To the editor:
It is true that the IB Organization was created in Geneva Switzerland in 1968. It is also true that UNESCO created the IB Organization. Last time I checked, UNESCO was a U.N. agency.
A great deal of literature has been distributed about the IB program. The literature talks a lot – but it don’t say much. Conspicuously absent is a specific syllabus. No detailed information on exactly what IB will ‘gradually integrate’ into the curriculum? It has the sound of newspeak and the smell of Fabian socialism. “Rigor, Relevance and Relationships?” What ever happened to ‘Reading, Riteing and Rithmatic?’
A curriculum who’s end will radically alter school curriculum, integrating ‘globalism, interdependence and cultural diversity’ (newspeak for international socialism) without bothering to obtain the permission of District parents and taxpayers? I find that decidedly ‘un’ American.
Whoa hoss. Back up the wagon train. I suspect the illusion of widespread support for IB is just that – an illusion. A public referendum (vote) should be held, which allows parents and taxpayers to decide the issue. What could be more American than that?
“Homo Faber…Man the Maker?” Sounds strikingly similar to: “Ye shall be as gods”. Same old lie – more sophisticated wrapping. Merry Christmas.
by Thomas Sowell (February 25, 2004) Article website address: http://www.capmag.com/article.asp?ID=3541
Summary: Parents in Fairfax, Virginia, have succeeded in getting rid of one of the endless series of fad programs that distract American public schools from real education in real subjects. Like most fad programs, this one had a high-sounding name: The International Baccalaureate Curriculum.
[CAPMAG.COM]
Parents in Fairfax, Virginia, have succeeded in getting rid of one of the endless series of fad programs that distract American public schools from real education in real subjects. Like most fad programs, this one had a high-sounding name: The International Baccalaureate Curriculum.
It also has a left-wing hidden agenda, as so many other fad programs do. One of the program's supporters gushed that it teaches students "how to think globally" and "how to make us part of the world."
One of the parents critical of the program put it quite differently. She said it "promotes socialism, disarmament, radical environmentalism, and moral relativism, while attempting to undermine Christian religious values and national sovereignty."
None of this is new. This kind of indoctrination has been going on for decades, and the kind of thinking behind it goes back a hundred years, when education guru John Dewey began promoting the idea that schools should be instruments of "social change."
By substituting back-door indoctrination in place of education, John Dewey has done more damage than anyone without an army.
What is new is that some parents are finally waking up and fighting back. They refuse to be conned by pious rhetoric or pacified by bumper stickers that say things like "My child was student of the month at Jordan Middle School" or even intimidated by the standard line, "You are the only one who has complained."
Education bureaucrats will use that line even if you are not even among the first 20 who have complained about some program or practice locally or among the first thousand nationally. There may be court cases all across the country over some program or practice, and they will still tell you that you are the only one who has complained.
While the parents in Fairfax have had the backbone to get this junk program thrown out of their school, largely because it displaced so much real education that their children would have trouble getting into quality colleges, the battle is still raging in nearby Reston, Virginia, where the education bureaucrats are determined to create a generation of internationalists.
"After all," a school spokesmen said, "it is our students who will change the world."
That the kinds of shallow, ill-educated and fad-ridden people who run our public schools should take it upon themselves to decide how the world needs changing is truly staggering. On the other hand, it has long been said that fools rush in where angels fear to tread.
A very different battle has been going on in the District of Columbia. Here the issue is whether any of the predominantly black students will be allowed to escape the failing and dangerous public schools by having vouchers to go elsewhere.
The teachers unions say no -- and the teachers unions are the 800-pound gorilla of the Democratic Party, whom they supply with money and with people to walk the precincts on election days. Some Republicans are also afraid to get on the bad side of the teachers union, even if that means watching another whole generation of poor kids go down the drain for lack of a decent education.
Among the parents who have not been intimidated is a black woman named Virginia Walden-Ford. She has not only confronted members of Congress in hearings, her organization of parents has taken out ads in the states represented by Congressmen who voted against vouchers.
