NY’S COMMON CORE-ALIGNED LESSONS USE SCIENTOLOGY VIDEOS TO TEACH STUDENTS THEY HAVE RIGHT TO FOOD, HOUSING, CLOTHING, MEDICINE, EVEN A JOB

From The Blaze

Update: Two small adjustments to this story were made to clarify the relationship between Common Core and school districts.

A parent in upstate New York is claiming there is some disturbing information being taught to his child as a result of a Common Core-aligned lesson on government and human rights. (Common Core is the controversial standardized curriculum program being advocated for by the federal government.)

The latest example, he says, is that his daughter and her classmates are being taught a section on the 30 “universal human rights” declared by the United Nations in 1945. Those rights include:

• The right to a nationality, and to change that nationality whenever you want to.

• The right to a job for everyone who wants one.

• The right to “social security” (to be taken care of by the government when you cannot do it yourself).

• The right to food, clothing, housing and medicine.

• The right to work and join a union. (One of the rights also states that you cannot be compelled to join an association.)

• The right to play.

Image: UN.org

The father of a 5th grade student who attends public school emailed TheBlaze to alert us to the lessons being taught to his child. The dad (who happens to be an attorney) emailed his daughter’s teacher to question her about the lessons and received a call from the school’s principal to address his concerns. He said he had a phone conversation with that principal, and the principle revealed that:

• The lessons are tied to the Common Core guidelines found on EngageNY.

• The U.N.’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights was being taught for about an hour each day over an eight-week period.

• The U.S. Constitution was part of  another eight-week “government” section, however only three weeks were spent studying it.

• The principal believes that most public schools in the state are using this program as well as others from Common Core.

In a subsequent phone conversation with TheBlaze, the father — who asked to remain anonymous to protect his child’s identity — added that the school’s principal was not happy about the curriculum mandates, but was powerless to do anything about it. All of the decisions and directions came from the state.

All the “right” things

The video that triggered the man’s initial email to the school is a 9:30 “documentary” titled, “What Are Human Rights?”

The webpage that features the above historical explanation of the U.N.’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights also contains a few other sections worth mentioning. There are 30 additional short, public-service-style videos, one each on the U.N.’s “rights.”

In this clip, called “Universal Rights,” a man is being threatened with execution and declares, “I have rights!” The bad guys laugh at him, ask him where he thinks he is and prepare to kill him. That is until a United Nations SUV rides into the frame and the bad guys immediately drop their weapons. One SUV with a U.N. logo is enough to convince these blood-thirsty killers to change their ways:

In addition to the “Universal Rights” clip, there are others. For example, a video that teaches students that the U.N.’s declaration also includes a “right to work.” Under that right are four basic rules:

1. Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favourable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment.
2. Everyone, without any discrimination, has the right to equal pay for equal work.
3. Everyone who works has the right to just and favourable remuneration ensuring for himself and his family an existence worthy of human dignity, and supplemented, if necessary, by other means of social protection.
4. Everyone has the right to form and to join trade unions for the protection of his interests.

If “work” is a human right, many would argue that the State has a responsibility to create work for those who do not have it.

Also among the 30 rights, is the right for food and shelter. The UN defines this right very specifically:

1. Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.
2. Motherhood and childhood are entitled to special care and assistance. All children, whether born in or out of wedlock, shall enjoy the same social protection.

According to this right, the government would be expected to provide just about anything a person needs from cradle to grave.

The videos’ curious origins

As we researched the videos featured on the U.N.’s website and part of the homework assignment from Common Core, we noticed a couple of unusual things.

• The producer of these videos was the Church of Scientology.
• The clips have been online since 2008, most of them were uploaded on April 3 of that year.

The non-profit Church of Scientology posted the following statement under one of the clips:

Central to our beliefs in Scientology is a conviction that all humankind is entitled to inalienable rights. So it is for more than 50 years, Scientologists have championed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Today, the Church of Scientology sponsors the largest non-governmental information campaign to make the Universal Declaration of Human Rights known the world over. To date, the Church has brought its campaign to more than 600 million.

When you watch the clips via Scientology’s YouTube channel, the church has disabled the commenting section under the videos, slightly considering rights No. 18 and No. 19 — freedom of thought and freedom of expression.

Image: YouTube

Separation of church and state?

The short summary of the story isn’t hard to follow:

• A public school in New York state is teaching an eight-week course in the U.N.’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights while the U.S. Constitution is only taught for three weeks.

• A concerned father says he talked to the local principal who told him he believes the lesson is used widely in other schools.

• Within the assignments for the U.N. study section, students are instructed to watch a video produced by the Church of Scientology and are offered additional short videos about each of the Human Rights. Our source says that his daughter watched “15 or 16 of the 30 videos in classrooms.” All of these videos are also products of Scientology.

In our discussion with the concerned father, we asked if there is a potential legal issue with a church providing educational materials for public schools. In other words, Scientology’s involvement a possible violation of the oft-cited separation of church and state? While he was intrigued by that possibility, he was more concerned over the lesson’s political push.

