On January 12, 2010, a 7.0 earthquake mercilessly shook the country of Haiti, causing death and destruction of Biblical proportions. By the time the last aftershock was registered, approximately 85,000 Haitians were dead, and hundreds of thousands more were injured or left homeless.

    Some observed that the 1989 San Francisco earthquake also reached 7.0 on the Richter scale, but that quake left 63 people dead and left about 12,000 homeless. The difference between the two was that California’s buildings are designed to withstand powerful earthquakes, and Haiti’s are not.

    That realization brought renewed attention to the poverty of the Haitian people. Onlookers began to question why the tiny Caribbean country was so hopelessly poor and ill-prepared.

    Garrett Glass of the Digital Freedom Network suggested a possible reason:

    “In Haiti’s 200-year quest for freedom, one of the most crucial components of freedom, which leads to prosperity, has never been effectively implemented or even seriously tried (much less respected). The Haitian system of establishing property rights is so convoluted, complicated and corrupt that to the average citizen of Haiti owning any property will always remain just a dream. The connection between poverty and the lack of property rights is often overlooked.”

    George Mason University economist Walter Williams noted that the rule of law is virtually nonexistent in Haiti:

    “Crime and lawlessness are rampant in Haiti. The U.S. Department of State Web site … long before the earthquake warned, ‘There are no “safe” areas in Haiti. … Kidnapping, death threats, murders, drug-related shootouts, armed robberies, home break-ins and car-jacking are common in Haiti … Crime anywhere is a prohibitive tax on economic development, and the poorest people are its primary victims.”

    A thoughtful social studies teacher could contrast the effects of the Haiti and San Francisco earthquakes as a way of teaching students about property rights and the rule of law (versus the rule of the mob or dictator).  Students could learn that without the rule of law, individuals could not enjoy their natural, God-given rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, as set forth in our Declaration of Independence. 

    Of course, discussing Haiti in those terms would lead to an affirmation of the American way of life – individual liberties and economic freedoms – and that clearly doesn’t meet the goals of the Blame America First/Social Justice crowd that currently controls public education.

    As such, when Haiti gets discussed in our public schools, it’s likely the Haitian people are depicted as victims of greedy capitalists who are trapped in poverty because U.S. corporations have turned Haiti into America’s sweatshop, making the products that fill our superstores.

    That’s the premise behind “Mickey Mouse Goes to Haiti,” a 1996 documentary that was produced by the National Labor Committee and has infiltrated elementary social studies classrooms all across the country.

    The documentary opens with an unidentified man speaking outside of a Disney store:

    “The profits that are made by the fashion industry and these conglomerates are astronomical. And not to be concerned for the people’s lives is a totally disastrous attitude – especially from a company like Walt Disney that makes their living … on children.”

    In short order, the film asserts that the Disney corporation pays workers seven cents to produce a shirt that will sell for $12. The filmmakers go on to show the squalid living conditions of the Haitian workers who produce the clothing.

    The film spends most of its 28-minute run time claiming that U.S. companies are attracted to poverty-stricken Haiti exploit its people. The film also suggests that there are so many Haitian workers that companies can play the unemployed against the workers to keep wages low. The message is very clear for viewers (read: students): profit-seeking corporations are the cause of Haiti’s suffering. 

    At one point in the film, a Haitian worker looks into the camera and says, “I’d like to send a message to the American people. If they send these clothes to be made in Haiti, if the Americans can’t give a living wage to us, to the Haitian workers, they shouldn’t wear the clothes we have made for them in Haiti. That would be better for us.”

    Suppose you’re a fifth-grade student who is watching “Mickey Mouse Goes to Haiti” as part of a multi-week unit plan titled, “Work, Workers & the U.S. Labor Movement.” What conclusions are you going to draw about corporations? About free markets and capitalism? About the American way of life in general?

    A blog post written by a student who claims to have watched the documentary in school provides some answers:

    “There is a documentary … I saw last week during my video class. It’s called ‘Mickey Mouse Goes to Haiti.’ In the states, how much can you purchase a Walt Disney t-shirt (for)? $12?

    “This corporation (including others) has factories in 3^rd world countries such as Haiti and they charge labour workers about $0.28/h. By the end of the day, they make about $2.888 and about $14.00 at the end of the week.

    “These people work full-time, 7 days a week and they still don’t have enough to feed the whole family, never mind medication or saving up for a more promising future ….

    “People die in third world countries at a rate of about 1 person every 6 seconds, so the next time you go to the Walt Disney store, Disney World or the next hot feature presentation, don’t just admire the crews sitting in the office doing something you might want to do for a living, but also the millions who sewed your Lion King t-shirt you just used as a floor towel.” (grammar and spelling were corrected for clarity)

    The student’s anger toward free markets, capitalism and corporations is palpable, which is surely the reaction activist-minded teachers are going for when they show the video.

    The intent here is not to excuse corporations that exploit employees in third world countries. The American consumer is right to hold companies accountable for exploitative business practices.

    However, social justice teachers must also be held accountable for twisting facts and misrepresenting situations to their students. To claim that Haiti is in dire straits because Americans practice capitalism is absurd. If anything, Haitians are suffering because capitalism (which requires property rights) does not exist in their country. The sweat shops are only a symptom of Haiti’s problems, not the cause of them.

