Tag Archives: The Federal department of Education

Alex Newman: Biblical Worldview & Christian Education: Real & Fake 4 (1)

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by Alex Newman

A biblical worldview is becoming increasingly rare in America and that is in large part due to the education system, explained Nehemiah Institute founder and chief Dan Smithwick in this interview on Conversations That Matter with The New American magazine’s Alex Newman. Smithwick, who developed the PEERS test to understand worldview, has been studying this subject for decades. And he found that some Christian schools do far better than others in instilling a biblical worldview in students. Smithwick said churches and preachers must address this crisis immediately.

 

NA: https://thenewamerican.com/biblical-worldview-christian-education-real-fake/

Alex Newman is a senior editor of The New American, author of the new book Deep State: The Invisible Government Behind the Scenes, and coauthor (with the late Sam Blumenfeld) of Crimes of the Educators.

Bill Lockwood: “Therapy” for White Teachers? 4 (1)

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by Bill Lockwood

It is heartbreaking to confess, but America is in the midst of a Marxist Revolution. This is strictly an anti-God, anti-Christian assault—and it is occurring right now. As time progresses, it will only intensify.

The New York Post (5/26/21) reports this week that “Team Biden wants white teachers to undergo anti-racist therapy.” Money is already being designated for this purpose under the cloak of COVID-19 relief funds. “Congress allocated nearly $200 million in COVID-19 relief funds for K-12 schools over the past year. While this money was intended to help reopen schools and mitigate learning loss, President Joe Biden’s Department of Education is encouraging school districts to spend some of it on a different purpose: providing ‘free, antiracist therapy for white educators.’”

Biden’s operation is called the American Rescue Plan which advocates “intervention” to “respond to students’ academic, social and emotional needs.” Team Biden’s guidance booklet for spending these ARP funds suggests that INCLUDED in the “students’ social and emotional needs is “disruption of ‘whiteness’ and the propagation of the Critical Race Theory.”

Therapy? Therapy or Psychotherapy is defined as the “process of working with a therapist to develop coping skills “to treat specific mental health conditions.” Normally those conditions fall into the category of “depression, anxiety, trauma” or some of the challenges we face on a daily basis. This prescribed therapy implies that “white people” have mental health issues by virtue of being white. This is the Critical Race Theory.

The former Soviet Union brainwashed an entire population with the notion that belief in God, or conservative and/or biblical-based values, is equivalent to a mental health problem. Such citizens were labeled as “mentally unstable”, then incarcerated for being out-of-step with the official state dogma.

Christians: it is a late hour in our once great Republic. The labeling is already occurring as the table is being set for broad-scale persecution. Time to gird up the loins of our minds and hearts and vow to re-dedicate our lives to Jesus Christ.

Alex Newman: Schools Busted Promoting Islam 0 (0)

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by Alex Newman

Government schools in Michigan are under fire after an investigation by the Thomas More Law Center, a non-profit legal group, exposed a massive tax-payer funded propaganda program glorifying Islam and denigrating Christianity. Teachers were targeted in the controversial scheme, with the expectation that they would pass the lies on to their students.

The investigation began after TMLC discovered that teachers were being forced to take a two-day “training seminar” on Islam. The program, run by a Muslim “consultant” and self-proclaimed “social justice” advocate, bombarded hundreds of public-school teachers with anti-American and anti-Christian extremism masquerading as “culturally responsive teaching.”

Among other concerns, the training program was “riddled with falsehoods and errors of omission that were clearly meant to deceive,” the Law Center explained. For instance, there was no truthful information provided to teachers on either jihad (holy war) or Sharia (Islamic) law, which are two of the cornerstones of Islam.

Teachers were told that while the Bible had been changed, the Koran had come straight from Allah to Muhammad. “Her message was clear: The Koran is superior to the Bible,” the Thomas More Law Center explained in a statement about its findings, adding that the Muslim “consultant” was paid $2,500 per day to indoctrinate teachers.

The “consultant,” Huda Essa, also dismissed concerns about terrorism, saying it had nothing to do with Islam. Perhaps not surprisingly, the program also taught Michigan teachers that white Christian males were more dangerous to the public than Islamic extremists whose holy book commands them to wage never-ending war against infidels. Essa accused America of “genocide,” too, while ignoring Islam’s 1400 year history of exterminating non-Muslims across the Middle East and North Africa, TMLC said.

“We found that the teachers were subjected to two days of Islamic propaganda, where Islam was glorified, Christianity disparaged, and America bashed,” said Richard Thompson, president and chief counsel of the Law Center, after the investigation was completed. “This type of infiltration amounts to an Islamic Trojan horse within our public-school systems. No other religion gets this kind of special treatment in our schools.”

As part of the investigation, the Law Center filed a Freedom of Information Act request for documents related to the workshop. Within the materials received, the conservative-leaning non-profit legal group obtained audio recordings of the “diversity” presentation forced upon Michigan teachers.

