Why ‘The People Speak’ and the Zinn Education Project May Be Illegal in Public Schools

“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.

(more…)

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Tags: American Flag, Anthony Arnove, Bill Bigelow, Chris Moore, education
Posted Dec 8th 2009 at 5:14 am in Celebrity News, Culture, Featured Story, Politics | 274450160 Commentshttp://bighollywood.breitbart.com/abaldwin/2009/12/08/why-the-people-speak-and-the-zinn-education-project-may-be-illegal-in-public-schools/Why+%27The+People+Speak%27+and+the+Zinn+Education+Project+May+Be+Illegal+in+Public+Schools2009-12-08+13%3A14%3A30Adam+Baldwin

Kids to Meet Marx in School – Care of Hollywood and The History Channel

Children 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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Tags: A People's History of the United States, A Young People’s History of the United States, American History, Brian Jones, capitalism
Posted Dec 7th 2009 at 5:08 am in Books and Literature, Celebrity News, Culture, Featured Story, Politics, Television | 273846632 Commentshttp://bighollywood.breitbart.com/pcourrielche/2009/12/07/next-week-on-the-history-channel-hollywood-stars-introduce-your-kids-to-marxism/Kids+to+Meet+Marx+in+School+%E2%80%93+Care+of+Hollywood+and+The+History+Channel2009-12-07+13%3A08%3A53Patrick+Courrielche

Pledge of Allegiance to Dissent: An Intolerant ‘Excess of Liberty’?

“I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands: one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”  

An Arkansas fifth-grader made news recently by claiming there is no “liberty and justice for all” in America as his reason for refusing to recite the Pledge of Allegiance during his school’s daily patriotic exercises. 

Red Skelton could’ve taught him a thing or two:

– 

Of course, the Supreme Court ruled in 1943 that as long as such dissent is practiced in a non-disruptive manner a student is acting well within his Constitutional rights — his faulty reasoning for the dissent being irrelevant — and he may not be compelled to participate by either the school, or the state. 

Teachers and administrators are strictly prohibited from singling out such peaceful dissent for discipline, admonishment or public ridicule.  (more…)

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Tags: gay marriage, Pledge of Allegiance, public school, Red Skelton, school
Posted Nov 20th 2009 at 3:12 pm in Featured Story, Politics | 266126236 Commentshttp://bighollywood.breitbart.com/abaldwin/2009/11/20/pledge-of-allegiance-to-dissent-an-intolerant-excess-of-liberty/Pledge+of+Allegiance+to+Dissent%3A+An+Intolerant+%E2%80%98Excess+of+Liberty%E2%80%99%3F2009-11-20+23%3A12%3A34Adam+Baldwin

Bibles

Liberalism is Communism is Atheism

“A rose by any other name is still a rose.”

Liz is driving me to the 9-12 Westwood Tea Party.  I’m biting my fake fingernails because I’m one of the speakers and I don’t have a speech yet.

Liz: Do you have your speech all ready?

Me: No…I’m kinda nervous.  I mean, where do I start? Should I talk about:

1)  Obama’s last speech where he lied 13 times? Not even little sneaky lies you have to research, but big, bold, blatant lies!  ”My plan will not fund abortions, or insure illegals!”  Lie, lie, lie.

2)  The former Liberally-Biased Mainstream Media that is now a completed, fully-functioning Progressive Propaganda Machine?  Ignoring the Acorn tapes, and the Van Jones story! That’s called the lie of omission!

3)  Or, …hey, you know what I read?  I was flipping around in the Bible and since it’s 9 -12 I just flipped to Psalm 12 and it said the most perfect thing…about lying in the government!

Liz: Really?  Did you see Glenn Beck today?

Me: The protest sign in the Washinton D.C. crowd that said Ephesians 6:12?

Liz: Yeah! (more…)

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Tags: Barack Obama, Bible, Daniel 3:6, Ephesians 6:12, Glenn Beck
Posted Sep 18th 2009 at 5:03 am in Culture, Featured Story, Politics, Religion | 228198168 Commentshttp://bighollywood.breitbart.com/vjackson/2009/09/18/bibles/Bibles2009-09-18+12%3A03%3A13Victoria+Jackson

A 12-Step Liberal Recovery Program

Most 12-step programs start out by requiring that people understand that they’re powerless over their addiction and that only by turning their lives over to a Power greater than themselves can they be restored to sanity.  Far be it for me to suggest that I am that Power, but clearly someone has to step in and try to rescue these poor liberal souls.  Even the most harebrained among them deserves that much.

First, though, they have to acknowledge that Ted Kennedy, Nancy Pelosi, John Murtha, Dick Durbin, Charles Rangel, Harry Reid and Charles Schumer, are not moderates, but, rather, leftists with a Socialist agenda.  Furthermore, they must recognize that the New York Times, the Washington Post, the L.A. Times, CNN, the three major networks, the news magazines and the New Yorker, are not objective in their reporting of political events, and neither are Chris Matthews, Keith Olbermann and Bill Maher, in their commentary.  If these entities and individuals are not on the payroll of the DNC, they certainly should be.  They certainly put in longer hours than Howard Dean. (more…)

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Tags: "under God", 10 Commandments, 12-step programs, abc, ACLU
Posted Mar 6th 2009 at 2:42 pm in Media Criticism, Political Humor, Politics | 7413869 Commentshttp://bighollywood.breitbart.com/bprelutsky/2009/03/06/a-12-step-liberal-recovery-program/A+12-Step+Liberal+Recovery+Program2009-03-06+22%3A42%3A04Burt+Prelutsky