The Over-funded U.S. Education System Operates to Promote Collectivism (Communism)

More than $500 billion is spent annually on public education in the United States (state and local spending for kindergarten through 12th grade education more than doubled since 1990. According to New America Foundation: "The federal government contributes about 8 percent of direct funding for elementary and secondary schools nationally (through the U.S. Department of Education, the federal government provides more than $40 billion a year on primary and secondary education programs). The two biggest federal programs are No Child Left Behind Title I Grants to local school districts ($14.5 billion in fiscal year 2009) and IDEA Special Education State Grants ($11.5 billion in fiscal year 2009). States rely primarily on income and sales taxes to fund elementary and secondary education. Property taxes support most of the funding that local government provides for education."

Today, students are indoctrinated by a massive education system largely run by liberals, leftists and Marxists promoting their agenda through the union — misrepresenting their intentions, rewriting history through the textbooks, and gravitating toward the radicals. Collective Utopian-promises replaced God in the classroom, and we sat by, silent. Students should learn life's lessons through trial, failure and success. Individualism, the driving force that made America great, has to be shown to our young people. Good teachers who agree are shackled by the state. The others are protected by the union. If this president is not a destroyer, he's been greatly misinformed by this educational system. - James A. Skeldon, Leftist public schools indoctrinate students, Watertown Daily Times, May 17, 2011

Charlotte Iserbyt: Exposing the Miseducation of America

May 13, 2011

Infowars.com - We are putting the final touches on part one of a multi hour interview with Charlotte Iserbyt, who worked at the Department of Education from 1980 to 1982. She found the documents that show the federal government and tax exempt foundations are changing the education system from fundamental academic study that amounts to operant conditioning dog training. We are several generations into this new form of education. This will hit home to anyone who has been miseducated in a public school during the last 40 years.

Norman Dodd and the Reece Commission: Tax-exempt Foundations Changed History and the U.S. Education System (Excerpt)

December 16, 2010

Canada Free Press - Norman Dodd (June 29, 1899 – January 1987) was a banker/bank manager, financial advisor, and chief investigator in 1953 for U.S. Congressman B. Carroll Reece's Special Committee on Tax Exempt Foundations (commonly referred to as the Reece Committee).

Dodd learned that the major tax-exempt foundations (Carnegie Endowment, Ford Foundation, and the Rockefeller Foundation, among others) had been operating since at least 1945 to promote an agenda that has little to do with charity, good works or philanthropy, but with controlling the education system in the United States, altering the teaching of American History, and building their own stable of historians.

A group of twenty historians ultimately became the nucleus of the American Historical Association, receiving a grant of $400,000 from the Carnegie Endowment in the late 1920’s which provided funding for revisionist research that produced a 7-volume study of our history, presented in a manner consistent with the way the Endowment wished it to be taught here in the future. This policy diverted away from support of the “out dated” and “no longer practical” principles and “self evident truths” embodied in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, and insinuated instead one of “collectivism” (communism), the so-called wave of the future, and how this country should be, as they wished to have it be.

The real objectives include the creation of a world-wide collectivist state which is to be ruled from behind the scenes by the same elite who control the foundations. His allegations stem from reviewing the minutes of the Carnegie Institute and their explicitly stated plans listed therein. [Wikipedia and Reality Zone]

1982 Interview of Norman Dodd by G. Edward Griffin

Textbook Raises Questions for Some Parents in Frederick, Maryland

They say social studies material does not teach facts objectively

May 12, 2011

The Frederick Gazette - "Social Studies Alive!" is a thin and colorful third-grade textbook, but it is not as innocent as it looks to some Frederick County parents. The textbook has been a part of the county's social studies curriculum since 2004, and touches on geography, economics, history, citizenship and the environment.

But some parents want it removed from classrooms because they say it does not teach facts objectively, and tends to favor and promote liberal beliefs and ideologies on issues such as health care, public education and government.

"I think it is agenda-driven. ... It's like a field guide for a community organizer," said Kristen Eddins of New Market, who spoke against the textbook at the Thursday meeting of the school board's curriculum and instruction committee.