These ads point out that liberal politicians who send their own children to private schools are preventing black parents from having that same choice. These parents don't hesitate to compare liberals like Ted Kennedy to Southern segregationists of the past like George Wallace and Bull Connor, who tried to block the advancement of blacks.
It would never occur to our more delicate Republicans to say such a thing. But their children are not at risk.
The time is long overdue for more parents to show some backbone if their children are not to continue to be used for classroom indoctrination or as pawns in the games of teachers unions.
EDUCATION IN AMERICA - PART 6
Wednesday, March 31 , 2004
In, 1968, the U.N.’’s program for global education advanced. UNESCO created the International Baccalaureate Organization, an NGO (non-governmental organization) in Geneva, Switzerland. This IB organization is supplying curriculum to schools around the world. Actually, curriculum for 33,000 teachers is being provided in 1, 500 schools around the globe. But get this, 55 of the schools are middle schools in the Washington, D.C. area.
UNESCO, according to Henry Lamb, Director of Sovereignty International, states that the IB curriculum promotes human rights, social justice, sustainable development, population, health, environmental, and immigration concerns.
George Walker, IB’’s director general in Geneva had this to say: ““We’’re living on a planet that is becoming exhausted. 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.”” I’’m sure Mr. Walker has in mind for the IB program under the U.N. to control worldwide education according to their anti-Christian terms. Jeanne Geizer, a mother in Reston, Virginia, wrote these words to a local newspaper: ““Administrators do not tell you that the current IB program for ages 3 through 12 promises socialism, disarmament, radical environmentalism, and moral relativism, while attempting to undermine Christian religious values and national sovereignty.””
The Center for Civic Education (CCE) authorized by Congress to create the New Civic as in HR1078 writes that the curriculum for civics education in the U.S. States: ““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 frame works and standards for a world transformed by globally accepted and internationally transcendent principles.
The New Civics textbook, ““We The People: The Citizens and the Constitution,”” written by CCE exposes that history has been replaced with attitudes on multiculturalism and global thinking. U.N. priorities such as social justice, environmental protection, and sustainable development as in the U.N. Declaration on Human Rights are taught to our children.
Dr. D. L. Cuddy of Raleigh, N.C. of whom I have great respect, recently reported in an article entitled, ““World Citizenship On The Road To World Government,”” that in our ““No Child Left Behind”” program, the U.S. Secretary of Education, Rod Paige, entered into a contact with the Center for Civic Education (CCE) and that CCE is an INGO (United Nations International Non-governmental Organization). Dr. Cuddy stated: The New Civics –– ““We The People: The Citizens And The Constitution”” is authorized for U.S. schools.””
This partnership with UNESCO, friends can only weaken U.S. Sovereignty and lead to internationalism. It must be stopped and there are some in Congress who are realizing that the true American Civics and the principles of Jefferson, Adams, Madison, and Franklin must be preserved.
UN Poisons U.S. Education with Our Tax Dollars Tom DeWeese
The Bush administration’’s schizophrenic relationship with the United Nations continues unabated. It is dazzling to watch one part of the administration rebuke the UN for failing to respond to the threats of dictatorships to American security while another zealously takes up a UN program designed to create a generation of Americans educated to believe in a system of global government.
It is astonishing that the Bush administration has begun issuing grants to help spread a United Nations propaganda program that describes itself as a ““universal curriculum”” for teaching global citizenship, peace studies and equality of world cultures. The U.S. Department of Education has issued its first $1.2 million grant to implement the UN’’s International Baccalaureate (IB) program to middle schools that are to become feeder schools for the IB’’s high school diploma program in low-income school districts.
The IB program had been adopted by about 1,450 schools in 115 countries, including 502 schools in the United States. The Bush administration grants will expand the IB program initially in Arizona, Massachusetts, and New York.
