arms all over the country in an effort to remove it from the classroom.
Washington bureaucrats should stop trying to mess with a system that worked successfully for generations and should allow educators to use the successful phonics method. The only thing worse than using a bad method is making a bad method mandatory for all schools across the country. That is what Common Core does and why parents are against it.
Letter To Candidates In The 2016 Elections
"You are probably aware that Common Core is one of the hottest issues at the grassroots level. Parents and students across the country have been in an uproar against Common Core in their school districts, state boards of education, and legislatures.
The Common Core State Standards have bombarded our students with all sorts of issues: politically biased lessons, ridiculous “new” ways to solve math problems with no right answers, new federal oversight on testing, and the collection of extremely intrusive, personal data on our kids.
As parents have demonstrated their outrage in so many states across the country, public office holders and prospective candidates have taken notice. Candidates’ positions on Common Core affected many races in 2014, and it will play an even bigger role in the 2016 elections.
That is why Eagle Forum introduced a national “Stop Common Core Pledge.” Voters deserve to know every candidate’s position on this vital issue. Those hoping to be public servants can sign our pledge and tell the voters very clearly where they stand on this issue."