    “Mickey Mouse Goes to Haiti” seems to be primarily used in fifth grade social studies classes – well before students have a clear understanding of our founding principles. To put it plainly, it is educational malpractice for teachers to propagandize students against a political and economic system that they do not fully understand.

    The history of capitalism is one of freeing individuals to pursue their goals and dreams. The pursuit of profits has led to innumerable inventions and innovations that have improved the quality of life for all humanity. Remember, it was the free market system which allowed for the creation of the life-saving medicines and medical treatments that were delivered to the Haitian people after the 2010 earthquake.

    Like all propaganda, “Mickey Mouse Goes to Haiti” distorts reality by telling a skewed and incomplete story. But what makes it truly dangerous is that it might be playing in a classroom near you.

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    On July 30, 2011 a few thousand teacher union activists descended upon Washington D.C. for a “Save Our Schools” rally. The keynote speaker that day was actor Matt Damon, who took the occasion to bash standardized testing. You know, virtually the only thing used to assess student achievement and a tool for teacher accountability.

    “I said before that I had incredible teachers,” Damon told the crowd. “And that’s true. But it’s more than that. My teachers were EMPOWERED to teach me. Their time wasn’t taken up with a bunch of test prep — this silly drill and kill nonsense that any serious person knows doesn’t promote real learning.”

    He added that teachers should help kids fall “in love with the process of learning” rather than worrying that students are filling “in the right bubble on a test.” Damon, a proud leftist, was repeating an oft-heard criticism from the left that standardized testing harms student learning. They argue that “teaching to the test” creates student automatons who are only capable of regurgitating factoids deemed important by the government.

    Many Americans reason that if the test covers the essential things kids need to know, then “teaching to the test” makes sense and wonder what all the fuss is about.

    Frankly, I wondered that myself – until I came across “Teaching About Global Warming in Truck Country” by Jana Dean, an eighth grade science and social studies teacher in Washington state. Dean’s article is included in “Rethinking Our Classrooms: Teaching for Equity and Justice, Volume 1.”

    In the article, Dean recounts the difficulty she had in selling students on the dangers of man-made global warming. Dean teaches in a rural community where most families still use trucks in their everyday activities. Early on in the global warming unit, one student asked if Dean was telling him he could never drive a truck like his father does.

    Dean writes:

“ … When Alex first crossed his arms, I began to realize that indicting our beloved motors for global warming before building a ton of background would be like petting a cat in the wrong direction. At the same time, it was a sign that I was going in the right direction: Change doesn’t happen without resistance. … My upfront commitment to action had activated in my students a fear of losing a way of life they’d been raised to inherit. … I decided to carefully sidestep any mention of the causes of global warming until we thoroughly understood the effects.” (emphasis added)

    In order to sufficiently scare the children, she used a curriculum developed by the Union of Concerned Scientists that links global warming to floods, droughts, heat waves, wildfires – basically anything weather-related. Then students learned how global warming is melting the polar ice caps and causing an increase in malaria and other diseases in tropical Africa. 

    Believing she had sufficiently primed the pump, Dean then “asked students to write about what concerned them most about global warming. As they shared aloud, I wrote down their worries on poster paper hung at the front of the class. The mood was somber. My students sat so still and silent we could hear each other swallow.”

    “I thought that by then we might have been ready to look again at the causes of climate change,” Dean writes.

    But instead of reaching for a science textbook, she reached for a video produced by Greenpeace that “bombards (viewers) with a message about our cars, our trucks, our factories, our consumption.” The film did not go over very well:

    “As he put his notebook away, Ron slammed it shut and said, ‘I don’t get it. What are we gonna do? Stop driving?’ Consternation ran through the class. ‘What about my quad … my motorcycle … how will we get to school … too far to ride my bike.’  I had no answer.”

    Dean “spent the next two weeks building science background,” which amounted to having students learn about greenhouse gases and how the manufacturing industry spews more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere with every product it makes. Dean writes:

    “By the end of the period they saw greenhouse gases everywhere – in tailpipes of tractors, in stockyards, in the power behind the pump, in oil wells, in the manufacturing of hydraulic fluid, in the coal that powered the cement kiln.”

    Like a good propagandist, Dean issued a call to action to her students, instructing them to find ways they could “combat global warming” within their families, their school, their country and the world at large. The class identified a variety of possible actions, from taking shorter showers to urging the passage of international treaties “to decrease dependence on fossil fuels.”

    The lesson culminated in a recycling program Dean’s class established for the school.

     “But the recycling project helped my middle school students see … how the actions we take collectively speak much louder than words. And I want my students to see themselves as agents in our world, rather than subject to it. They made a change in their school that will last much longer than their short stay in 8th grade. And they’ve established a climate of concern in their school that I can take further next year.” (emphasis added)

    Not only has Dean crossed the line that separates teaching from propagandizing, but she spent almost a month’s worth of class time on her global warming unit, with the grand result being a few recycling bins placed around the school and a “climate of concern” among students.

    It is doubtful that Washington state’s standardized test asks students to explain how owning a truck helps contributes to global warming. That means in a nine-month school year, Dean only has eight months to teach the rest of the 8th grade science curriculum – the stuff that kids will actually be tested on.