Children caught between the comparable ““New Civics”” curriculum now being implemented and the IB program will have no concept of the U.S. ideals of limited government controlled by ““We the People.”” They will be fully indoctrinated into accepting the idea of a one-world government that only recognizes the power of the state to ““grant”” our rights. Gone is Thomas Jefferson’’s idea of unalienable rights. They were ““self evident”” to Jefferson and those who sacrificed their lives for American independence, but the new curriculum views them as antiquated curiosities.
Yet, this is what Education Secretary Rod Paige calls ““world-class education.”” Most everyone else would call the IB program ““socialism.”” Worse, such indoctrination is taking place in public school classrooms, paid for by taxpayer dollars, and forced on unsuspecting children. What makes this more infuriating is that it’’s being funded and implemented by a Republican administration!
This same administration and its educational programs have recently been called to task in a report, the ““American Diploma Project.”” The result of cooperation between three major think tanks, the report concludes that, ““The diploma has lost its value because what it takes to earn one is disconnected from what it takes for graduates to compete successfully beyond high school---either in the classroom or the workplace.””
Coupled with the IB program, not only will American students be taught that allegiance to America, our governmental and economic systems, should be replaced by global citizenship, but the diplomas they are earning are just a ““broken promise”” of the education they should have received!
The educational system in America is in total meltdown. E.D. Hirsch, Jr., author of ““The Schools We Need: And Why We Don’’t Have Them”” has written that ““Successful reading requires more than an ability to decode or ‘‘sound out’’ words. It also requires adequate background knowledge or ‘‘cultural literacy.’’ Without background knowledge of history, literature, art, music, science and math, students will read, but without comprehension.””
With the UN-sponsored International Baccalaureate (IB), instituted at the middle school level, American students will be taught a curriculum that stresses code words such as human rights and social justice, but which in practice the UN has never successfully been able to implement or enforce. Many of the members of the UN are some of the world’’s worst dictatorships, guilty of the worst abuses of human rights and social justice.
Moreover, American children will be taught about the environmental scheme called ““sustainable development”” that, in reality, means blocking development for almost any reason because it requires using the Earth’’s natural resources. They will be indoctrinated to accept the UN’’s views on immigration, population, health, and other environmental concerns.
Mostly what they will not learn about are that the values that have sustained the United States of America and which make it a magnet for freedom-hungry people around the world. Instead, the curriculum teaches about the failed system of socialism. George Walker, IB’’s director-general, based in Geneva, Switzerland, says the program is committed to changing children’’s values so they think globally, rather than in ““parochial national terms from their own country’’s viewpoint……””
Henry Lamb, one of the nation’’s experts on the United Nations, warns that the United Nations Education, Science and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) ““has been trying to impose an international curriculum to prepare students for world government”” since its inception. During the Reagan administration, the U.S. dropped its membership in UNESCO, citing how corrupt it had become. Typically, the Bush administration just put us back in!
As a result, the current administration tacitly supports the view of a 1949 UNESCO textbook, ““Toward World Understanding””, that says, ““As long as the child breathes the poisoned air of nationalism, education in world-mindedness can produce only rather precarious results. As we have pointed out, it is frequently the family that infects the child with extreme nationalism.””
Think back to the countless American homes, offices and other structures that flew the flag after 9-11 as a symbol of their allegiance to the United States. To the UN, this is ““extreme nationalism”” that ““poisons”” the minds of our children.
One critic of the program warned, ““administrators do not tell you that the current IB program for ages 3 through grade 12 promotes socialism, disarmament, radical environmentalism and moral relativism, while attempting to undermine Christian religious values and national sovereignty.””
Do you want your children growing up without learning the basic facts of our Constitutional form of government? Without learning the facts of our history, replete with the battles fought to retain individual freedoms, States rights, and the rule of law? A review of science, and even math texts, reveals that sustainable development, environmental protection, and social justice dominate material children are force-fed in the name of education.