What Thompson found most disappointing about the ordeal was the fact that not a single one of the over 400 teachers subjected to this particular “training” session publicly challenged the bizarre teachings. It was not immediately clear whether this was due to fear of reprisals, agreement with the consultant’s extremism, or other causes.

Similar tax-funded “training” seminars for educators by the same Islamist have taken place in California, Georgia, Texas, Florida, and more. In fact, the consultant’s website openly brags about all the educators across America who have been subjected to the same propaganda, which has been filtering down into school classrooms for years.

It seems that, with one key exception, any and all religions are now being welcomed and promoted to gullible children in government schools in America today — Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Humanism, Atheism, and so on, are all celebrated. By contrast, only Christianity and the Bible, the foundations that America and the West were founded upon, is blacklisted, ridiculed, denigrated, and openly attacked.

The Takeaway

Especially in a Christian nation like America, this tax-funded anti-Christian indoctrination should be considered totally unacceptable. It represents an existential threat to liberty, peace, and prosperity. Parents and taxpayers need to stop these abuses now, before the ongoing “fundamental transformation” America becomes impossible to reverse. Protecting one’s own children is a great place to start.

Alex Newman is a correspondent for The New American, covering economics, education, politics, and more. He can be reached at anewman@thenewamerican.com. Follow him on Twitter @ALEXNEWMAN_JOU or on Facebook

Alex Newman: Orwellian Nightmare: Data-mining Your Kids 0 (0)

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by Alex Newman

One of the most troubling aspects of the “education reforms” currently being advanced by the Obama administration and its allies is the unprecedented monitoring and tracking of students — invasions of privacy so pervasive George Orwell might blush. Everything from biometric data to information on children’s beliefs and families is already being vacuumed up. Opponents of the “reform” agenda have highlighted the cradle-to-grave accumulation of private and intimate data as among the most compelling reasons to kill the whole process.

Aside from data produced by the looming Common Core-aligned national testing regime, most of the data-mining schemes are not technically direct components of the plot to nationalize education standards. However, the vast collection of personal information and the accompanying data-mining are intricately linked to the federally backed standards in multiple ways, not to mention myriad other federal schemes. Despite protestations to the contrary, the new standards and the data collection go together hand in hand.

Efforts to portray the data gathering via Common Core-aligned testing as a “state-led” plot notwithstanding, the Obama administration is reportedly considering raising phone taxes by executive decree to help subsidize the necessary technology. Why federal tax increases would be needed to pay for education and data-mining schemes that the federal government is supposedly not involved in has not been explained by officials, but experts and analysts say the reason is obvious.

Implementing Intrusions

Already, there are numerous systems being used and deployed across America aimed at compiling unprecedented amounts of data on students. Some are run by private organizations with government assistance; others are operated by authorities directly. All of them are extremely controversial, however, with parents and privacy advocates outraged.

Among the data schemes that have received a great deal of attention in recent months is “inBloom.” As with the new national education standards called Common Core, it is also funded by Bill Gates and the Carnegie Corporation. With at least nine states participating in the $100 million program already, the non-profit entity, which shares data with whomever authorities choose, is quickly gobbling up vast quantities of information.

Respected experts such as attorney Michael Farris, president of ParentalRights.org, pointed out that the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child committee has repeatedly pressured governments to create similar national databases on children, albeit using different pretexts. Even liberals have expressed opposition. “Turning massive amounts of personal data about public school students to a private corporation without any public input is profoundly disturbing and irresponsible,” said New York Civil Liberties Union Executive Director Donna Lieberman, slamming authorities for failing to disclose the scheme or offer parents an opt-out.

In conjunction with inBloom, other systems are being funded and largely directed by the federal government itself. Using the same unconstitutional process as the one used to foist Common Core on state governments — a combination of federal bribes, waivers, and more — the Obama administration all but forced cash-strapped states to start monitoring and tracking student information, or to expand their existing systems.

Previous administrations and U.S. lawmakers also contributed to the problem, with the foundations having been laid dec­ades ago. Before Obama, the Bush-era No Child Left Behind Act, for instance, among myriad other demands, called on states seeking federal funds to create “unique statewide identifiers” for each student. Under Obama, the process has accelerated at an unprecedented rate.

The stimulus-funded “Race to the Top,” a so-called school improvement scheme demanded by Obama, only distributed taxpayer funds to states that agreed to build and expand data systems, with the secretary of education specifically requesting interoperable databases to facilitate the collection and transfer of data. Massive bribes to states from the $50 billion “State Fiscal Stabilization Fund” conditioned on acceptance of Common Core and expanded data tracking, also part of the “stimulus” package, were critical in advancing the plot as well.

Boasting about the “stimulus”-funded coercion of state governments on data regimes during a speech to UNESCO, the deeply controversial UN “education” agency, Education Secretary Arne Duncan lauded the program.

