COMMENT: By now, you have no doubt heard about the student in New Jersey being taught a 'rap' praising Barack Hussein Obama.  Well, as Paul Harvey used to say, here is the 'rest of the story.'

Lyrics: Songs About President Obama

When the White House announced plans for the president's nationwide address to schoolchildren two weeks ago, worried parents were dismissed as "kooks." We pointed to the subtext of "social justice" activism rampant in American classrooms. It's time for a big fat Told You So.
Out of the spotlight, politicized lessons continue to supplant core academics.
Earlier this year, at the B. Bernice Young Elementary School in Burlington Township, N.J., schoolchildren were instructed to memorize a paean to Barack Obama. A video uploaded to the YouTube account of Charisse Carney-Nunes, author of the children's book "I Am Barack Obama" and a self-described Harvard Law "schoolmate" of the president's, showed students lined up in the auditorium snapping their fingers and chanting in unison Read more here.

N.J. Principal Unapologetic for Videotape of Kids Praising Obama, Parents Say

The principal of a New Jersey elementary school where young students were videotaped singing the praises of President Obama is making no apologies for the videotape and says she would allow the performance again if she could, according to parents who spoke with her Thursday night.

Three parents told FOXNews.com that Dr. Denise King, principal of B. Bernice Young Elementary School in Burlington, N.J., defended the controversial performance, which was videotaped and posted on YouTube, when they approached her during a "Back to School" event.

Parent Jim Angelillo said King told him the lesson was merely part of Black History month, and not an attempt to indoctrinate students, as critics have charged. He said he believes teachers have the freedom to express their political views, but not in the classroom.

"Freedom of speech, not freedom to teach," Angelillo told FOXNews.com.

King has long been a fan of Obama, hanging pictures of the president in her school's hallways and touting her trip to his inauguration in the school yearbook.

Included in the full-page yearbook spread were Obama campaign slogans ("Yes we can! Yes we did!") and photos King took in Washington on Jan. 20, when she attended the inauguration.

There also were photos taken at the school depicting students doing Obama-themed activities about their "hopes for the future," featuring posters of Obama. According to the yearbook, students watched the inauguration in class.

Parents said Elvira James, the teacher of the class that was videotaped, also seemed to be promoting Obama.

"She praised him, she put pictures on the walls," said Jim Pronchick, whose 8-year-old son, Jimmy, was in James' class last year. "When he won (the election) they really went off."
Read more here.

New Jersey School District Is No Stranger to National Spotlight

Study: American public school books have 'same inaccuracies' as Arab texts

 A new study reveals that if Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad wanted to criticize the nation of Israel before the United Nations, he could use American public school textbooks to do so.

"It is shocking to find the kind of misinformation we discovered in American textbooks and supplemental materials being used by schools in every state in the country," said Dr. Gary Tobin, president of the Institute for Jewish & Community Research and a co-author of the study.

"Elected officials at every level should investigate how these offensive passages are creeping into our textbooks. Presenting false information in the classroom undermines the very foundation of the American educational system," he said.

Tobin teamed with insititute research associate Dennis Ybarra for the study, titled, "The Trouble with Textbooks: Distorting History and Religion." The five-year effort, which looked at 28 prominent history, geography and social studies textbooks, reveals American public school students are being loaded up with indoctrination about Christianity, Judaism, Islam and the Middle East, to the cost of Christianity and Judaism and the benefit of Islam.

The study also supports other assessments of U.S. texts on which WND has reported.

According to an earlier report from the American Textbook Council, history textbooks throughout the U.S. schooling system promote Islam.

The new study by the IJCR found more than 500 erroneous passages in the books, including one textbook that charged that early Jewish civilization contributed little to the arts and sciences.

An excerpt from "World Civilizations," published by Thomson Wadsworth, for example, said, "Excepting the Old Testament's poetry, the Jews produced very little of note in any of the art forms ... There is no record of any important [early] Jewish contributions to the sciences."

The level of outrageousness grew: "Christianity was started by a young Palestinian named Jesus," claims "The World," published by Scott Foresman.

"The textbooks tend to be critical of Jews and Israel, disrespectful about Christianity, and rather than represent Islam in an objective way, tend to glorify it," said co-author Ybarra. "To teach children, for instance, that Jesus was a Palestinian and de-emphasize his Jewishness does a disservice to Christians and Jews as well as anyone who cares about historical accuracy."

The institute analyzes issues such as racial and religious identity, philanthropy and higher education. Its full report is available at TroubleWithTextbooks.org, where all 28 books that came under its review are listed.

The organization said its study revealed textbooks include routinely negative stereotypes of Jews, Judaism and Israel. For example, Israel is blamed for starting wars in the Middle East and Jews are charged with deicide, and the problems are rife through the three mega-publishers that have deep enough pockets to get approval and publish a textbook in the major states of Texas and California.

"The 'Trouble with Textbooks' is a very important book not only for Jews but for the entire Christian community," said Rev. John J. Keane, ecumenical officer for the Franciscan Friars of the Atonement. "This volume is an excellent tool for anyone who is interested in balanced information that is fair and reliable concerning Judaism, Christianity and Islam."

