Why We Need The Freedom In Education Act
By Tom DeWeese (12/09/05)
Your elected representatives in Congress deny that this nation has a mandatory federal education curriculum. Congress hides the fact behind the historic arrangement of state and local control of schools. The federal government denies that there is a federal curriculum that teaches world government over national sovereignty. Your Representatives in Congress are in the dark and the federal government is lying.
The fact is, the building blocks of world government are being taught in a number of ways. There are several specific programs in today’s education curriculum designed to promote global government.
The International Baccalaureate Program (IB) created by the United Nations Economic, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in now in more than 500 American public schools and the federal Department of Education is helping to fund it. UNESCO says, “the program remains committed to changing children’s values so they think globally, rather than in parochial national terms from their own country’s viewpoint.”
The IB curriculum achieves that goal, says UNESCO, by promoting human rights, social justice, sustainable development, population, health, environmental, and immigration concerns. This is not education, rather it’s propaganda for a certain political agenda.
But the UNESCO global curriculum is found in much more than just the IB program. On October 3, 2003, just 3 months after the Bush Administration put the United States back into UNESCO (after Ronald Reagan had removed us twenty years ago) former Bush Education Secretary Rod Paige addressed the UNESCO Round Table of Ministers on Quality Education.
Said Paige, “The United States is pleased to return to UNESCO and to participate in meetings like this. I am very pleased to see many friends from the Third Inter-American Education Ministerial in Mexico City.
There and here, we agree that we must make education a universal reality. Our governments have entrusted us with the responsibility of preparing our children to become citizens of the world. We are here to share and learn.
When President Bush took office, he saw these problems and decided to tackle them head on through a program called ‘No Child Left Behind.’ UNESCO, through the great leadership of Director General Matsuura, knows the importance of education on a global level by coordinating the “Education for All” initiative.
‘Education For All’ is consistent with our recent education legislation, the No Child Left Behind Act.”
Those policies are now storming into classrooms across the nation. For example, from the Idaho Department of Education comes a curriculum called “Human Rights in Education.” Listed below are four classes taught to four separate grade levels:
Grade Six (Geography and Cultures – Western Hemisphere):
Introduction to Our World; Focus on Canada; Focus on Latin America
Global Citizenship
Grade Seven (Geography and Cultures – Eastern Hemisphere):
Global Citizenship
Grade Eight (Social Science Exploratory – A Case Study of Idaho)
Universe of Obligation
Grade Nine (World History) {Humanities}:
Universal Declaration of Human Rights
However, the most powerful tool for the teaching of global government in public schools is a civics text book entitled We the People: The Citizen and the Constitution. The textbook is the only one authorized and funded by federal law; the only text which is officially part of the federal takeover of education. This book was first authorized and funded by the education appropriations bill (HR6) in 1994 and was authorized and funded again in No Child Left Behind in 2002. This book is the Federal Curriculum for civics and government in textbook form.
The “We the People” textbook was written by a private organization called the Center for Civic Education. No other group was considered when the book was authorized by Congress. It was not put out for bids from other text book companies. And there was no review process established to look at the content of the book once it was written. The fact is Congress has no idea what is in the text book it authorized (against the Constitution) and funded. Is there a political agenda in the book? Does it teach American civics?
It turns out that the Center for Civic Education has a very specific political agenda. In discussing the mission of the text book, the Center writes, “In the past century, the civic mission of schools was education for democracy in a sovereign state. In this century, by contrast, education will become everywhere more global. And we ought to improve our curricular frameworks and standards for a world transformation by globally accepted and internationally transcendent principles.”
It is apparent on nearly every page of the textbook that, in order to promote “globally accepted principles,” the founding documents of the United States need not be considered. For example, the book never treats fundamental American principles of liberty as truths. Even though the Declaration of Independence clearly states “We hold these truths to be self evident,” the text continually calls them simply “ideas.” “Ideas,” it seems, are more open for interpretation and dismissal than can be “truths.”
Further, when discussing the Bill of Rights to the Constitution, the text dismisses them as simply creations of our culture. Specifically it says, “As fundamental and lasting as its guarantees have been (past tense), the U.S. Bill of Rights is a document of the eighteenth century, reflecting the issues and concerns of the age in which it was written…Other national guarantees of rights also reflect the cultures that created them. Many of these cultures have values and priorities different from our own. In many Asian countries, for example, the rights of individuals are secondary to the interests of the whole community. Islamic countries take their code of laws from the teachings of the Koran, the book pf sacred writings accepted by Muslims as revelations to the prophet Mohammad by God.” (p207).
In discussing the Bill of Rights, the book doesn’t even mention all of them. In fact, in Unit Five of the book, the First Amendment is mentioned 16 times;
Second Amendment is never mentioned; Third Amendment is mentioned once; Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Seventh and Eighth Amendments are mentioned a combined total of 17 times; Ninth Amendment is never mentioned; and Tenth Amendment is never mentioned. It is simply impossible to discuss the government of the United States without discussing the Ninth and Tenth Amendments which lay the groundwork for our form of federalism. In short, according to the We the People textbook, all 50 states and all our citizens are at the mercy of the federal government.
According to veteran political science professor, Dr. Allen Quist, who has done extensive study of the textbook, “We the People: The Citizen and The Constitution teaches a radical view of the human rights – the view that human rights are not inalienable, that human rights consist only for those rights that the change agents wish to include at any point in time, and protecting the human rights is not the primary purpose of government. The intent of this textbook is to undermine our free system of government, not promote it.”
Certainly, if the Untied States is going to survive as a free, independent, sovereign nation, then such propaganda must be removed from our public classrooms. To that end, a coalition of concerned groups, including EdAction of Minnesota, Eagle Forum, Gun Owners of America and the American Policy Center are working to get the We the People textbook out of the public classroom and stop the globalist curriculum.
These groups are promoting legislation called “The Freedom in Education Act,” which clearly states that “no federal funds shall be used to develop, publish, advertise, promote, support or distribute textbooks or curriculum; that competitive bidding shall be required for all education-related federal grants to non-governmental organizations; all questions in federally funded education assessments shall be released to the public within three years of being administered; and No federal funds shall be used for cooperative education activities between the Department of Education and UNESCO.”
American parents have for several years decried the federal invasion into the public classrooms. American patriots have expressed dismay at the drive toward global government. Now, here’s your chance to do something about it. Get on the phone and call your Congressmen and demand that they help co-sponsor The Freedom in Education Act so we can preserve the independence and sovereignty of the United States of America. What are you waiting for?
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