With the Obama administration-pushed Common Core nationalization of education sparking an unprecedented backlash among parents and teachers across the political spectrum, now would seem to be an especially bad time to foist even more radical “science” standards on American schools as well. Still, that is exactly what is happening with the “Next Generation Science Standards” currently being rolled out in multiple states. Over a dozen federal agencies reportedly helped produce the deeply controversial program, which critics say represents an attempt to indoctrinate future generations.
Without strong public resistance, impressionable young children across much of America will soon be taught, among other discredited dogma, that human emissions of carbon dioxide “pollution” are responsible for “global warming.” Also high on the agenda is convincing young children that the atheistic evolution theory — believed by just 15 percent of Americans according to polls — is not only based on “science,” but is the only explanation for life. What opponents call the “brainwashing” will begin as early as kindergarten — at least if the Obama administration and its establishment allies get their way.
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About a dozen state governments and Washington, D.C., have already approved the controversial new “science” standards so far, with numerous others currently considering them. Big Business and Big Labor have also expressed fervent support. “Federal agencies are committed to lifting as much of this as we can in partnership with the states,” Climate Education Interagency Working Group co-chair Frank Niepold with the U.S. Global Change Research Program was quoted as saying during a conference call promoting the radical standards.
Vice President Joe Biden recently praised a Big Business coalition (including Big Oil) for backing the national science scheme, too. Meanwhile, Obama Education Secretary Arne Duncan has been openly touting his collaboration with UNESCO in producing “green citizens” in America and advancing the “sustainability movement” through “education,” which he considers a “weapon” to “change the world.”
The establishment backing for the radical plot, though, is hardly surprising. After all, the nationalized pseudo-science standards for K-12 education were produced by the same shadowy but powerful outfit responsible for Common Core. Known as Achieve, Inc., the non-profit is very well connected. Its current chairman emeritus, Louis Gerstner, Jr., for example, is a Bilderberg summit attendee and a member of the globalist, pro-Common Core Council on Foreign Relations.
Gerstner, who also served as CEO of the infamous IBM, revealed one of the big agendas behind the effort to nationalize standards in a 2008 column for the Wall Street Journal: “abolish all local school districts” and “establish a set of national standards for a core curriculum.” Since then, establishment proponents of the education nationalization — and even globalization — have retreated from publicly trumpeting their real goals. Still, even as the radical agenda becomes more transparent and the uprising against it grows, establishment-minded policymakers and politicians are charging full speed ahead.
The opposition, though, is gearing up for a fight, too, and has already seen at least a few early apparent victories against the “Next Generation” so-called science plot. In Wyoming, for example, lawmakers acted decisively earlier this year to protect children in the state from indoctrination into the pseudo-scientific propaganda, even prohibiting the spending of any taxpayer funds to implement the scheme. Wyoming science teachers have highlighted other major problems with the standards, too.
Activists, meanwhile, reject the whole premise. “We question this whole idea of standards reform and the whole idea of nationalized standards,” Wyoming Liberty Group policy analyst Amy Edmonds was quoted as saying in media reports. “We believe at the heart that it continues to take away parental choice.” Separately, more than a few lawmakers lambasted the dubious climate hysteria and other discredited pseudo-science in the standards, too.
Last year, the Kentucky legislature voted against the “science” standards as well. Perhaps learning from Obama, extremist Gov. Steven Beshear, a Democrat, imposed the national plot on students via “executive order” anyway. However, the battle in Kentucky is far from finished as critics contemplate new tactics to rein in the out-of-control governor. Just last week, an Oklahoma House of Representatives committee voted 10 to one to reject the scheme, too. South Carolina is also fighting back hard.
In Kansas, the organization Citizens for Objective Public Education filed a lawsuit against the state Board of Education last year seeking to block the indoctrination of students into the theories of Charles Darwin, a virulent racist who claimed in his book that the white race was superior to others. According to the suit, which was joined by parents and students, the national standards “seek to cause students to embrace a non-theistic Worldview” and use “a variety of deceptive devices and methods” to lead them into “only materialistic/atheistic explanations.”