    It is clear that “teaching to the test” leaves less time for their social engineering lesson plans, which cramps the propagandists’ style in a major way.

    Here’s how one social justice educator summed it up:

     “Teachers who are pressured to teach towards an exam, or to teach from a textbook that their school district has chosen, find it very difficult to try anything non-traditional in their classrooms for fear of reprisal from their administration and concern that their students won’t pass high-stakes tests.”

    Parents and taxpayers want kids to leave school with the knowledge and skills that will allow them to succeed in life. That stands in contrast to the progressives’ goal of creating a generation of good global citizens who are equipped to identify and combat the suffering caused by capitalism, which is the driving force behind most of the world’s greed, inequality and pollution.

    Standardized tests are designed to measure math and reading skills, but they cannot measure a student’s commitment to social justice or disdain of the free market system. Suddenly the left’s hatred of standardized testing makes sense, doesn’t it?

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    Those of us who attended public schools before “social justice” spread through the curriculum like a bad infection probably remember sitting in math class and working through problems such as this one:

    Leroy has one quarter, one dime, one nickel, and one penny. Two of the coins are in his left pocket and the other two coins are in his right pocket. The coins have been randomly placed in the two pockets.

    What is the probability that Leroy will be able to purchase a 30-cent candy bar with the two coins in his left pocket? Using the coins, explain your reasoning. 

    We didn’t know it at the time, but while we busily charted all of Leroy’s different coin combinations, we were actually being taught to tacitly approve of America’s exploitative capitalistic system.

    Think that’s taking things a bit too far?

    Read the words of a “fair trade” blogger and judge for yourself:

    “Did you know that child slavery is a common practice on cocoa farms in Ivory Coast, the world’s biggest supplier of cocoa beans? Don’t feel too bad if you didn’t know – I didn’t either until a few days ago. But now I know and so do you. I’m a huge chocoholic but now there is no enjoying a non-fair trade bar of chocolate, knowing a child may have been forced to pick the beans. There’s no going back. … Picking cocoa beans is hard and dangerous work. It takes 400 beans to produce a pound of chocolate so these kids work long and hard to get enough cocoa for even a few bars. No wonder most chocolate bars are so cheap and fair trade chocolate is so expensive.”

    The average American “oppressor” would say that the correct answer to sample problem is, “Leroy has a one-in-three chance of having the right combination of coins in his pocket to buy the candy bar.” (Note: both the problem and the answer are courtesy of the federal government’s National Assessment of Educational Progress website.)

     But according to the social justice crowd, the correct answer should be, “Leroy is contributing to the oppression of the cocoa bean pickers of the world by purchasing a non-fair trade candy bar.” (Students who suggest charging Leroy with a hate crime would be given extra credit.) 

    Proponents of incorporating social justice issues into math lessons argue that to ignore the child labor that was used to help produce the candy bar is to blind students to the plight of the cocoa bean pickers. Math, therefore, is perpetuating the problem.

    But don’t take my word for it. Listen to the words of Paulo Freire, one of the pioneers of bringing social justice lessons into the classroom. Freire has said that “Washing one’s hands of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless means to side with the powerful, not to be neutral.”

    That sentiment is echoed throughout “The Guide for Integrating Issues of Social and Economic Justice into Mathematics Curriculum,” by Jonathan Osler.

    In his guide, Osler writes:

    “ … [T]he systemic and structural oppression of low income and people of color in the United States is worsening. The number of people in prison continues to grow, as do unemployment rates. Billions of dollars that were once available for social programs and education have been diverted to pay for war. …

    “These problems and many others are being addressed by community organizations and activists, and often find their way into assignments in Social Studies and English classes. However, in math classes around the country, perhaps the best places to study many of these issues, we continue to use curricula and models that lack any real-world, let alone socially relevant, contexts. A great opportunity to educate our young people about understanding and addressing these myriad issues continues to be squandered.” (emphasis added)

    The purpose of Osler’s guide is to provide ways in which teachers can bring social justice topics into their lesson plans.

    For example, Osler suggests that a lesson about mathematical averages can used to critique the US’s war in Iraq. Students can “take casualty data for the past 12 months and calculate a monthly average from the perspective (of) a military recruiter and from an anti-war activist.”   

    Instead of discussing random coins in pockets, probability lessons can be used to raise awareness of racial profiling by exploring “the probability that a traffic stop should be (and is) a person of color.”

    Geometry lessons can be used to “look at how many liquor stores/fast food chains are within a 1-mile radius or within 5 blocks of your schools. This can be compared with schools in other neighborhoods.” Better still is a geometry lesson that tackles “environmental racism” by having students “determine the density of toxic waste facilities, factories, dumps, etc. in the neighborhood.”

     Lessons about war budgets, incarceration rates, AIDS cases and homelessness are also identified. 

    The social justice crowd knows that many Americans still cling to the antiquated notion that math teachers should stick to teaching students about math and not politics. Osler answers that criticism by arguing:

    “Our classrooms are politicized spaces before we walk in the door because political parties in our country are dictating what should and should not be happening in our classrooms. What we’re supposed to teach, and how we’re supposed to teach it, has been predetermined by someone with a political agenda. My goal is to provide my students with varied sources of information and support them in coming to their own conclusions.”

