Obama Nation: Let Me Be Clear…
by James Hudnall and Batton Lash
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Posts Tagged ‘education’
Why ‘The People Speak’ and the Zinn Education Project May Be Illegal in Public Schools
by Adam Baldwin“The People Speak” College Tour concluded with a standing-room-only crowd in UCLA’s Schoenberg Hall last Friday afternoon.
After the video presentation, host professor Ellen DuBois facilitated an audience question-and-answer session with her guests, actor Josh Brolin and producer Chris Moore, while Howard Zinn’s partner Anthony Arnove (whom Brolin credits for his own participation) paced the back of the theater.
Asked about his project’s intended use in K-12 public school settings, Mr. Moore answered:
We have a whole educational program. There’s a curriculum, there’s a whole educational thing. There’ll be a website that has tools, that’s searchable… There is definitely a plan.
That plan includes “The Zinn Education Project” which:
…promotes and supports the use of Howard Zinn’s best-selling book A People’s History of the United States and other materials for teaching a people’s history in middle and high school classrooms across the country. The Zinn Education Project is coordinated by two non-profit organizations, Rethinking Schools and Teaching for Change.
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Kids to Meet Marx in School – Care of Hollywood and The History Channel
by Patrick CourrielcheChildren are uniquely malleable beings, readily convinced of magically colorful tales – Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy are the first that come to mind. This innocence is beautiful, but it is a quality that can easily fall victim to radically foreign ideas if taught consistently and pervasively at an early age. One need only look at the birth of fascism or socialism to see a recipe for how radical ideas become ubiquitous among a nation’s youth.
Enter Howard Zinn – an author, professor and American historian – who, with the help of Hollywood and the History Channel, intends to change the way our pre-K through high school children learn American history. His current curriculum suggestions, like introducing three-year-olds to the lynching of African-Americans, or quizzing seven-year-olds on which Presidents owned slaves, should be a red flag to parents.
Zinn has spent a lifetime teaching college students about the evils of capitalism, the promise of Marxism, and his version of American history – a history that has, in his view, been kept from students. His controversial 1980-book The People’s History of the United States paints traditional American history as a façade – one that has grotesquely immortalized flawed leaders and is based on principles that victimize the common man. In 2004, Zinn wrote a companion book entitled Voices Of A People’s History Of The United States, which includes speeches and writings from many of the people featured in The People’s History.
These two books have now become the basis for a new documentary, entitled The People Speak, to be aired December 13th at 8pm on the History Channel. The trailer portrays the documentary as a collage of compelling one-person readings, told through the words of “ordinary” people who have struggled throughout American history against oppression. Produced by Zinn, Matt Damon, Josh Brolin, and Chris Moore, the documentary appears to be cloaked, ironically (given Zinn’s admitted socialist agenda), in many of the traditional ideas that were behind our founding. The verdict is still out on the doc, but it is not for the books that inspired the film as well as the educational initiative associated with it. (more…)
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A Political Warranty
by Joseph C. PhillipsIn his first year in office former president Bill Clinton, who had run as a centrist, was drawn into the new left vortex of socialized healthcare, which led to a resounding defeat for Clinton and the Democrats in the 1994 mid-term elections. Current President Barack Obama too is attempting to reform healthcare and like Clinton has seen his popularity sink. Some political pundits are drawing comparisons between the two administrations and positing that democrats are setting themselves up for a bit of a spanking come 2010. It is, as Shirley Bassey sang, “all just a little bit of history repeating.”
Or is it?
In 1994 the political right offered voters something more than simply criticism of the President. Republican members of the House of Representatives presented voters with the “Contract with America.” This document, signed by all but two Republican congressmen and all of the Republican congressional candidates, detailed the specific legislative action Republicans would take if the American people handed them the reigns of government. The contract was a “detailed agenda for national renewal, a written commitment with no fine print.” (more…)
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BREAKING: GOP Senators Request Explanation From NEA Chairman Regarding Possible Violations of Federal Law
by Big HollywoodPress release from U.S. Senator Mike Enzi (R-Wyo.), Ranking Member of the Senate’s Health, Education, Labor and Pension Committee:
Enzi Leads GOP HELP Committee Inquiry
Into Alleged NEA Political Activity
WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Sen. Mike Enzi (R-Wyo.), Ranking Member of the Senate’s Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee, today led his fellow Republican HELP Committee members in requesting an explanation regarding possible violations of federal law at the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA). Enzi and his colleagues sent the request to NEA Chairman Rocco Landesman.
In the letter delivered today the Senators questioned the possibility of “taxpayer dollars to engage in lobbying activities to promote the President’s health care legislative agenda and other legislative priorities” during several August conference calls with NEA grant recipients and community stakeholders.