Among the most troubling elements to many critics is the preaching of climate alarmism as “science” — even “settled science,” a notion that many of the most ardent alarmists actually reject as utterly unscientific. The fact that there has been no increase in temperatures for the last 18 years appears to matter little to the architects of the plot; the essential-to-life CO2, exhaled by humans and required for plant life, must be demonized at all costs.
The standards also make no mention of the fact that man’s emissions of the gas make up a fraction of one percent of all “greenhouse gases” present naturally in the atmosphere. The record cold temperatures plaguing America and the highest level of Antarctic sea ice since records began do not seem to have cooled the alarmists’ fervor to “educate” the children into what many respected analysts refer to as their pseudo-religion either. Numerous top climate scientists have even warned that the radical alarmists are becoming dangerous to humanity.
Most Americans, of course, have rejected the increasingly discredited climate alarmism, polls show. The deliberate manipulation of data by NASA, NOAA and other alarmist bodies which helped produce the science standards certainly has not helped. However, with global-warming theorists looking increasingly ridiculous — 73 out of 73 United Nations “climate models” forecasting drastic warming, for example, have been proven wrong — alarmist forces seeking “carbon taxes” and a UN-led planetary carbon regime may have better luck convincing young children.
“This is a very big victory for the other side,” Executive Director Craig Rucker with the market-oriented environmentalist group Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow (C-FACT) was quoted as saying by the Heartland Institute about the standards. “If you start inculcating these ideas into the young, they will view this as a statement of faith, and it becomes very difficult to convince them otherwise — which is why the proponents of climate change are doing it…. The claims they’re making are preposterous.” He also suggested the climate alarmism would be used to push pro-big government opinions on students.
When it comes to pushing the evolution agenda, the views of parents, taxpayers, and countless scientists again seem to be irrelevant. According to a 2012 poll, despite decades of taxpayer-funded pro-evolution dogma preached at government schools, about half of Americans believe the Biblical account of creation as outlined in the Book of Genesis. The numbers continue to rise. On the other hand, only 15 percent of those surveyed thought man had “evolved” from less advanced life forms without any divine intervention. Still, under the national science standards, taxpayers will be forced to fund the preaching of controversial dogma that the overwhelming majority of those citizens reject.
Experts in the field have also sounded the alarm about the new national plot. “Americans need to recognize that the Next Generation Science Standards for biology — legislation to force Darwinism on students as fact while blocking them from exploring conflicting evidence — is corrupted science,” explained John Feliks, a scholar at the University of Michigan and the founder of the Pleistocene Coalition. “For these ‘Standards’ to have made it this far is the result of decades of textbook fraud and a lack of interdisciplinary perspective regarding the fossil record.”
The implications of the developments are massive, he continued. “Aside from children losing the K-12 window for developing critical thinking skills American complacency and gullibility are being tested,” explained Feliks, who spent much of the last two decades demonstrating that human cognition does not evolve. “Any grade school subject depending upon tactics such as those discussed is not ready to be taught as science.” Students of all ages, he added, ought to “openly challenge the ideology being forced on them as fact in the captive-audience classroom with full confidence that evidence is there to support them.”
Countless experts have blasted the use of government schools to indoctrinate American children into anti-Christian, pseudo-scientific dogma under the guise of “science.” The related Common Core scheme, imposed on some 44 states using bribes and coercion from the Obama administration, is also packed with controversial propaganda. Many top experts say it will drastically reduce critical-thinking skills among the youth.
Even if the national standards were excellent, however, critics say control over public education should remain with local communities — not the Obama administration, Big Business, Bill Gates, or shadowy establishment non-profit outfits with dubious agendas. With the public only recently beginning to realize what has been going on, analysts expect the opposition to the plot to continue surging as awareness spreads. Some even say that the unprecedented focus on education resulting from nationalization could lead to fundamental reforms. For the sake of liberty and real education, Americans should ensure that it does.
Alex Newman is a correspondent for The New American, covering economics, education, politics, and more. He can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @ALEXNEWMAN_JOU.
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