    Osler isn’t finished. He concedes that math can be used to help people, but argues:

    “ … [M]ore often it has been used to hurt them. Math was behind the development of nuclear weapons. It is used to maintain an economic divide between a handful of wealthy, White people and the billions of poor people of color around the world. It is used as a rationale for depriving people of access to cheap, life-saving drugs. So my question is: what good has the progress of mathematics as an intellectual discipline done for people? Maybe if our mathematics had a background in social justice, we wouldn’t have so many people suffering around the world.”

    There was a time when math class existed to train the next generation of engineers and researchers. Now, math class is being used to inspire the next generation of social activists and community organizers.

    That is why it’s not surprising that in 2009, only 40 percent of fourth graders had math skills that rated as proficient or advanced, according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress. Even worse, only 32 percent of eighth grade math students test at those levels.  

    Americans are continually reminded that “the Earth is flat,” meaning our economy is so entwined with the global economy that U.S. workers are competing for jobs against workers in China, India and the rest of the world.

    Despite these new realities, our public schools are promoting this silly “social justice” curriculum which substitutes the essentials for the fuzzy concepts of fairness and equality.  This is academic malpractice, and it is the economic equivalent of unilateral disarmament.

    The laughter you hear is coming from China.

 -###-

    In the late 1990s, the Los Angeles Unified School District partnered with United Teachers Los Angeles – funded by a federal grant – to produce a multi-part curriculum entitled, “Workplace Issues and Collective Bargaining in the Classroom.”

    Education Action Group obtained it from the California Department of Education.

    The purpose of the lessons is to get students to appreciate the need for collective bargaining, and experience first-hand how it works. During the lessons, which can take up to a week of class time, students pose as either “labor” or “management” and bargain a teachers’ contract.  They grapple with such issues as health insurance co-pays, raises and hiring procedures. Finally, the union has someone to feel its pain!

    The curriculum includes a video which touts the success of the program.  It’s insightful that the very first speaker on the video is the president of the teachers union, A.J. Duffy:

    “UTLA plays a unique role in the labor movement in L.A. As the second largest teachers’ union in the country, with all of our other responsibilities, we are in the position to educate the next generation of civic leaders by reaching out to high school students and having them participate in a unique UTLA program. … The Collective Bargaining Education Project brings the lessons of labor to the classroom by involving students in the same process UTLA and other unions engage in to gain better wages and working conditions for teachers and students at L.A. Unified Schools.”

    The union endorsements of the curriculum don’t stop there.

    Linda Tubach, one of the curriculum’s creators, says “The students have a very direct experience with the issues that they’re going to face in their workplaces and their experience is a collective one in small groups, mentored by coaches who have direct experience in the collective bargaining process.”

    At the time the video was produced, unionized employees in California comprised less than 18% of the workforce, according to the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics.  So in other words, Tubach’s lessons don’t apply to over 80% of these future workers.  But, of course, that isn’t what the lessons are about.  They’re about ginning up awareness and sympathy for organized labor.

    Alberto Valdivia, then UTLA treasurer, has nothing but praise for the lessons.

    “This is really, really wonderful,” Valdivia says in the video. “And the reason that it’s wonderful is because it’s the students who are making the decisions. … Here you have this whole setup that is made for student enrichment, for student learning, for student knowledge.”

    Viewers hear from more union officials and allies who are eager to heap praise upon the curriculum:

    “I would think that this is one of the most valuable tools that the L.A. Unified School District has,” notes Miguel Contreras, Executive Secretary-Treasurer of the L.A. County Federation of Labor.

    “The vast majority of students will be entering the workforce in the next few years and it’s very important that they understand the role of unions,” says Kent Wong of the UCLA Center for Labor Research and Education. “It’s very important that they understand the benefits of having a union contract and the role of collective bargaining in an environment that provides the only opportunity for workers to collectively negotiate their wages and their benefits.”

    It appears that the curriculum is having its desired effect on students.

    In the video, one student says, “It makes me – when I get my career or my job – it’s going to want me to get into a union, too, so that I’ll be protected, too.” 

    Amidst all this pro-union propaganda, parents and taxpayers are left to wonder if any part of LAUSD’s curriculum teaches students about how to start a business or how society and the American economy benefit from the entrepreneurial spirit. 

    It’s safe to assume that the Los Angeles school district cannot be bothered with pro-capitalist messages which would only distract from the mission of creating the next generation of labor leaders.

    In 2000, the school district issued a memo indicating that “In two years, this [UTLA] program has directly served more than 80 teachers and their students in 39 LAUSD high schools.  Almost 5,000 students have directly participated in a collective bargaining simulation.”

    At long last, school administrators and union leaders are working together. It’s too bad that their joint venture involves indoctrinating students about the desirability of unionization and collective bargaining.

    While it is difficult to nail down just how widespread the curriculum is outside of Los Angeles, the organizers claim they’ve received requests from school districts across the country to bring it to their communities.

    “The project’s curriculum is literacy-based, approved by the District, and aligned with the District’s learning standards as well as the California History-Social Science Framework,” the memo states.  Says something about California learning standards, doesn’t it?

