Update:
It could be worse; they could be using Saudi textbooks in the Lone Star state:
Robert Spencer reminds us how this came about:
Texas curriculum: “Allah is the Almighty God”
Arabic-speaking Christians generally use the word “Allah” for the God of the Bible, but this curriculum doesn’t seem to be talking about Arabic-speaking Christians: it seems fairly clear that it is trying to portray Islam in a benign and positive light, without any reference to the violent texts and teachings that jihadis and Islamic supremacists point to in order to justify their actions.
Pamela Geller exposed Rick Perry’s dawah curriculum in the public schools of Texas (here)
What a coincidence that this curriculum would be in use in Texas, where Governor Rick Perry partnered with the Aga Khan Foundation to develop a severely whitewashed, Islam-friendly curriculum. When Pamela Geller and I broke the story of that curriculum in 2011, the reaction was furious: one blogger demanded I stop linking him; another claimed that the curriculum material we had uncovered was not really the curriculum at all, and tried to pass off one teacher’s private notes as the real curriculum; and formerfriends and associates denounced us with a cult-like fervor that I still find hard to believe that a compromised nonentity like Rick Perry could have inspired.
Now, lo and behold, we find that Texas has a severely whitewashed Islam curriculum, just as we said. Today one of the bloggers who was most furiously and frenziedly denouncing us last year for daring to suggest that Perry was opening Texas schools to a biased and whitewashed presentation of Islam posted this WND story without the slightest reference to the Perry controversy, about which he was so spectacularly wrong. That’s chutzpah.
“Texas teaching ‘Allah is the Almighty God,’” by John Griffing for WND, December 13 (thanks to JW):
In the 70 percent of Texas public schools where a private curriculum has been installed, students are learning the “fact” that “Allah is the Almighty God,” charge critics of a new online curriculum that already is facing condemnation for its secrecy and restrictions on oversight.
The program, called CSCOPE, is a private venture operating under the umbrella of the Texas Education Service Center Curriculum Collaborative, whose incorporation documents state its independence from the State Board of Education of the Texas Education Agency.
Other reports previously have raised alarm over the curriculum’s depiction of the Boston Tea Party as a terrorist act on par with the 9/11 attack.
According to documentation that has leaked out, the program describes the Boston Tea Party this way: “A local militia, believed to be a terrorist organization, attacked the property of private citizens today at our nation’s busiest port. Although no one was injured in the attack, a large quantity of merchandise, considered to be valuable to its owners and loathsome to the perpetrators, was destroyed. The terrorists, dressed in disguise and apparently intoxicated, were able to escape into the night with the help of local citizens who harbor these fugitives and conceal their identities from the authorities. It is believed that the terrorist attack was a response to the policies enacted by the occupying country’s government. Even stronger policies are anticipated by the local citizens.”
There also have been reports that the curriculum – contrary to recent Supreme Court rulings – says the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, the right to bear arms, is limited to state-run organizations.
“The collective right’s advocates believed that the Second Amendment did not apply to individuals; rather it recognized the right of a state to arm its militia. It recognized limited individual rights only when it was exercised by members of a functioning, organized militia while actively participating in the militia’s activities.”
Now come concerns about what critics describe as a definitively pro-Islam bias.
The critics say the studies border on proselytizing.
In one scenario, students are asked to study the tenets of Islam, and critics say the materials provided exceed impartial review of another faith, extending into requirements of conversion and moral imperatives.
A computer presentation utilized as part of a study of Islam includes information on how to convert, as well as verses denigrating other faiths.
According to excerpts, under the heading, “Who Is Allah?,” students are told:
“Allah is the Almighty God.”
“Allah alone is the Creator. He alone deserves our devout love and worship.”
Muhammad is described as having become “disillusioned with the corruption in the city and the growing gap between the urban dwellers and the Bedouins (nomadic herders).”
But there is no mention of his documented sex activities with a child or his penchant for beheading entire indigenous people groups.
CSCOPE’s geography curriculum also is being scrutinized.
