EXCERPTS FROM
DON’T LET THE KIDS DRINK THE KOOL-AID
Confronting the Left’s Assault on Our Families, Faith, and Freedom
by Marybeth Hicks
The Culture Wars are Over
The culture wars are over. We lost. We are no longer fighting to uphold traditional social values. Now we’re fighting a battle over the very definition of what it means to be an American, and what America means to the world. A losing battle.…We retreated from the public square. But somehow the Leftism that went unchallenged there managed to follow our children.…We’ve been deluding ourselves that in the long run we could win a war of attrition…But the Leftists don’t have to have children. They can steal ours. And to win they don’t have to turn our children into angry revolutionaries. They just have to do exactly what they’re doing—shape our kids into a generation completely ignorant of the principles that have made America the extraordinary nation it is, and fill them with so much worry over so-called crises they’ll naturally let the government step in and take care of us all. That will be quite sufficient to end the American experiment with republican self-government—in one generation. Considering our nation’s origins, it’s obvious why the Left is intent on feeding our kids a steady diet of propaganda. If the path to maintain our republican form of government is to rear citizens who will protect it, then the surest means to devolve into a socialist state is to raise a generation of Americans who will naturally accept such a political system. (pp. ix-xvii)
Social Justice Math
If history, social studies, and literature are easily hijacked by political Leftism, what about math? Surely, math is safely objective, and therefore unable to be infused with socialist dogma. Right? Wrong. Rethinking Schools’ booklist includes Rethinking Mathematics: Teaching Social Justice by the Numbers. And they aren’t the only ones pushing socialist math—there’s a whole movement devoted to importing Leftism into the study of numbers. Eric (Rico) Gutstein, a former Chicago public school math teacher who now teaches at the University of Illinois at Chicago, is one of its leaders. A founding member of the Chicago-based Teachers for Social Justice, his 2006 text is called Reading and Writing the World with Mathematics: Toward a Pedagogy for Social Justice. Those of us who help our children with math homework may have a hard time understanding the concept of such a book, so here is an excerpt of a review from Britannica Online by British educator Andrew Noyes: “This is a book about hope; the hope of a better world and the essential role of mathematics in writing that more socially just, future world.”…It bears repeating: this is a math book…about hope. (pp. 11-12)
All in the Family—21st Century Style
According to the Pew Center, “By emphatic margins, the public does not see marriage as the only path to family formation.” Survey respondents were open to definitions of “family” that included unmarried parents and children, single parents and children, and same-sex couples with children. The only scenario that misses the majority definition of “family” is an unmarried couple without kids—proving some conventions aren’t entirely lost, though they may soon be meaningless. If twenty-first-century America still defines a family largely by the presence of children—but not by marriage—we also believe that the erosion of the traditional family is a negative trend. With fully 41 percent of children born out of wedlock as of 2008, including 72 percent of black children, the Pew study found the vast majority of respondents—78 percent—believe growing up with a single parent is more challenging than being raised in a two-parent home. A majority—51 percent—believe that children of same-sex couples face more challenges than those raised in a home built around a traditional marriage. (pp. 26-27)
Bullying is Bad, Unless It Helps Progressives
Opting out of sex education classes won’t work for long because issues of sexuality now are presented under the aegis of “school safety.” Here’s the rationale: being gay means being bullied, and bullying is a safety issue, not a health issue. Ergo, children can be required to undergo mandatory “school safety” training. And parents may not opt out. That’s how the curriculum was framed in the Alameda (California) Unified School District (AUSD), where, in 2009-2010, parents filed lawsuits and threatened a recall election to keep their kindergarten through third grade children from a mandatory lesson on homosexual relationships as part of a nine-lesson anti-bullying curriculum. The controversy over “Lesson 9,” in which children would be taught specific concepts and language about homosexuality and gender identity, led the AUSD to abandon that portion of its program—but only because the lesson focused exclusively on bullying as an expression of homophobia, and didn’t specifically mention any other “protected classes” besides gays, such as racial minorities or people with physical disabilities. It simply wasn’t PC enough. The lesson was reinstituted once this glitch was ironed out. Funnily enough, it turns out that bullying gay kids is not even an issue in the elementary schools of AUSD. Documentation from the District obtained by the Pacific Justice Institute revealed “that, of the approximately one-hundred-seventy incident reports in an eighteen month period, there were no school incidents of harassment due to sexual orientation in the elementary grades. (p. 79-80)
Teaching for the Union Label
