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	<title>FrontPage Magazine &#187; Mary Grabar</title>
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		<title>Common Core&#8217;s Little Green Soldiers</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/mary-grabar/common-cores-little-green-soldiers/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=common-cores-little-green-soldiers</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/mary-grabar/common-cores-little-green-soldiers/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 04 Mar 2014 05:46:00 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Mary Grabar]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[classroom]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Climate Change]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Common Core]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Global Warming]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Indoctrination]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[math]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[science]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=220193</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Shrinking hard science to make room for indoctrination. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/climateeducation-a9117b32fbeba1efc3ce45c4e9d8a2a2a390927b-s6-c30.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-220195" alt="climateeducation-a9117b32fbeba1efc3ce45c4e9d8a2a2a390927b-s6-c30" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/climateeducation-a9117b32fbeba1efc3ce45c4e9d8a2a2a390927b-s6-c30-450x337.jpg" width="270" height="202" /></a>Remember the children singing praise songs to Obama back in 2008?  Remember young teenage boys marching in formation and shouting out thanks to Obama for their promising futures?</span></p>
<p>The appointment of <a href="http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/no-more-carrots-lots-more-stick_756487.html">Arne Duncan as Secretary of Education</a> initially was seen as a savvy bipartisan move.  But under his watch the Department of Education has become a propaganda arm used to influence the next generation to accept the idea of catastrophic man-made climate change as per the UN, the Environmental Protection Agency, and such groups as the National Wildlife Federation.</p>
<p>In a multi-pronged approach, the Department is teaming up with various non-profit and government organizations and curriculum companies to promote “fun” contests and activities for students, while promoting the next phase of Common Core “State Standards”—in science.</p>
<p>For example, the Department’s latest Green Strides newsletter (February 28) announced three contests for K-12 students who display their agreement with the government&#8217;s position on climate change.</p>
<p>In that newsletter, the Department of Education announced that another federal agency, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and its National Environmental Education Foundation, have “launched an exciting video challenge for middle school students called <a href="http://epa.gov/climatestudents/contest.html">Climate Change in Focus</a>.”  In this contest, <i>middle school</i> students are asked to make a video that “expresses why they care about climate change and what they are doing to reduce emissions or to prepare for its impacts.”  To win loyalty to the EPA, it is announced that winning videos will be highlighted on the EPA website.  The effort sounds like the kids’ cereal box promotions of yore: the top three entries will receive “cool prizes like a solar charging backpack,” winning class projects will receive special recognition for their school, and the first 100 entrants will receive a year’s subscription to <i>National Geographic Kids Magazine</i>.</p>
<p>Another contest, National Wildlife Federation&#8217;s <a href="http://www.nwf.org/Young-Reporters-for-the-Environment.aspx">Young Reporters for the Environment</a>, invites students “between the ages of 13-21 to report on an environmental issue in their community in an article, photo or photo essay, or short video.”  Entries should “reflect firsthand investigation of topics related to the environment and sustainability in the students&#8217; own communities, draw connections between local and global perspectives, and propose solutions.”</p>
<p>Students are also encouraged to make nominations for “<a href="http://www.unep.org/champions/">Champions of the Earth</a>,” a “UN-sponsored award for environment, Green Economy, and sustainability.”  Among the 2013 laureates are Martha Isabel Ruiz Corzo, who orchestrated a public-private biosphere reserve status for a region in Mexico, and <a href="http://www.unep.org/champions/laureates/2013/McClendon.asp">Brian McLendon</a>, of Google Earth.</p>
<p>Students already get exposed to climate change and sustainability in textbooks which are bought with taxpayer funds, as well as in videos and online materials produced by taxpayer-supported <a href="http://www.pbslearningmedia.org/search/?q=climate+change">Public Broadcasting</a>.  Many students, of course, have had to sit through Al Gore’s documentary, <i>An Inconvenient Truth.</i></p>
<p>Quite obviously, a middle school student does not have the necessary scientific knowledge to make videos about climate change—a particularly challenging scientific problem.</p>
<p>The Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS)—the next phase of Common Core—will make the situation worse, however.  Students will be even less capable of distinguishing science from propaganda.  These standards, like those for math and English Language Arts, were produced by Achieve, a nonprofit education group started by corporate leaders and some governors.</p>
<p>As in the standards for English Language Arts and math, the NGSS are intended to be transformative, or as Appendix A states, “to reflect a new vision for American science education.”  They call for new “performance expectations” that “focus on understanding and applications as opposed to memorization of facts devoid of context.”</p>
<p>It is precisely such short shrift to knowledge (dismissively referred to as “memorization”) to which science professors Lawrence S. Lerner and Paul Gross object.  The standards bypass essential math skills in favor of “process,” they asserted last fall at the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation <a href="http://edexcellence.net/next-generation-science-and-college-readiness">blog</a>.</p>
<p>Common Core standards, in all disciplines, are written with a lot of fluff to conceal their emptiness.</p>
<p>Lerner and Gross discovered “inconsistency between strong NGSS (and Appendix C) assertions and what was actually found by the mathematicians, among others, of our reviewing group.”</p>
<p>(The Common Core math standards themselves have garnered much criticism among teachers, parents, and students; focusing so much on “process,” they make simple problems bizarrely confusing, as a collection of <a href="http://pjmedia.com/lifestyle/2014/03/01/how-10-troubling-homework-assignments-reveal-the-truth-about-common-core/?singlepage=true">examples</a> illustrates.)</p>
<p>Lerner and Gross condemn the “Slighting of mathematics,” which does “increasing mischief as grade level rises, especially in the physical sciences.”  Physics is “effectively absent” at the high school level.</p>
<p>“Several devout declarations” appear, however, the authors sardonically point out, as they note this one from Appendix C:</p>
<blockquote><p>In particular, the best science education seems to be one based on integrating rigorous content with the practices that scientists and engineers routinely use in their work—including application of mathematics.</p></blockquote>
<p>Lerner and Gross attack the “practices” strategy, as an extension of the “inquiry learning” of the early 1990s, which had “no notable effect on the (mediocre) performance of American students in national and international science assessments.”</p>
<p>With some sarcasm, they write, “It is charming to say ‘. . . students learn science effectively when they actively engage in the practices of science.’”  However,</p>
<blockquote><p>Students will not learn best if they practice science exactly as do real scientists.  A firm conclusion in cognitive science contradicts that claim.  Beginners don’t and can’t ‘practice’ as do experts.  The practices of experts exploit prior experience and extensive build-up in long-term memory of scaffolding: facts, procedures, technical know-how, solutions to standard problems in the field, vocabularies—of knowledge in short.</p></blockquote>
<p>Not only do the <a href="http://www.nextgenscience.org/">Next Generation Science Standards</a> shirk the necessary foundations in math and science knowledge, but they explicitly call for including ideological lessons, such as “Human impacts on Earth systems.”  For grades K-2, students are to understand, “Things people do can affect the environment but they can make choices to reduce their impact.” In grades 3 through 5, students will learn “Societal activities have had major effects on the land, ocean, atmosphere, and even outer space.  Societal activities can also help protect Earth’s resources and environments.”  This is from part ESS3.C of the NGSS standards.</p>
<p>“Human impacts on Earth systems” are huge topics, when approached legitimately.  They present quandaries to scientists at the top levels.  Yet NGSS imposes them on kindergartners.  The objective, of course, is not teaching legitimate science, but indoctrination.</p>
<p>Amazingly, ten states have already voluntarily adopted the Standards.</p>
<p>Such efforts, coordinated by the Department of Education, threaten the future of science itself.</p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>. </b></p>
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		<title>Milan Zajec, Survivor of Communist Horrors in Slovenia, R.I.P.</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/mary-grabar/milan-zajec-survivor-of-communist-horrors-in-slovenia-r-i-p/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=milan-zajec-survivor-of-communist-horrors-in-slovenia-r-i-p</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/mary-grabar/milan-zajec-survivor-of-communist-horrors-in-slovenia-r-i-p/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 17 Feb 2014 05:38:02 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Mary Grabar]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Communism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Left]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Milan Zajec]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Slovenia]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[testimonial]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=219001</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[A farewell to the hero who gave a powerful testimonial to the criminality of communism. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/milan_zajec.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-219065" alt="milan_zajec" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/milan_zajec-397x350.jpg" width="278" height="245" /></a>Milan Zajec, one of three survivors who made his way out of the pit of a thousand dead and dying fellow Slovenians at Kočevski Rog in 1945, recently died in Cleveland, I learned from Pavle Borstnik’s column in the </span><i style="line-height: 1.5em;">Slovenian American Times</i><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">.  As in other Communist countries, Slovenian freedom-seekers were forcibly repatriated as deals were made with Stalin.  The war was over, but 10,000 refugees staying in a British-controlled camp in Austria were told they were going to Italy.  As they looked out the slats of the rail cars and saw Partisan soldiers, they knew that they were going to their gruesome deaths in their homeland under the rule of victor Marshall Tito.  Slovenia, which gained independence from Yugoslavia in 1991, is the size of New Jersey, but has over 600 mass, unmarked graves of victims of the Communists.</span></p>
<p>Borstnik describes Zajec as a “simple, country boy,” from the village of Veliki Gaber, who along with his brothers wanted to lead a simple life.  “Then came war and revolution and Milan soon recognized the real aims of the people claiming to be waging a ‘liberation war’ against the foreign occupier.  Together with most of his brothers he chose to resist this philosophy. . . .”</p>
<p>Borstnik writes that Zajec retreated into “total privacy” during his last years.</p>
<p>Those who were killed in the pits are often accused of being Nazi collaborators, Communist propaganda repeated in the schools and media.  In my most recent copy of <i>Slovene Studies</i>, Professor Oto Luthar of the Center for Interdisciplinary Studies in Ljubljana calls the Partisans “liberators.”</p>
<p>In the United States, scholars studying Communism are exiled from universities.  Communist <a href="http://www.aim.org/aim-column/gay-rights-aside-is-obama-working-for-putin/">propaganda</a> continues to come from Russia, even as the Olympics take place.</p>
<p>A former political prisoner of Tito, whom I met a few years ago at a Slavic studies conference, pointed out all the “red” academics and journalists who had flown to Philadelphia from Slovenia, or who were comfortably ensconced in American universities.  These academics do “gender analysis” or “semiotics” as they deny firsthand accounts of survivors—and history.</p>
<p>Real life doesn’t fit the neat categories of theory or ideology.</p>
<p>Borstnik explains that the Communists in Slovenia began their social revolution by forming a vaguely “anti-imperialist front.” Heeding Stalin, they launched an insurrection in Yugoslavia on July 4, 1941 under the pretense of fighting the Germans.  One thousand out of the 300,000 population of Ljubljana were killed by the secret police.</p>
<p>In the countryside, the Communists terrorized farm families, demanding food.  They were “armed bands, roaming the country, executing the known or suspected ‘enemies of the revolution’ and pillaging their property.”  The Slovenians were then accused by the Italians of supporting Communists and sent to concentration camps.</p>
<p>So the men decided to form independent Village Guard units for self-defense.  After Italy went to the Allies, the Germans came in.  Under German occupation, Village Guards became the Home Guards to protect Slovenians from the Partisans.</p>
<p>When Tito’s forces became victorious at the end of the war, the British shifted their support to him from Draza Mihailovich, the military commander of King Peter, in exile in Britain.  The 20,000 Home Guards (<i>Domobranci</i>) who had fled to Austria were disarmed by the British and repatriated until Canadian Major Paul Barre confronted the British commanders, thus saving 10,000 from the same fate.</p>
<p>In order to advance their pro-Communist theories, the professors overlook the complicated stories of life under Nazi occupation, as Communists terrorized the people.  Borstnik expresses contempt for the Nazis who treated Slovenians like slaves, as they did all Slavs.</p>
<p>Metod Milac who was born in 1924 in Slovenia and wrote a first-hand account in <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Resistance-Imprisonment-Forced-Labor-European/dp/0820457817/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1392248789&amp;sr=1-1"><i>Resistance, Imprisonment &amp; Forced Labor</i></a><i>: A Slovene Student in World War II</i>, also describes how most Slovenians felt about the Nazis.<i>  </i>Only a teenager, Milac was captured by the Italian fascists, then the Communist Partisans, and then again by the Italians.  He resumed his studies briefly after recovering from near starvation in the Rad concentration camp.</p>
<p>Milac describes the day in 1944 when the Germans forced the Home Guard (which his older brother, Ciril, had joined) to take an oath of allegiance: “I felt pain and despair that day, knowing that many of my friends, acquaintances, and schoolmates who participated had no intention of pledging any alliance to the Third Reich nor did the majority of those taking part.”  He expresses relief that his brother’s unit was not selected to take part in the oath-taking.</p>
<p>Milac had decided to join the pro-Anglo-American underground group, “Slovene National Clandestine Resistance Force,” diverting from his brother’s choice.  He was captured by the Gestapo and eventually sent to Auschwitz, where he survived the labor camp.  One of the 200,000 displaced persons, he immigrated to New York, then Cleveland, and finally Syracuse.  He earned advanced degrees in music and then in library science and becamea librarian at Syracuse University.  He tells this story in his book, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Land-Bright-Promise-Refugee-Reflects/dp/1433118467/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1392248789&amp;sr=1-2"><i>A Land Bright with Promise</i></a>.</p>
<p>Milac knew Milan Zajec and another one of the three survivors of Kočevski Rog, France Dejak.  It was through Dejak’s account that Milac learned about the fate of his brother, who was with Dejak’s group imprisoned at the school, Bishop’s Gymnasium, which the brothers had attended.  Milac writes,  “Having spent four years as a student in the Bishop’s Gymnasium only a few years before, he must have suffered even more at being a prisoner in the chapel where he attended daily mass as a student.  Dejak did not know much more, except that he last saw Ciril, wired to another man, when they were loaded on the trucks to the place of execution.  Thus, I can assume that his murder took place on Saturday, 9 June 1945.  He was 22 years old.”</p>
<p>Zajec, as Borstnik writes in his most recent column, was “chosen to survive.”  Fortunately, he recorded his memories. This is Zajec’s description of being transported with other prisoners (quoted in <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Slovenia-1945-Memories-Death-Survival/dp/1848855346/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1392248935&amp;sr=1-1&amp;keywords=slovenia+1945+memories+of+death+and+survival+after+world+war+ii"><i>Slovenia 1945</i></a><i> </i>by John Corsellus and Marcus Ferrar):</p>
