8/03 Is Your School’s Curriculum UN Approved?
Written by
Larry Pratt Published: 01 August 2003
Is Your School’s Curriculum UN Approved?
by
Larry Pratt
Does it seem somewhat far out to ask such a question? Would that it were so.
The United States is working with the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) to federalize the curriculum of all schools in the United States. The new curriculum would be one that conforms to other countries as well as to UNESCO.
Actually, we do have federal curriculum standards for civics that encompass the teaching of history, geography, social studies and civics. Indeed, there are federal standards for other disciplines as well. The standards are referred to in Washington newspeak as guidelines.
The guidelines have resulted in a subsidized textbook ($10 a copy) entitled We, the People: The Citizen and the Constitution. If a school district does not use this textbook, whatever they teach from must teach to the national tests that reflect the federal “guidelines.” The Department of Education is warning states that if they do not have enough students passing the federally approved tests, they will lose their federal subsidies.
The guidelines and We the People are so busy teaching multiculturalism and environmentalism that they have no time for teaching the 2nd Amendment (right to keep and bear arms), and the 10th Amendment (severely limiting legitimate activity of the federal government).
And now, it turns out, we are reporting on our progress at wiping out local and state control over curriculum to the UN! Here it is off the UNESCO web site on the USA country report page (http://www2.unesco.org/wef/countryreports/usa/rapport_2.html):
Most countries have national curricula…. In the United States, however, education is managed at the state and local levels…. Thus, the very concept of designing and agreeing on a set of learning outcomes across traditional jurisdictional lines is new, and in the minds of many, unsettling and undesirable.
The UN is saying that they are aware of the political sensitivity of a nationalized education system. This explains the following reference to not letting the American voter in on what “us elitists” are pulling off:
Officials of the U.S. Department of Education, as well as presidents Bush and Clinton, have applauded the emergence of [curriculum] standards at the state level and in the various subject areas, but they understand that any suggestion that these were being imposed by Washington would unleash a political backlash.
And for the pleasure of One World groupies is this gem from the same page: “Consciousness is thus growing among U.S. educators that… [e]ducational outcomes must now meet not only national but international standards.”
I wonder what countries might be the model for setting UN educational standards? Perhaps some of the countries which have trained children to be compliant workers and citizens who do just what they are told. The mind thrills to consider the array of choice: from Cuba to Zimbabwe with Iran and Libya along the way.
Rep. Ron Paul is right. So are the other 73 Representatives who voted with Paul to get the UN out of the US and the US out of the UN.
Being run from Washington is bad enough, but being run by the UN is the end of the road to perdition.