“More robust data systems and a new generation of assessments can assist teachers and principals to improve their practices and tailor their instruction in ways that were largely unthinkable in the past,” Duncan continued. “We have advanced data systems that we are constantly improving.” Duncan wants other governments and the UN to follow the Obama administration’s lead on data gathering, he explained.

The administration helped pay for expanding “state” systems with an eye toward integrating them. Some $315 million in federal grants, for example, were used to bribe state governments and help them comply. However, the specific grant scheme, known as the Statewide Longitudinal Data Systems (SLDS) program, actually began handing out taxpayer money in 2005.

As of 2009, the latest year for which figures are available on the Department of Education’s website, 41 states and Washington, D.C. had been awarded federal SLDS grants to expand their data systems on students. Experts say all 50 states now maintain or are capable of maintaining huge databases on the vast majority of American kids.

According to the Department of Education, the goal of the SLDS grants is to have states “expand their data systems to track students’ achievement from preschool through college.” The Education Department’s National Center for Education Statistics offers slightly more detail about the SLDS scheme online: “Through grants and a growing range of services and resources, the program has helped propel the successful design, development, implementation, and expansion of K12 and P-20W (early learning through the workforce) longitudinal data systems,” it explains. “These systems are intended to enhance the ability of States to efficiently and accurately manage, analyze, and use education data, including individual student records.”

Cradle to Career Data Collection

Of course, all of the data collected must be shared with the U.S. Department of Education and other entities within and outside the federal government. Acting unilaterally, U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan even purported to overrule federal privacy laws by promulgating new “regulations” gutting the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA). Some lawmakers expressed outrage, but the process continues.

“As part of what you described as a ‘cradle to career agenda,’ the Department of Education is aggressively moving to expand data systems that collect information on our nation’s students,” wrote Rep. John Kline (R-Minn.), now chairman of the House Education and Workforce Committee, in an early 2010 letter to Duncan. “The Department’s effort to shepherd states toward the creation of a de facto national student database raises serious legal and prudential questions.”

As Kline points out in the letter, there is good reason to believe that the administration is again flouting federal law. “Congress has never authorized the Department of Education to facilitate the creation of a national student database,” he explained. “To the contrary, Congress explicitly prohibited the ‘development of a nationwide database of personally identifiable information’ … and barred the ‘development, implementation, or maintenance of a Federal database.” Despite no mention of the Constitution, multiple federal statutes are cited in the correspondence.

Apparently, the administration does not take kindly to having its alleged violations of the law exposed. While it couldn’t fire Rep. Kline, the Education Department did reportedly dismiss its top privacy official, then-Family Policy Compliance Office chief Paul Gammill. According to a 2010 report in Inside Higher Ed, Gammill was fired after he “argued in internal meetings and documents that the department’s approach to prodding states to expand their longitudinal student data systems violated the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act.” The Education Department refused to comment on the case, though it openly admits that one of the long-term goals of the SLDS program is to “make education data transparent through Federal and public reporting.”

According to the Department of Education, grants awarded to states under the program are aimed at supporting the creation and implementation of systems “that have the capacity to link individual student data across time and across databases” and “promote the linking of data collected or held by various institutions, agencies, and States.” Among the data to be included are the yearly test records of individual students mandated under the 1965 Elementary and Secondary Education Act. “States are encouraged to include additional information in their longitudinal data systems,” the department continued.

In another Education Department document offering “guidance” on the SLDS schemes, further insight is offered into what sort of information authorities are seeking and collecting. Among the “Personally Identifiable Information” outlined in the report: name, parents’ names, address, Social Security number, date of birth, place of birth, mother’s maiden name, and more.

Other private and protected data that might be collected, the document suggests, include the “political affiliations or beliefs of the student or parent; mental and psychological problems of the student or the student’s family, sex behavior or attitudes; illegal, anti-social, self-incriminating, and demeaning behavior; critical appraisals of other individuals with whom respondents have close family relationships; legally recognized privileged or analogous relationships, such as those of lawyers, physicians, and ministers; religious practices, affiliations, or beliefs of the student or the student’s parent; or income.” While the collection of such data in surveys and questionnaires funded by federal tax dollars requires parental consent under federal law, state-level collection does not. Plus, experts say there are numerous other potential loopholes as well.

So Much for Student Privacy

Much of the information vacuumed up at all levels of government already makes its way into a national Department of Education scheme known as “EDFacts.” The department describes it online: “EDFacts is a U.S. Department of Education (ED) initiative to collect, analyze, report on and promote the use of high-quality, kindergarten through grade 12 (K-12) performance data…. EDFacts centralizes data provided by state education agencies, local education agencies and schools.” Under EDFacts, state education agencies submit some 180 data groups. The federal National Center for Education Statistics, meanwhile, describes over 400 data points to be collected.

