If you are interested, you can look at the Founding Principles Course material in pdf format. I've browsed the document, and I believe it is pertinent to share with you how the course aligns with the Koch Brothers' Conservative agenda.
- Public high school students in North Carolina will be taught from a lesson plans and worksheets prepared by a organization closely tied to the billionaire Koch brothers, if the state’s Department of Public Instruction gets its way. According to the Raleigh News and Observer, the Virginia-based Bill of Rights Institute received a “$100,000, sole-source contract with [North Carolina] to help develop materials for teachers to use in a course on founding principles that the state requires students to take.”
- ... the organization receives funding directly from David Koch and from two Koch family foundations, although, if anything, this description understates the Institute’s ties to the conservative billionaires. Two of the Institutes four board members are employed by Koch entities — one is a senior vice president at Koch Industries and another is director of higher education programs at the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation
Firstly, all of the teaching material involves reading articles and headlines supplied through the Bill Of Rights Institute website. Here is today's selection of top stories from their website:
Let's look at a few of those articles.
SCOTUS and the police search: “To be reasonable is not to be perfect, and so the Fourth Amendment allows for some mistakes on the part of government officials, giving them fair leeway for enforcing the law in the community’s protection,” Roberts wrote. This ruling ultimately gives more latitude for law enforcement. After months of protests over white cops repeatedly given reprieve for killing black men, and even children, the Supreme Court has seemingly turned a blind eye to America's concern. Republican responses on the protests have been generally offensive to the black community.
Lawsuit over prayer at school board meeting has been dismissed: A First Amendment controversy could finally be coming to a close. A federal judge has ordered a case against a local school board to be dismissed. And it means that board members there will continue to pray before meetings. Keeping prayer in school has been regular right-leaning agenda for ages.
Obama's Immigration Reform: A federal judge in Pennsylvania ruled Tuesday that President Barack Obama's move to halt deportations for millions of undocumented immigrants violates the Constitution -- but it's not clear that the ruling will have any immediate impact. If you've read any news in the past week, you know how the Republicans have rallied to punish Obama for his actions in every way possible. Some have called for jail time, while others plan to block Obama from entering the Capitol for his State of the Union Address.
In just those three topics, I see a prevalent plan - the Republican Agenda. Where are the articles on referring to Senators standing up to Wall Street? That's been a pretty hot topic this week, with Senator Elizabeth Warren giving quite a tongue lashing about big banks controlling too much of America. I'm fairly certain we will not see anything of the kind, considering the origin supplying the top news to North Carolina educators.
I could easily surmise from the first two pages of the Founding Principles Course document that this is going to be infected with the Republican Agenda. I could stop there, but the investigation endure.
Page three of the document reviews several incidents where social media users were sentenced to jail time or community service for varying offensive, or potentially threatening comments. Some were benign, while others were reprehensible. The educational goal is to examine and dissect these incidents, and then apply the cases to ten Founding Principles: Individual Rights, Individual Responsibility, Creator-Endowed Inalienable Rights, Equal Protection, Due Process, Federalism, Representative Government, Private Property, Rule of Law, Separation of Powers. The page then ends with a link to a Fox News affiliate article online. I do not expect the need to explain "Creator-Endowed" and the Fox News link - as we are very aware of how these two relate directly to Republican agendas.
Page four refers to "limited government" as a piece of constitutional democracy of the United States. Four pages in, and yet another Republican Agenda.
The Founding Principles Course document material is 391 pages long. In all honesty, there is plenty of non-biased and fact-based educational information regarding government, the way it works, and the actual theories behind the establishment of America. It encourages critical thinking, which is actually something Common Core encourages, too (a curriculum Republicans first stood behind until it was supported by Obama).
However, there are many sections dedicated to issues where Federal vs. States' rights are arguable. For instance, page 170 revolves around Jim Crow laws. This topic points to how state laws were in violation of natural rights, and states could commit acts that were wrongful, calling for the federal government to correct these wrongs. It is also states, "Others disagreed, pointing out that national governments have no better record of protecting rights than states do. The federal government did not effectively protect citizens' rights over centuries of slavery and segregation. If more powers were given to the federal government in the name of protecting rights, what would happen if officials then used that greater power to do bad things over the whole nation?"
I will not use assumption to connect this last statement to a Republican agenda. Take it for what it is. I have my own reasonable conclusion to how this could relate to many topics (immigration, for one), but others may see it differently.
Additional themes like Social Security, gun control, rights to legalize marijuana within individual States, and the Affordable Care Act [Obamacare] (pgs. 174 - 175), and how these topics relate to the Commerce Clause are also up for discussion in the course. While there are several cases related to the Commerce Clause, I find it suspicious in how the above issues are selected for discussion. If you view the readings on these two specific pages, you can effortlessly sniff out right-leaning agenda, but it isn't completely overt. The selection of the topics is more suspicious than the language used to discuss the topics.
Quite Frankly...
I could spend more time on this topic, but I don't get paid for this, as I blog for personal satisfaction, education, and because I like to write (and I am known to be opinionated). From what I have observed, there is Koch directed Republican Agenda within the Founding Principles Course material. It isn't a heavy dose of Republican rhetoric, but it assuredly isn't unbiased educational material.
Public education should remain unbiased, factual, and relevant. Simply put, the Founding Principles Course isn't completely unbiased, and if North Carolina enforces the use of this course material, the Kochs will have succeeded in a slow poisoning of the minds of our future leaders. Thankfully, most high school students will have had enough life experience to perhaps pick up on some of the agenda. That's about the age where I started questioning religion, politics, and the like. I have faith that not all of their minds will be poisoned, but those living in Conservative homes will most certainly have more fuel for their fires.
I say, let's keep Koch out of our schools. North Carolina, I challenge you to find educational material that isn't pushing a political agenda!
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