Those concerns aren’t unfounded. On the same page as the first video we featured is an option to take part in a petition to implement the U.N.’s Declaration of Human Rights.

Image: UN.org

The attorney’s concern here is that a specific competing political policy (from the U.N.) is being taught in greater detail than the U.S. Constitution. And that students are then being called to action and asked to sign a petition supporting a list of rights that have no legal standing in our country.

Since the school’s principal insisted that he had no say in the matter of how Common Core was used, we contacted the media spokesperson for the New York State Education Department and sent  a short list of five questions. We were referred to a basic information website for Common Core information and told, “I’ll see what I can do about answering them today; in the meantime, though, take a look at our recently-issued Common Core field memo.” No further information was sent prior to publication of this story.

From CATO

Look at No Child Left Behind. See, No Federal Control. Wait…

By 

NEAL MCCLUSKEY

In what is either a case of blinders-wearing or just poor timing, today the Fordham Institute’s Kathleen Porter-Magee has an article on NRO, co-written with the Manhattan Institute’s Sol Stern, in which she and Stern take to task national curriculum standards critics who assert, among other things, that the Common Core is being pushed by President Obama. Yes, that’s the same Kathleen Porter-Magee whom it was announced a couple of days ago would be on a federal “technical review” panel to evaluate federally funded tests that go with the Common Core.

The ironic timing of the article alone is probably sufficient to rebut arguments suggesting that the Common Core isn’t very much a federal child. Still, let’s take apart a few of the specifics Porter-Magee and Stern offer on the federal aspect. (Other Core critics, I believe, will be addressing contentions about Common Core content).

Some argue that states were coerced into adopting Common Core by the Obama administration as a requirement for applying for its Race to the Top grant competition (and No Child Left Behind waiver program). But the administration has stated that adoption of “college and career readiness standards” doesn’t necessarily mean adoption of Common Core. At least a handful of states had K–12 content standards that were equally good, and the administration would have been hard-pressed to argue otherwise.

Ah, the power of parsing. While it is technically correct that in the Race to the Top regulations the administration did not write that states must specifically adopt the Common Core, it required that states adopt a “common set of K-12 standards,” and definedthat as “a set of content standards that define what students must know and be able to do and that are substantially identical across all States in a consortium.” How many consortia met that definition at the time of RTTT? Aside, perhaps, from the New England Common Assessment Program, only one: the Common Core.

NCLB waivers, for their part, gave states an additional option – having their state college systems confirm state standards as “college  and career ready” – but that came after RTTT had already pushed states to adopt Common Core, and offered only a single alternative. That’s probably why, to use Stern and Porter-Magee’s own words, “President Obama often tries to claim credit” for widespread adoption of the Core. He actually had a lot to do with it!

As for states having “equally good” standards somehow being able to get past RTTT commonality demands, well, that’s just not how it works. The rules were the rules, and states didn’t just get out of them by saying “I dare you to act like our standards aren’t super.”

Education policymaking — and 90 percent of funding — is still handled at the state and local levels. And tying strings to federal education dollars is nothing new. No Child Left Behind — George W. Bush’s signature education law — linked federal Title I dollars directly to state education policy, and states not complying risked losing millions in compensatory-education funding (that is, funding for programs for children at risk of dropping out of school).

This is a very curious, self-defeating argument. Basically, Porter-Magee and Stern are asserting that the Feds only supply a small fraction of education money, and yet all states got sucked into No Child Left Behind. Applied to Common Core, federal money needn’t be very large in percentage terms to be irresistible, illustrating the very point about compulsion that Stern and Porter-Magee hope to refute. And it’s not hard to see why relatively small bombs of federal money pack a big punch: Taxpayers – who live in states –had no choice about paying their federal taxes, and no matter how they look in relative terms, millions or billions of federal dollars seem like mammoth sums in most news stories.

Perhaps the clearest evidence that states can still set their own standards is the fact that five states have not adopted Common Core. Some that have adopted it might opt out, and they shouldn’t lose a dime if they do.

It’s true that five states have not fully signed on to Common Core (Minnesota has adopted the language arts, but not math, portions), but that’s likely in large part because Race to the Top did not put annual funding on the line, and waivers had a non-Core option. But forty-five state did sign on, suggesting that the push was still very forceful. And it is irrelevant whether Porter-Magee and Stern think that states that opt out shouldn’t lose a dime of federal money. The reality is that those that have opted out did lose a full chance to win Race to the Top money, and if Common Core and accompanying tests are made central to a reauthorized NCLB – and why wouldn’t they be, since almost every state has adopted them – then annual funding would be put at risk. Which is what Common Core supporters have probably wanted since before the Obama administration existed, writing in 2008 that the job of the federal government is to furnish “incentives” for state adoption of “common core” standards.

So please, do look at NCLB when thinking about possible federal control of the Common Core. It’s a clarion alarm about what’s likely coming.