The U.S. Department of Labor, separately, admits that it is working to “integrate workforce data and create linkages to education data.” According to the department’s “Workforce Data Quality Initiative,” the SLDS will “enable workforce data to be matched with education data to ultimately create longitudinal data systems with individual-level information beginning with pre-kindergarten through post-secondary schooling all the way through entry and sustained participation in the workforce and employment services system.” When combined with information from the IRS, ObamaCare, the NSA, and countless other federal data-collection schemes, the picture that emerges has critics very nervous.

As technology advances, the federal government’s Orwellian data gathering will — without action to stop it — almost certainly expand beyond most people’s wildest nightmares. In fact, it already has. Consider, for example, a February 2013 report by the Department of Education dubbed Promoting Grit, Tenacity, and Perseverance: Critical Factors for Success in the 21st Century. Included in the 100-page report is information about technology already being used in an Education Department-funded tutoring program.

“Researchers are exploring how to gather complex affective data and generate meaningful and usable information to feed back to learners, teachers, researchers, and the technology itself,” the report explains. “Connections to neuroscience are also beginning to emerge.” (Emphasis added.) The technological tools already being used by federally funded education schemes to probe students’ minds and “measure” the children include, as described in the report, “four parallel streams of affective sensors.”

Among the devices in use today through a federally funded tutoring scheme is a “facial expression camera” used to “detect emotion” and “capture facial expressions.” According to the report, the camera is linked to software that “extracts geometric properties on faces.” There is also a “posture analysis seat” and a “pressure mouse.” Finally, the report describes a “wireless skin conductance sensor” strapped to students’ wrists. The sensors collect “physiological response data from a biofeedback apparatus that measures blood volume, pulse, and galvanic skin response to examine student frustration.” Again, these systems are already being used in government-funded programs, and with technology racing ahead, developments are expected to become increasingly troubling.

Another Education Department report, entitled Enhancing, Teaching and Learning Through Educational Data Mining and Learning Analytics, acknowledges similarly alarming schemes. “A student learning database (or other big data repository) stores time-stamped student input and behaviors captured as students work within the system,” it notes. “A predictive model combines demographic data (from an external student information system) and learning/behavior data from the student learning database to track a student’s progress and make predictions about his or her future behaviors or performance.” (Emphasis added.)

All across the country today, Big Brother-like technological developments in biometrics are also making schools increasingly Orwellian. Earlier this year in Polk County, Florida, for example, students’ irises were scanned without parental consent. “It simply takes a picture of the iris, which is unique to every individual,” wrote the school board’s “senior director of support services” in a letter to parents. “With this program, we will be able to identify when and where a student gets on the bus, when they arrive at their school location, when and what bus the student boards and disembarks in the afternoon. This is an effort to further enhance the safety of our students. The EyeSwipe-Nano is an ideal replacement for the card based system since your child will not have to be responsible for carrying an identification card.”

In San Antonio, Texas, meanwhile, a female student made national news — and exposed what was going on — when she got in a legal battle with school officials over her refusal to wear a mandatory radio-frequency identification (RFID) device. The same devices are already being implanted under people’s skin in America and abroad — albeit voluntarily. Also in the biometric field, since at least 2007, children in states like Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and New Jersey have been fingerprinted at school under the guise of “school lunch” programs and other pretexts.

Despite fierce opposition, the trend toward using biometric data to identify and track students while collecting unimaginable amounts of information is accelerating. The federal government is helping lead the way toward abolishing any vestiges of privacy, and aside from NSA spying on virtually everyone, students appear to be among the primary targets. Without major resistance, experts predict that someday — perhaps even in the very near future — biometric identification will become ubiquitous. Combined with all of the other data being collected, the federal government may finally achieve what was sought by tyrants throughout history: detailed 24/7 information on everything, about everyone.

TNA: https://www.thenewamerican.com/culture/education/item/16193-orwellian-nightmare-data-mining-your-kids

Alex Newman is a correspondent for The New American, covering economics, education, politics, and more. He can be reached at anewman@thenewamerican.com. Follow him on Twitter @ALEXNEWMAN_JOU or on Facebook

 

Alex Newman: California Goes Full Orwell: “Cradle-to-Career” Data Scheme  0 (0)

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by Alex Newman

Blazing ahead on the highway to a full-blown Orwellian society, California just approved a new comprehensive “education” data regime that is being touted by Governor Gavin Newsom and lawmakers as a “Cradle-to-Career Data System.”

While details are still being worked out, it is clear that this massive data-gathering machine is intended to vacuum up every sort of information imaginable on California children. The intrusive surveillance and tracking will begin at birth and extends through work life. Health data will be included, too.

The scheme was strongly supported by Governor Newsom. In fact, on the very first page of his proposed budget for the year, the radical left-wing politician demanded $10 million to start building the enormous data regime.

The purpose of it all, Newsom said, is “to better track student outcomes and increase the alignment of our educational system to the state’s workforce needs.” In short, government central planning is the admitted goal — though certainly not the only one.

The “Cradle-to-Career Data System Act” was approved overwhelmingly as part of a broader “education” bill. In the Senate, SB 75 was approved by a massive landslide of 31 in favor versus 7 against. In the Assembly, the vote was 62 to 14 in favor.