<blockquote><p>We were all between 18 and 24 years old.  The wire cut into our flesh.  We were beaten by the Partisans at the corners of the truck.  I started to sob.  If I moved, everybody was hurt and we all fell on top of each other. . . We started to pray aloud and get ready for death.  We had been preparing for death ever since the Partisans got hold of us . . . I was afraid I would be sick and I could not get off the truck at Kočevski Rog.  The sun was strong and I was thirsty.</p></blockquote>
<p>They approached “the killing site in a valley”:</p>
<blockquote><p>We heard shooting and screaming of <i>domobranci </i>being killed.  Nobody cried yet.  We were just waiting.  I could not feel my legs any more.  They cut my shoe-straps and removed my shoes.  The knife went into my flesh and it bled.  I saw an 18-year-old boy with his eyes gouged out and his skull smashed.  He was still conscious, sitting quietly, not moaning, just sighing . . . We were forced to sit down and stand up, still tied together with wire that cut into our flesh.  We had to walk several metres and then back again.  It seemed to take about an hour.  We were made to sing Communist songs.  Some had their heads cut by the knives and were dragged along unconscious behind.</p></blockquote>
<p>Speaking Slovenian and wearing British uniforms, Partisans tore gold teeth out of the jaws of living <i>Domobranci</i>.  The prisoners were forced into a pit with bloody corpses. The dying moaned beneath Zajec, new victims fell over him, and blood flowed into his mouth.  He wrote, “I wanted to die, but death would not come.”</p>
<p>Zajec attributed his survival to his Holy Mary of Carmel medallion.  The dying prayed for their atheistic Communist enemies, and a priest chanted in Latin.  The Partisans fired shots and grenades into the pit.</p>
<p>Zajec survived five days.  Eventually pulling themselves out of the pit by a tree that had fallen in from blasting that was intended to cover the bodies, the survivors got out and walked 35 kilometers to safety.</p>
<p>Milac expresses his disbelief that all this happened without any trials, in violation of international rules. It was evidence that the goal of the Communist Party was “a Soviet-style dictatorship under Tito.”</p>
<p>With the sadness that overtakes him when he talks about the war, Milac writes, “It is also hard to believe that in the small Slovene nation one would find so many people who would be able, willing, and possess so a complete disregard for another human being to execute acts of such unbelievable sadism.”  His book is filled with accounts of kindness and cruelty on all sides.</p>
<p>My own parents escaped Yugoslavia (specifically Slovenia) in the late 1950s with me as a toddler.  I knew only bits and pieces about the war from overheard conversations among the adults.  They told about being forced by the occupiers to learn the Hungarian language and about soldiers demanding food from villagers.  There were secret signals among women to avoid rape.  There were stories of survival in forests.  There was the story of the young man in the village, whose name I don’t recall, who was shot just as he looked over his shoulder.  There was the uncle recruited to fight, with a gun pointed at him, more than once.  But we did not learn this history in school.</p>
<p>In his epilogue to <i>Resistance, Imprisonment, &amp; Forced Labor</i>, Milac writes that the enforced repatriations that killed his brother and several friends are “among the deepest wounds that are still bleeding.”  Efforts to cover them up, he writes, will last forever.</p>
<p>Borstnik continues to write about the political situation in Slovenia.  He calls Milan Zajec’s story “the final testimonial to the banality and criminality of the red ‘philosophy’ which, unfortunately, to this very day, continues to claim for itself the right to rule and judge the life of our unhappy homeland.”</p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>. </b></p>
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		<title>The Agenda of Racially Sensitive &#8216;White Guys&#8217;</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/mary-grabar/the-agenda-of-racially-sensitive-white-guys/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-agenda-of-racially-sensitive-white-guys</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/mary-grabar/the-agenda-of-racially-sensitive-white-guys/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 10 Feb 2014 05:05:14 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Mary Grabar]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[cultural insensitivity]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[diversity inc.]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Howard Zinn]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Luke Visconti]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Norman Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Race]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[sensitivity]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[white guy]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=218297</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The Marxist forefathers of today's "diversity" fear-mongers. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/ATWG_1-300x225.jpg"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-218298" alt="ATWG_1-300x225" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/ATWG_1-300x225.jpg" width="300" height="225" /></a>Over at a place called Diversity, Inc., founder and CEO Luke Visconti runs a regular column titled “Ask the White Guy.”  Recent advice columns have concerned “Why is Trayvon a White-on-Black Crime?” “Can a White Man Speak with Authority on Diversity?” and “Do Blacks Need to Relax Their Natural Hair to Get Promoted?” </span></p>
<p>No kidding.  There is also another white guy who profits from his presumed sensitivity to racism as he makes the <a href="http://speakoutnow.org/userdata_display.php?modin=50&amp;format=event">rounds</a> on college campuses, <a href="http://www.speakoutnow.org/userdata_display.php?modin=53&amp;uid=8569">coming next</a> to Princeton. His name is Tim Wise and he has written a book titled, <i>White Like Me: Reflections on Race from a Privileged Son.</i></p>
<p>Diversity, Inc., as to be expected, <a href="http://www.diversityinc.com/news/is-thug-the-new-n-word/?utm_source=SailThru&amp;utm_campaign=newsletterLuke&amp;utm_medium=DI&amp;utm_content=2014-01-29&amp;utm_term=news">weighed in</a> on Seattle Seahawks football player Richard Sherman’s claims that accusations that he displayed thug-like behavior in an interview immediately after he made a game-saving deflection is evidence of racism.  But Sherman’s statement to a FOX reporter, “I’m the best corner in the game! When you try me with a sorry receiver like [San Francisco 49er Michael] Crabtree, that’s the result you gonna get! Don’t you ever talk about me! … Don’t you open your mouth about the best or I’m gonna shut it for you real quick!” is hardly sportsmanlike behavior.</p>
<p>But as usual, Diversity, Inc., seeks out racism.  In this article they allow Sherman’s quotes about online comments to end the article: “mind-boggling the way the world reacted,” Sherman said. “I can’t say the world, I don’t want to generalize people like that because there are a lot of great people who didn’t react that way. But for the people who did react that way and throw the racial slurs and things like that out there, it was really sad. Especially that close to Martin Luther King Day.”</p>
<p>(Democrats are now studying ways to monitor “<a href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/13-dems-propose-bill-to-study-hate-speech-on-the-internet-outside-zone-of-first-amendment-protection/">hate speech</a>,” including online comments to which Sherman referred; this bone-headed idea came from a project for a geography class at <a href="http://now.humboldt.edu/news/geography-of-hate-mapping-the-origins-of-online-hate-speech">Humboldt State University</a>.)</p>
<p>Even after his team won, <a href="http://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/nfl/seahawks/2014/02/03/richard-sherman-super-bowl-seahawks/5176007/"><i>USA Today</i></a><i> </i>referred to this incident in the headline, “Seahawks’ Richard Sherman is full of smiles, not quotes, after Super Bowl win.”</p>
<p>Companies like Diversity Inc. who capitalize on the fear of discrimination lawsuits continue to exploit minority communities, as such white guys like Norman Mailer and Howard Zinn did in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s.</p>
<p>In his 1957 essay, “The White Negro,”<i> </i>Norman Mailer advanced the idea of “Hip,” “the sophistication of the wise primitive in a giant jungle.”  According to Mailer’s hipster theology, God is “located in the senses of his body, that trapped, mutilated, and nonetheless megalomaniacal God who is It. . . . not the God of the churches but the unachievable whisper of the mystery within the sex, the paradise of limitless energy and perception just beyond the next wave of the next orgasm.”</p>
<p>Mailer rationalized the behavior of the psychopath: “The psychopath murders—if he has the courage—out of the necessity to purge his violence, for if he cannot empty his hatred then he cannot love, his being is frozen with implacable self-hatred for his cowardice.”  Mailer presented the case of two eighteen-year-old thugs beating up a candy-store keeper.  Such murder is not therapeutic because it’s not murder of an equal.  Still, wrote Mailer, “courage of a sort is necessary, for one murders not only a weak fifty-year-old man but an institution as well.”</p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Howard Zinn, the late communist history professor too saw the “Negro,” specifically, the “ghetto Negro,” as someone who could fulfill his aims of tearing down capitalist institutions.  In a 1969 essay titled “Marxism and the New Left,” Mailer wrote, “Marx envisioned the industrial proletariat as the revolutionary agent because it was in need, exploited and brought together in the factory.  The Negro is in need, exploited and brought together in the ghetto.”  The New Left, the “loose amalgam of civil rights activists, Black Power advocates, ghetto organizers, student rebels, Vietnam protestors” would then recruit the ghetto “Negroes” to revolutionize “cities, universities, corporations.”</span></p>
<p>The respectable middle class was seen as the biggest obstacle to a communist revolution.  The 1960s was the time when the black community was making its biggest inroads into the middle class and into higher education.  Radicals like Zinn did not want blacks to acquire middle class status and values.  Some professors argued for admission of low-achieving black students to their campuses over high-achievers.  The New Left’s promotion of “smashing monogamy” and welfare dependence encouraged the decline of the black family.</p>
<p>Mailer gained notoriety and rationalization for his own thuggishness that included stabbing one of his wives and championing killer <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Mailer">Jack Abbott</a>, who would go on to murder again.  That led to sales of his books.  Zinn enjoyed the benefits of a tenured position in academe and sales of his books.  Visconti and Price today rake in consulting and speaking fees for hammering on the distorted and depressing charges of never-ending and ever-present racism.</p>
<p>There were some black leaders during the Civil Rights era who objected to such stereotyping and presumptuousness.</p>
<p>In his speech before the 84<sup>th</sup> Annual Session of the National Baptist Convention, in 1964, Reverend Joseph H. Jackson, President of the National Baptist Convention, indirectly criticized such agitators.  He advised that “Negroes must still make their own leaders.”  The leaders should come from the fields of politics, civil rights, religion, and business:</p>
<p>“We have athletes and comedians.  Let us still applaud our athletes when they achieve on the field of competition, and let us join with others and freely laugh at the jokes that our comedians give.  But we must not confuse these various fields.  There must not develop any dictatorship of any one field, and athletes and comedians must not make the mistake of assuming the role of political, religious, and cultural leaders.  We as a race must see to it that each man serves in his field, and we must not allow the white community to pick our leaders or to tell us what Negro we should follow.”</p>
<p>Jackson advanced a more measured approach to ending racial injustice and cautioned against a “spirit of revenge, blind emotions, and uncontrolled temper.”  Reminding his audience about how direct action led to “mob violence and vandalism,” he suggested instead using the vote and respectful debate.</p>
<p>Like Frederick Douglass, Jackson expressed hope that the American founders’ ideals would be fulfilled:</p>
<p>“America was born in a struggle and as a struggle for freedom, and for the opportunity to develop the highest resources of mankind.  The Declaration of Independence and the Federal Constitution were the results of our fathers’ attempts to put on paper the ideals that inspired the birth of the nation, and those principles by which and on which the nation was erected and sustained.  There have been errors, mistakes, and gross sins committed against this American venture, but this high venture has not been repudiated or negated.”</p>
<p>You will not see mention of Jackson in Howard Zinn’s <i>A People’s History of the United States</i>, widely used in high school and college classrooms.  You will not likely hear mention of him at the Diversity, Inc., workshops and conferences.  Students on college campuses are not likely to hear a respectful reference to him from speakers like Tim Wise.  Conservative black leaders like <a href="http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/08/allen-west-tea-party-congressman">Allen West</a> are not treated respectfully by liberal <a href="http://www.motherjones.com/authors/tim-murphy">white</a> journalists.  It seems that such “white guys” still have an agenda.</p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>. </b></p>
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		<title>The State of the Dis-Union: Preparing World Citizens</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/mary-grabar/the-state-of-the-dis-union-preparing-world-citizens/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-state-of-the-dis-union-preparing-world-citizens</link>
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		<pubDate>Thu, 30 Jan 2014 05:20:46 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Mary Grabar]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[College]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[debt]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Education]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[state of the union]]></category>

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		<description><![CDATA[Reading between the lines of the president's remarks on education.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/763249ef91c88c9287c8c69d628e4beb.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-217583" alt="763249ef91c88c9287c8c69d628e4beb" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/763249ef91c88c9287c8c69d628e4beb-450x339.jpg" width="315" height="237" /></a>There were many who had reason to be outraged by President Obama’s State of the Union address: the military whose funding has been cut, and who have been besmirched as </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://eaglerising.com/4382/democrat-says-military-veterans-mentally-ill/">emotionally unstable</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> while they are forced to be sitting ducks in battle and then face the potentiality that the administration will </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/iraqi-airstrikes-artillery-target-militants-in-fallujah-at-least-7-dead-in-city/2014/01/26/9fcdec52-86d3-11e3-916e-e01534b1e132_story.html">abandon</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> what others had died for, like Fallujah; the millions in the middle class whose health insurance has been dropped or whose premiums have doubled and who are losing jobs to illegal aliens and are insulted by the idea that a job that pays $10.10 is something to aspire to. </span></p>
<p>But I want to focus on Obama’s continued efforts to re-educate America, to re-educate her people so that they become shriveling dependents who long for a leader who will unilaterally make decisions for the masses.</p>
<p>Only such a people could believe Obama’s claim of having “a set of concrete, practical proposals to speed up growth, strengthen the middle class and build new ladders of opportunity into the middle class.”</p>
<p>Only a well-educated, independent-thinking populace could feel the chill of words regarding “congressional action.”  Conflating America with himself, Obama said, “America does not stand still, and neither will I. So wherever and whenever I can take steps without legislation to expand opportunity for more American families, that&#8217;s what I&#8217;m going to do.”</p>
<p>Once again, there was discussion of government job-training programs.  (Has anyone actually gotten a job as a result?)   To prepare “tomorrow’s workforce” (and that’s all it is: a workforce, not an educated citizenry), we must guarantee “every child access to a world-class education.”</p>
<p>Translation: indoctrination into world citizenship.</p>
<p>Obama referred to one “Estiven Rodriguez,” who “couldn’t speak a word of English when he moved to New York City at age nine.”  Apparently, Rodriguez “led a march of his classmates – through a crowd of cheering parents and neighbors – from their high school to the post office, where they mailed off their college applications.  And this son of a factory worker just found out he’s going to college this fall.”  Obama referred to the army of tutors and teachers that helped him, but immigrants have done far more with only night classes, and often working two or three jobs.</p>
<p>Then, said Obama, “Five years ago, we set out to change the odds for all our kids.  We worked with lenders to reform student loans, and today, more young people are earning college degrees than ever before.”</p>