Either each new generation of Americans must be taught the truth about our heritage, our governmental system of checks and balances, of guaranteed rights that come from the governed, and why our economic systems has made us the most powerful engine of progress on Earth, or they will fall prey to the UN globalists that want to control their future.
The International Baccalaureate program should be ripped from the classrooms of America, defunded, and thrown upon the same ash heap of history where the former Soviet Union and other despotisms can be found.
Tom DeWeese is the publisher/editor of The DeWeese Report, a monthly newsletter on issues affecting the welfare of the nation. He is also president of the American Policy Center, a grassroots, activist think tank headquartered in Warrenton, VA.
The Center maintains an Internet site at www.americanpolicy.org
FROM: [YOUR NAME]
RE: Stop Funding of the International Baccalaureate Curriculum
It has come to my attention that the U.S. Department of Education is funding the International Baccalaureate curriculum, which is being marketed and promoted by a UNESCO "front" company in Switzerland.
We have enough home-grown propaganda in our schools without having to import propaganda from foreign countries. It's hard enough fighting the political agenda of the National Education Association. Now we have to worry about a program that undermines Western culture and promotes socialism, moral relativism, and world government.
Did it ever occur to you that many Americans -- perhaps a majority -- don't want to see this kind of brainwashing become the central task of the public school system?
Do you ever worry that what you're doing might be contrary to the wishes of most parents and concerned citizens nationwide?
I urge you to think about this matter and to cancel further funding for the International Baccalaureate curriculum, which is flying under false colors as a genuine academic discipline rather than a stealth attack on the values that many of us cherish.
I want you to understand that I care enough about this issue to pay for the transmission of this message.
Sincerely
[YOUR NAME]
Stop Funding of the International Baccalaureate Curriculum
As I write this letter, the United Nations is spreading a program in our schools designed to brainwash our kids and teach them to despise our country and worship the United Nations? This program – called the International Baccalaureate (IB) -- is weaseling its way into middle schools and high schools all over the country with its cleverly concealed contempt for American culture and American values. The goal is to enlist your children in a movement to destroy America as we know it and turn over the reins of our government to the UN. Your children may already be victims of this plot to subvert America. They may already be learning that U.S. ideas and values are dangerous to the peace and prosperity of the world, that Americans are selfish and greedy, and that we have grown rich by exploiting third-world countries. They may be hearing about the evils of capitalism and the benefits of world socialism. And guess who’s funding the spread of this program. You and I!
Secretary of Education Paige issued a $1.2 million grant to put this vile and devious curriculum into schools in deprived neighborhoods. In other words, his Department of Education has chosen to fund disloyalty and even revolution among people in this country. Paige fell all over himself praising the program, saying, "We are ever mindful of the lessons of Sept. 11, one of which is that all future measures of a rigorous k-12 education must include a sound grounding in other cultures, other languages and other histories." It's difficult to imagine a more ignorant excuse for funding IB. Yet here we are, funding a curriculum that, according George Walker, International Baccalaureate's director-general, is "committed to changing children's values so they think globally, rather than in parochial national terms from their own point of view." One critic of this curriculum summed it up: "[A]dministrators do not tell you that the current IB program for ages 3 through grade 12 promotes socialism, disarmament, radical environmentalism, while attempting to undermine Judeo-Christian religious values and national sovereignty." Don't you see what's happening? We're teaching our own children to be foreigners. We are committing cultural suicide -- and doing it on taxpayers' money – yours and mine. We have to kill the International Baccalaureate program, root and branch.
So where did the “International Baccalaureate come from? The program is being hustled by a foreign organization based in Geneva, Switzerland. The group calls itself International Baccalaureate Organization, but it is really a front for UNESCO, the UN agency that concocted this evil program. Henry Lamb, an expert on the UN, has warned that UNESCO “has been trying to impose an international curriculum to prepare students for world government since it was founded.”
Ronald Reagan took the U.S. out of UNESCO because it was wildly, blatantly anti-American.