"I just feel like these are values that they should be learning at home," Eddins told the committee, which reviews issues and questions related to textbooks, lesson materials and curriculum issues.

Eddins said she first became concerned about the textbook two years ago when her then 8-year-old daughter at New Market Elementary School quoted the book in saying that public education is free. Alarmed, Eddins asked to review the textbook.

"It's the assumption that government services are free that bothers me," Eddins said. "We spend half a billion on public education in Frederick County."

The textbook does not state directly that education is free, but rather that "families don't pay to send their children to public school. Instead, the community helps to pay for public schools." Yet, Eddins said she feel it does not give children the full picture.

In the case of public health care, for example, the text explains in detail how paying for health care can be a hardship for families. But when it talks about universal health care in Denmark, it fails to mention that the community pays for those services with taxes, Eddins said.

Led by such concerns, school board member April Fleming Miller, who sits on the curriculum committee, asked her colleagues and staff to discuss the issue. James Gray, the school system's social studies curriculum specialist for elementary schools, told the committee that the textbook is one of 15 to 20 printed and online resources and texts that Frederick County teachers use when they teach third-grade social studies. Rather than following a single textbook, teachers follow the goals and objectives of the social studies curriculum that the Frederick County school board approved in 2008, Gray said.

"We never teach a complete lesson from this book," said Gray, who also provided committee members with a list of additional resources teachers may use. "... We do not teach this book as social studies."

Board member Kathryn B. Groth said she could see why some parents could feel uncomfortable with the textbook because they feel it is their job, not the schools', to teach a child to be involved in the community, to care for environment, or to protect endangered species. But at the same time, she said she felt gratified to hear that Frederick County teachers have other materials to choose from, and also receive training that instructs them how to discuss political hot-button issues in their classes.

"I don't want it to look like we are social engineering. And I don't want it to look like we are community organizing," she said.

Board member Angie Fish agreed that to some extent the textbook is leading students to a certain perspective. But she also said that she couldn't see what is wrong with teaching children to be involved in their community or to care for the environment.

"I did read the text. In a couple of the sections the questions are a bit leading," she said. "But we are not there in the classroom saying that America should have free health care."

A mother of four and a teacher of high school English and Advanced Placement classes in Montgomery County, Fish said she has never felt that her children have been indoctrinated at school. She said parents should be able to trust that teachers have the professional training and expertise to provide children with all the information to teach them to think critically and make their own decisions.

"For us to change everything right now is not wise," she said last week. "If I was told today that this is our only resource, I'd be upset, but it's not."

Miller, however, had more concerns, and was not sure if the discussion had resolved her worries with the textbook. She was concerned about the text emphasizing beliefs versus facts, and also that the textbook doesn't mention Martin Luther King Jr. when it talks about the Civil Rights movement.

"I just want to make sure that we are showing different views," Miller said.

Still, parents who oppose the textbook are not discouraged, and have vowed to continue pushing until they get rid of the textbook.

Cindy Rose of Knoxville, whose 9-year-old daughter Grace is a third-grader at Valley Elementary, has been raising questions about the book for months. She even appeared on Glenn Beck's television show on Fox News last month where she talked about the book and her concerns that it tends to teach more beliefs and ideological views than facts and data.

Rose was not pleased with Fish and Groth's response.

"This book needs to go. If it's only one of 40 resources, then why don't they just get rid of it?" Rose asked after the meeting.

Rose now hopes to meet with school board president Brad Young to see if he can suggest bringing up the textbook for discussion by the entire board. Young can do that if he gets two more board members interested.

"I am not done yet," Rose said on Tuesday. "I don't want another year to go by with children being taught this information. ... This book is dangerous."

Young said Tuesday that he had not heard from Rose yet, but is familiar with the issue because of a large number of e-mails sent out between parents and board members. Young said he expects that Miller may bring the textbook up for discussion for the full board and Young would not mind participating in that discussion if other board members are interested.

Read more here and here.