A “workgroup” under the supervision of the executive branch will bring together “social justice” groups, unions, Big Tech bosses, Big Business, and other special interests to determine what data to collect and what exactly to do with it. More details on the scheme are expected by July of next year.

For now, the legislation calls for integrating K-12 data with higher education data. After that, the next phase will include workforce data, “early education” data, preschool data, health data, and much more. It will all be linked together in the databases, which will be shared with the feds and special interests. Even private institutions are expected to provide data for Big Brother’s new scheme.

Would-be profiteers and totalitarians of all varieties celebrated the legislation, disgorging platitudes on the supposed wonders it will do for “education” and the “children.” Critics, though, sounded the alarm.

“Big data and technological progress are enabling leftist government officials to take totalitarianism socialism to unforeseen heights,” explained popular liberty-minded commentator Shane Trejo in a piece about the new data-gathering scheme in California. “George Orwell must be spinning in his grave.”

Meanwhile, as The Newman Report has documented, more than half of California children cannot read, and over 25 percent are “gender non-conforming.” Obviously, education is not the goal here.

The Takeaway

As long as parents continue allowing the government to brainwash and data-rape their children in government schools, the abuse will continue to get more extreme. The government has no business gathering this private data from children and families. It is past time for parents to “just say no!”

   Alex Newman is a correspondent for The New American, covering economics, education, politics, and more. He can be reached at anewman@thenewamerican.com. Follow him on Twitter @ALEXNEWMAN_JOU or on Facebook

Alex Newman: False Attack on FreedomProject Shreds “PolitiFact” Credibility 0 (0)

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by Alex Newman

In a ham-handed effort to mislead concerned parents and protect the education establishment, the far-left “fact checking” website PolitiFact has again exposed itself as a dishonest purveyor of misleading propaganda rather than a genuine fact-checking service. Aside from the scam website Snopes, which recently defended the teaching of child rape to children in a ludicrous attack on FreedomProject, Politifact may be the most dishonest “fact checking” service around.

This particular story began in January when FreedomProject’s The Newman Report exposed California’s proposed new “Health Education Framework” and the gender-bending propaganda within it. FreedomProject leader Dr. Duke Pesta and this writer went on to produce a video focusing on one point in particular: The HEF’s recommendation of the controversial book Who Are You?: The Kid’s Guide to Gender Identity. 

Among other absurdities, the book, recommended in the Kindergarten through 3rd grade section of the HEF, teaches children that they can choose from an infinite variety of “genders” that may not match their “sex assigned at birth.” Examples of choices offered include “trans, genderqueer, non-binary, gender fluid, transgender, gender neutral, agender, neutrois, bigender, third gender, two-spirit,” and more. This is described in the book as the “gender spectrum.”

“Some people say there are only two genders. But there are really many genders,” the book teaches children as young as 4. “I am … girl boy both neither just me! You are who you say you are, because YOU know best. For some people, the grown-ups guessed right about their body and their gender. This is called cisgender — when someone’s identity matches their sex assigned at birth. And for some people, there are more than just two choices.”

The FreedomProject video exposing this insanity — widely regarded by experts as child abuse — reached over 5 million people on Facebook. It also sparked a national outcry that shocked California’s fringe political establishment. After the massive scandal, education policymakers in the state retreated slightly. Indeed, in press release issued just last month, they even announced that the book “Who Are You?” would be removed from the Health Education Framework.

However, the latest version of the HEF posted on the California Department of Education’s website still includes the book as of June 27. Indeed, Politifact reported that an official had promised to remove the book in revisions due “in a couple of months,” and until then, there was not even a public notice that the extremist propaganda would supposedly be removed from the HEF.

And yet, that supposed decision to remove it is the crux of PolitiFact’s rating of “false” the notion that California was planning to teach children that there are at least 15 “genders” they could choose from. Even if it is true that the state backed down and removed the book in May, which at this point is far from clear since no version of the HEF has been released without the book, the article and video produced by FreedomProject were entirely accurate when they were produced in January.

Claiming that the claim is “false” because months after it was made, the state supposedly revised its materials is the height of dishonesty. Imagine Politifact and its hack “fact checker” Amy Sherman going back to fact check New York Times articles from 2004 about the Iraq War and claiming the articles were “false” because the U.S. government had largely removed it forces by 2019. That is how absurd the website’s attack on FreedomProject’s reporting is.

PolitiFact also claimed, falsely, that FreedomProject had reported that the book was mandatory. In reality, Dr. Pesta was very clear in the video that it was a “recommendation,” which in practical terms means it will be used. “The State of California has recommended — and when California recommends something, that means they want it in there — they’ve recommended a book for 5-year olds to begin to comprehend the complicated nature of gender,” he said in the video.