Now we’re back in, pouring tax dollars into an agency run by a gang of One-World fanatics, some of whom hate us at least as much as Osama bin Laden does. Here’s what Toward World Understanding, a UNESCO textbook, says:
“As long as the child breathes the poisoned air of nationalism, education in world-mindedness can produce only rather precarious results. As we have pointed out, it is frequently the family that infects the child with extreme nationalism.”
So these people are not only anti-American but anti-family. They believe that teaching our children love of family, God, and country is “infecting” them. By the way, do you know what the phrase “extreme nationalism” means in globalese? It means:
· celebrating the 4th of July and flying our flag above all others;
· honoring the sacrifice of Nathan Hale, who said: ‘I regret I have but one life to give for my country”;
· the willingness of American boys to risk their lives on the beaches of Anzio, Normandy, Iwo Jima, and Guadalcanal to save the free world from tyranny and genocide;
· the heroic decision of Pat Tillman to give up a $3.6-million National Football League contract to join the U.S. Army and lose his life in Afghanistan, while leftists in this country call him an “idiot” and a “sap” and say "he got what was coming to him."
Love of country is extreme nationalism! A belief that the American way of life is good is extreme nationalism. Refusing to turn American citizens over to the World Court to answer charges made by left-wing Middle Eastern dictators is extreme nationalism. Enforcing the death penalty for child murderers like John Wayne Gacy and serial killers like Ted Bundy is extreme nationalism. Believing that “all men are created equal and that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights” is extreme nationalism. (The UN doesn’t recognize the authority of God to grant rights. That authority rests only with governments.) That’s the lying ideology this curriculum is teaching.
The Washington Times has described the goal of the program as teaching “a set of culturally neutral universal values to which all people aspire.” What are “culturally neutral values”? They are NOT American values: NOT free enterprise, NOT checks and balances in government, NOT a written constitution, NOT the institution of marriage, and NOT freedom of speech and assembly and religion under the Bill of Rights. Those are “parochial values” that aren’t shared by Sudan and Indonesia and Saudi Arabia so we can’t teach them to our children.
Here are some of the “culturally neutral values” IB teaches:
· global citizenship
· world peace guaranteed by an all-powerful UN
· equality of world cultures
· tolerance
· open-mindedness to change
But wait a minute! If you hold U.S. citizenship, you value America’s welfare over that of other countries. If you hold global citizenship, you value the welfare of other countries over that of America. Is that where you and I want to go? As for world peace under UN governance, we’ve seen how the UN works when peace is threatened. Today, the UN is about as capable of keeping the peace as a two-day-old kitten. Equality of world cultures? Are we supposed to pretend Western Christian culture isn’t better than other more bloodthirsty cultures. Or cultures that allow their citizens to die in the streets without lifting a hand to help them? Who sent Mother Teresa to help the sick and dying on the streets of Calcutta? Tolerance? That means we tolerate everybody else, bow and scrape and pretend their primitive cultures are equal to ours. And all the while they regard us with the hatred and contempt of the envious. Open-mindedness to change? We know who’s supposed to change. It’s us -- America. Not the socialist nations of Northern Europe or the Christian-killing countries in Africa and Asia. If we tell them to change, we’re intolerant. If we object to becoming a socialist nation ourselves or protest the fact they are killing our Christian brothers and sisters, then we’re close-minded. We’ve seen this before, haven’t we? This is nothing but Soviet-style Communism -- the Evil Empire repackaged -- to make suckers out of Americans by turning their kids into little propagandists for world government. It is also the nearest thing to treason that’s ever made its way into our educational system. It is a prescription for national suicide, a tool for transforming America into a third-world country. And that’s precisely what UNESCO and the International Baccalaureate Organization want to do – bring us down. They are driven by envy because we are the most powerful and prosperous nation in the world, with the most enduring form of government and the most productive economy. We can’t let them get away with it.