A high school question on a geography test asks, “Which of the following has been a benefit of globalization?” Possible answers are as follows: a) pandemics, b) increased standard of living, c) loss of local culture, and finally, d) widespread environmental impacts.
The only “correct” answer accepted in the context of the test is “an increased standard of living.”
WND recently reported the Texas State Board of Education was hearing concerns expressed by parents.
The debate carries national significance because of the influence Texas has on textbook and curriculum publishers as the only state that adopts uniform standards.
CSCOPE advocates say that the volume of information to which students now have access outside the classroom necessitates the move away from textbooks.
“If they’re sitting in a classroom with a textbook, that’s not the world anymore,” said Anne Poplin, Education Service Center Region 9 executive director.
“We’re moving to Bring Your Own Devices. It’s a disadvantage (for children) not to have access to their devices. It’s not a textbook-driven environment. If it is, they’re behind,” Poplin said.
An estimated 70 percent of Texas schools already are involved in the program.
But one of the concerns is that state law requires textbooks to be reviewed by the board of education, and parents are allowed to have access, since CSCOPE is considered a private venture it operates independently of state or local school board oversight.
The state attorney general’s office has ruled that CSCOPE is a government organization subject to requirements of transparency, but because of loopholes in the Texas Public Information Act and Senate Bill 6, passed in 2011, CSCOPE has thus far been able to keep its content from public review. Even parents are denied access.
Kimberly Thomas, a teacher in the Lubbock school district, calls CSCOPE a “joke,” identifying a ninth-grade lesson that asks students to circle capital letters in a sentence.
Her department was rated exemplary by the state prior to the installation of CSCOPE. As Thomas notes, CSCOPE “forces our own department to undo the proven, successful curriculum we have developed that gave us an exemplary rating.”
Just days ago, Thomas Ratliff, a member of the state board and supporter of CSCOPE, said CSCOPE was “supplemental” and that textbooks still are being used.
“CSCOPE is not designed to eliminate textbooks or other instructional materials. It is designed to complement them for the benefit of the teacher and the student,” he wrote in a prepared statement.
CSCOPE employees, on the other hand, claim the software is designed to replace textbooks and, indeed, has in many Texas school districts.
Addressing the issue of the program’s secrecy, Ratliff slammed critics who say they want government to be “run like a business” but then get upset when that happens.
But critics argue private schools, the closest thing to a school being run like a business, still make instructional materials available to parents, something that CSCOPE refuses to do.
The “parent portal” provided on the public portion of CSCOPE’s website has not allayed critics’ concerns. Some of the lessons leaked to the public have contained wide disparities from the summary pages viewable in the public section of CSCOPE’s website.
Ratliff defends this dichotomy by saying that, like iTunes or any other “business,” some things must be placed behind a “pay wall” as part of a business plan. Ratliff claims that CSCOPE is created by “teachers, for teachers.”
But teachers must sign a gag order when required to use CSCOPE in their classrooms.
Complicating the issue is the fact that school districts usually purchase CSCOPE with state tax dollars.
While Ratliff calls the curriculum “instructional material” he said state oversight wouldn’t help, and “I would much rather have 7,000 locally elected school board members decide what content is best for their students, not the 15-member SBOE. Allowing CSCOPE to be developed and implemented at the local level is the ‘local control’ Texans say we want. Injecting SBOE oversight into this would shift us into a ‘controlling the locals’ approach.”
Critics say that’s not the way the system is set up, and CSCOPE actually ends local input since it prevents, on penalty of copyright litigation, distribution of its content to parents.
A vocal critic has been Texas State Rep. Debbie Riddle, a Republican.
“I did pretty well with textbooks. Benjamin Franklin did pretty well with textbooks. Are they going to say reading books is not effective? Should we all stop reading our Bibles?
“Call me old-fashioned, but there is something about the feel, smell, holding a book; there is a lot to be said for holding a hard copy,” she said.
———————–
Separately but in a related issue, Attorney General Greg Abbott has released an opinion that is being is being quoted by critics as disqualifying Ratliff from the state board because of his connections to companies doing business with schools in Texas.