    The fact that schools from across the country want to use this curriculum says a lot about the state of American public education, too.

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    Ellen Wolpert, a longtime “early childhood educator” in Massachusetts, penned an article entitled, “Rethinking ‘The Three Little Pigs.’”

    You’re probably familiar with the story: a big, bad wolf threatens to destroy the homes of three individual pigs. There’s a lot of huffing and puffing on the wolf’s part, but he can only blow over the two homes that were constructed with straw and sticks.

    The house left standing is made of brick, leaving readers to conclude that careful planning and hard work (as represented by the brick house) leads to success. The pigs’ definition of success, of course, is to avoid being eaten by the wolf.  

    That’s how normal, well-adjusted people interpret the story. But Leftists, by and large, are dour, unhappy people who see oppression and bigotry around every corner. So it’s no surprise that Wolpert sees a dark and malicious subtext to the simple fairy tale. 

    “I first became aware of the story’s hidden messages when we were doing a unit on housing at my daycare center,” Wolpert writes in the article. “As part of the unit, we talked about different homes and the many approaches to solving a basic human need: a place to live.”

    Having been properly “sensitized by the movement for a multicultural curriculum,” Wolpert began to realize that:

    “ … one of the most fundamental messages of ‘The Three Little Pigs’ is that it belittles straw and stick homes and the ‘lazy types’ who build them. On the other hand, the story extols the virtues of brick homes, suggesting that they are built by serious, hardworking people and are strong enough to withstand adversity.

    “Is there any coincidence that brick homes tend to be built by people in Western countries, often by those with more money? That straw homes are more common in non-European cultures, particularly Africa and Asia?”

    Who knew the story had such a hateful, Eurocentric message?

    If parents and teachers persist in filling their children’s heads with such trash as “The Three Little Pigs,” Wolpert offers some strategies for mitigating the damage:

    “One might explain, for example, that in many tropical areas straw homes are built to take best advantage of cooling breezes. In some areas, straw homes are on stilts as protection from insects and animals or to withstand flooding.

    “Such a perspective then becomes part of a broader process of helping children to understand why homes are different in different parts of the world – and that just because something is different doesn’t mean it’s inferior.”

    Sure, tell that to the first little pig and the second little pig. They may appreciate Wolpert’s “broader perspective,” but that doesn’t change the fact that because they wanted to “dance and sing” they almost became the wolf’s dinner.

    But why stop there? Perhaps Wolpert could revise the story so in the end, the pigs welcome the wolf, commune with him, and help to understand why he would want to eat them. Perhaps they could dialogue with the wolf about tolerance and multiculturalism, and if they’re really successful, they’ll turn him into a vegan.

    I’m sure the Left would like to see rework most of our cultural heritage to promote its agenda. But if they move too fast and reach too far, the people will push back. As with all other leftist agenda, one small step at a time.

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    Any good community organizer knows an effective protest requires two things: a bully to excoriate and a catchy slogan to resonate in the public mind.

    Even though most protestors are “uncomplicated” people, don’t be deceived; staging an effective rally is not a simple task.

    First, a bully must be identified. For progressives, a bully is anybody who disagrees with you politically, so there is no shortage of candidates. However, as Saul Alinsky’s “Rules for Radicals” explains, it’s best to settle on one target to isolate and attack.

    Next, protestors need to come up with a catchy slogan to shout at the designated bully. Most people don’t have the Rev. Jesse Jackson’s “gift” of reducing complex ideas into simplistic rhymes. This skill must be taught.

    Which brings us to this week’s installment of the Indoctrination Fridays series:  Gender doesn’t limit you – A research-based anti-bullying program for the early grades.

    This charming six-part lesson plan is designed to stamp out (mostly) gender-based bullying from Pre-K all the way through 6^th grade.

    Most readers will agree that bullying is a problem and that teachers should talk to students about it in a thoughtful, reasonable manner. But thought and reason are totally absent from the “Gender doesn’t limit you” lesson plans, which only provide children with a designated slogan to shout at suspected bullies.

    Here’s an example from Lesson 4 – Biased Judgments:

    To start the lesson, teachers are instructed to tell students that, “Sometimes one group of kids thinks that they are better at something than another group because of their gender.”

    The teacher then tells students that whenever someone makes a highly offensive remark such as “boys are better at soccer than girls,” they should tell the offender, “Give it a rest. No group is best.”

    Since repetition is crucial to the learning process, the plan provides teachers with four scenarios to read to students. After each one the class is instructed to shout, “Give it a rest. No group is best.”

    Here’s one of the scenarios from Lesson 4:

    (Teacher): “Paul and Vanessa are baking cookies together. Vanessa says that girls are better at baking than boys. What do we tell Vanessa? One, two, three GO!”

    (Class): “Give it a rest, no group is best.”

    That’s the extent of the lesson: identify a bully (doesn’t that Vanessa sound like a monster?), give the kids a slogan to shout, and practice with a few scenarios. 

    It’s like that for each lesson, although the quality of the slogans varies. Here’s a Cliff’s Notes version of the lesson plans:  

    For the “Peer Exclusion” lesson, kids are instructed that “not letting someone play with you just because of their gender is called bullying….” Applicable slogan: “You can’t say, ‘Boys/Girls can’t play.’”