What FreedomProject did report is what the State of California has been explaining openly for many months: Parents may not opt their children out of state-mandated LGBT indoctrination. This is stated openly and clearly all over California Department of Education websites and materials, and can be verified with a quick check. PolitiFact apparently hopes nobody will read past their bogus “false” rating — much less investigate their report — to discover the truth.

The Takeaway

The fact that fake “fact-checking” websites are brazenly lying about FreedomProject and its reporting to conceal the truth is actually very good news. It means the work of FreedomProject exposing this evil perpetrated against America’s children is highly effective. And it has the establishment and its toadies in the business of fake “fact checking” worried sick. Still, because the far-left Facebook partners with PolitiFact, legal options are being considered to deal with the malicious libel. Stay tuned.

   Alex Newman is a correspondent for The New American, covering economics, education, politics, and more. He can be reached at anewman@thenewamerican.com. Follow him on Twitter @ALEXNEWMAN_JOU or on Facebook

Alex Newman: Parents Sue After Second Grade Teacher Tries To Convince 8-Year-Old Boy He Was A Girl 0 (0)

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by Alex Newman

Outraged parents are suing an Oregon school district after a government-school teacher repeatedly tried to convince their son that he was a girl trapped in a boy’s body, causing severe emotional trauma to the child. Similar horrors are taking place in public schools across America.

According to a report in local Fox affiliate KPTV, the boy was held back from recess multiple times in April of 2018 by the teacher at Nellie Muir Elementary School.

During these incidents, the teacher reportedly pestered the boy about whether he was “transgender.” The child was also forced to watch videos and read about gender-confusion, referred to by school officials as “transgenderism.”

And now, the boy is suffering, big time, his parents reported.

“He feels different now, he feels confused,” the mother was quoted as saying, requesting anonimity to protect the family’s privacy. “To hear your son say that…on a couch talking to a therapist, holding back tears – it’s very heartbreaking.”

The parents are suffering too, with the mother taking medical leave from work and the father now dealing with panic attacks.

The mother only found out about it all because the teacher ordered the child to read books about transgenderism, which the mother found in her son’s backpack.

School officials are claiming that the boy had said he felt like a girl before the extreme transgender indoctrination began. But the father says that even if that were true, it is no excuse for what happened.

“She should have notified us if that was the case, if he did say he felt like a girl,” said the boy’s father. Indeed, if it is true that the boy expressed confusion, it was almost certainly a result of propaganda at school.

Across America, though, government schools have adopted policies to keep parents in the dark about “sexual identity” and “gender” issues.

In any case, the parents believe the teacher began pestering the child because he was using the staff restroom due to embarrassment about a stomach issue — not because he was confused about whether he was a boy or girl.

The Oregon parents in this case, however, want others to know about the secret indoctrination taking place at Nellie Muir Elementary School. Similar outrages and abuses—the American College of Pediatricians has referred to transgender propaganda as “child abuse” — are occurring nationwide.

But it could have been worse for this family. As The Newman Report documented in November, government-school officials in Minnesota actually took a child to have his genitals surgically removed in a “sex change” operation in defiance of the parents. A lawsuit is currently underway in that case, too.

The Takeaway

Parents who trust government schools with their children are putting those children in grave danger, as this case illustrates. Ultimately, it is up to parents to protect their children from the madness and abuse that has overtaken the “public education” system.

Alex Newman is a correspondent for The New American, covering economics, education, politics, and more. He can be reached at anewman@thenewamerican.com. Follow him on Twitter @ALEXNEWMAN_JOU or on Facebook

Tom DeWeese: Barbarians at the School House Door 0 (0)

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Barbarians at the School House Door – “The technocrats will argue that the World Wide Web contains vast knowledge for the taking with the right tools. They argue that printed books are limited.”

by Tom DeWeese

The barbarians have finally broken down the school doors and are now plundering knowledge. Books are their target. Banning them is the goal.

In New York City, administrators at the Life Sciences Secondary School have ordered all textbooks rounded up and removed. Books, they say, are antiquated. Instead, technology is to be the new god of learning.
Of course the excuse is that books are expensive. The schools complain that the kids lose the books or that they wear out and there is no budget to replace them. And more importantly, using iPads means they can be automatically updated with the latest information, scientific discovery and technology.

So the schools need to keep up with all the latest developments to keep the kids on top, they say. It’s a wide, wonderful brave new world! Aren’t our children lucky to live in these times?  Everything in today’s school house is apparently designed for the comfort and ease of the children. No stress. No demands. No expectations.

And so the books were piled up in the hallway of the school. Next stop – the trash bin. Most were in good condition, including hundreds of math, algebra, geometry and various English literature text books. Also strewn around the floor were copies of Romeo and Juliet and A Street Car named Desire.

The technocrats will argue that the World Wide Web contains vast knowledge for the taking with the right tools. They argue that printed books are limited. That printed text books soon become antiquated. And so the future of learning is achieved by opening up this super highway of knowledge in the class rooms so every child has access. Thus, throw away the books and unchain their minds.