<p>There is a reason why this government wants to monopolize student loans to produce more “peace and environmental justice studies” graduates: Democrat voters.</p>
<p>Obama invoked the misleadingly named “Race to the Top” contest (really a race for stimulus funds attached to federal education standards called Common Core).  He claimed, it “has helped states raise expectations and performance.  Teachers and principals in schools from Tennessee to Washington, D.C. are making big strides in preparing students with skills for the new economy – problem solving, critical thinking, science, technology, engineering, and math.  Some of this change is hard.  It requires everything from more challenging curriculums and more demanding parents to better support for teachers and new ways to measure how well our kids think, not how well they can fill in a bubble on a test.  But it’s worth it – and it’s working.”</p>
<p>Notice how he didn’t reference Common Core, now dubbed Obamacore.  After test scores plunged and mass confusion ensued, even the <a href="http://neatoday.org/2014/01/28/new-york-teachers-union-says-no-to-common-core-standards-as-implemented/">New York NEA</a> teachers union came around to opposing Common Core. “Problem solving, critical thinking” are hallmarks of <a href="http://sfppr.org/2014/01/common-core-whats-behind-arne-duncans-race-card/">progressive educators</a>, like Linda Darling-Hammond, close pal of Bill Ayers, who has been in charge of designing one of the two Common Core <a href="http://sfppr.org/?s=mary+grabar">national tests</a>.  And what, exactly, is wrong with filling in a bubble?  It means the test-taker has to <i>know </i>something and the grader can’t give extra points for correct attitudes.</p>
<p>What, also, is the “new economy”?  Did we not need science, technology, engineering, and math in the old, twentieth-century economy?</p>
<p>By stating “It requires more challenging curriculums,” Obama admitted what Common Core proponents deny: it does change the curriculum.  These are curriculums that eliminate most history, except that which advances the U.S. as <a href="http://townhall.com/columnists/terrencemoore/2014/01/13/racebaiting-101-the-common-core-on-civil-rights-n1777289">racist</a>, sexist, homophobic, imperialistic, etc.</p>
<p>The reference to “New ways to measure how well our kids think” is not reassuring when the Department of Education <a href="http://content.govdelivery.com/accounts/USED/bulletins/96fac8">promotes</a> the idea that “educational strengths” include “social competence” and “ethnic awareness.”</p>
<p>The new standards do not involve knowing about the country’s founding or the Constitution.  Such students might understand this pre-speech message from Jon Carson of Organizing for Action:</p>
<p>“Friend &#8211;</p>
<p>“Tonight, President Obama made sure everyone knows:</p>
<p>“He&#8217;s not waiting for Congress. He&#8217;s taking action now, and he&#8217;s going to explore every method in his power to restore real opportunity for all Americans.”</p>
<p>Then he asks for a $5 donation.</p>
<p>But kindergarten is not early enough.  Said Obama, “The problem is we’re still not reaching enough kids, and we’re not reaching them in time.  That has to change.”</p>
<p>He cited “research” to justify making “high-quality pre-K available to every four year-old”: “Research shows that one of the best investments we can make in a child’s life is high-quality early education.”  Funny, how they always say “research,” but not <i>which </i>research or what the research actually says about <a href="http://news.heartland.org/editorial/2013/11/12/government-preschool-treating-cancer-band-aid">government-funded preschool</a>.</p>
<p>Nonetheless, “As a parent as well as a President, I repeat that request tonight.”</p>
<p>What if Congress doesn’t snap to and fulfill his “request”?  Well, Obama has friends: “And as Congress decides what it’s going to do, I’m going to pull together a coalition of elected officials, business leaders, and philanthropists willing to help more kids access the high-quality pre-K they need.”</p>
<p>Such “coalitions” must ensure that Obama fulfills his promises: “Last year, I also pledged to connect 99 percent of our students to high-speed broadband over the next four years.  Tonight, I can announce that with the support of the FCC and companies like Apple, Microsoft, Sprint, and Verizon, we’ve got a down payment to start connecting more than 15,000 schools and twenty million students over the next two years, without adding a dime to the deficit.”</p>
<p>Of course, Microsoft is in the “coalition” of “business leaders and philanthropists.” The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is the biggest funder for Common Core; all tests must be taken online.  The other companies surely appreciate the business, too.</p>
<p>Obama’s Department of Education is redesigning high schools: “We’re working to redesign high schools and partner them with colleges and employers that offer the real-world education and hands-on training that can lead directly to a job and career.”  It seems all bases for government control are being covered.  Oh, and “real-world education”?  It means being <a href="http://www.rollcall.com/issues/57_120/mary-grabar-gradgrinds-of-common-core-213672-1.html">trained</a> for a job—only.  (See my <a href="http://sfppr.org/2014/01/dumbing-down-the-nations-classrooms/">review</a> of Terrence O. Moore’s book <i>The Story-Killers</i>.)</p>
<p>The feds have not only taken over financing, but they now want to <i>rate </i>colleges.  But this is how Obama put it: “We’re shaking up our system of higher education to give parents more information, and colleges more incentives to offer better value, so that no middle-class kid is priced out of a college education.”</p>
<p>The Education Department is appealing to the youth vote by holding “summits,” inviting college “<a href="http://www.ed.gov/blog/2014/01/duncan-invites-student-feedback-on-college-access-and-affordability/">student experts</a>” to weigh in on college “accessibility” and “affordability.”  The youth experts have spoken and Obama heard: “We’re offering millions the opportunity to cap their monthly student loan payments to ten percent of their income, and I want to work with Congress to see how we can help even more Americans who feel trapped by student loan debt.”</p>
<p>The scary part came when he used himself and Michelle as examples: “The bottom line is, Michelle and I want every child to have the same chance this country gave us.  But we know our opportunity agenda won’t be complete – and too many young people entering the workforce today will see the American Dream as an empty promise – unless we do more to make sure our economy honors the dignity of work, and hard work pays off for every single American.”</p>
<p>Oh, you mean college students should write <a href="http://obamaprincetonthesis.wordpress.com/">theses</a> like Michelle Obama’s?  Can we all write “Princeton Educated Blacks and the Black Community” and investigate how “attending Princeton will likely lead to my further integration and/or assimilation into a White cultural and social structure that will only allow me to remain on the periphery of society”?</p>
<p>Education was bad enough back then.  As a result, we have her in the White House with her Columbia and Harvard educated husband.  It can only get worse when he invokes “widely shared” prosperity, calling on Americans to “toil” together, and summoning “what is best in us, with our feet planted firmly in today but our eyes cast towards tomorrow. . . .”</p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>. </b></p>
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		<title>Common Core&#8217;s Anti-Gun Lessons on Sandy Hook</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/mary-grabar/common-cores-anti-gun-lessons-on-sandy-hook/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=common-cores-anti-gun-lessons-on-sandy-hook</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 06 Dec 2013 05:30:58 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Mary Grabar]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Common Core]]></category>
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		<description><![CDATA[Gates Foundation propaganda invading our schools. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/classroom.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-212492" alt="classroom" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/classroom.jpg" width="254" height="195" /></a>The pundits may have thought that Barack Obama’s efforts to exploit the Sandy Hook School tragedy on December 14, 2012, where a <a href="http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/nov/25/newtown-shooter-acted-alone-had-no-clear-motive/">mentally ill</a> young man killed 20 elementary school students and 6 teachers, had been <a href="http://www.politico.com/politico44/2013/11/biden-dont-let-immigration-die-like-gun-control-177370.html?ml=m_po">tabled</a> for lack of support.  Now we learn that Obama’s Organizing for Action super pac is <a href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/obama-super-pac-to-exploit-newtown-kids-with-fake-memorial-events/">exploiting</a> the one-year anniversary with fake memorials in order to resume the push for gun control.</p>
<p>Along with the efforts to reach adults are those to reach children in schools.  The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, a major funder of Obama’s education initiative called Common Core (recently admitted to be an “<a href="https://eagnews.org/axelrod-claims-common-core-an-obama-initiative/">Obama initiative</a>” by David Axelrod) is aiding in the effort to eviscerate the Second Amendment by emotionally manipulating and indoctrinating students.</p>
<p>An <i>Education Week</i> article touts free “anti-violence” lesson plans for students in grades 4-12 to commemorate the one-year anniversary of the shooting.  <i>Education Week </i>is full of handy “tips” and “news” for teachers, but is really a Gates Foundation-subsidized Common Core propaganda outlet, as I noted in my <a href="http://www.aim.org/special-report/terrorist-professor-bill-ayers-and-obamas-federal-school-curriculum/">report</a> on Common Core for <i>Accuracy in Media</i>.  <i>Education Week </i>articles are frequently linked in the U.S. Department of Education’s newsletter, <a href="http://www.ed.gov/teaching/teachers-edition-archive"><i>The Teachers Edition</i></a>.</p>
<p>The “anti-violence” Common Core-aligned lesson plan that <i>Education Week</i> is <a href="http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/teaching_now/2013/11/rep_giffords_and_sandy_hook_mother_co-author_anti-violence_lesson_plan.html?cmp=ENL-EU-NEWS2">promoting</a> could hardly be more propagandistic.  It is written by shooting victim Gabby Giffords, the former Arizona Congresswoman, and Nicole Hockley who lost her son Dylan at Sandy Hook.   It claims the ostensible purpose of “turning our tragedy into a moment of transformation” and “To be open to all possibilities.”  It says students should be “Open to those with the most opposing views.”</p>
<p>But the only views teachers are told to give are those that advance an anti-gun rights agenda.</p>
<p>To prime students emotionally, teachers are asked to show a <a href="http://www.schooltube.com/video/1720cd68aa4041c0b34b/">School Tube video</a> from Roma High School to demonstrate how a student-led vigil can “show how people can come together after tragic events to make the world a better place.”  (No empirical evidence is given about the cause and effect.)</p>
<p>There is very little reading required in the lesson, but what there is a <a href="http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2013/01/07/gabby-giffords-mark-kelly-tucson-shooting-gun-control/1816383/">USA Today article</a> by Giffords and her husband Mark Kelly, chiding “special interests,” like the NRA, which they claim is “advancing the interests of an ideological fringe” and “cow[ing] Congress” into refusing to take action on “common sense reforms.”  The other is an article linked to Giffords’s and Kelly’s lobby group called <a href="http://americansforresponsiblesolutions.org/gabrielle-giffords/">Americans for Responsible Solutions</a>.  (There is an attachment for additional reading from <a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/crime/2012/12/gun_death_tally_every_american_gun_death_since_newtown_sandy_hook_shooting.html">Slate</a> Magazine for “older students” that unscientifically aggregates the number of gun deaths by asking readers to send in news about gun deaths in their towns.)  Teachers are advised to have students read the “Sandy Hook Promise” from the website and discuss “why they feel the promise was created.”</p>
<p>Teachers are told that the first two paragraphs of the promise are “most helpful.”</p>
<p>These are<i> </i>the first two paragraphs:</p>
<p>“Sandy Hook Promise (SHP) is a national, non-profit organization led by community members and several parents and spouses who lost loved ones in the tragic mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School on December 14, 2012. . . .</p>
<p>Our intent is to honor all victims of gun violence by turning our tragedy into a moment of transformation.”</p>
<p>Teachers are told to have students “brainstorm” on the question, “How can we work together to make the United States a safer place?”</p>
<p>Teachers are offered the suggestion of having students trace their hands on construction paper and then making cut-outs.</p>
<p>On these they should write one-sentence statements, beginning with the words, “I hope.”</p>
<p>As models, photographs of the lesson plan writers’ own construction paper hands are presented: &#8220;I hope for a country that can work together to prevent gun violence,” wrote Gabby Giffords on her hand.  &#8220;I hope parents can come together to build a future for our children safe from gun violence,” wrote Nicole Hockley on hers.</p>
<p>Finally,</p>
<blockquote><p>Show students the other postings on <a href="https://www.uclass.org/about">UClass</a> [a “global lesson exchange” for teachers]. Have them comment positively on other students’ hands that have been posted on UClass. Urge them to do at least one thing to make the United States a better place.</p></blockquote>
<p>Teachers are assured that the lesson plan follows the new Common Core education standards.</p>
<p>For grades 3-8, the “Correlating Common Core Standards” are:</p>
<blockquote><p>CCSS.ELA-Literacy.SL.3.1 Engage effectively in a range of collaborative discussions (one-on-one, in groups, and teacher-led) with diverse partners on grade 3 topics and texts, building on others’ ideas and expressing their own clearly.</p></blockquote>
<p>It gets a little more rigorous for high school students:</p>
<blockquote><p>CCSS.ELA-Literacy.SL.11-12.1 Initiate and participate effectively in a range of collaborative discussions (one-on-one, in groups, and teacher-led) with diverse partners on grades 11–12 topics, texts, and issues, building on others’ ideas and expressing their own clearly and persuasively.</p></blockquote>
<p>In case the difference in these two academic standards is not obvious, students in upper grades are asked to “<b>create a plan for their own anti-violence campaign</b>” (words in bold in original). In other words, high school students should become activists.</p>
<p>The promoters of Common Core have repeated sales points about “high standards,” “rigor,” “close reading,” and including “critical thinking.”  Really?  Do you remember tracing your hand on construction paper in high school?</p>
<p>The lesson on Sandy Hook is typical of those now being produced and advertised as meeting Common Core requirements.</p>
<p>Of course, we know that many teachers have been using classrooms to indoctrinate students for decades now.  What is different under Common Core is that the lessons are even more ideological.  They <a href="http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/marketplacek12/2013/11/researchers_estimate_7600_district_buyers_for_common_core_materials.html?cmp=ENL-EU-NEWS2">profit</a> the multinational publishing companies as they rewrite materials to adhere to Common Core.  And they advance the agendas of left-wing non-profits and the federal government.</p>
<p>The construction paper hands being produced in grades 4 through 12 to commemorate Sandy Hook show how Obama’s Common Core initiative is working (pardon the pun) hand in glove with his political pac.</p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>. </b></p>
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		<title>Deceptions of a Terrorist</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/mary-grabar/confessions-of-an-anti-american-liar/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=confessions-of-an-anti-american-liar</link>
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		<pubDate>Thu, 07 Nov 2013 04:25:57 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Mary Grabar]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Bill Ayers]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[book]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[fugitive days]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Larry Grathwohl]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[mccain]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[memoir]]></category>
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		<description><![CDATA[Exposing the lies in Bill Ayers' new "memoir." ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Untitled.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-209400" alt="Untitled" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Untitled.jpg" width="231" height="245" /></a>Bill Ayers’s latest “memoir,” <i>Public Enemy: Confessions of an American Dissident</i>, like all his writings, is not worth reading, except to keep up with the lies he is spreading.</p>
<p>Ayers, like his 1960s terrorist comrades, counts on the ignorance, gullibility, and tender emotions of the youth. Given the way the history of the 1960s is taught today, young people just might believe the Weatherman terrorist&#8217;s claims of being censored and persecuted, and a victim of a McCarthy-ite witch hunt.  He even likens himself to Galileo.</p>
<p>In the Bill Ayers ego, Galileo was right about the solar system, and Bill Ayers was right about the Vietnam War.  It was a genocidal war, and Bill Ayers represented the resistance.</p>
