- Behind frequent protestations by public
officials about local control of the schools, a federal curriculum has
been quietly imposed by law. All the pieces are now in place for this major
goal of the Clinton administration.
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- Elementary and secondary school education
used to be organized around subjects such as reading, math, history, geography,
language and science. While smatterings of those subjects are still taught,
the focus has been shifted from academic subject matter to teaching attitudes,
beliefs, values, themes, behaviors and job skills.
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- This is indoctrination, not education.
Left-wing professors write the textbooks and the teachers unions control
the public schools, so the ideology is what those groups deem politically
correct.
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- And it's all hiding behind that good
conservative word "standards." Who could possibly be against
standards?
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- Two of the three 1994 Bill Clinton laws,
Goals 2000, which defines the goals, and School-to-Work, which prescribes
the shift from academics to job skills, were touted as "voluntary."
The third 1994 law, the appropriations reauthorization (known to many as
H.R. 6), tied the knot, warning that schools would not get any federal
money unless they conform to the other two laws.
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- In a remarkable inclusion of special-interest
legislation, the third law named and funded a private organization, the
Center for Civic Education (CCE), to develop the national standards for
teaching civics and government. This cozy relationship was reconfirmed
in the 2002 education law called Leave No Child Behind and means that CCE
is empowered, with the force of federal law and a stream of taxpayers'
money, to decide what is taught in our nation's schools about civics and
government.
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- CCE produced a 180-page volume called
"National Standards for Civics and Government," plus textbooks,
teacher's guides and other materials for elementary, middle and high school
levels. This great quantity of words is short on facts but long on inculcating
attitudes.
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- CCE's textbook called "We the People:
the Citizen and the Constitution" admits a peculiar aversion to facts:
"The primary purpose of this text is not to fill your head with a
lot of facts about American history and geography. Knowledge of the facts
is important but only insofar as it deepens your understanding of the American
Constitutional system and its development."
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- "Deepens your understanding,"
that is, of a prescribed worldview without cluttering your mind with hard
facts about American history and what's actually in the U.S. Constitution.
For example, the fact that the U.S. Constitution contains a Second Amendment
doesn't exist in the book called
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- "Standards."
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- This is curious because, while the federal
law was vague about the content of the standards CCE was empowered to write,
the law was very specific in demanding instruction on the Bill of Rights.
Many pages of "Standards" are devoted to the Bill of Rights but,
funny thing, the Second Amendment is completely censored out.
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- The 180 pages of "Standards,"
of course, contain much that is informative, but the information is peripheral
to the selling of a political agenda designed to change the student rather
than educate him. The book admits that "Standards" is trying
to teach "certain dispositions or traits of character."
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- One major theme is a put-down of allegiance
to national sovereignty. Professor Allen Quist of Bethany Lutheran College
made a word count and discovered that the book contains only eight references
to national sovereignty, but 17 references to the environment, 42 references
to diversity, and 42 to multiculturalism.
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- When "Standards" listed the
seven "fundamental values" of the United States, national sovereignty
didn't make the cut, but diversity did.
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- Six of the eight mentions of national
sovereignty use the same curious wording: "The world is divided into
nation-states that claim sovereignty over a defined territory and jurisdiction
over everyone within it."
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- Do we only "claim" national
sovereignty, or is it a historical fact that we won our national sovereignty
in a War of Independence and we jolly well need it to protect ourselves
against foreign aggressors. The words "divided into" imply that
maybe it would be better if we were not "divided" into countries,
phrasing that is a favorite of those who advocate global government.
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- CCE's "Standards" puts two
government purposes on equivalent levels: "the protection of the rights
of individuals and the promotion of the common good." The words "common
good" are repeated over and over again in this book, but they are
not in our Constitution.
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- "The common good" can mean
whatever a totalitarian government wants it to mean. Our Founders never
would have ranked "common good" as an equal value with our Creator-endowed
individual rights.
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- The last page of "Standards"
gives its final advice to the students: Citizens have "the ability
to reaffirm or change fundamental constitutional values." Is that
what a federal curriculum is all about -- changing our constitutional values?
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- ©2002 Copley News Service townhall.com
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- http://townhall.com/columnists/phyllisschlafly/printps20020213.shtml
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