    For the “Role Exclusion” lesson, students are told that, “Boys and girls can have any job they want to, or do any activities that they want.” If some insensitive lout attempts to define gender roles in the children’s presence, they are to say, “Not true! Gender doesn’t limit you.”

    And so it goes for six lessons. Some of the remaining slogans include “That’s weird! Being boys and girls doesn’t matter here” and “I disagree! Sexism is silly to me.” As you can see, the quality of the sloganeering fades with each lesson.

    You can also see the “lessons” aren’t designed to develop critical thought or meaningful classroom discussions. In fact, the researchers who designed these lessons brag that “teaching students catchphrases to interrupt gender bullying” is far more effective than “using literature to challenge gender stereotypes.”

    What this curriculum seems best designed for is to teach kids there’s a bully around every corner and the best way to handle him (and you just know it’s a “him”) is to shout clever slogans.

    Sure, the kids whose school careers are frittered away with such tripe might not be prepared to enter the competitive world of work or college. But rest assured, these kids will know what to do when a bully like Scott Walker or Chris Christie tries to take away their seat on the government’s gravy train.

    That’s right, these lesson plans will produce some wonderful union activists someday.

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    The real targets of the Green Movement are free markets and capitalism, not theoretical global warming.  There is always another agenda.

    Back in 2008, Detroit News columnist and WJR talk radio personality Frack Beckmann brought to light a series of lessons produced by Creative Change Educational Solutions, a non-profit outfit producing plans for teachers that want to instruct their students on environmental issues.

    Beckmann decried the fact that the curriculum developed by Creative Change focuses on criticizing capitalism by having students compare “wages and working conditions in factories in China and Vietnam (to) corporate profits…and compensation for chief executive officers.”  In other words, the distribution of wealth is unacceptable and must be changed.  That will save the whales!

    This curriculum is much worse than Beckmann lets on, however.  The lessons have spread throughout southeast Michigan.  One school district, Bloomfield Hills – which ironically serves one of the wealthiest communities in the state – purchased the curriculum for $750. Ann Arbor Public Schools paid $4,900 for a day-long seminar.  Similarly, Eastern Michigan University paid Creative Change $19,133.67 between 2007 and 2008 to “identify community groups and schools, help to develop, plan for, and facilitate Stakeholders Meetings, and collaborate writing the implementation proposal.”

    Eastern Michigan University and Ann Arbor Public Schools, spent our tax dollars to spread this poison around the region.

    There’s nothing wrong with teaching kids to turn off the lights and if it’s yellow to let it mellow. But Creative Change goes beyond common sense reforms and pushes a socio/political agenda.

    One sample lesson plan – “Economics for the Common Good” – focuses on the Gross Domestic Product and how it is supposedly a misleading indicator of economic “progress.”  You see, if there is an oil spill, millions if not billions are spent cleaning it up. That looks good for the GDP but not so good for the environment, according to their theory.  So the progressives sought to compensate for that by devising the “Genuine Progress Indicator.”  This measurement would take into account the “bad things” that grow the GDP to reflect the progress society is making.  

    “There is a growing acknowledgement that the GDP does not reflect sustainability’s aim to balance economic concerns with environmental and social goals.”  Nevertheless, “…the GPI measures our combined economic, social, and environmental progress.”

    Even nuttier, the writers suggest this as a novel idea because for once, bees will be able to get long-overdue credit for their contribution to society.  “The GDP also ignores the many life-sustaining services performed by nature, such as pollination by bees and water purification by wetlands.  Scientists conservatively estimate that these services are worth about $33 trillion per year, almost twice the total world GDP of $18 trillion.”

    How a scientist can calculate the value of chemical-capturing mud is beyond me, but that must be why I’m not writing the curriculum and these very smart eggheads are.  Alas, the lesson acknowledges that a GPI “can never be 100% accurate.”

    But how do we make this understandable to the pimply faced teens?  Cartoons!

    “…Create a comic strip featuring the adventures of a GDP superhero and super-villain.  The superhero, for example, would drive a gas-guzzling SUV, crash it into a lake (causing an expensive clean-up), rack up huge hospital bills, and file a lawsuit.  The villain, on the other hand, wouldn’t even have a car, would walk to work, and resolve conflict through discussion and mediation.”

    Oy.

    It’s no wonder America’s future is looking more bleak, when this is the type of garbage filling our students’ minds.  Instead of belittling free markets and economic success with unrealistic characatures, perhaps it would behoove teachers to reflect on the real progress, innovation and high standard of living that capitalism has brought to America.

    But that, of course, would not be consistent with the agenda.  This propaganda is brown and should be flushed down.

 -###-

The Black Panthers of the 1960s and 1970s and the New Black Panther Party today are known for employing violence, intimidation and radicalism to get their way. The Black Panthers were founded in 1966 on Marxist principles, advocating socialism as a solution for the grievances of African-Americans.

Its “Honorary Prime Minister,” Stokley Carmichael, said in a speech that year:

“This country is a nation of thieves. It stole everything it has, beginning with black people. The U.S. cannot justify its existence as the policeman of the world any longer. I do not want to be a part of the American pie. The American pie means raping South Africa, beating Vietnam, beating South America, raping the Philippines, raping every country you’ve been in. I don’t want any of your blood money. I don’t want to be part of that system. We must question whether or not we want this country to continue being the wealthiest country in the world at the price of raping everybody else.”

