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U.N. INFLUENCE IN U.S. SCHOOLS By Henry
Lamb January 26, 2004 Since its beginning, the United Nations Education, Science and Cultural Organization has been trying to impose an international curriculum to prepare students for world government. More than 500 U.S. schools are now using the International Baccalaureate program, and the Department of Education has just awarded a $1.2 million grant to expand the program in middle schools in Arizona, Massachusetts and New York. In one of its first efforts in 1949, the UNESCO textbook, titled "Toward World Understanding," used to teach teachers what to teach, said: "As long as the child breathes the poisoned air of nationalism, education in world-mindedness can produce only rather precarious results. As we have pointed out, it is frequently the family that infects the child with extreme nationalism." In the 1960s, Dr. Robert Muller, U.N. Deputy Secretary-General, prepared a "World Core Curriculum." Its first goal: "Assisting the child in becoming an integrated individual who can deal with personal experience while seeing himself as a part of 'the greater whole.' In other words, promote growth of the group idea, so that group good, group understanding, group interrelations and group goodwill replace all limited, self-centered objectives, leading to group consciousness." The U.N.'s global education program took a major step in 1968, when UNESCO provided the funding to create the International Baccalaureate Organization, a non-government organization, in Geneva, Switzerland. The IBO is now providing the curriculum for 33,000 teachers in nearly 1500 schools around the world, 55 of which are middle schools in the Washington D.C. area. UNESCO says the IB curriculum promotes human rights, social justice, sustainable development, population, health, environmental and immigration concerns. "We're living on a planet that is becoming exhausted," says George Walker, IB's director-general in Geneva. "The program remains committed to changing children's values so they think globally, rather than in parochial national terms from their own country's viewpoint." Jeanne Geiger, an outspoken critic of the program in Reston, Virginia, wrote to a local newspaper: "Administrators do not tell you that the current IB program for ages three through grade 12 promotes socialism, disarmament, radical environmentalism, and moral relativism, while attempting to undermine Christian religious values and national sovereignty," The IB program was dropped at Woodson High School in Fairfax, Virginia, when critical parents told local school officials that the best universities in Virginia did not give full credit for the IB program. The goals and methods of the IB program reach much further than the 502 U.S. schools now officially enrolled. The Center for Civic Education, which, by law, writes the curriculum for civics education in the United States, says: "In the past century, the civic mission of schools was education for democracy in a sovereign state. In this century, by contrast, education will become everywhere more global. And we ought to improve our curricular frameworks and standards for a world transformed by globally accepted and internationally transcendent principles." This global influence can be clearly seen in the new mission for the National Curriculum Standards for Social Studies: "The United States and its democracy are constantly evolving and in continuous need of citizens who can adapt to meet the changing circumstances. Meeting that need is the mission of social studies. Students should be helped to construct a pluralist perspective based on diversity [and] should be helped to construct a global perspective." A critical review of "We the People; the Citizen and the Constitution," a civics textbook written by the Center for Civics Education, reveals that the teaching of historical facts is replaced with teaching attitudes and values about multi-culturalism and world-mindedness. A review of science, and even math texts, reveals that sustainable development, environmental protection and social justice dominate the material children are taught. No longer are American children learning about the structure of a federal republic compared to a parliamentary democracy. No longer are children learning the difference between capitalism and socialism. No longer are children being taught why the United States became the most powerful economic engine the world has ever known. Instead, they are being taught that with less than 5% of the world's population, the U.S. uses 25% of the world's resources and produces 25% of the world's pollution. They are being taught that the U.S. is the #1 terrorist nation. They are being taught that the rest of the world is mired in poverty because of the greedy capitalists in the United States. The effectiveness of generations of this U.N. globalist curriculum is evidenced by many of the talking heads interviewed on the nightly news, and even by some of the presidential hopefuls. © 2004 Henry Lamb - All Rights Reserved Sign Up For Free E-Mail Alerts
Henry Lamb is the founding Chairman of Sovereignty International (1996), and the founding ECO of the Environmental Conservation Organization (1988). He is publisher of eco-logic Powerhouse, a widely read on-line, and print magazine. His columns are frequently translated into Spanish and published throughout Central and South America, Spain, Portugal, and Italy. He has attended United Nations meetings around the world, is a frequent speaker at conferences and workshops across the country, and is a regular guest on dozens of talk radio programs. He has provided testimony for the U.S. Congress, as well as State Legislatures, and has served as a consultant to FOX News on U.N. affairs. For eight years, he was CEO of a national trade association for contractors, headquartered in Chicago, coming to that position from CEO of a private construction company specializing in erosion control and water management structures. His background includes teaching at the secondary school level, and serving four years as a legislative analyst for a county government in Florida. E-Mail: henry@freedom.org
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