<p>In Ayers&#8217; world, Sarah Palin and John McCain (a “war criminal” for having served in Vietnam) led the witch hunt against him during the 2008 presidential campaign. He claims that Sarah Palin’s supporters chanted “Kill him” in response to her charges that Obama was “palling around with a terrorist.” Ayers felt like</p>
<blockquote><p>“Goldstein from George Orwell’s <i>1984</i>—the public enemy projected onto a large screen in the ritual ‘two minutes hate’ scene when the faithful gathered in a frenzy of fear and loathing, chanting ‘Kill him!’”</p></blockquote>
<p>This, of course, is false, but Ayers does not feel the need to provide evidence.</p>
<p>Ayers goes out of his way to try to diminish the late Larry Grathwohl, who employed strategies learned in Vietnam to survive infiltrating the Weather Underground. A suspected infiltrator had been beaten to within an inch of his life by the Weatherman terrorists.  Ayers calls Grathwohl, “a paid police informant who hung around SDS briefly back in the day,” but was “dragging himself out of retirement and rebooting his career as a right-wing warrior” in 2008, addressing St. Mary’s College, in a “nationally organized” campaign to “demonize and blacklist” Ayers.  Ayers alleges that Grathwohl spread a “double fiction”: that he had once been an “’FBI agent and that he had infiltrated the Weather Underground.  Neither was true.”</p>
<p>The facts: Grathwohl never claimed to be an FBI agent; <em>he was</em> an FBI informant. There is a public record and no denying that Grathwohl infiltrated the Weather Underground.  He testified before the U.S. Senate and several grand juries, and wrote <a href="http://bringingdownamerica.com/?p=1">a book</a> about his experience.  Grathwohl talked to San Francisco police in 2009 about a statement Ayers made to him implicating Dohrn in the bombing death of Sergeant Brian V. McDonnell.  The case is still open.</p>
<p>Ayers claims that the police, whom he called pigs and tried to kill back in the day, are now his friends. Having cleared the record through a coffee shop conversation with Ayers, the Chicago cops have, according to Ayers, started a book club to discuss his memoir, <i>Fugitive Days.</i><i><br />
</i></p>
<p>Ayers is particularly skilled at lying by omission and diversion.  He spends a considerable amount of space discussing his encounter with a blogger at the Ronald Reagan Airport in 2009, and “confessing” that he did indeed write Obama’s memoirs.  What he fails to mention, though, is <a href="http://www.aim.org/special-report/terrorist-professor-bill-ayers-and-obamas-federal-school-curriculum/">his purpose</a> for being in Washington, and it was to share the stage at an education conference with Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, Under Secretary Martha Kanter, and a representative from Achieve, the group that designed the federal Common Core standards.</p>
<p>In memoir #2, Ayers claims to have never participated in bombings &#8212; with bombs that were ever intended to harm or kill anyone. Richard Elrod, the city attorney paralyzed in the Days of Rage riot led by Ayers, is forgotten.  Instead, Ayers would have readers believe that he has been a fully committed teacher and family man, a liberated husband who brought his sons to meet wifey Bernardine Dohrn during her lunch hour.</p>
<p>This may fly for a fully indoctrinated college freshman, but those of us who slogged through <i>Fugitive Days</i> might see a contradiction, like when Ayers in several passages describes details about the days that bombs were set:</p>
<blockquote><p>“Everything was absolutely ideal on the day I bombed the Pentagon. The sky was blue.  The birds were singing.”</p></blockquote>
<p>But then again Ayers is careful to say that this is a memoir, <i>not</i> a history.  And the opening line of <i>Fugitive Days </i>is “Memory is a motherf&#8211;ker.”</p>
<p>Bill Ayers, the trickster, taunts “catch me if you can,” as he prepares to schmooze the latest group at a public college or festival, crying censorship whenever anyone objects to student and tax funds being used to host a terrorist and <a href="http://www.usasurvival.org/docs/GrabarChicagoWayUpdated.pdf">quack professor</a>.</p>
<p>Ayers sees himself as an “unlikely academic at a research university” (indeed), someone respected by the academic community, jetting from one public lecture, dissertation committee, teacher workshop, and academic conference, to another.  But then, beginning in 2008, Ayers complains that he was being disinvited as a result of pressure from right-wing zealots.</p>
<p>At the University of Wyoming he was disinvited in 2010 from giving two lectures, one pompously titled, “Trudge Toward Freedom: Moral Commitment and Ethical Action.”</p>
<p>Along came his heroine, student Meg Lanker (now Meg Lanker-Simons). Ayers presents her as “a fighter on every level”:</p>
<blockquote>
<blockquote><p>“I’m going to sue the university in federal court,” she told me during our first conversation.  “And I’m claiming that it’s <i>my </i>free speech that’s been violated—I have the right to speak to anyone I want to, and right now I want to speak to you.”  She was young and unafraid, smart and sassy, her dreams being rapidly made and used—no fear, no regret.  I liked her immediately.</p></blockquote>
</blockquote>
<p>It gets funnier, because Bill Ayers then writes, “Meg’s approach struck me as brilliant—students (and not I) were indeed the injured party.”</p>
<p>Someone forgot to mention, however, that the “young and unafraid, smart and sassy” Meg Lanker was charged with and admitted to making false threats of sexual assault against herself by posting a comment that said she would become a “good Republican b**tch” in retaliation for running her “liberal mouth.”  This was reported in the Laramie <a href="http://www.laramieboomerang.com/articles/2013/04/30/breaking_news/doc518002170be89677502843.txt"><i>Boomerang</i></a><i> </i>on April 30, 2013.  It was reported again on May 3—five months before the release of Ayers’s book—in the pages of the <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/03/meg-lanker-simons-hoax-university-wisconsin_n_3210326.html"><i>Huffington Post</i></a><i>.  </i>Furthermore, this was another “hate” hoax that disturbed liberals like to promote, especially on college campuses.</p>
<p>Ayers quotes anonymous emails at length&#8211;with no proof that they were ever sent.  Alas, perhaps there is a commonality between the obviously disturbed Ms. Lanker-Simons and the professor.</p>
<p>Consider this purple passage about the Republican “thugs” who had prevented Ayers from spreading his goodness to University of Wyoming students:</p>
<blockquote><p>We should stand together and refuse to accede to these kinds of pressures to demonize and mostly to suppress students’ right to freely engage in open dialogue.  After all, a public university is not the personal fiefdom or the political clubhouse of the governor, and donors can’t be permitted to call the shots when it comes to the content or conduct of academic matters.  We should not allow ourselves to collapse in fear if a howling mob gathers at the gates with flaming torches in hand; in fact, that’s when standing up and pushing back become absolutely necessary.  I wouldn’t force myself on the university, of course, but I felt that canceling would be terribly unfair to the faculty and students who had invited me, and would send a big message that bullying works.  It would be the equivalent of a book burning, and would be one more step down the slippery slope of giving up on the precious ideal of a free university in a free society. . . .</p></blockquote>
<p>And on and on. You get the idea: Bill Ayers glorifies himself. It is up to those of us who know the truth to continue exposing the deceitful narrative on which his personal mythology has been built.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>The Book of Lies Tour by Privileged Bill Ayers</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/mary-grabar/the-book-of-lies-tour-by-privileged-bill-ayers/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-book-of-lies-tour-by-privileged-bill-ayers</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 23 Oct 2013 04:40:02 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Mary Grabar]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Bill Ayers]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Communist]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Larry Grathwohl]]></category>
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		<description><![CDATA[America's entitled terrorist and his real record. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/Screen-shot-2012-05-08-at-5.37.56-PM.png"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-208255" alt="Screen-shot-2012-05-08-at-5.37.56-PM" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/Screen-shot-2012-05-08-at-5.37.56-PM.png" width="250" height="194" /></a>In his memoir about infiltrating the Weather Underground, <a href="http://bringingdownamerica.com/?p=1"><i>Bringing Down America</i></a><i>: An FBI Informer with the Weathermen, </i>Larry Grathwohl described his frustrations with having to be at two places at once: at his job on the loading dock and at the meetings organized by Weatherman, the domestic terrorist group cofounded by Bill Ayers.  It was 1969, and Grathwohl had recently returned from a tour of duty in Vietnam.  He was 22 years old and had a wife and baby to support.  After the group tried to recruit him (they had been ordered by communist higher ups to recruit from the working class), Grathwohl, with the encouragement of his father-in-law, a retired police officer, decided to infiltrate the group.</p>
<p>It’s hard to be a working class radical—or to even pretend to be one, as Grathwohl learned.  Russell Kirk in <i>Decadence and Renewal in Higher Education </i>recalls that “the higher the students’ background of prosperity, the more radical their rebelliousness.”  Mark Rudd’s attempts to shut down Brooklyn College were rejected by the students there.  But he found success at elite Columbia University.</p>
<p>Like many of the violent troublemakers during the 1960s and 1970s, Bill Ayers was the son of privilege, specifically of the politically powerful and wealthy Thomas Ayers.</p>
<p>After admittedly bombing police stations and government buildings and spending a decade in reasonable comfort on the run from the law, Bill Ayers earned two graduate degrees in education in record time, immediately obtained a teaching position in his hometown of Chicago, and swiftly rose up the tenure ladder to “Distinguished Professor.” He used his time as a professor at the public university to proselytize for the communist revolution, filling up over 40 pages of a curriculum vitae with regurgitated nonsensical agitprop.  He earned a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from Bennington College (taking a leave from his teaching on the taxpayers’ dime) and turned his creative dissertation into the book <i>Fugitive Days</i>.  Now he is being given a public platform to promote his second memoir <i>Public Enemy</i>, speaking at public colleges as well as public events like the <a href="http://www.wisconsinbookfestival.org/events/public-enemy">Wisconsin Book Festival</a>.  <a href="http://newsbusters.org/blogs/tim-graham/2013/10/14/morning-joe-cant-stand-gingrich-welcomes-radical-bomber-bill-ayers-who-h">MSNBC</a> gave him a platform last week with a spin worthy of the old Soviet Union, with a lead-in of clips of Sarah Palin during the 2008 presidential campaign accusing Barack Obama of “palling around” with terrorists, namely Ayers.</p>
<p>Dressed in his customary pseudo-proletariat chic, Bill Ayers presented himself simply as a retired professor, a concerned grandfather, who had led an “antiwar group.”  There is a “collective responsibility” for the excesses of the era, he said in his fake conciliatory voice.  “We all should apologize,” he said, naming Henry Kissinger, John Kerry, Bob Kerry, Angela Davis, and Jane Fonda.  He had no regrets for destroying government property “in opposition to a genocidal war.” Presenting himself as a victim of “guilt by association,” Ayers distanced himself from Obama—no doubt making Obama very happy. The interview ended with stories about his grandchildren’s bedtime hour.</p>
<p>Ayers was given the floor on national television to lie about his terroristic past.  Larry Grathwohl, who passed away in July, <i>testified</i> in 1974 before the United States Senate subcommittee on internal security.</p>
<p>Grathwohl told the committee, “Bill [Ayers] was the person who directed the ‘focle’ that I was part of to place the bomb at the DPOA [the Detroit Police Officers Association] Building.  He designed the bomb and told me that he would get the necessary materials, the dynamite, et cetera, and 4 days later Bill broke that focle that I was part of up . . . and we were directed to go to Madison, Wis.”  This was in 1970.</p>
<p>A focle was a four-person task force, small in size to evade detection.</p>
<p>Grathwohl talked about the case again at a 2012 conference sponsored by America’s Survival:</p>
<p>“during the meeting with Bill Ayers [in 1970] we were told that our objective would be to place bombs at the Detroit Police Officers Association . . . and at the 13<sup>th</sup> precinct.  Furthermore, Bill instructed us to determine the best time to place these explosive devices that would result in the greatest number of deaths and injuries. . . .”</p>
<p>When Grathwohl pointed out to Ayers that a Red Barn restaurant next door would most likely be destroyed and the customers killed during the explosion, Ayers replied “sometimes innocent people have to die in a revolution.”</p>
<p>At the 1974 Congressional hearing, Grathwohl described another meeting where “Bill [Ayers] started off telling us about the need to raise the level of the struggle and for stronger leadership inside the Weatherman ‘focles’ and inside the Weatherman organization as a whole.  And he cited as one of the real problems was that someone like Bernardine Dohrn had to plan, develop and carry out the bombing of the police station in San Francisco. . . .”  That bomb killed Sergeant Brian V. McDonnell in 1970.</p>
<p>Larry testified that Ayers had said that the bomb was placed on the window ledge.  Ayers described the kind of bomb it was “to the extent of saying what kind of shrapnel was used in it.” That case is still open.</p>
<p>Last week, On MSNBC Ayers said, “we [Weatherman] made a decision while we were willing to engage in extreme tactics, we would not harm human life. . . . We never hurt or harmed anyone.  We destroyed property.”</p>
<p>Bill Ayers, the privileged professor, was allowed to lie on television.  Larry Grathwohl did what most working class Vietnam vets did: he worked.  His story was nearly forgotten, until Cliff Kincaid started inviting him to America’s Survival conferences a few years ago.  That was where I met Larry.  This spring my writing partner Tina Trent republished Grathwohl’s memoir and the three of us <a href="http://www.dissidentprof.com/latest-dispatches/152-the-bill-ayers-weatherman-road-show.html">toured Florida</a> in May, speaking about Grathwohl’s book, Bill Ayers, and the terroristic Weatherman.  We found a receptive audience at tea party groups, many of them military veterans.</p>
<p>On his MSNBC stage, Ayers “confessed” to past “self-righteousness.” But Ayers is such a product of privilege that he cannot see his own disregard for those not of his elite class of communists.  In 1970, he conveyed contempt for the mostly black patrons who would have been killed at the Detroit restaurant by his bomb.  During his teaching career, he cheated thousands of “urban school” students of a legitimate education.  In his self-righteous first memoir <i>Fugitive Days</i>, he presented “Celeste,” the black family maid, as a cudgel with which to beat up his parents and their generation.  He brags about kissing a black girlfriend. He writes about dining at the St. Petersburg in San Francisco, while on the run from the FBI.  The owner is described as a “cheery old lady whose family had escaped the Bolsheviks and gone to China, only to flee the Maoists en route to Cuba, and then to run from Fidel, landing right here in the U.S., where, we hoped, if the pattern held, she was merely awaiting another revolution.”</p>
<p>Larry Grathwohl repeated the story, always with amazement and disbelief in his voice, about how the well-off young adults of the Weatherman would discuss what they would do after the “revolution”: order the reeducation of an estimated 100 million Americans and the execution of the estimated 25 million who would resist reeducation.</p>
<p>Bill Ayers has Larry Grathwohl to thank to sabotaging at least one of his bombs in Detroit.  Larry Grathwohl prevented the Weathermen from doing more harm than they did.</p>
<p>But as we can see by the way Ayers is feted by the liberal media, it is those from the upper classes still who are given the stage.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>Bomber Bill Ayers&#8217; College Tour</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/mary-grabar/bomber-bill-ayers-college-tour/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=bomber-bill-ayers-college-tour</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 27 Sep 2013 04:50:55 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Mary Grabar]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Bill Ayers]]></category>
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		<description><![CDATA[A Weather Underground terrorist tries to erase his history -- and universities help him do it. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/100924-ayers-vmed-5a.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-205497" alt="Image: Bill Ayers" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/100924-ayers-vmed-5a-404x350.jpg" width="242" height="210" /></a>Bill Ayers has a new book coming out and is doing the lecture circuit on college campuses.  He was invited to speak on “<a href="http://www.dailyherald.com/article/20130920/news/709209755/">Democracy and Education</a>: Teaching for Liberation” at Elgin Community College in Elgin, Illinois, on September 26, and on Tuesday, October 1, he will be speaking at Gettysburg College on “<a href="http://www.campusreform.org/blog/?ID=5103">Queering Education</a>.”</p>
