The socialist indoctrination of our children in the insidious public
education system is seriously damaging to our society. It's been going on
for decades and must be stopped. DDC

****

'FOX News Reporting: Do You Know What Textbooks Your Children Are Really
Reading?'
Tucker Carlson
Friday , September 04, 2009 (repeated over weekend)

FOX News Reporting examines what is really inside children's textbooks.

Fox News Reporting investigated the $10 billion dollar-a-year textbook
industry and how the drive to be politically correct might be taking over
American schools.

Host Tucker Carlson, asked experts, teachers, publishers and parents the
same question: "Do you know what is inside your children's textbooks?" From
kindergarten through college, we found staggering errors and omissions which
may be pushing agendas, hidden and otherwise.

We spoke to the author of "The Language Police," education historian Diane
Ravitch, who said textbook publishers censor images or words they deem to be
controversial in children's textbooks. She told us that publishers pander to
special interest groups, and assemble bias and sensitivity review
committees. These committees decide what words to ban or redefine, and even
what images are deemed offensive.

And we examined some college textbooks both in print and in digital forms.
We found a glaring mistake in an expensive history book written by Alan
Brinkley, Provost at New York's Columbia University.

And in Fairfax County Virginia, questions remain about what textbooks are
used in the private Islamic Saudi Academy. The ISA teaches about 1000
students each year pre-K - 12. Questions have been raised about its
textbooks at least since 2006.

This summer, Ahmed Omar Abu Ali, ISA's 1999 valedictorian, was sentenced to
life in prison for his role in a 2002 Al Qaeda plot to assassinate President
George W. Bush.

The ISA is wholly owned by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and teaches students
from textbooks, which according to a report by a Saudi scholar interviewed
by FOX News, continues to "propagate an ideology of hate to the unbeliever."
FOX News Reporting obtained some of their current 2008-2009 textbooks which
were supposed to be purged of inflammatory language. We found proof
otherwise.

We tracked down two American college professors who were paid by the ISA to
review these textbooks. They signed a letter obtained by FOX News that the
ISA's 2008-2009 textbooks "do not contain inflammatory material." One of
them sat down for an interview; the other refused.

And in California's Alameda County, our cameras were there as parents were
embroiled in a heated debate over a mandatory curriculum designed to teach
students from grades K-5 about different types of families, including
lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender lifestyles. After a vote by the
Alameda Unified School District in May of this year, the second grade
reading curriculum now requires a book about gay penguins.

Break the public education monopoly for the sake of students
By Daniel B. Jeffs, founder DDC
May 22, 2009

President Obama has remained silent, while Democrats in Congress inserted a provision in the $410 billion 2009 omnibus spending bill that would threaten the future of the Washington, D.C., Opportunity Scholarship Program, a voucher program that provides for low-income families to send 1,700 of their children to the private schools of their choice. Because of the sorry state of the D.C. public schools, some Democrats were willing to allow it in 2003 when a Republican-led Congress created the voucher program. Even though scholarship students are performing much better, and the parents want it to continue, the program will only be continued one more year.

March 31, 2009

Education reform is costly failure - we need to cut our losses
By Daniel B. Jeffs, founder DDC

Education reformers having been whittling away at the quality of public education since 1960 with failed experimentation and unconscionable results, not the least of which have been outcome-based education, inflated grades, social promotion, and relentless administrative and union empire-building at obscene expense.

Public Education Against America: The Hidden Agenda
Author: Marlin Maddoux
Publisher: Whitaker House - 2006

Book Description:

America's educational system has been hijacked. Radio talk show legend Marlin Maddoux exposes the plots and methods used by the academic elite to capture the hearts, minds, and values of the next generation. Through the use of "political correctness" on college campuses, Moral Relativism in high school sex ed classes, brainwashing techniques starting in kindergarten, and much more, Maddoux reveals how public education has eroded the faith and values of American children in an ongoing effort to create a godless, humanistic society.

Re: Rescuing teens from economic ignorance
Los Angeles Times Business section
March 7, 2009

It is encouraging to see that dozens of juniors and seniors from Allan F. Daily High School participated in a financial literacy program near Glendale sponsored by the nonprofit educational group, Junior Achievement. Indeed, the fact that so many young people can text or Twitter easily, but can't balance a checkbook, is simply another indictment of the public schools, which have sadly become little more than factories of ignorance, graduating functionally illiterate students.

Many financially illiterate young people, their illiterate parents and many of their grandparents were failed by an education establishment, which left them under-educated in reading, writing, math and science, with little or no improvement for decades, particularly in California. It is obvious that young people cannot learn core academics, including financial literacy if they were not educated properly and their parents are not capable of teaching them for the same reason.

My wife and I witnessed the experimentation and erosion of public education. It was necessary for us to supplement our children's core education, including economic and financial training and responsibility up to and including their graduation from high school in the mid-1980's. The failure of public schools went back even further, as I experienced with a grocery cashier who could not multiply 5 times 7 to pay me 5 cents each for 7 returned paper grocery bags. The cashier was embarrassed by her inability to do simple math, but I knew why the amount was 35 cents and she didn't. She wasn't taught and I was. I graduated from a California high school in 1957 with an education equivalent to a college education today. Clear evidence of of institutional failure.

Certainly the current economic crisis was exacerbated by consumers and homebuyers sorely lacking education, financial-economic knowledge and experience, which should be a final wake-up call to real education reform. It would be tantamount to criminal neglect, not to.

Re: Obama on education: Right talk, wrong walk
By Star Parker
March 2, 2009 http://townhall.com/columnists/StarParker/2009/03/02/obama_on_education_right_talk,_wrong_walk

Privatize Public Education
By Daniel B. Jeffs, founder DDC
March 3, 2009

Star Parker's commentary on education is correct. We need more common sense and freedom in K-12 education -- not more government programs and money. We need school choice. President Obama wants education reform, which does not include choice.

The historical problem with education reform is that it has been reformed into a public education government monopoly, dumbed-down throughout the process, and turned into very expensive factories of ignorance producing functionally illiterate students, robbed of their education. California is the prime example of the education establisment's drag on taxpayers and the economy. The system's curriculum sacrifices core academics for politically correct indoctrination and experimentation.

President Obama's $787 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 includes pumping $90.9 billion into public education, including an increase of $15.6 billion to increase Pell Grants for college. The president's reform idea in the end is to fund public education from K through college, which will surely dumb-down college education worse than it is now, and make graduates even less competitive for employment.

It has been proven time and time again that government programs and government sponsored enterprises -- such as mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, AMTRAK, and the U.S. Postal Service -- are costly, inept, often failures, and a waste of taxpayer dollars. Public education is no different. Beginning with choice, public education should be privatized.