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Thank god, some states are ‘getting it”. Take the state of Virginia, (no, not the 72 virgins the bozos are clamoring for) and some very smart American parents who know the 153 charter schools/Fetullah Gulen, schools in the US are not here for any purposes that include peace or any understanding between cultures and religions. Hats off to them.
The good American parents, citizens of Loudoun County, VA had a town hall meeting 2 nights ago to stop a Gulen School from opening.
Here is an Ex CIA’s analysis of the Gulen connection to the schools
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v6wqna7AhYg&feature=youtu.be
Take the time to view this video and be forewarned of what these usurpers of american goodwill, have in mind for your future. And the 153 schools are only in America…beyond that are hundreds more now splattered all over the globe…europe, canada, australia, africa, et al.
Let us simply call it, ‘a sheep in wolves clothing’…don’t buy this sht.
This all went under the radar for too long.
Its high time that something is done about it.
Ending Progressive Public Education (from BCF)
“If Barack and Michelle Obama feel comfortable allowing Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn to babysit their children, that is their problem. The question is, would you allow them to babysit yours? Let’s take that a step farther: would you let them raise your children? Would you give them exclusive supervision over the majority of your children’s daylight hours up to age eighteen, primary control of your children’s academic curriculum and teaching methodology, and authority to arrange the broad social and moral framework within which your children will be educated?
No? Then why do you accept modern public education? Furthermore, why, after having delivered generations of children into this Marx/Dewey/Marcuse/Ayers educational program, is anyone perplexed at people’s inability to respect individual freedom, understand property rights, or hold themselves to standards of character and reasoning higher than that of a mugger?”
***
Toronto – Indoctrinating school kids to blindly accept Marxist notions of “social justice” in Math
Perhaps, as Allan Bloom suggested with regard to gladiators, witch burnings, and rock music, a civilization’s greatest absurdity always seems normal to itself. In seeking to explain such a quotidian absurdity, the best angle from which to begin our search may be sideways.
I have a family member in Canada who, a few years ago, suffered a spinal injury. Although her case was not technically an emergency, her surgeon told her in no uncertain terms that the damage to her back was degenerative, and that her condition would continue to deteriorate, irreversibly, until she had the necessary surgery.
Canada’s health care system is, of course, fully socialized, which means it is a bureaucratic nightmare beset with shortages, outrageous wait times, and the impersonal disdain for individual patients that leftists euphemize as “universal care.” My family member got her needed surgery at the earliest available date – which happened to be nine months after being told her spine would continue to degenerate until surgically repaired.
At one point, around halfway through this nine month wait, I suggested that she drive a couple of hours south and pay to have the surgery done at a U.S. hospital. It would have been very expensive, I conceded, but she had to measure the potential gouge out of her savings against the threat of having to give up so many favorite activities forever, and ending up in a wheelchair at sixty.
She would not hear of it. It was not a matter of being a strident defender of socialized medicine, or of nervousness about a foreign hospital. Though frustrated and worried about her future, she simply could not take seriously the possibility of pursuing alternatives, nor question the causes of the ordeal she was being put through, even though her own health and quality of life were at stake. Indefinite wait times guaranteeing permanent, unnecessary harm are just “the way things are” in a public health care system, so you learn to turn off your critical apparatus and accept it stoically. Thus, having been told that surgery was needed to halt life-altering spinal deterioration, my relation simply accepted her unjust sentence: wait as long as it takes to get the “free” health care you have coming to you, even if it means never recovering full health. “What else can you do?”
She got her “free” health care, albeit months late — and will never again enjoy full freedom of movement, agility, a natural gait, or many of the physical activities she used to partake in.
That’s what happens when government controls your body. They decide on matters of your preservation and well-being; you try not to go mad thinking about all that you might lose at their whim.
Now let us get a little closer to the issue at hand, and consider what happens when government controls your mind, or your children’s minds.