Teachers across the nation often take it upon themselves to weave pro-union messages into the social studies, history, and reading curricula. For example, fifth graders at the Penn Valley Elementary School in the Pennsbury School District of Bucks County, Pennsylvania, were given a reading comprehension assignment made available by a teacher resource company called Teacher Created Materials, Inc. The “Whole Story Comprehension” worksheet included a mock letter to the editor from a fictional eighth grader from Fowlerville, Michigan, in which the writer complains about the “way our teachers are being treated.” The letter says, in part: “We don’t pay teachers enough for the very important job they are doing. The average yearly salary for educators in our area is $29,000. As professionals, teachers should be paid like other professionals in our community, such as lawyers and doctors.”…Ready for the punch line? Teachers in the Pennsbury School District were working without a contract at the time…and the issue of teacher salaries was being hotly debated in the community. Also, for the record, the average teacher salary in Pennsbury is $83,000. But let’s not confuse the kids. (pp. 108-109)
I Pledge Allegiance to the Earth
Of all the truly obnoxious ways in which children are plied with eco-radicalism, an especially insidious one is the “Earth Pledge,” recited regularly in a few schools, but widely on Earth Day. Couched in lovely phrases about peace and harmony, the Pledge undercuts patriotism (pledge your allegiance to the earth, not to a flag or the country it stands for), equates all life forms, advocates redistribution of resources, and articulates the vision of a utopian world—all in one tidy, memorable parody of the pledge to the American flag:
I pledge allegiance to the earth, and to all life that it nourishes; All growing things, all species of animals, and all races of people. I promise to protect all life on our planet, to live in harmony in nature, and to share our resources justly, so that all people can live in dignity, good health and in peace.
The text of the Earth Pledge synopsizes the Left’s eco-platform in a nutshell. (pp. 116-117)
Can you tell me how to get to Shara’a Simsim?
Perhaps no entertainment property debunks the myth that media content reflects but does not shape the culture more than one iconic American institution: Sesame Street. Not only was this classic PBS show designed to mold young minds, it was created on the precise premise that television has the power to educate and influence children in their earliest years.…What resulted then was the non-profit we all knew as The Children’s Television Workshop, home of Jim Henson’s muppets. The organization now is called Sesame Workshop, and its mission is much greater than its original goal—to teach literacy and numeracy to America’s underprivileged children.…Like most American parents, I turned on Sesame Street when my children were small…Bert, Ernie, Cookie Monster, Oscar the Grouch and the Sesame Street grown-ups were familiar characters in our home.… But at the risk of appearing the grouch myself, Sesame Street through the years became so politically correct, it seemed the focus shifted from songs and skits about letters and numbers to innumerable episodes built around diversity and multiculturalism at the expense of basic pre-school lessons. It turns out my sense that Sesame Street had changed direction was correct.…The greater goal is found in the mission statement: “to better understand the world and each other.”… Now, here is where someone will grab a hold of this book and accuse me of all sorts of bigotry simply because I am going to question the motives of the folks at Sesame Workshop. To be clear, I am all for kids learning about various cultures!…Kids don’t need to be taught to be curious about a cool native African costume or birthday traditions in other countries.…But through the new and improved Sesame Street, they’re being conditioned to accept an image of themselves as “global citizens,” which by definition carries a political meaning. (pp. 145-146)
The Food Police
One might wonder why the government believes it can solve the childhood obesity problem when its own massive National School Lunch Program—feeding children free (or at least subsidized) lunches since 1946—may in fact be one of the root causes of the problem. Inconveniently, at around the same time Michelle Obama was introducing the “Let’s Move” logo, researchers at the University of Michigan Cardiovascular Center released a paper at the American College of Cardiology’s fifty-ninth annual scientific session indicating that children who consume school lunches are more likely to be overweight or obese than those who bring lunches from home. The University of Michigan also noted, “Recent data show that while an estimated 30.6 million U.S. students consume school lunches, only 6 percent of school lunch programs meet the requirements established by the School Meals Initiative for Healthy Children.” You’d think, then, that schools would encourage parents to pack lunches at home, right?…Not in the wacky world we live in. Students at Little Village Academy, within the Chicago Public School system, are not permitted to bring a lunch from home. Little Village banned sack lunches six years ago…According to a Chicago Tribune report, Chicago Public Schools (CPS) permits its principals to use their discretion to decide if their student population needs stringent rules about food choices. Problem: the Little Village students hate much of the school’s cafeteria food.…The kids profiled in the Chicago Tribune story said they’d rather bring a sandwich and a banana from home than eat the glop that passes for “healthy” enchiladas on their lunch trays. At the heart of the anti-obesity agenda is the underlying belief that some parents are simply incapable of making wise decisions on behalf of their own children (pp. 162-164)
To schedule an interview with Marybeth Hicks please contact Patricia Jackson
at 202-216-0601 ext 478 or pjackson@eaglepub.com