The incident at the middle school in New York is not isolated. It’s a growing trend. Cushing Academy, a private prep school in Massachusetts, just dumped its 20,000 library books. Instead, the library has been revamped into pseudo Internet café. Here the students can watch the three television flat screens or just sit and talk.

Say schools officials, “The library is trading its 20,000-volume collection for a database of millions of digital books. All of the students can read any of the books, either through the 68 Amazon Kindles cycling around the campus or in the laptop that each of the school’s 450 students is provided.”

Said Headmaster James Tracy, “If I look outside my window and I see my student reading Chaucer under a tree, it is utterly immaterial to me whether they’re doing so by way of a Kindler or by way of a paperback.”
Actually it does matter. First, traditional libraries were always ordered to be quiet areas because students were absorbing information, researching or writing papers. The atmosphere now is loud with lots of talking taking place.

That doesn’t provide a learning atmosphere. Second, printed books cannot be changed. The content in iPads can be changed and controlled by outside forces. In short, one can’t trust the content to be accurate. Third, those same outside forces can actually control what information is available. They can control knowledge.

Read Tom Deweese’s book, “Erase: A Political Thriller”

Today we are a divided society. Freedom verses control. Can anyone deny that there are powerful forces that seek to change how we think in order to fulfill a revolution to literally change our entire society? We have observed massive changes in our culture over the past ten years. Free enterprise is racist and evil. Private property ownership is a social injustice. Individual thought is dangerous. Marriage and sexual orientation are in great turmoil. Free speech is a threat. The mere mention of a certain presidential candidate can send college students into turmoil requiring therapy and major thumb sucking.

Do you think these changes are just happenstance? No, they are the result of a carefully orchestrated takeover of the public education system with the specific purpose of creating a new kind of citizen for the future. One that doesn’t challenge authority and official dictates. How do you create such a product? Keep them ignorant of history, philosophy and contrary ideas. If you don’t know there is even a question then you will never ask it.

Printed books can be dangerous as they can’t be changed. If allowed to remain they can be discovered by future generations. In printed version, their message remains intact, ready to spark questions to a hungry mind.

The Founding Fathers studied all kinds of government styles and philosophies before deciding on our Republican form. They wanted one that would protect the freedom of thought, movement and our ability to benefit from the fruits of our own labor. Individuality, private property and free enterprise were the roots of the government they chose. To keep the freedom which these policies created, the Founders fully understood that knowledge was key. Thomas Jefferson said, “If we are to guard against ignorance and remain free, it is the responsibility of every American to be informed.”

Today, the revolution in our classrooms has robbed the children of the philosophy behind our founder’s actions. They have never been taught that private property ownership is the only true way to eradicate poverty. They have no idea that free enterprise is the true system that gives then freedom of choice and control over the quality and quantity of products and services we purchase.

And as they color their hair purple, dress in outrageous fashions, and take on the usual youthful defiance to claim their individuality, they slavishly cling to their public school teachings that individuality is selfish and must be controlled. They do so automatically because their ability to think and reason has been removed through lack of knowledge.

Behavior modification, social justice and an all out assault on attitudes, values and beliefs have replaced academics in the public education system as it churns out the perfect global village idiots. Leaving old books and their anti-revolutionary ideas lying around is a danger to their revolution. Soon, books with contrary ideas will not be available in your favorite E-book. Google will not provide the answers in a search. Facebook will censure contrary postings. Oh, wait, all of that is already happening.

I read the report on this trashing of books with great interest because such action was a major part of the plot of my recent political thriller ERASE. In my fictionalized world an evil force called LEAP was systematically taking over the publishing industry, slowly eliminating outlets for printed books and replacing them with their own E-book version. LEAP even made a massive gift to the schools across the nation by giving every school kid a LEAP iPad to replace their school books. The only problem was that now LEAP controlled the content and could change it at will.

I wrote ERASE to be fiction. I didn’t intend to provide the forces of evil with a “How To” manual! Yet, now my fiction has certainly become reality and it’s growing in schools across the country. In one scene of ERASE a teacher asks the question, “How do they think they can stop knowledge, it’s there, no matter what? The answer came back to him, “They stop knowledge by banning it.” In our modern age, controlled by technology, book burning is no longer a necessary tool for tyrants. All they need to do is press a button and knowledge, history, indeed entire societies disappear in an instant.

APC: https://americanpolicy.org/2017/07/10/barbarians-at-the-school-house-door/

Read Tom Deweese’s Biography

Terminate The Department of Education 0 (0)

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Terminate The Department of Education – Please sign petition below!

Those words are the entire content of a new bill, H.R. 899. This bill was introduced by courageous Congressman Thomas Massie (R – Kentucky). H.R. 899 is revolutionary. H.R. 899 will end the destruction of America’s education system. H.R. 899 should have been introduced 37 years ago.

But no Republican has had the courage to do the right thing in all those years – until now. That’s why I’m asking you to stand with this courageous Congressman to help him get this vital bill passed in Congress and delivered to President Trump’s desk for his signature.