<p>Some people remember Ayers’s real past and are objecting.  ECC alumni Robert and Barbara Haase, in a <a href="http://www.dailyherald.com/article/20130923/discuss/709239849/">letter to the editor</a>, wrote: “William Ayers’ viewpoint should not be included in the ‘variety of viewpoints’ in the marketplace of ideas you propose to expose. . . .”</p>
<p>They said that he deserved jail time for setting bombs at a time when their “friends and relatives in Vietnam [were] defending Ayers’ right to express his views without fear.  Some of them never made it home.  They were not there to defend anyone’s right to commit acts of terrorism.”</p>
<p>They are quoting an administrator who used the old saw of “variety of viewpoints” to justify inviting Ayers.</p>
<p>But college students, immersed in romanticized versions of 1960s history, will have little against which to challenge Ayers’s revised history. His new book, <i>Public Enemy: Confessions of an American Dissident</i>, appears to be an attempt to wipe away charges against him in 2008 with a series of lies, lies that are evident from his own blog promoting the book:  “In the heat of the 2008 presidential election, Barack Obama’s opponents were spinning a chilling narrative that cast him as an enigmatic figure with a group of shadowy associates, including a Black Nationalist preacher, a Palestinian professor, and an ‘unrepentant domestic terrorist.’ That imagined terrorist was Bill Ayers, a one-time leader of the Weather Underground. . . .”</p>
<p>He claims that he is “a dedicated teacher, father, and social justice advocate.” His “‘shady past’” is actually “the story of an ardent antiwar activist.”</p>
<p>Is he really just an “ardent antiwar activist” demonized by the McCain campaign, as he claims?</p>
<p>Ayers himself in several passages in his earlier memoir <i>Fugitive Days </i>admits to participating in bombings.  He posed for the book’s publicity photo by standing on an American flag.</p>
<p>The Weather Underground’s 1974 manifesto <i>Prairie Fire</i>,<i> </i>stated, “We are a guerilla organization.  We are communist women and men, underground in the United States for more than four years,” and “Our intention is to disrupt the empire . . . to incapacitate it, to put pressure on the cracks, to make it hard to carry out its bloody functioning against the people of the world, to join the world struggle, to attack from the inside.”</p>
<p>In <i>Fugitive Days</i>, Ayers also describes hopes of a world communist revolution:</p>
<blockquote><p>The world is in flames, we thought, the people of the world rising against the octopus of imperialism and cutting off its tentacles one by one.  It was a compelling image, apocalyptic: Cuba, one, Korea, two, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique, Angola, Algeria, Ghana, and Viet Nam, of course, number eight, where the monster had overextended itself once and for all.  National liberation movements active in Chile, Panama, Argentina, Guatemala, the Philippines, Jamaica, South Africa, Mexico—<i>dos, tres, muchos Viet Nams</i>—had heated up and the world’s aggressive policemen were pinned down in Southeast Asia.  A pitiful, helpless giant.</p></blockquote>
<p>The U.S. is the “pitiful, helpless giant” in the face of a communist world revolution.</p>
<p>None of that is mentioned in his blog, nor was it mentioned last February when he spoke at the <a href="http://pjmedia.com/blog/bill-ayers-in-retirement/">Association of Teacher Educators conference</a>.  Instead, he repeated lines from his nonsensical writings about education, like “We are finite beings plunging through infinite space,” and we are “world changers, one person at a time.” He advised fellow educators and graduate students on “how to survive till the revolution” by doing “anarchist calisthenics.” He had nothing to say about improving the performance of students in the “urban schools” for which he has trained teachers.</p>
<p>Colleges now are simply giving Ayers a forum to promote his upcoming book and his revisionist, self-glorifying history that was promoted to his college students, <a href="http://www.usasurvival.org/docs/GrabarChicagoWayUpdated.pdf">even on his syllabi</a>. Consider this quotation from “Social Conflicts of the 1960s, Honors 201” for Spring semester 2006:</p>
<blockquote><p>In 1965, just as the American catastrophe in Viet Nam was reaching full ignition, I was arrested along with 38 others for disrupting the normal operations of the Ann Arbor draft board, part of the bureaucratic machinery for sorting soldiers from civilians, the living from the dead, issuing we thought, warrants to kill and to die.</p></blockquote>
<p>U.S. political leaders on this syllabus are described as having been “blind and arrogant and cocksure as they took over the failed French colonial mission.”  The U.S. enemy was “a poor peasant nation” that “refused their assigned role in Washington’s script . . . the National Liberation Front wouldn’t quit—they retreated when necessary, holed up underground as required, and reemerged suddenly to beat back the invaders.”</p>
<p>In a 19-page essay on the syllabus for a seminar called Conceptions of Teaching and Schooling (CIE 576), Ayers claimed that teachers are “cogs,” and students are “prisoners,” “compelled by the state to attend, handed a schedule, a uniform, and a rule book, sent to specific designated space of cell blocks, monitored constantly….”</p>
<p>The idea of schools as prisons was promoted by American communists in the 1930s.</p>
<p>The Weather Underground’s document “Bring the War Home” similarly stated, “Young people all over the country go to prisons that are called schools,” and “No longer will we tolerate ‘law and order’ backed up by soldiers in Vietnam and pigs [police] in the communities and schools.”</p>
<p>Now Bill Ayers’s own words, are being used in a K-12 curriculum put out by a non-profit called, ironically, “<a href="http://www.americanswhotellthetruth.org/">Americans Who Tell the Truth</a>.” These supposed truth-tellers are mostly radicals, like Ayers, Medea Benjamin, and Howard Zinn.  Gettysburg College even used the original oil portrait of Ayers produced by the non-profit in its <a href="http://www.campusreform.org/img/CROBlog/5103/ayersgettysburg.jpg">poster</a> for their event.  Students in some schools today are reading such self-serving, heart-tugging prose by the bomb-setter, Bill Ayers: “I held tight to the romance that ordinary people have the capacity to eliminate the agony of exploitation and the intolerable suffering of the poor and the despised—to achieve justice in the public square and establish a beloved community.”</p>
<p>Has Bill Ayers changed his stripes?  Is he simply someone who was an antiwar activist, but then became a respectable professor, as he would like naïve students to believe?</p>
<p>Bill Ayers failed in bringing about a revolution with the terrorist organization Weatherman he co-founded, so he tried to do it <a href="http://www.dissidentprof.com/bookstore/150-bill-ayers.html">through education</a> and by lying to the most vulnerable.</p>
<p>This is not about free speech, as Ayers’s allies, like the administrators at Elgin Community College, would like to make it.</p>
<p>Bill Ayers has not changed a whit.</p>
<p>He is still as arrogant as Weatherman informant <a href="http://bringingdownamerica.com/?p=1">Larry Grathwohl</a> described him and as anti-intellectual as <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Radical-Son-A-Generational-Odyssey/dp/0684840057">David Horowitz</a> described him.</p>
<p>He’s not even smart enough to disguise the ideas expressed from his days in the Weather Underground.  But given what they’re taught, students wouldn’t know this.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>Rubio: No Friend to Immigrants and the Working Class</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/mary-grabar/rubio-no-friend-to-immigrants-and-the-working-class/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=rubio-no-friend-to-immigrants-and-the-working-class</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 09 Sep 2013 04:20:09 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Mary Grabar]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Amnesty]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Illegal]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Immigration]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Jobs]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Poor]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[reform]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Rubio]]></category>

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		<description><![CDATA[The path to ending the conservative movement -- and prosperity for the poor -- begins with amnesty. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/Sen.-Marco-Rubio_immigration-cropped-proto-custom_28.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-203435" alt="John McCain, Charles Schumer, Marco Rubio, Robert Menendez" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/Sen.-Marco-Rubio_immigration-cropped-proto-custom_28-431x350.jpg" width="259" height="210" /></a>When it comes to immigration, our terms have been redefined in an Orwellian sleight of hand.  Today, the one who comes over the border illegally is called the same thing as the one who waits to come over legally, as those of my parents’ generation did.</p>
<p>Back in the late 1950s when my parents and aunts and uncles escaped from communist Yugoslavia being an immigrant meant staying off the government dole and having “sponsors” guaranteeing that you would.  My relatives spent years as refugees in Austria, where they worked on farms, often living in barracks.  Once here, they were greeted by sponsors who guaranteed housing, food, and medical care until the new immigrants could find jobs.  It was a mark of shame to receive public assistance.  Immigrants skimped and saved.  They struggled to learn English and what they could not learn they demanded their children learn.  When I and my cousins went to public school, we were inculcated with American values and strove to become Americanized.</p>
<p>This is not true today where government-paid workers search out immigrants, offering them government assistance.  In schools, immigrant and illegal alien children get anti-American lessons, and often in their own language.</p>
<p>Now Republicans are embracing the same ideas.  They even use the language of the Marxists who have been behind the push to legalize millions of illegal aliens in order to gain Democratic voters.</p>
<p>As New Zealand blogger and researcher Trevor Loudon documents in his <a href="http://www.trevorloudon.com/2013/08/trevor-loudon-presents-his-new-book-the-enemies-within-tues-aug-27th-in-columbia-sc/">new book</a>, <i>The Enemies Within</i>, the push for amnesty for new Democratic voters began in 1995 when the unions, that had previously fought amnesty to protect jobs, were taken over by Marxists who then infiltrated the Democratic Party.</p>
<p>A key player is SEIU leader, and Honorary Chair of the Democratic Socialists of America, Elisco Medina.  In 1999, he convinced the AFL-CIO convention that U.S. immigration policy was “broken and needs to be fixed.”  In 2000, the AFL-CIO called for a new amnesty and the repeal of the 1986 law that criminalized hiring illegal aliens.</p>
<p>In 2009, Medina spoke about the need for “’comprehensive immigration reform’” at America’s Future Now! conference in Washington, D.C.   Noting that two out of three Latino voters voted for Barack Obama, he presented a two-part strategy:</p>
<p>In order to expand their power, he said progressives need to be “solidly on the side of immigrants,” who would remember “who was there with you.”</p>
<p>Second, with “reform of immigration laws,” 12 million people would be put on “the path to citizenship, and eventually voters.”  Medina asked attendees to imagine the gain in voters even if only two out of three voted Democrat.</p>
<p>But if one does not believe Loudon that Democrats/Marxists are using the case of “immigration” for vote harvesting, one should listen to esteemed political science professor Alan Abramowitz, author of <a href="http://books.google.com/books/about/The_Polarized_Public.html?id=JhLSygAACAAJ"><i>The Polarized Public</i></a><i>: Why American Government Is So Dysfunctional</i>.  A year ago, at our annual Labor Day book festival in Decatur, Georgia, he told an Obama-pumped audience that the demographics were on their side.  Abramowitz is known for his accuracy in predicting election outcomes.  But it’s not rocket science.  Abramowitz<i> </i>simply looked at the demographics and correctly predicted a Democratic victory.  (Political polarization was attributed to conservative “extremism” on the part of conservatives, which would disappear once they were outnumbered.)</p>
<p>As Abramowitz showed the charts and graphs, as well as photos of multihued Obama rallies, I thought of how sad it was that he would brag that the gains in Democratic voters was not due to the appeal of ideas but to racial and ethnic pandering. It was a celebration of vote-buying.</p>
<p>This Labor Day weekend, at the Americans for Prosperity Foundation conference, I heard hecklers interrupt Senator Marco Rubio’s speech with chants of “no amnesty.” Rubio has used rhetoric about the “broken system” to sell the “Gang of Eight’s” senate bill 744.  Many in the audience were annoyed by the hecklers, still seeing Rubio as a shining star, an old-fashioned immigrant success story.  “He’s right on most of the issues,” a woman told me.</p>
<p>Yes, Rubio did hit all the talking points about economic freedom.  But these were the same canned lines that I had heard in the summer of 2008 at the first Red State conference in Atlanta.</p>
<p>In 2013, in front of nearly 2,000 activists he became flustered as he tried to ignore calls of “traitor.”</p>
<p>As I left the room, I saw three individuals in bright pink t-shirts emblazoned with “Pink Slip Rubio.com” standing in the hall.  One was Jack Oliver, legislative director for Floridians for Immigration Enforcement, a decade-old group.  Oliver feels betrayed by Rubio, who had shaken his hand and promised that he would never support comprehensive reform, legalization, or the Dream Act.  According to his group’s <a href="http://www.flimen.org/">website</a>, Senate Bill 744 gives work permits and legalization to over 11 million illegal aliens, doubles authorized immigration to 22 million over the next decade, and adds millions to welfare and entitlement rolls.  Oliver calls it “amnesty first and a promise for enforcement lager,” and contends that the bill never would have gotten through the Senate without Rubio acting as the immigrant “poster child” of the sponsoring “Gang of Eight.”</p>
<p>Oliver began his career in construction as a plasterer laborer in 1968, a time when such a trade could support a family.  He got involved in the immigration fight when he heard George W. Bush claim that illegal aliens were needed to do the jobs Americans wouldn’t do.  He saw his wages drop 30 percent under Bush’s lax policies.  He had left Florida in 1986 and returned in 2002.  As a field superintendant he saw that construction workers were making less in actual dollars than what they had been making in 1986.</p>
<p>“I saw how devastating illegal labor is to the domestic labor market,” he says, citing the millions of young people who aren’t going to college.  “If they’re not going to make a living in the trades we’re going to have to subsidize those families.  It’s an expansion of the welfare state.”  Especially hard hit is the black community.  He estimates that 75 percent of the construction laborers with whom he worked in Cleveland, Pittsburgh, and Washington, D.C., were black.</p>
<p>The immigration bill will change demographics forever, he contends, with Democrats fast-tracking the newly legalized immigrants to citizenship and voting rolls.   It will end the conservative movement.</p>
<p>Post-election quarterbacks attributed Mitt Romney’s loss to a “conscious decision to blow off Hispanic voters.” Republicans sounded like a party that “hates brown people,” said <a href="http://www.redstate.com/2012/11/07/status-quo-ante/">Erick Erickson</a>. Others made similar analyses until the real numbers came in, showing that the deciding factor in the Republican loss was the abandonment by white working class voters—like Oliver.  Furthermore, as <a href="http://pjmedia.com/jchristianadams/2012/11/07/gop-outreach-to-hispanics-wont-work/">J. Christian Adams</a> pointed out, going back to the George W. Bush administration, the policies of the left don’t work with conservative Hispanics, the only ones the GOP can realistically count on.</p>
<p>I am reminded by Jack’s story about my immigrant family, about an uncle who was a bricklayer, about my father who was a welder.  Other legal immigrants I knew worked in manufacturing or such skilled labor jobs.  Today they would not have a chance.</p>
<p>So Rubio, despite the rhetoric from the powerful large business interests in the Republican Party, is no friend of the middle class or of legal immigrants.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>Get Ready for Al Jazeera America</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/mary-grabar/get-ready-for-al-jazeera-america/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=get-ready-for-al-jazeera-america</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 19 Aug 2013 04:30:31 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Mary Grabar]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[al jazeera]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[America]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Islam]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[journalism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Media]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Terrorism]]></category>