To begin with what everyone knows:
(1) Modern public school education throughout the West discourages high achievement. The teachers themselves are generally among the bottom feeders from the previous generation of the same public system. (By and large, they became teachers because it seemed the most respectable job they could get with the least real knowledge, skill, or work. There are exceptions, of course, but they are increasingly rare in a school system that is so discouraging of talent, effectiveness, and non-approved approaches and opinions.)
(2) Public schools actively teach relativistic, anti-individualist morals. This is the Dewey model of education, and it has been faithfully expanded and pursued by educational decision makers and their gofers (the teachers) for the better part of a century.
(3) The standards of academic achievement are dropping at an accelerating rate with each passing decade. High school graduates today are deficient in general knowledge, literacy, and basic reasoning skills. They lack common sense, as well as a sense of common heritage based on shared experiences of something beyond the latest popular song. In other words, their education has taught them no connection to a world before their birth, thus converting the natural distance between generations into an impenetrable dividing wall. (This wall, of course, facilitates the disruption of traditional family life and devotion to one’s elders — as it is meant to do.)
In light of all of this, how are we to understand a society that continues, however unhappily, to send its children into this system, in effect saying, like the victim of socialized medicine, “What else can you do?”
Every day, parents are sending their children to a place where they will be taught: (a) that getting along with others is the primary social skill, regardless of who the “others” are and what they are doing; (b) that failing to follow the latest trends in music (lust, hate, violence), fashion (slovenliness, sexiness, disrespectfulness), or social behavior (drugs, drinking, sexual pressure) will make you a “loser” among your peers, and — at best — a pity case among the teachers; and (c) that excelling is only appreciated or encouraged within the range of achievement set by the curriculum (agenda-driven drivel), class average (lower every year), and teacher expectations (finish the textbook on time).
(See Glenn Fairman’s account of some of the manifestations of all of this, here.)
And then there is the realm of language and literature, without which men are left helpless in a narrow tunnel of fixed moral and intellectual possibilities, lacking even the ability to ask what they are missing. A visitor from only fifty years ago would be shocked to learn that in today’s North American schools, Shakespeare, Austen, Donne, and Swift are out; lifestyle choices, green studies, and diversity are in.
Whereas the “boring,” antiquated studies that are being phased out taught real diversity — diverse character types, potential outcomes of various choices, subtleties of human morals, motives, and feelings — the approach to all modern education, by contrast, is derived from one basic (and superficial) perspective on life, namely leftist-relativist-cynical-cool.
Whereas history and the classics teach the various degrees and shadings of human nature, greatness, and evil, as well as ideals against which to judge oneself and others, modern education teaches the normalization of deviant behavior, the moral equivalency of aspirations, and reverence for the flavor of the month — exactly what education was supposed to help us rise above. In short, modern education is intended to produce exactly the kind of human beings that result from the most pessimistic understanding of the pre-societal state of nature: irrational; ruled by fear, lust, and laziness; unable to form a unified conception of last week, and with no coherent hopes beyond tomorrow.
Until this public school system — built on leftist agendas, enforced mediocrity, and teachers motivated by greed varnished with sentimental slogans about “the children” — is broken into a million pieces and scooped into the trashcan of history, it is silly to imagine that the West will escape from the multifaceted cage it has constructed around itself. The force and centrality of this education in the souls of young people is too great to be counteracted with a little “quality time” on weekends. All are stunted by it to some degree; most are irreparably harmed.
And no simple legislative act can solve this problem, even if there were legislators with the will to perform such acts. Many Americans, for example, lament the failure of Republican presidents to dismantle the Department of Education. It must never be forgotten, however, that this department was made possible by the preceding decades of the progressive takeover of education. Abolishing the department, though highly desirable, would not eradicate the deeper problem of the presiding and pervasive educational philosophy.
Bill Ayers is a prominent teacher educator, and would still be one even if the Department of Education were shut down tomorrow.
This brings us back to the question with which we began: why do people put up with this? Why do parents willingly (or reluctantly, for that matter) send their own children — their own future — to socialist reeducation camps? “From my cold, dead hands,” they proudly say of their guns. Are not their children worthy of at least so strong a grip?