The authors found textbooks that stated or suggested:

• Jesus was a "Palestinian," not a Jew.
  
  
• The Arab nations never attacked Israel. Arab-Israeli wars “just broke out,” or Israel started them
  
  
• Arabs nations want peace, but Israel does not
  
  
• Israel expelled all Palestinian refugees
  
  
• Israel put the Palestinians in refugee camps in Arab lands, not Arab governments
  
  
• Palestinian terrorism is nonexistent or minimal
  
  
• Israel is not a victim of terrorism, or terrorism against Israel is justified
  
  
• U.S. support of Israel causes terrorism, including 9/11
  
  
• The intifadas were children’s revolts not involving adults or terrorism

The NEA Spells Out Its Policies

Read this article online: http://www.eagleforum.org/column/2008/july08/08-07-30.html

What's Happened to Teaching History?

 

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by Phyllis Schlafly, March 12, 2008

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A survey of British under-age-twenty kids recently reported that more than a fifth of them believe Winston Churchill, Richard the Lionheart and Florence Nightingale were fictional characters, but that Robin Hood, Sherlock Holmes and King Arthur were real people.

 

We hope American students are more knowledgeable, but evidence is not reassuring. They scored an F, or just 54 percent, in a new survey by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute of 14,000 freshmen at 50 U.S. colleges and universities.

Students were asked 60 questions to test their knowledge of American history and government. In general, the better a college ranked on the widely publicized U.S. News & World Report list, the lower it ranked on civic learning.

Another just-released survey found that a significant proportion of U.S. teenagers live in "stunning ignorance" of history and literature. That survey was conducted by a new research organization called Common Core.

An earlier survey of college seniors at 50 top colleges conducted by the American Council of Trustees and Alumni found that more than half didn't know that George Washington was the commanding general of the Continental Army during the American Revolution who accepted Cornwallis's surrender at Yorktown. Some 36 percent thought it was Ulysses S. Grant, and 6 percent said it was Douglas MacArthur.

Fortunately, two important new books now tell 20th century history the way it really happened, instead of the way liberals and feminists wish it had happened. Every college student should read these books in order to learn history that colleges fail to teach.

Both books describe how Reagan-style conservatism replaced New Deal liberalism during the half century following World War II, an event of great magnitude and good fortune for America. The first of these new books was written by an historian, the second from the view of participants in historic events.

The Conservative Ascendancy: How the GOP Right Made Political History is the work of distinguished historian Donald T. Critchlow (Harvard University Press, 2007). It is the indispensable scholarly account of how a small unorganized band of writers and an equally unorganized collection of grassroots activists launched a counteroffensive against the prevailing economic and political order of the 1930s and 1940s, and by the 1980s became the dominant force in American politics.

Long after Franklin D. Roosevelt was gone, conventional wisdom still considered his New Deal liberalism to be the wave of the future. Conservatives were believed to be an ineffective remnant waging a holding action against the inevitable socialism.

Critchlow traces the travails of the conservative movement through the political battles involving Robert Taft, Barry Goldwater, Richard Nixon, and Gerald Ford. Those who lived through those years will delight in the extraordinary detail produced by Professor Critchlow's extensive research and his more than 500 footnotes, and those too young to remember will learn history they cannot get anywhere else.

Conservatives found their leader in Ronald Reagan, who fortified their resolve with his faith that the tide of history is moving in our direction and that it is morning in America. Critchlow skillfully shows how the Reagan victories of the 1980s depended on a coalition of the fiscal conservatives left over from the 1964 Goldwater campaign, the alumni of the anti-Communist groups that had educated the grassroots about external and internal threats to our country, and the social conservatives who newly came into the political process in the campaigns against the Equal Rights Amendment and Roe v. Wade.

Upstream: The Ascendance of American Conservatism by Alfred S. Regnery (Simon & Schuster, 2008) is a fascinating account of how conservative authors combined with conservative activists to shake off New Deal socialism of the 1930s and become the dominant ideology in America. As the author boasts, "We are all conservatives now."

Regnery's book leads us to know and understand dozens of conservative leaders from various walks of life, voluntary organizations that played a role in the movement, mail-order fundraising, and foundations. He puts the broad scope of the conservative movement in focus, including the importance that the courts play in our culture.

Regnery deftly explains the fundamental differences between conservatives and big business, and between conservatives and neoconservatives. Conservatives want limited government, but those two other groups seek an activist government to promote their particular agendas.

Regnery's book is based not only on his first-hand involvement with many icons of the conservative movement, but his face-to-face interviews with many who are still living and able to tell their stories.

Regnery ends his book by describing the unexpected conservative uprising (all the way from Bill Kristol to Pat Buchanan) against President George W. Bush's nomination of Harriet Miers to the U.S. Supreme Court. No doubt the author hopes that the success of that revolt shows that conservatives are still moving Upstream and can maintain their identity apart from liberal-Republican and Bush mistakes.

Read this article online: http://www.eagleforum.org/column/2008/mar08/08-03-12.html