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		<description><![CDATA[How the jihadist equivalent of Pravda is already being embraced by the journalistic establishment. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/1375972566000-XXX-AL-JAZEERA-network-hdb3.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-201060" alt="1375972566000-XXX-AL-JAZEERA-network-hdb3" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/1375972566000-XXX-AL-JAZEERA-network-hdb3-450x337.jpg" width="270" height="202" /></a>If you thought Walter Cronkite was bad with his broadcasts that propagandized against American efforts during the Vietnam War, get ready for Al Jazeera America.  You may be getting it on your cable provider along with 40 million other American households beginning on August 20, 2013.</p>
<p>Al Jazeera, the state propaganda arm of the dictatorial Qatar government is known for stirring up <a href="http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/americans-associate-al-jazeera-al-qaeda-braodcaster-faces-uphill-climb-pin-tv-audience-article-1.1232777">Al Qaeda</a> with images of Osama bin Laden around the time of 9/11.  More recently, it cheered the overthrow of the Egyptian government and <a href="http://www.aim.org/aim-column/big-money-buys-access-for-al-jazeera/">ignored</a> the sexual assault of CBS news correspondent Lara Logan as she covered protests there. The headquarters are to be in our nation’s capitol, at the non-profit Newseum center, even though its operations violate the Foreign Agents Registration Act because they are not labeled as foreign propaganda (a law enacted to protect us from Nazi propaganda).</p>
<p>Ironically, the largest and oldest professional journalism educators’ association, the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC), enjoyed the participation of Al Jazeera in several panels and events at their annual meeting earlier this month.</p>
<p>Two of these events have been recorded by Cliff Kincaid.  One <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xaTEBYw9ru8&amp;feature=c4-overview&amp;list=UUukW9fbX4m5MpOmQ2M5isVg">presentation</a> by William Youmans, Assistant Professor at the School of Media and Public Affairs at George Washington, concerned “the discourse of terrorism.”</p>
<p>Youmans, as the tape reveals, was formerly Civil Rights and Media Relations Manager at the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and a Research Fellow for Bernie Sanders, the socialist senator from Vermont.  Fellow academics listened respectfully as Youmans performed an academic sleight-of-hand, using the post-modern tricks of the trade to make the case for eliminating the word “terrorism.” He questioned definitions (“Terrorism is notoriously difficult to define” with “ambiguities” and “institutional definitions” that exclude “state terrorism”), used moral equivalence (questioning why the word terrorism was used for the 2013 Boston Marathon attack and not for the Sikh temple shooting at Oak Creek, Wisconsin, by a lone gunman), made claims of discrimination (the “racialization” of Arabs and Muslims), and charged Americans with militarism (“policy outcomes” of “hawkishness”).</p>
<p>In another <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FIgVHBJNCNI&amp;feature=c4-overview&amp;list=UUukW9fbX4m5MpOmQ2M5isVg">video</a>, of a panel called “News Coverage of Terrorism,” moderated by Walter Cronkite School of Journalism professor Bill Silcock, Abderrahim Foukara of Al Jazeera replied to Kincaid’s questions about Al Jazeera’s funding also with moral equivalence.  He claimed that no journalist can ever claim independence whether in a “dictatorship, semi-dictatorship, or democracy. “ He maintained that journalists are equally beholden to their paymasters, whether of a dictatorial regime or the “military-industrial complex” of the United States.  He and the other panelists from various universities seemed to be oblivious, however, to the idea of freedom of the press and the First Amendment, which the Qatar regime does not have.</p>
<p>Most of the professors attending this conference assign textbooks that recount the journalistic high points of the Pentagon Papers and Watergate.  They tell students that journalists are brave, principled truth-finders and defenders of the public.  The popular textbook <i>The Elements of Journalism </i>by Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel includes at the top of the list of journalistic principles: maintaining independence, monitoring power, being loyal to citizens, and upholding  the truth.</p>
<p>The most highly esteemed prize in journalism, the Pulitzer Prize, is named after the founder of the Columbia School of Journalism, Joseph Pulitzer.  His words are engraved prominently at the school: “Our Republic and its press will rise or fall together.  An able, disinterested, public-spirited press, with trained intelligence to know the right and courage to do it, can preserve that public virtue without which popular government is a sham. . . .”</p>
<p>But the top-selling media studies textbook, <i>Media &amp; Culture, </i>calls Al Jazeera a legitimate “foreign news bureau.” The authors quote Columbia University President Lee Bollinger in support of this contention.</p>
<p>After losing the presidential election in 2000, Al Gore taught at the Columbia Journalism School.  It was his channel that Al Jazeera bought for $500 million.</p>
<p>Today, the Columbia School of Journalism sends students to Qatar on <a href="http://www.journalism.columbia.edu/news/371">fellowships</a> from Al Jazeera and recently <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/us/2011/05/05/al-jazeera-english-wins-columbia-universitys-journalism-prize/">awarded</a> its top journalism prize to Al Jazeera English.</p>
<p>In an earlier time, an outlet like Al Jazeera would have been met with the same kind of outrage as would have met the institution of Pravda in Washington, D.C.  But education has changed very much, including journalism education.</p>
<p>On the date of Al Jazeera America’s launch, Tuesday, August 20, 2013, America’s Survival is <a href="http://www.usasurvival.org/ck07.11.13.html#axzz2bz5myjou">hosting</a> a free and public conference at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C.  I will be joining Cliff Kincaid and will be presenting my report, co-authored with Tina Trent, on the Crisis in Journalism and the Conservative Response that focuses on biased education and alternative journalism education programs.  We will be joined by others, including Grove City College Political Science Professor Paul Kengor and journalists Trevor Loudon and Jerry Kenney.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>Common Core &#8216;Exemplars&#8217;: Graphic Sex and Praising Castro</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/mary-grabar/common-core-exemplars-graphic-sex-and-praising-castro/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=common-core-exemplars-graphic-sex-and-praising-castro</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 07 May 2013 04:40:31 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Mary Grabar]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[books]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Che Guevara]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Common Core]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Communism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[exemplar]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Fidel Castro]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[literature]]></category>
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		<description><![CDATA[What the few remaining literary books on the national standards list will be teaching students. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/chalkboard.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-188381" alt="chalkboard" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/chalkboard-450x300.jpg" width="270" height="180" /></a>I must admit that I would have been too embarrassed to teach Julia Alvarez’s sexually explicit novel, In the Time of the Butterflies, to the college students I have taught for over twenty years, much less to ninth- and tenth-graders, as many Georgia high school teachers have been instructed to do.</p>
<p>Some high school teachers also have a problem with its overtly feminist and leftist-leaning ideology. The men are portrayed as weak drunkards, continually cheating on their wives.</p>
<p>For example, there is a drunken New Year’s celebration of “the triumphant announcement.  Batista had fled!  Fidel, his brother Raul, and Ernesto they call Che had entered Havana and liberated the country.” No indication in the novel that Fidel and Raul turned out to be tyrants, or Che a mass murderer.</p>
<p>The novel has explicit descriptions of masturbation and intercourse, but I’m too embarrassed to quote those.</p>
<p>The novel is taken straight from Common Core’s “<a href="http://www.corestandards.org/assets/Appendix_B.pdf">Text Exemplars</a>” for ninth and tenth grades.  Although the “exemplars” are officially intended to be suggested readings, educrats take the suggestions literally.  They know that they have to prepare students for the <a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2012/mary-grabar/common-core-phasing-western-culture-out-of-education/">national tests</a> being rolled out in 2014/2015.</p>
<p>Most state legislators and members of the school board who support Governor Nathan Deal in his support of Common Core repeat that Common Core does not prescribe a curriculum—but rather “standards.”  These standards supposedly ensure that students’ academic achievement is consistent state to state.  But that’s another reason for textbook selection committees to select works from the “exemplars”—like Alvarez’s novel.  And it’s another reason why school boards seek to buy “Common Core-compliant” <a href="http://www.mdjonline.com/view/full_story/22361736/article-Textbooks-rejected--Board-votes-against-books-tied-to-Common-Core?instance=home_lead_story">textbooks</a>, as Cobb County in Georgia was going to do for $7.5 million—until citizens protested.</p>
<p>Consistency and standards are among the selling points of Common Core.  Recently at a political meeting one of our Republican state senators brought in a Common Core-supporting member of the state school board to sell us on Common Core and explain that arguments against Common Core are based on misinformation.  These are state standards, he insisted.  They are not curricula.  And they were developed by some “very smart” people&#8211;people with doctorates in education and experience in administration.  The school board member even used his son’s Boy Scout badges to demonstrate the difference between standards and curricula.  Neither he nor the senator had spent a day in a classroom as teachers, however. Had they, they would have known that “standards” and “curricula” in the real world of the classroom have very little difference in meaning.  That’s why there is a big rush on to buy “Common Core-compliant” textbooks across the country.</p>
<p>Still, these two Common Core salesmen implied that opponents are part of the tin foil hat contingent.  Even my question in private to the school board member (who claimed to love “literature”) about the fact that informational texts like EPA directives will be replacing a large percentage of literary works was met with the retort, “So how many times do you use Beowulf?  Graduates need to learn how to read informational texts in order to be able to read instructions at work.”</p>
<p>No doubt, high school students sharing his opinion would rather read Alvarez’s unchallenging polemical and titillating prose than Beowulf or Paradise Lost.   No doubt, her novel will bring them up to speed on politically correct figures and sex tips.  The accompanying EPA directives will teach them how to scan boring texts for required instructions at their “21<sup>st</sup> century” jobs where they will do tasks that require little concentration or independent thought.</p>
<p>And as national social studies standards now come rolling in they will also learn about new American heroes, like Common Core’s biggest funder, billionaire Bill Gates.  One elementary school textbook published by Pearson, the giant international publishing company that has helped develop Common Core tests, contains several pages of tribute to him.</p>
<p>The tribute to the billionaire leftist will make a nice complement to praise of Castro and Che in one of the few works of fiction allowed to remain in the ever-diminishing pool of literary “exemplars” under these new “standards.”</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>Georgia High School Teachers: &#8216;Political Advocates&#8217; for Illegal Aliens</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/mary-grabar/georgia-high-school-teachers-political-advocates-for-illegal-aliens/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=georgia-high-school-teachers-political-advocates-for-illegal-aliens</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 13 Mar 2013 04:11:39 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Mary Grabar]]></dc:creator>
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		<description><![CDATA[Terrorist Bill Ayers leads the way for the leftist education establishment. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2013/mary-grabar/georgia-high-school-teachers-political-advocates-for-illegal-aliens/22366_10202011_undocumentedrally143f/" rel="attachment wp-att-181101"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-181101" title="22366_10202011_undocumentedrally143f" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/22366_10202011_undocumentedrally143f.jpg" alt="" width="265" height="221" /></a>Less than three weeks after two Athens, Georgia, high school English teachers appeared with formerly “undocumented” students at the Association of Teacher Educators conference in Atlanta, Georgia, a <a href="http://onlineathens.com/local-news/2013-03-06/undocumented-students-supporters-protest-ugas-arch-education-equality">protest</a> for “education equality” was held in Athens on the campus of the University of Georgia, one of five top state schools that restrict their access in order to save space for legal residents and returning soldiers.  No surprise, one of these teachers was quoted in the lengthy follow-up<em> </em><a href="http://onlineathens.com/local-news/2013-03-09/study-break-undocumented-students-face-hurdles-higher-ed">article</a> on March 9 titled, “Undocumented students face hurdles to higher ed.”</p>
<p>I attended the conference to hear <a href="http://pjmedia.com/blog/bill-ayers-in-retirement/">Bill Ayers</a>, and saw that these educators had much in common: they saw their roles primarily as advocates, not educators.  ATE, however, claims to be “devoted solely to the improvement of teacher education” and to represent over 650 colleges and universities, 500 major school systems, and the majority of state departments of education</p>
<p>The advocacy includes that on behalf of illegal alien students, at the expense of other students.  The panel, “Immigration and Education: Critical Issues, Critical Times,” featured JoBeth Allen, who runs a “Freedom University” for students prohibited from attending the University of Georgia, and Azadeh Shahshahani, president of the Lawyers Guild and director for “immigrant rights” at the ACLU Foundation of Georgia.</p>
<p>Also on the ATE panel were two English teachers from the two public high schools in Athens: Matthew Hicks of Cedar Shoals High School and Ian Altman of Clarke Central High School.</p>
<p>Both teachers described to other teachers and education professors how they have turned their classrooms—during and after class periods—into advocacy labs for illegal alien students.  In her introductory remarks, Allen noted that the two “award-winning” teachers make “human rights” part of the curriculum.  That includes taking students to rallies for “undocumented immigrants,” helping students prepare speeches for the annual Athens Human Rights Festival, and publishing a newsletter.  Teachers bring students to hearings on immigration bills.  Altman talked about his plans to fly to Tucson with students for a “Greenfest” for “Dreamers” and bragged about a student who gave a “brilliant speech” at a press conference on immigration and now has a full scholarship to Syracuse University.</p>
<p>Such speech-writing forms much of the assignments in these two teachers’ classes.  Altman described how he begins the semester by telling students that he could “teach the standards” or teach them what is “valuable.”  (Skirting “standards” was an objective at the ATE conference.)  “I can teach standards,” he said, echoing ATE keynote speaker Bill Ayers, “but I might as well work in a factory.” In his estimation, what is valuable is raising awareness of the plight of undocumented students and helping them attain legal status.  Altman uses William Faulkner’s Nobel Prize acceptance speech, the Declaration of Independence, and Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” and “Letter from Birmingham Jail” speeches to teach students “how a democratic society can function.”  Similarly, Arthur Miller’s play <em>The Crucible </em>teaches “empathy.” In other words, these literary works are twisted into arguments against immigration laws.</p>
<p>Altman used postmodern literary theory to justify his activism: immigration has to do with human lives and lives are “inscribed in language.”  For him, the personal and professional coincide: “To be their teacher means to be their political advocate.”</p>
<p>What about the student who is an American citizen and who disagrees with Altman’s position?</p>
<p>Altman puts the student on the spot and demands that he look at his undocumented classmate.  Even though his readings and assignments focus on “undocumented immigrants,” Altman claimed that the dissenting student is not pressured to change his politics.  However, “he has to understand human tragedy in our political system.”</p>
<p>Altman and Hicks use their classrooms after school hours for such advocacy as well.  Altman raises money for college applications, edits letters for college admissions, writes letters of recommendation, and offers a “safe place” for undocumented students.  “We become advocates, confidantes, and confessors,” he stated, as he laid out the standard leftist line about how those who advocate for strong immigration laws are really classicist, and racist against Latinos.</p>