Perhaps the remnants of real learning that are still, though dwindlingly, accessible in the public system — primarily in math and science — are enough to persuade some parents that the system is salvageable at its core. In truth, that “core” is the problem. The parts of the program that resemble legitimate education are merely tolerated as necessary adjuncts or teasers to justify the project of soul-stealing in the eyes of ordinary citizens who would be uncomfortable if the virtues of bisexuality, the evils of capitalism, and the coolness of Barack Obama were the only things their kids learned at school today.
Perhaps part of the problem is that the teachers’ unions are so huge that everyone has a few teacher friends. Therefore we all feel a vested interest in the “teachers are trying their best” apologetic. This allows us to despise the “system,” while comforting ourselves with the thought that the teachers, on the whole, are on our side. They are not. The majority are, at best, unwitting dupes; many are just people looking for a respectable paycheck at a job with long holidays and many places to hide; and some are genuine leftist collectivists, either of the bleeding heart variety, or of the “where do I sign?” variety. The rare exceptions are martyrs — and they know it. They will be invaluable allies in the educational revolution that must take place.
Perhaps anything so long in existence begins to seem indispensable or essentially unalterable. As much as we know change is needed, it becomes increasingly difficult to imagine away features of life that have “always” been there. Before it has even been fully implemented, opponents of ObamaCare have begun to concede that it is “the law of the land” now, and will admit of no change more radical than a tweak here and there. Progressive public education has been with us for a century. We are all products of its earlier stages. It feels as inescapable as our most uncomfortable memories.
Whether for these reasons or others, one thing remains undeniable: most North American children are spending the most influential waking hours of their formative years with Bill Ayers, or — if they are lucky — with Ayers’ lazy cousin. As long as this continues, Marx and Dewey win, and freedom and individualism lose. It is that simple.
Since November 6, there has been a lot of talk among conservatives (or classical liberals) about “starving the system” as a way of forcing progressivism into dissolution and collapse. No system deserves to be starved more ruthlessly than public education. This is, in many ways, the hardest fight of all, but it is also the most indispensable, and the one that will pay the greatest dividends. This is no time for recriminations or regrets about past error or shortsightedness. And it is no time for careless lunges. It is time to think carefully but efficiently, alone and together, about how to extricate the current and upcoming generations of young people, or at least that portion within our influence, from an education system explicitly designed to shrink their world to the pinhead of the present, to blunt their thought, to erase their conscience — in sum, a system designed to turn them into the useful idiots of global progressivism.
This battle will require weapons we have never used before, and even some we have not yet invented. And the battlefield is strewn with landmines. This will take time, planning, and coordinated action by people prepared to take chances and forsake other, lesser priorities.
A victory here, however, would be a bargain at almost any price. A soul is a terrible thing to waste. A hundred million souls — now we are talking about the difference between desolation and hope.
Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/12/ending_progressive_public_education.html#ixzz2F546IzEH
Methinks CSCOPE should be a tool for the colon that exposes the shiiitte in the dark place that turd totalitarians want us not to see. Instead it sounds like CSCOPE does not want anyone to scope out the truth. Meaning whoever gave birth to cscope is a ditwad and dope.
You know something is amiss here…”But critics argue private schools, ….. being run like a business, still make instructional materials available to parents, something that CSCOPE REFUSES TO DO”…
Say what? ‘refuses to do’…and why would that be? So as not to put the light of day on the subject matter and put it out there for all to see? What is there to hide if the quran has nothing horrid and heinous within its pages…any moron can flap their gums in the breeze with ‘allah is a dream god who loves only roses, perfume and music’, but anyone with even a slight understanding of the terrorist god, knows there is much to detest. Why disease a student’s brain? Bad enough that the liberals are infecting their brand of mental illness and misery all over creation, but forcing mental illness on kids is hardly kosher.
Hope to god that Texans give this one a really good fight…or else they can kiss their cowboy past goodbye. The prairies will find them dogs everywhere. And where the dogs are, the goats and sheep will follow.