Please sign the enclosed petition to Congressman Massie telling him you support H.R.899.

PETITION TO: TERMINATE THE DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION

And I will personally deliver your signed petition to him so that he may display yours and thousands more to show Congress the American people demand an end to the federal Department of Education.

This is what you and I have been waiting for. It’s the end of the federal government messing with the minds of our children, indoctrinating them with leftist propaganda.

The end of Common Core!

The end of the power of the National Education Association (NEA) the most powerful union in the nation – and the one that directly affects your child’s future! These programs and policies are the NEA’s agenda:
Goals 2000, School to Work, Workforce Development Boards, pumping drugs like Ritalin into our children. And now today – Common Core.

Classrooms are torturing your children with idiotic programs like Common
Core where the questions make no sense – defy logic and cause them to quit. American history has been removed. Instead of learning about the Declaration of Independence the children have been indoctrinated to accept the UN’s Declaration on Human Rights. Academics have nearly disappeared from the classroom and the children are pummeled with propaganda on global warming.

The Department of Education’s policy is to determine that your children are sick if they believe in their nation as a bastion of freedom. Or if they love God and their families. As a result of 38 years of the Department of Education our children have been successfully turned into ignorant, pliable global village idiots!

Does that sound harsh?

Then take a good look around you. Look at the surge of young people who unquestioningly supported avowed Socialist Bernie Sanders for president. Look at the sick images of college students who need counseling and coloring books to deal with anyone who expresses opinions other than those deemed to be politically correct by the Education establishment.

It’s all fed through the Department of Education. And if our nation is to survive it must stop! That’s why you and I must take a stand to help Rep. Massie succeed in terminating the Department of Education.

PETITION TO: TERMINATE THE DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION

In introducing his H.R. 899 Rep. Massie said, “States and local communities are best positioned to shape curricula that meet the needs of their students.” And he is absolutely right.

That’s why we have 50 state school boards. And it’s why nearly every community in the nation has a locally-elected school board – so parents have a say in their child’s education. Through that system of local control the United States education system was the envy of the world. Today it is a pathetic failure. H.R. 899 has been long overdue.

In 1980 Ronald Reagan promised to get rid of the Department of Education that was started by Jimmy Carter just a year before. Reagan was betrayed by the same type of establishment Republicans that now threaten Donald Trump.

In 1996 the Republican Party Platform said the “federal government has no constitutional authority to be involved in school curricula… That is why we will abolish the Department of Education, end federal meddling in our schools and promote family choice at all levels of learning.” Republicans lost the presidential race that year and so the Department of Education survived.

Today you and I have a new chance. During the recent campaign, President Trump called for slashing the Department of Education Budget. He certainly sees the danger. And I am quite certain that new Education Secretary Betsy DeVos would gladly see her position ended if it also meant the end of the Department of Education. That would be a victory for her and the Trump Administration.

PETITION TO: TERMINATE THE DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION

So let’s take the right action today.

Let’s end the power of the National Education Association. Let’s save generations of children from being enslaved in ignorance. Let’s save millions of tax payer dollars. And let’s take the first vital steps in draining the swamp and restoring our nation’s precious Republic.

All of that can be achieved by passing a simple one-line bill. “The Department of Education shall terminate on December 31, 2018.” It’s that simple.

I started my fight against the Department of Education in the 1990s when Bill Clinton was president. He had introduced Goals 2000 and the rest of the policies to change our education system. This was before Common Core. I walked all over Capitol Hills meeting with Members of Congress, begging them to stop these programs. Incredibly, Republicans were actually sponsoring many of them.

I actually succeeded three times in stopping the passage of the Workforce Development Act – then called the Careers Act – until I was betrayed by a U.S. Senator from Ohio – Mike DeWine. He lied on the floor of the Senate by saying I and Phyllis Schlafly supported the bill. His lie passed the bill.

Please, join with me in supporting Congressman Thomas Massie’s bill H. R. 899. We can finally terminate the federal Department of Education and return education policy to the local level where you have a say in how it is done! Please sign my enclosed petition of support to Rep. Massie so he can prove the American people support his bill and demand an end to the Department of Education.

PETITION TO: TERMINATE THE DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION

Also, if you can, please call you congressman and ask for his support of the bill. In fact, if you can, ask him/her to co-sponsor it. He has 7 co-sponsors so far. If we can get 50 Members of Congress to sign on we can pass H.R. 899! You can call your Congressional Representative at 202-224-3121. Just ask for him/her by name. You will be automatically connected.

I am doing everything I can to build support for the bill. Will you help me lead that effort across the country? But we can win this battle to terminate the Department of Education because the American people are finally fed up with these tyrannical policies of the Left.  We’ve never had a better opportunity.
H.R. 899 is our best chance to stop the destruction of our American way.

PETITION TO: TERMINATE THE DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION

Thank you,
 Tom DeWeese, 
President

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