<p>Both Altman and Hicks presented themselves as modern day freedom fighters.  For them, being advocates for “undocumented” students is a high, noble cause.  Indeed, it was quite disturbing to watch the two teachers with their former students next to them talk about emotionally charged after-hours sessions.  Said Hicks, “You need to be brave enough and strong enough,” yet “able to cry with them.”</p>
<p>Once he has helped them find the college that welcomes undocumented students, Hicks helps them write application essays.  But he also incorporates college application essays into his classroom activities, encouraging students to write about their “challenges.” Admissions panels, looking for “diversity” increasingly give greater weight to such essays, as legal challenges to other preferential criteria like the automatic addition of points to test scores for those of certain races are made.</p>
<p>The two girls had given their stories, in the typical 18-year-old patois, repeating the trauma of what it was like to learn that they were “undocumented,” while they “felt American,” and how “it sucks how teachers can’t help students unless you tell them you are undocumented.”</p>
<p>Of course, there was no discussion of the law or acknowledgement of parental responsibility, or of the possibility of getting state-supported college educations in the nations of their birth.  These were teenagers, and admittedly good students.  They are the type advocates of the DREAM Act like to show off.  They gave their testimonies about being brought over by “coyotes” from Mexico, tearfully leaving behind grandparents.  They do the same when they testify at the state Capitol, hoping to tug at the heartstrings of legislators, but not needing to for the businessmen who seek to profit from cheap labor, and university administrators who seek the federal aid dollars that follow students.  D.A. King, president of the Dustin Inman Society, a pro-enforcement immigration watchdog group, is used to seeing busloads with young people coming to the state capitol in Georgia to chant “we will not comply” with immigration laws.</p>
<p>Teachers like Altman and Hicks have been trained by education professors like the ones at Georgia State University who held a <a href="http://marygrabar.com/dissidentprof2/latest-dispatches/100-the-incriminating-video">Teach-In</a> last year on lobbying against immigration laws (<a href="http://marygrabar.com/dissidentprof2/latest-dispatches/101-my-testimony-and-questioning-in-eight-minutes">my testimony here</a>).  Their preferred “undocumented” students earn high grades, at least partly because of their extra help.</p>
<p>What about the student who, quite logically, doesn’t see Faulkner’s Nobel Prize acceptance speech as a statement on behalf of illegal aliens, and furthermore does not want do writing assignments that include protest speeches, or emotionally charged college admissions essays?  Well, he’s out of luck, and furthermore has little recourse through an appeal to his teacher.  Matt Hicks admitted that helping “undocumented” students is “what I do with all my spare time.”</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>Common Core: Phasing Western Culture Out of Education</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/mary-grabar/common-core-phasing-western-culture-out-of-education/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=common-core-phasing-western-culture-out-of-education</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 17 Dec 2012 04:08:08 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Mary Grabar]]></dc:creator>
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		<description><![CDATA[Why soon not even private school curricula will be safe. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2012/mary-grabar/common-core-phasing-western-culture-out-of-education/classroom-3/" rel="attachment wp-att-169701"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-169701" title="classroom" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/classroom.jpg" alt="" width="254" height="195" /></a>This week, left-wing outlets, like NPR’s quiz show, <a href="http://www.npr.org/templates/rundowns/rundown.php?prgId=35"><em>Wait, Wait . . . Don’t Tell Me!</em></a> and the <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/10/common-core-nonfiction-reading-standards_n_2271229.html"><em>Huffington Post</em></a>, as well as the British <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/booknews/9729383/Catcher-in-the-Rye-dropped-from-US-school-curriculum.html"><em>Telegraph</em></a>, expressed surprise and concern that the new national Common Core standards will destroy the love of literature.  The leftist outlets focused on favorites like <em>Catcher in the Rye </em>and <em>To Kill a Mockingbird</em>, but couldn’t seem to connect this unconstitutional federalization of education with their favorite presidential candidate.</p>
<p>They should also be concerned about what the recently released test questions reveal about what the feds want: happy workers for the State.</p>
<p>The test questions, which will eventually be given to every single student, are the kind you could expect from a close pal of Bill Ayers, co-founder of the terrorist group Weatherman-turned-“Distinguished Professor of Education.” Ayers’s close colleague, Stanford Education Professor Linda Darling-Hammond, education director of Obama’s presidential transition team, heads content specifications for testing under one of the consortia, Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium which received $176 million in stimulus funds to develop testing under Common Core—now the law of the land, at least in 46 states. (The rest of the $360 million for testing was given to PARCC, Partnership for Assessment Readiness for College and Career.)</p>
<p>SBAC recently <a href="http://www.smarterbalanced.org/sample-items-and-performance-tasks/">released</a> 16 sample test questions.  They reveal that the “transformation” of American education that Darling-Hammond had eagerly anticipated will be fulfilled—toward making students into global citizens, devoid of a sense of cultural heritage, and content with performing quick tasks that require little concentration.</p>
<p>Common Core was sold as delivering more academic rigor, on a more consistent state-to-state basis.  But one of its most controversial aspects for the English/Language Arts portion (the other being math) was the replacement of literary works with “informational texts.” Students are to divide their time equally between literature and informational texts, until high school, when literary works will make up only 30 percent of English/Language Arts instruction.</p>
<p>The recently released <a href="http://sampleitems.smarterbalanced.org/itempreview/sbac/ELA.htm">sample test questions</a> do indeed test for students’ ability to search out information from both written and audio/video “texts,” and provide short written responses to them, as well as, occasionally, correct punctuation.</p>
<p>The <a href="http://www.corestandards.org/about-the-standards/myths-vs-facts">Common Core website</a> attempts to assure us that “the Standards require a certain critical content for all students including classic myths and stories from around the world, America’s Founding Documents, foundational American literature, and Shakespeare.” Yet, at the same time, “they intentionally <a href="http://www.corestandards.org/about-the-standards/key-points-in-english-language-arts">do not offer a reading list</a>.”  We know, however, that if students are to be tested on reading and writing skills, <em>some </em>content will be necessary.  The content presented in the sample test questions is telling.  None of it is from the “classic myths and stories,” etc., cited above.</p>
<p>Common Core proponents repeatedly refer to the changed “twenty-first century workplace.”  Accordingly, tests are administered by computer and incorporate videos.  Two of the samples ask students to answer questions after watching short videos about weightlessness in space.  Such testing is in line with the increased emphasis on “listening and discussion skills” that I noted in <a href="http://www.aim.org/special-report/terrorist-professor-bill-ayers-and-obamas-federal-school-curriculum/">my report</a> for Accuracy in Media.  In Common Core-aligned lessons, high school juniors and seniors were tasked with looking at, and then discussing, photographs and videos.</p>
<p>The trend of late has been to emphasize such “alternative literacies,” but Common Core codifies what are really preliterate skills.</p>
<p>Even the written texts and analytical tasks seem to test only for rudimentary skills: the ability to read a short, simple passage and then pull out the correct information.  Three of the sample questions involve searching out answers and definitions in a simple narrative titled “Grandma Ruth.”</p>
<p>Another question asks the students to provide an ending to a story that consists of two short paragraphs about a character named Jeff and his dog walking by a lake, when a splash is heard.</p>
<p>The question remains: how would the response be graded?  For absence of grammatical errors?  Or according to Darling-Hammond’s criteria spelled out in her 2009 <em>Harvard Educational Review </em>article of “developing creativity, critical thinking skills, and the capacity to innovate”?  She did indicate that new assessments would use “multiple measures of learning and performance.” We can expect some—ahem&#8211;“discretion” in grading.</p>
<p>The intent of Common Core is to ensure <em>every </em>student of “college and career readiness.” Are such questions intended to meet the top goal of Darling-Hammond and the Department of Education—that is to “close the achievement gap”?  One suspects so.</p>
<p>The next question too asks the student to complete a writing assignment&#8211;arguing for a longer school day.  This time the student is given a schedule of activities.  The assignment is to “revise the paragraph by adding details from the daily schedule that help support the reasons for having a longer school day.” Presumably, this tests for the ability to provide “<a href="http://www.corestandards.org/about-the-standards/key-points-in-english-language-arts">relevant evidence</a>.”</p>
<p>Coincidentally, the idea of public schools being “centers of community life” with longer days has been something that the Obama administration has been promoting with daily announcements about “cradle to career” initiatives and efforts to “engage” various “communities.” While he was still head of Chicago schools, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan made schools community centers, offering three meals a day, and even eye exams and eyeglasses.  Now he wants to expand the role of schools on a nationwide basis. In <a href="http://www.peterlevine.ws/mt/archives/2009/03/arne-duncan-on.html">Duncan’s vision</a>, schools would be open 12 to 13 hours a day, 7 days a week; they would “meet the social and emotional needs” of students, and provide cultural and academic activities, as well as services for parents, like GED tutoring and healthcare clinics.  To Duncan, such efforts are part of a “battle for social justice.”</p>
<p>So is it a coincidence that one of the test questions concerns a longer school day?</p>
<p>Notice the student is not asked <em>if </em>the school day should be longer. Textbooks, similarly, now <a href="http://pjmedia.com/blog/norton-reader-teaches-obamas-2009-cairo-speech-to-college-students/">ask students to write papers</a> on <em>how</em> “you personally might respond to [President Obama’s] call to remake this world.” The popular <em>Norton Reader </em>does exactly this in one of the topic questions that follows Obama’s 2009 Cairo speech in its pages.</p>
<p>Next in the sample test is a reading passage titled “Planes on the Brain,” by free-lance writer <a href="http://elisabethdeffner.com/">Elisabeth Deffner</a> in a children’s magazine called <em>Faces,</em> published by Carus Publishing, which was <a href="http://www.foliomag.com/2011/digital-platform-epals-acquires-carus#.UHwb-1FgaM9">acquired by</a> ePals Corporation in 2011.</p>
<p>ePals, which is working with Microsoft, Dell, and IBM, encourages “global collaboration.” One of its “Rich, Multi-Disciplinary Student-Centric Learning Centers” is called <em>Global Citizens</em>.<em> </em>Its <a href="http://www.corp.epals.com/partners-and-customers.php">website</a> says, “Microsoft and ePals are working together to offer schools and districts interoperable products and tools for building educational communities, delivering high quality content and facilitating collaboration.” The Bill Gates company, Microsoft, is the vehicle of delivery for content.  The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is the largest private funder of Common Core.  To get schools “<a href="http://www.edweek.org/dd/articles/2012/10/17/01readiness.h06.html?tkn=VYQF1wbCLBUqPzdDLCUwuaA88k4mcH8FJlZ%2F&amp;cmp=ENL-EU-NEWS1">tech ready</a>” for the online national testing, the Gates Foundation-supported <em>Education Week</em> provides helpful tips and reminders and an encouraging <a href="http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/finding_common_ground/2012/10/resisting_technology_is_soooo_20th_century.html?cmp=ENL-EU-VIEWS2">blog post</a>.  Not surprisingly, a test question comes from an article published in an online magazine that partners with Microsoft.</p>
<p>These are close collaborators indeed, for the “Our Approach” page of ePals could have been written by Darling-Hammond herself:</p>
<p>Authentic ePals projects are centered around meaningful content and experiences that require teamwork, digital literacy skills, higher-level thinking and communication. By engaging in authentic learning experiences about relevant issues, students, teachers and mentors learn and work together, strengthening core learning while motivating learners and building self-confidence and skills necessary for future careers.</p>
<p>ePals, also, we are told, helps teachers learn “to use technology effectively in their classrooms, by providing professional development, curriculum, contests and other resources.”  The “Transforming Volunteering” promotional video features a quotation by—surprise&#8211;President Obama about “shaping the future.”</p>
<p>In 2010, ePals received <a href="http://www.corp.epals.com/news/press/press_dec13_10.php">broadband stimulus funds</a> and won the contract for New York City.  Partners listed on the video include the World Bank, National Geographic (which just <a href="http://www.marketwatch.com/story/national-geographic-learning-transforms-the-k-5-reading-market-with-reach-for-reading-a-common-core-reading-program-that-helps-students-learn-to-read-while-reading-to-learn-2012-12-11">announced</a> a line of Common Core-aligned reading materials), and the <em>Washington Post.  </em>ePals is also partnering with Teaching Matters, which describes itself as “a non-profit organization that partners with educators to ensure that all students can succeed in the digital age.”</p>
<p>Teaching Matters, on October 18, 2011, honored Darling-Hammond as a “Champion of Education and Innovation.” The <a href="http://www.teachingmatters.org/blog/save-date-teaching-matters-honor-linda-darling-hammond-october-18-2011">press release</a> referred to Darling-Hammond as “an authority on school reform, educational equity and teacher quality,” and noted that in 2007, <em>Education Week</em> (the Gates-supported Common Core advocacy newsletter) “named her one of the 10 most influential people in the field of education over the last decade.”</p>
<p>The “Champion of Education and Innovation” promises to influence further with such test questions:</p>
<p><em> • How</em> was the Tuskegee Airmen program a positive influence? (along with a “highlighting” exercise)  (Nothing wrong with learning about the Tuskegee Airmen—except when such examples are used in isolation to indict the U.S. as a racist/imperialist nation.)</p>
<p>• A writing assignment concerning the use of cell phones in schools with reasons for and against presented in bullet points (must be one of those “relevant” topics).</p>
<p>• A passage, “Diamonds in the Sky,” about astronomy with two multiple choice questions and a short writing response regarding how scientists can use the knowledge to make diamonds.</p>
<p>• A passage about the invasion of kudzu that asks the student to eliminate unnecessary sentences.</p>
<p>• Grammatical corrections to a student essay about watching a hockey game.</p>
<p>There are no references to the “classic myths and stories” or “America’s Founding Documents” that bureaucrats promised.</p>
<p>Are these examples of the “higher order thinking” and “more thoughtful assessments”  that Darling-Hammond touted in her post-award <a href="http://www.teachingmatters.org/blog/conversation-linda-darling-hammond">interview</a> by Teaching Matters Executive Director Lynne Guastaferro?</p>
<p>Apparently “twenty-first century skills” and “higher order thinking” don’t call for lengthy works of literature, like Shakespeare’s plays, <em>Little House on the Prairie</em>, or even favorite novels of liberals.  More likely, students will be given a short passage and asked how a sod house affects the ecosystem.  The wallpaper for the Teaching Matters website features a bulletin board with projects on biodiversity.  The <a href="http://www.missourieducationwatchdog.com/2012/12/wading-into-standards-weeds.html">U.S. Environmental Protection Agency</a> is advancing the use of their materials regarding environmental regulations for Common Core. California’s <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/335520/goodbye-liberal-arts-betsy-woodruff"><em>Invasive Plant Inventory</em></a><em> </em>is on the recommended informational reading list, as is <a href="http://www.missourieducationwatchdog.com/2012/12/wading-into-standards-weeds.html">EPA Executive Order 13423</a>.</p>
<p>Do “twenty-first century”  students no longer need to read poems by John Donne about love so strong that separations are like “like gold to aery thinness beat”?  Or do they need to learn how to make diamonds?  Are we really going to inspire the next great American novelist by asking him to insert a few sentences on a computer screen about what happens when a splash is heard?</p>
<p>For sure, for decades now, educators have been moving in the direction of Common Core, with the replacement of classic imaginative works by texts that address “relevant” leftist political issues.  Since at least the 1980s those like E.D. Hirsch have been decrying the loss of cultural cohesion through an unraveling curriculum and lowering of standards.</p>