BTW—have the New England loony liberals moved to Texas where they now infect the population with their ‘group stink think’?
Thank you, thank you, thank you Sheik for your outstanding summation above of all that ails us. As a mother of five kids, all of whom are incredibly bright and gifted (three graduated magna cum laude), I am also saddened that they were given short shrift by the ignorant ersatz educational system here in the US. I look back at the seventies when I was asked to help pick student’s books for 7th and 8th grade. There were about ten of us on a committee to do this.
There were only TWO of us who correctly wanted books that would challenge…the majority won out and the books they chose were so incredibly dumb-downed, I cannot tell you. Shades of all the dumb-downed broads (frumpy feminists) and the rock and roll/druggie dopers of that era. And yes, the sad part is that they’ve been teaching the kids…all of those who came out of the 60′s, 70′s and 80-90′s are the lame loser teachers who have so dummy downed American students for decades. Actually when I think about it, they are a perfect match for the neanderthals I taught a few years ago at a muslim boy’s school…in that regards, feminists have much in common with moes.
Go to a store today and give a kid two single dollars and two cents for a purchase of $1.52 and they look at you with a neon WTF on their forehead..they have no clue as to why you gave them two cents. I rest my case on what lousy jobs the liberal feminist/marxist morons have done to our kids…and trust me, the feminists have run education in the US for decades, just like they do the media which is another mess.
They have bad mouthed white men for so long, I am beginning to think that they want some arab animal nitwit to knock out their lights.
I have to keep my mouth shut around women here in New England, for I’ve witnessed the degradation of our culture, schools and low quality of life for decades now. It sickens me to the core that women felt that shattering the glass ceiling was so much more important than family. About the only thing they shattered was the family for now we
have 1/2 of pregnancies of single moms which only serves to rinse, repeat, rinse, repeat more morons who manifest marxist mentalities.
They actually would make willing muslims who would gladly forfeit their brains to some higher nitwit that seeks nothing but control.
When I ask women to tell me why they want three full time jobs they look at me like I am nuts. I can only speak for myself, but I do know this, I am more capable than most women I know, more strong and more courageous, but there is no way in heaven, I could have worked hard at a paying job, kept a great house, prepared decent meals, do all those things a woman must do to keep a house running smoothly, not to mention being a bundle of loving joy between the sheets at night…
AND FINDING TIME TO REFRESH MYSELF. And I have that right!
All I hear from these little girl nincompoops in New England is “I am tired all the time”. “You don’t say village idiot”?…do you know of any men who put in two hours on a road to get back and forth to work, then 8-10 hours on the paying job, only to come home to another TWO full time jobs of home and kids and building a marriage and finding a bit of time to renew self? Nope? I didn’t think so, but the frump feminists love to complain about THEIR CHOICES which by and large have wrought no big rewards!! Sadder yet, by adopting the mentally deranged marxist mindset, they left their kids in the care of other miserable moronic women who then brainwashed their kids!!
I know this, if I had been trying to climb a corp ladder and shatter a glass ceiling, I would have shattered all underneath me. And it is like this, if you screw up with your family, I don’t care if you turn out to be MS CEO of ABC CORP, you are a still a major loser if your kids suffer.
And speaking as one who had the smarts and capability of running a major company without difficulty, my values took another avenue.
So too, if you can’t take care of your man and he runs out at noon for his 3 martini lunch and a quickie with the cute office Susie—don’t come crying to me…I’m no fool. And for any muslim man reading this and you are thinking, ‘wow, i like this gal who is talking here’, listen up, bud, if you were to be the King in my home, it sure as hell means that I AM THE QUEEN..and you have to treat me as such or you are out on your BUTT regardless of what your beloved Allah/muhammed says. They say, ‘what is good for the goose, is good for the gander’.
The only reason that some Arab Christian generally use the word Allah for the word God is because back in time some “translators’ of ther Bible did something that was not right. Which was that they compromised the truth by substituting the word Allah where the word God should have used in the Arabic translation of the Bible.
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