The letter also raises serious questions regarding how the NEA’s participation in these calls may have violated federal criminal restrictions on lobbying Congress, the Hatch Act, appropriations restrictions on spending funds for such purposes and possible contradictions with the entity’s mission under its authorizing statute.
“…The promotion to NEA grant recipients of topics that are at the top of the President’s legislative agenda and urging a call to action creates a serious conflict of interest,” wrote the Senators.
The full text of the letter to Landesman is below: (more…)
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Deconstructing the Speech
by Kurt SchlichterA close reading of the President’s speech to schoolchildren today reveals some notable things. As a trial lawyer, it’s professionally interesting to see how he makes his case – and to see what case he is actually making. And as the father of a new kindergartner and a toddler, I’m interested in seeing how he goes about trying to influence our children – not because I’m paranoid about him influencing my kids but because I’d like to learn how to do it myself.
Let’s start with some statistics. My computer counted 36 uses of the word “I” and 15 uses of the contraction “I’m” in 2,367 words. The subject is supposed to be “school,” but that word only appears 25 times. So, the subject is the President.
The first two paragraphs seem innocuous, but they set the tone. There are a lot of contractions – 110 by my Dell’s count. You use those to seem comfortable and informal, sort of like Matlock would. It assures the jury – I mean the kids – that you are not so different from them, that you’re one of them. It’s a good move – I do it. I’m just not sure the President should. (more…)
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Mr. President Goes Back to School: A Controversial Issue?
by Adam BaldwinToday, President Obama delivers his speech to American students after several days of controversy due to its companion U.S. Department of Education (ED) Lesson Plan.
Count me among those who find a U.S. President delivering a speech to students–especially one encouraging them towards academic responsibility and excellence as a means to productive adult citizenship–among the more innocuous, and potentially beneficial activities of the Office.
Appreciating yesterday’s early release of President Obama’s speech and having now read it in context, I would heartily maintain that opinion, were it not for the ED’s controversial lesson plan.
FYI:
Part I, Sec. 1905 of the ED’s General Provisions: ELEMENTARY & SECONDARY EDUCATION states: (more…)
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Stupidity, Schooling, and the Take-Over of America’s Culture
by Evan SayetHalf-a-century ago, a band of Leftist thugs violently took over the administration building at Columbia University and hijacked the American education system. From that moment on, they used this system to indoctrinate – in fact brainwash – generation after generation into their cult of Leftism.
For the next five decades (pseudo)-intellectuals, hiding behind tenure and “Academic Freedom,” have been spewing greater and greater nonsense designed for one purpose and one purpose only: sabotaging and eventually destroying all of Western Civilization.
Bernardine Dohrn and Bill Ayers
Don’t think so? Simply consider the fact that one of the most oft-repeated chants of the Modern Liberal movement is “Hey, hey, ho, ho. Western Civilization has got to go.”
With control of the “education” system, the Leftists turned what had been a place of scholarship into a Leftism factory with a curriculum and modus operandi designed to facilitate their Utopian dreams which first required the demolition of the great (but imperfect) Western World. (more…)
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The Most Conservative Show On Television
by Kurt SchlichterAmerica is facing a self-esteem crisis. There’s too damn much of it.
In a nation where failure is rewarded with bailouts, the successful are public enemy number one and society’s nannies spread the lie that everyone is a winner, a simple TV singing contest provides the loudest voice of bedrock conservative values like hard work and personal achievement. And that voice has an English accent.
For the three folks who don’t know because they have been living in a cavern next to Osama bin Laden since 2002, “American Idol” has wannabe crooners appear before a panel of four judges and warble some song for about sixty seconds. The viewers vote (by paying a buck to the phone company) on who stays in the contest and who gets tossed off, but before the voting the singers get feedback. This is when the fun begins. (more…)
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Flunked: Education in America
by Joseph C. PhillipsQ: Out of 29 participating nations, where did America rank on international student assessment?
A: 24th
Every education reform effort since the National Defense of Education Act signed in 1958 has begun with soaring rhetoric, big promises, and massive budgets and delivered not much in the way of results.
In 1979, Jimmy Carter created the Department of Education; George H.W. Bush promised to “map a new approach to education”; Bill Clinton signed his “Goals 2000″; and George W. Bush had his “me too” moment with “No Child Left Behind.” Yet in spite of all these efforts and billions upon billions of dollars only 23% of American students were proficient in reading by graduation in 2005. In fact, according to the most recent data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), reading scores have remained flat while real federal spending per pupil has more than tripled since 1985. The average freshman graduation rate has also remained flat according to the National Center for Education Statistics. (more…)
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