<p>Many gave up on the public school system and sent their children to private schools or home-schooled them.  But critics warn that national tests will make these curricula moot.  They are right.  <em>Education Week </em><a href="http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2012/10/10/07private_ep.h32.html?tkn=MMOFHR1jxlUyB0rdEK8Vp4g%2F0yLyTvnkdKKl&amp;cmp=ENL-EU-NEWS1">recently reported</a> that already many Catholic and other private schools are jumping ahead and adopting Common Core in preparation for college-entrance exams that will line up with Common Core criteria.</p>
<p>Literary works promote an American cultural identity, pass on Western Judeo-Christian values, inspire independent thought, and develop the imagination.  Their elimination is likely to produce citizens incapable of understanding the proper&#8211;and limited&#8211;role of the state.  It’s too bad that the liberal lovers of literature failed to see the dictatorial move of a president through the Department of Education in his first term. Now they whine about students not reading <em>To Kill a Mockingbird. </em>They themselves need to read <em>Dr. Zhivago.</em></p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>How Will History Remember Obama&#8217;s &#8216;Cairo Speech&#8217;?</title>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 16 Oct 2012 04:15:10 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Mary Grabar]]></dc:creator>
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		<description><![CDATA[The textbooks are already being written. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2012/mary-grabar/how-will-history-remember-obamas-cairo-speech/obama-cairo-speech/" rel="attachment wp-att-148614"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-148614" title="obama-cairo-speech" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/obama-cairo-speech.gif" alt="" width="315" height="228" /></a>Will textbook editors rush to include Mitt Romney’s foreign policy speech at the Virginia Military Institute last Monday, as they have with Obama’s speeches and autobiographical writing?</p>
<p>It’s very doubtful.  Speeches by conservatives and Republican political leaders appear, if at all, as tokens, and are usually surrounded by material that puts them under suspicion. Rare is the appearance of a speech by Ronald Reagan.  Rarer still is a respectful discussion of him.  Conversely, speeches by Obama are presented as the hallowed truth and as inspirational guidance for students.</p>
<p>Such is the case with Obama’s 2009 Cairo Speech, now appearing in the latest edition of the <a href="http://books.wwnorton.com/books/detail-contents.aspx?ID=23556"><em>Norton Reader</em></a>, published by the preeminent publisher of anthologies for the English college classroom, Norton.  Obama is the first sitting president I’ve seen included in a textbook, and I’ve been teaching college for 20 years.</p>
<p>Obama felt his words would heal the wounds inflicted by the United States before his tenure and therefore titled his speech “A New Beginning.”  By falsifying history, he built up the Middle East and Islam, while he disparaged the United States, the West, and, of course, President George W. Bush.  The president who called himself a “citizen of the world” claimed that there was no difference between the West and the Middle East, between Christianity and Islam.</p>
<p>Such a view has resulted in a deadly foreign policy, as evidenced by the 9/11 attack on our embassy in Benghazi.</p>
<p>Then, in <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/president-obamas-2012-address-to-un-general-assembly-full-text/2012/09/25/70bc1fce-071d-11e2-afff-d6c7f20a83bf_story.html">his speech</a> before the UN on September 25, Obama repeated the same platitudes. After presenting Ambassador Christopher Stevens as a kind of self-sacrificial multiculturalist who “built bridges across oceans and cultures,” Obama stated that “freedom and self-determination are not unique to one culture.  These are not simply American values or Western values; they are universal values.”</p>
<p>This, of course, is patently false.</p>
<p>Obama admitted as much when he then said that the U.S. government “had nothing to do with this [disgusting and crude] video” (then being used as an excuse for the lack of security).  Obama stated that the video is not only “an insult to Muslims, but to America as well.” (It is emerging that the amateurish film may have been made by <a href="http://frontpagemag.com/author/walid-shoebat/">provocateurs</a>.)</p>
<p>As I indicated in the <a href="https://www.createspace.com/3901477">guide book</a> I published for students about the Cairo speech, political speeches, as described by Aristotle in <em>The Rhetoric</em>, by their nature must gloss over harsh political realities in order to win over audiences to their future vision.  Yet, Obama crossed over a line by presenting outright falsehoods and by continuing to apologize for the U.S.  He did it again last month before the U.N. General Assembly.</p>
<p>In contrast, Mitt Romney referred to “American exceptionalism” and commitment to Israel and the former Soviet Bloc countries, thereby affirming American and Western values.  He did so even more as he invoked George Marshall and the Marshall Plan with its rebuilding of Europe after World War II.</p>
<p>I wonder if Romney read the columnists and historians who reacted to Obama’s assertion in Cairo that “I know there has been controversy about the promotion of democracy in recent years, and much of this controversy is connected to the war in Iraq.  So let me be clear: no system of government can or should be imposed upon one nation by another.” Victor Davis Hanson was not the only one to wonder, “Would that include postwar Japan, Italy, and Germany?”</p>
<p>At the U.N., Obama admitted, “I know that not all countries in this body share this particular understanding of the protection of free speech.”  Then quite illogically he said, “The United States has not, and will not, seek to dictate the outcome of democratic transitions abroad.”</p>
<p>Romney admitted the superiority of American and Western values when he referred to “support[ing] friends who shared our values” under the Marshall Plan.  He said, “Statesmen like Marshall rallied our nation to rise to its responsibilities as the leader of the free world &#8230; We defended our friends, and ourselves, from our common enemies.” He also quoted Ronald Reagan, who quoted Abraham Lincoln, in claiming that the U.S. is the “last best hope.”</p>
<p>This is a refreshing divergence from the fantasy multicultural blather that Obama delivers, as he did at the U.N. by claiming that “the fault lines of race or tribe [often] arise from the difficulties of reconciling tradition and faith with the diversity and interdependence of the modern world,” and then ending with a reference to the “common heartbeat of humanity.”</p>
<p>Romney will have a lot to work with in the upcoming debates as the Obama administration’s flailing attempts to cover up its negligence in Benghazi come to light.  Yet, Romney did not need to call the video “reprehensible” and “insulting [to] Islam” even as he noted, “the Administration has finally conceded, these attacks were the deliberate work of terrorists[.]”   Such talk only concedes ground on what should be a rock-solid defense of the First Amendment.</p>
<p>Romney faces an American electorate educated to believe Obama’s fantasies about “universal values,” “diversity,” and the “common heartbeat of humanity.”  Without a reform in our institutions, especially schools, our nation will be in danger of electing leaders who turn out to be “internal enemies,” as George Washington warned in his “Farewell Address”—another presidential speech not included in the <em>Norton Reader</em>.</p>
<p>Nor does the <em>Norton Reader </em>include any selections by Alexis de Tocqueville’s nineteenth-century classic, <em>Democracy in America</em> and his words about the importance of voluntary religion (echoing George Washington).  Tocqueville says:</p>
<blockquote><p>When there is no longer any principle of authority in religion any more than in politics, men are speedily frightened at the aspect of this unbounded independence.  The constant agitation of all surrounding things alarms and exhausts them.  As everything is at sea in the sphere of the intellect, they determine at least that the mechanism of society should be firm and fixed; and as they cannot resume their ancient belief, they assume a master.</p></blockquote>
<p>Need we say more about the current president and his worshippers?</p>
<p>In fact, Tocqueville asserts that religious faith is essential to freedom: “I doubt whether man can ever support at the same time complete religious independence and entire public freedom. . . . if he be free, he must believe.”</p>
<p>Furthermore, Tocqueville insists that not just any religion will do, and certainly not Islam.  His reasons still make sense nearly 200 years later:</p>
<blockquote><p>Mohammed professed to derive from Heaven, and he has inserted in the Koran, not only a body of religious doctrines, but political maxims, civil and criminal laws, and theories of science.  The Gospel, on the contrary, only speaks of the general relations of men to God and to each other—beyond which it inculcates and imposes no point of faith.  This alone, besides a thousand other reasons, would suffice to prove that the former of these religions will never long predominate in a cultivated and democratic age, whilst the latter is destined to retain its sway at these as at all other periods.</p></blockquote>
<p>Even if Romney is elected, the deeply entrenched and powerful academics putting together textbooks and syllabi will continue to present students with a skewed view of history and rhetorical greatness.  Obama’s fanciful presentations of world peace will continue to strike familiar dulcet notes in the soft, indoctrinated brains of our young people.  Hope is not a foreign policy, as Romney said, but Americans first need to understand history and first principles.  While celebrating the freedom to worship, we must point out to Muslims that it is a privilege <em>our</em> Western culture grants <em>them</em>.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>Jihad Jane in the Classroom</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/mary-grabar/jihad-jane-in-the-classroom/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=jihad-jane-in-the-classroom</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 23 Mar 2010 04:03:06 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Mary Grabar]]></dc:creator>
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		<description><![CDATA[Islamic Awareness Week returns to the American campus.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/niqab.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-55577" title="niqab" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/niqab.jpg" alt="" width="450" height="274" /></a></p>
<p>In the days after the 9/11 attacks, average Americans donated money and festooned American flags to vehicles in a show of unity and support.  Educators, in contrast, took advantage for further anti-American indoctrination and plastered school walls with “Understanding Islam” posters.  They did this at the University of Georgia where I was finishing up my Ph.D. program.</p>
<p>Since then, the Islamists have wormed their ways into our culture, reaching the most vulnerable: our children.</p>
<p>It is no surprise to me that blonde American women, <a href="http://www.texasgopvote.com/blog/jihad-jane-and-jihad-jamie-03171">like Jihad Jane and Jihad Jamie</a>, would be converting to Islam and supporting jihad.  The most depraved murderers on death row attract the support of soft-hearted and weak-minded women.  They are aided by educators and the propagandists they invite into the classroom.</p>
<p>In fact, proselytizing occurs in high schools and colleges without a peep from principals or college presidents, who fret about such Christian symbols as Christmas trees on their campuses.</p>
<p>For example, for the second year, the Muslim Student Association is holding their Islamic Awareness Week at the Clarkston campus of Georgia Perimeter College in the Atlanta area.  MSA Advisor Shyam K. Sriram, who teaches American Government and Political Science, in an email encourages faculty members to allow their students “to obtain extra credit for attending these myriad of events” and adds that he is “happy to sign off on any extra credit sheets.”</p>
<p>Not only is Sriram sending this to all instructors on campus through the e-mail list, but his Islamic Awareness Week provides the theme for the college’s home page and posters about the events plaster bulletin boards on campus.  The student who wants to learn more about the event can click on a link and see the following list and the note, “Faculty are encouraged to give students extra credit for attending.”</p>
<p>These events for the week of March 16-19 include:</p>
<p>“Islam 101” with Brother Abu Addisalam.</p>
<p>“The Sweetness of Faith” with Imam Ishmael ibn Paul Teasley.</p>
<p>“Sorry, Mama, But I Love Her: A Talk on Love, Patience and Relationships” with Imam Tariq Khan.</p>
<p>“Hijab for a Day” “Information Session for WOMEN only.”</p>
<p>“Converts Panel featuring Former Rapper Loon.”</p>
<p>“Young Muslim Collegiate Panel.”</p>
<p>The title “Sorry, Mama, But I Love Her” reminded me of a workshop I attended at the National Council for the Social Studies conference called “Muslim Perspectives Through [sic] Film and Dialogue: Understanding, Empathy, Civic Discourse.”   There, Barbara Petzen (a blonde woman), an academic specializing in Middle East studies, and employed by the Middle East Policy Council, which has received multiple donations from Saudi Arabian royalty, offered sheep-like high school social studies teachers free films for use in the classroom.</p>
<p>One, which she showed, <em>Allah Made Me Funny</em>, about three young Muslim comedians—a Palestinian, an Indian, and an African-American convert&#8211;fits in with the lessons on “tolerance” teenagers receive from television and the classroom.</p>
<p>Its producer, Michael Wolfe, knows what will appeal to teenagers, for he himself is a convert and comes from what <a href="http://www.islamfortoday.com/wolfe1.htm">he calls</a> a “mongrel” background of a mixed Jewish-Christian marriage.  What was especially disturbing in the film was the black convert, who bragged about his loss of attraction to white women since his conversion.  He had some tender-hearted bemusement for his poor, benighted old mother still stuck in the old Christian religion who was upset at his conversion.  He could see into her plot to get him back to her church, for an “intervention” on him.  (The camera panned to the wholesome Muslim audience of families in traditional and Western dress laughing good-naturedly.)</p>
<p>The talk by Imam Tariq Khan at Georgia Perimeter College (“Sorry, Mama, But I Love Her”) suggests a similar conflict between an adult child and parent. Converts are loving toward parents—although more enlightened.  In this age of tolerance and following your own path Islam is presented as just another alternative—and a better, more tolerant, and more hip alternative at that.</p>
<p>One wonders what would happen were the script reversed.  Would administrators allow a Methodist minister to put on a “Christian Awareness Week” at a community college?  Would Muslims tolerate a film being shown to Muslim students at a public school, titled <em>Jesus Made Me Funny</em>, that poked fun at their parents’ Muslim religion, that joked about seeing through a parent’s attempt to intervene?  Indeed, Muslim parents like those of <a href="http://www.floridasecuritycouncil.org/rifqa/">Rifqa Bary</a>, threaten and do kill children who convert to Christianity.</p>
<p>Of course, such facts never came up in the film or workshop.  Petzen said to teachers, “What I love about these guys is that they’re normal.”</p>
<p>When an inconvenient fact comes up—like the violence that Muslims have displayed—those like Petzen offer defenses through moral equivalency.  She gave lessons to social studies teachers to pass on to students about the rioting and murders after the publication of cartoons about Muhammad.  Well, Christians would get upset too, she offered.</p>
<p>Yes, they have, when their tax dollars go to support <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piss_Christ">artwork</a> that immerses a crucifix in urine.  But they don’t riot and murder over it.</p>
<p>Of course, educators are likely to present the Christians who opposed public funding of Andres Serrano’s “Piss Christ” artwork as close-minded and bigoted (as they have done in textbooks I’ve been required to use).  They are likely to invoke the First Amendment.</p>
<p>Petzen <a href="http://www.academia.org/as-the-third-world-turns/">objected</a> to my characterization of her “defense” in the report I wrote about the conference.  It was an “explanation,” she insisted.</p>
<p>Really?  Her moral equivalency <a href="http://www.academia.org/of-pedagogy-propaganda/">insults</a> the intelligence of the civilized world.  Everybody could <em>understand</em> being upset with the depictions in the cartoons.  What they could not understand was the barbarism of the response.  “Explanations” for violence, for behavior that defies every standard of Western civilization, makes every barbaric act more “normal.”  And, indeed, “normalization” of Islam is the goal of Petzen and Sriram, and every other proselytizer in the classroom.</p>
<p>In 1983, “A Nation at Risk,” stated famously, “If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war.”</p>
<p>Some insist that “jihad” is misunderstood, that according to the Koran it involves moral cleansing and an intellectual effort. If so, we’ve got Jihad Janes in the classroom, proselytizing to already indoctrinated children and teenagers.  This is indeed a “war” on the hearts and minds of students.</p>
<p><strong>For my full report on the National Council for the Social Studies <a href="http://www.usasurvival.org/docs/Grabar_report.pdf">go here</a>.</strong></p>
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