Midland (MI) schools give control over to UN

(link)

IB program outsources our children's education
By Pat Hartnagle

Outsourcing has been a very popular news item in the last few weeks. I was quite impressed with all the support received for those involved in Midland's recent discussion of it. Everyone in the system seemed to support keeping the local people and not going to an outside group for help.

I was quite surprised to see one letter to the editor by someone in defense of her husband's job state that the support staff is the "bread and butter" of our schools. Whatever happened to the students, who bring in all the tax dollars, provided by parents and all citizens, providing the need and means for the entire system?

This person also is the parent of three Midland Public School students and a member of the community who has no problem apparently with outsourcing her children and their curriculum to a company in a foreign country.

Apparently that view is shared by the teachers, who do not have a problem with outsourcing their academic freedom, training and input into curriculum.

The superintendent of MPS has no problem with outsourcing his authority for responsibility for the students and parents whom he is supposed to represent.

The school board has no problem with outsourcing the oversight of students, curriculum, choice of textbooks and protection of student records. Apparently, parents have no problem with any of the issues of curriculum, education, testing and student records outsourced for their children either.

With the adoption of the International Baccalaureate Program to be started in the fall, our already limited freedom in education will be taken away from local schools, states and even the federal government as authority is given over to the United Nations, under which UNESCO operates. It already has been writing curriculum and has begun to write textbooks -- much of that taking place under the International Baccalaureate Program.

This curriculum will meet international standards and the UN already has made the content of its international standards perfectly clear. Professor Allen Quist of EdWatch outlines those standards. "Required content will include "education for sustainable development," as defined by its Earth Charter, which includes abortion rights, gay marriage, indoctrination in Pantheism, universal disarmament, income redistribution between nations and advocacy of all the UN environmental treaties, to identify just a few of it's doctrines. The UN's required content also will include its Universal Declaration of Human Rights which says that people have no "inalienable" rights, only those rights the UN says they have. This UN document also clarifies that education must promote the UN and all its activities and that the UN is the highest court of appeals on all human rights issues, higher even than our own Supreme Court.

The UN's required content also will include the dictates of its Treaty on the Rights of the Child, which says that parents have no right to decide what their children will be taught. That right will now belong to the UN. All of education will be geared to"international standards." That means that the UN sets the standards. Since the tests are geared to the standards, the UN will dictate the content of the tests.

Do teachers teach to the tests? Yes, especially when they are paid more when students conform to the international curriculum. The IB does not focus on knowledge, instead it focuses on the attitudes and values of the internationalist left. The educational curricula and achievement tests are based on a political and educational philosophy that is not consistent with the world view and wishes of most parents and other citizens in the United States. Perhaps that is why the plan also calls for the elimination of locally elected school boards. The United States will be required to establish a national system of education as opposed to a state and local system."

Gene Edward Veith, journalist for "World" magazine writes, "Public schools to bolster their academic quality are turning to what they publicize as AP and IB courses. AP refers to Advance Placement, toughened up classes that can earn college credit. But IB is a different animal. International Baccalaureate courses follow a globalist, relativistic curriculum that many taxpayers would object to. Some 500 schools in the United States, each of which pays the Geneva organization between $5,000 and $9,000 per year, and for that will obtain curriculum, special teacher training and even some of the grading. Why would public school districts, most of which by law are required to be locally controlled, give up their control to a company in Switzerland?

"Knowledge," according to IBO's website. is considered to be an in-depth understanding of significant ideas, not merely the acquisition of "fact and skills." And this "understanding", that replaces objective learning consists largely of environmentalism, peace studies, leftist politics, and above all, multiculturalism. The IBO goal is the formation of students "who understand that other people with their differences, can also be right." Not just that other people can be right, but that people with differences can "also" be right. At the heart of the IB approach is a view that no actual culture holds truth.

It does take a certain kind of braininess to convince oneself that it is true that there is no truth and it is no wonder that major universities -- the patrons of postmodernist theory -- are impressed with all of the young relativists clutching their IB diplomas. But the philosophy does not produce a good education: rather it produces a mindset in which good education in impossible.

This program which sets the pathway for No Child Left Behind being totally acceptable, completely undermines everything this country and its education system has stood for. It will make "world citizens" to the point where our country, as we know it, will no longer exist. As Abraham Lincoln said, "The government of tomorrow sits in the classrooms today." For more information, go to website: www.edwatch.org/

Pat Hartnagle is a Midland resident.

Gee, do you think it's time for a NEW American Revolution?


Current Mood: Angry
Current Music: None
Carry Pistol: Para-Ordnance P14.45ACP