The far-left Southern Poverty Law Center, which also has curricula that will be featured in this series, has labeled the New Black Panthers a “hate group.” That’s saying something.  

But that’s of little relevance to Wayne Au. 

The Seattle high school teacher-turned-professor taught his students to apply the principles of the Black Panthers to their own problems. Seriously.

He wrote:

“I taught about the Panthers in the context of a high school African Studies class in Seattle that focused on African history and the experience of Diaspora. Of the 30 working- and middle-class students, most of them 10th graders, 25 were African American, four were white, and one was Chicana. When I teach about the Black Power Movement, I try to connect the movement to today’s issues. One way is by having students review the Black Panther’s Ten Point Program and develop their own personal versions of the program.”

Just to appreciate how far on the fringe Au is, consider what he told SocialistWorker.org about standardized testing:

“Wayne Au, professor of education at the University of Washington in Bothell and an editor of Rethinking Schools, noted that ‘test makers purposefully choose to use questions on tests that rich kids will usually answer more correctly than poor kids’ so that the results fall into a bell-curve spread.”

So perhaps the way to get back at the test makers is to employ Black Panthers’ principles.

But back to Au’s practical application of the Black Panthers Ten Point Program. He highlighted several student’s Panther-inspired Ten Point Programs for their own lives. One student offered more general demands, such as “free housing for the homeless people in the United States” and “non-racist presidents.” Another student developed a list for the “Gay/Lesbian/Bisexual/Transgendered/and Questioning Community.”Another student, “Marcus,” goes straight for the jugular and “challenges capitalism and corporate control of the United States.” Some that he offered:

1. We want the mask of capitalism lifted and economic classes disbanded.

2. We want an end to the solitary control of mass media by corporations.

5. We want an end to the health insurance system in America. It is time to end corporate control of Americans’ health.

6. We want fair treatment of all criminals. Rich money launderers and tax fraud offenders should receive the same punishment as armed robbers and drug dealers.

9. We want an end to all corporate funding of education. The public education system is being used by corporations as a training ground for future employees.

10. We demand an end to the growing separation of the economic classes of America. The enslavement of the middle and lower classes by the bourgeoisie must be put to a stop.

Au found this “piece notable for its relentless attack on corporate America; it demonstrates a growing consciousness among students about issues such as sweatshops, media bias, campaign financing, and the encroachment of private industry on public education.”There are many more incredible comments in Au’s lesson plan, but perhaps the most revealing is when Au laments that more students didn’t strike a more radical pose:

“The Panthers were also struggling against cynicism, powerlessness, and resignation. My hope is that the lesson laid a groundwork, so that in the future the students will have some tools with which they can assess issues they see in their own communities and their lives and perhaps develop Ten Point Programs of their own. The Ten Point Program may be a place where students are able to find their voice and speak out about the problems they see in this world – and, more difficult, begin to organize to put their program into practice.” (emphasis added)

Incredible. A more fitting title for Au’s lesson plan would be “What Would the Black Panthers Do?” because apparently in Au’s eyes, they are to be held up as freedom fighters and not the violent thugs they were and continue to be.

 -###-

A paper published by several college professors, entitled Organizing the Curriculum for Labor Consciousness, calls for more weaving of Big Labor history and tactics into every day curriculum.

Take the case of Kate Lyman, a teacher in the Madison, Wisconsin school district.

According to an article she penned for the leftist Rethinking Schools magazine, she was swept into the protests by her daughter and Facebook, because “that’s how they did it in Egypt.”

When teacher staged a “sick out,” Lyman described it as “four exhilarating days, four confusing days, four stressful and exhausting days.”

For the record, she’s speaking of the self-serving school employees. She’s not talking about the working parents that had to scramble to find child care because their children were not in school.

At first, the teacher, who already apparently has a warning in her personnel file for violating the school’s “controversial issues” policy, claimed to just invite the students’ observations about what took place.

Consider what these students said: of immigrants, one said Walker would “send them back to Mexico.” Lyman apparently didn’t correct this idiotic notion. Another said, “does he want to be rich?” “Yeah, he wants to be rich!” “He’s selfish.” “He’s crazy.” “He’s guilty.” “He’s greedy.” “He should go to jail, even though he’s governor.”

Lyman made up math problems with the attendance numbers from the protests.

Lyman’s student teacher created a PowerPoint presentation, with side-by-side pictures of the Madison protests and images from the civil rights fights in the south. Then, she went lower than I thought was possible even for union activists. Quoting Lyman:

“I hesitated to ask this last question as the students were examining a photo of white segregations (“We want a white school!”) juxtaposed to a Walker supporter (“WisSCOTTsin”). But we talked extensively about rights, in the context of both the Civil Rights Movement and the Capitol protests.”

I bet you can’t guess how old these kids were. Surely if they were tuned into the news, they must be high schoolers. No, Lyman is warping the brains of 2nd- and 3rd-graders. 

This is a perfect example of what the professors’ paper was calling for.

“Embedded in the history of labor’s struggle is an alternative system of values that we sorely need in this era of socially destructive greed and consolidated corporate power,” the professors wrote.

“The values of the labor movement, embodied in collective action for social justice, can counter the gross mal-distribution of wealth and power that has dangerously undermined our economy and politics. A restoration of organized labor’s power can promote prosperity by securing a living wage for working people, and reinvigorate democracy by building a politically progressive electorate that bridges the traditional fault lines of different that have been used to confuse working people and divide them against each other and from their own deepest interests.”

It seems that if the truth is on your side, nothing would have to be “built.” The masses, once informed, would come flocking to your side.

But the reasoning for the union activists’ push for more “labor history” in curriculum seems to be becoming more clear. The professors cite leftist American “historian” Howard Zinn, when he wrote:

“If teacher unions want to be strong and well-supported, it’s essential that they not only be teacher-unionists but teachers of unionism. We need to create a generation of students who support teachers and the movement of teachers for their rights.” (emphasis added)

“Movement of teachers for their rights,” is, of course, code for teachers unions. So the teachers need to get them when they’re young, fill their heads with propaganda equating collective bargaining privileges and lawsuits over coverage of Viagra as somehow equal to the work of Martin Luther King, Jr. and John Lewis.

Is this becoming more clear now?

This is a battle that is being waged for what our youngest students are taught.

“In education the neoliberal emphasis on accountability and individual efforts militate against the labor movement’s call for solidarity and collective action to address common economic problems. This (mis)education does not serve the needs of the vast majority of students, who need more than anything else to develop the capacity for collective action in their own real interests.

“Moreover, the traditional curriculum does not require discussion of the alternatives to corporate capitalism promoted by historic American social and political movements, such as the International Workers of the World, and the American Socialist Party, beyond a nominal mention and subsequent dismissal, and despite the end of the Cold War, Marxist economics is not seriously studied and communism is not considered as an alternative economic system but simply dismissed as the flawed ideology of a deservedly defeated empire.”

This is the overarching principle of “organizing the curriculum:” to change America away from a free market economy and towards socialism, all the while exalting the virtues of Big Labor.

-###-

In typical union and socialist propaganda, employers are depicted as cruel and uncaring business owners who never miss an opportunity to cheat and mistreat workers.

Big Labor’s “us versus them” worldview is so entrenched that they can’t recognize the fact that most successful companies value their employees, and do whatever they can to retain their best workers. That reality, of course, undercuts the relevance of unions.

So what’s a union to do? 

Like their fellow travelers in the “man-made” global warming community, the unions know they have to indoctrinate the young with their propaganda. But when you’re dealing with kindergartners, you have to insert the concept of unionizing subtly into lessons.  You’ll get blank stares if you talk about the virtues of Jimmy Hoffa or the Service Employees International Union.

The California Federation of Teachers produced the perfect solution with “Trouble in the Hen House: A Puppet Show.”  To spare you the unpleasantness of reading this bilge, here’s the basic plot:  a bunch of hens feel “oppressed” by the farmer, so they band together and create Hens United. The angry unionized chickens are too powerful a force for the farmer to handle, so he capitulates to the hens’ demands.  Here’s a key excerpt:

Henrietta(the hen):  Farmer Brown, we have something to say.  This is what we chickens want:

    1. More and better food.  No mold, no sand in our corn.

    2. Freedom to walk around outside and a bigger hen house.

    3. Each hen will lay an average of four eggs a week.

    4. Stop punishing us.  Let Hortensia come back.

Farmer: No way!  Who ever heard of chickens telling the farmer what to do?  Shut up and get back to the henhouse!

Chickens:  No, Farmer Brown, not this time!  And besides those things, you have to recognize our union, Hens United, or we’ll all stop laying eggs!

Farmer: OK, OK, if I have no eggs to sell, I’ll go bankrupt.  We’d all starve, so I guess I’ll have to do what you say.  Since you’re all together, what can I do?

 Chickens: We won!  We stuck together and we won!  Si, Se puede.* 

With this puppet show, educators now have a way of teaching children how to use mob tactics to get what they want from those in positions of power. This puppet show fits very nicely into a kindergartener’s school day – right after finger painting and just ahead of snack time.

Lest readers are tempted to dismiss this as some wacky lesson plan that never sees the light of day in an actual classroom, consider this story about the 2009 California Federation of Teachers convention, as reported in the May 2009 newsletter of the San Mateo Community College Federation of Teachers:

“…Bill Morgan uses a short puppet show, Trouble in the Hen House, to teach about the strength and value of organizing unions.  His students act out a story about hens who organize a union to fight against unfair compensation and poor working conditions.  Through this activity, the students learn about becoming activists, organizers, negotiators and problem solvers.”

Just to remind you, the “students” the newsletter is referring to are kindergartners and first graders.

With labor activists starting to propagandize students in kindergarten, they’ll already be brainwashed by the time they learn to actually think critically.  Vladamir Lenin is quoted as saying, “Give me four years to teach the children and the seed I have sown will never be uprooted.”

The scary thing for America’s future is that this is happening this early in children’s lives and little if anything is being done about it.

*Note: “Si, Se puede” is Spanish for “Yes, it is possible,” but is sometimes translated as “Yes, we can.”  Where have I heard that before…?