By Paul Bremmer
Alex Newman, who co-authored a new book on the problems in American education, “Crimes of the Educators,” with the late Samuel Blumenfeld, says he’s ready to debate Rebecca Klein of Huffington Post.
“I formally re-issue my challenge to Ms. Klein to debate me on Common Core, any time, any place, or at the very least interview me on the subject, as is standard journalistic practice before attacking somebody,” he told WND.
Newman was confronting Huffington Post Education Editor Rebecca Klein over her June 4 article, “5 of the Most Extreme Claims Made Against Common Core In The Last 5 Years.”
One of her claims was Newman’s contention in March 2014 that Common Core was part of a global agenda to “transform American children, and students around the globe, into what globalists refer to as ‘global citizens’ ready for the coming ‘green’ and ‘sustainable’ world order.”
He is asking for her to investigate the claim for herself.
“If the Huffington Post’s education editor thinks using education and Common Core to create green global citizens is extreme, she really should take it up with UNESCO, Bill Gates, Achieve, Inc., and Obama Education Secretary Arne Duncan,” Newman told WND.
“As she now knows from the many official documents I’ve sent to her on this matter – documents found on the websites of UNESCO and the Department of Education – both bureaucracies are very open about what they are doing: using schools to create what they refer to as ‘green’ and ‘global’ citizens.”
For example, in a 2010 speech at the Sustainability Summit, Duncan bragged that his Education Department was “taking a leadership role in the work of educating the next generation of green citizens and preparing them to contribute to the workforce through green jobs.”
In a separate 2010 speech given to UNESCO, Duncan proclaimed the U.S. must partner with foreign countries to tackle global challenges.
He declared: “These new partnerships must also inspire students to take a bigger and deeper view of their civic obligations – not only to their countries of origin but to the betterment of the global community.”
Information about the efforts to create “green” and “global” citizens is freely available online, Newman said, but Klein did not appear to consult it.
“Unfortunately, Ms. Klein seems to have just copied and pasted material from a discredited report put out by the fringe leftist group the Southern Poverty Law Center, without bothering to check out the information before publishing it,” Newman said. “I’ve offered Ms. Klein the opportunity to debate me on Common Core and education, whether on HuffPost Live, on which I’ve appeared before, or any other venue of her choosing. So far I have received no response.”
In her article, Klein also accused WND columnist Patrice Lewis of saying the Common Core standards will “indoctrinate kids under a Nazi society.” Lewis scratched her head at why the Huffington Post would bother to target her column.
“I think they must be desperate for material if they’re picking apart a weekly column by an obscure rural housewife,” she quipped.
At any rate, according to Lewis, the HuffPost mischaracterized what she wrote.
“I drew parallels between the blatant indoctrination in Nazi Germany preceding World War II and the current indoctrination taking place in American public schools,” Lewis told WND. “The HuffPo header said, ‘They Indoctrinate Kids Under A Nazi Society.’ Nowhere did I say America was a Nazi society, but there are indisputable similarities.”
The columnist said America is moving toward a “groupthink” mentality like the ones in Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia. She also claimed the nationalization of education standards under Common Core represents a government attempt to control the minds of youth, just as Hitler attempted to capture the minds of German youth.
“The only reason the progressives pooh-pooh any parallels drawn between Soviet Russia, Nazi Germany, and current American society is because liberals embrace and agree with the goals,” Lewis declared. “Their side is ‘winning.’ They’re the ones controlling public education and the mainstream media. They applaud any and all attempts to capture the minds of children away from the so-called narrow, bigoted, outdated, racist, homophobic, sexist (did I miss anything?) attitudes of their parents.”
Lewis pointed out that Klein didn’t bother to refute any of the five “extreme” claims she documented in her article.
“Sure, [The Huffington Post] had a nice giggle at the expense of conservatives,” Lewis said. “‘Ha ha, look at all the tinfoil-hat wearers.’ But the article did nothing to refute these concerns.”
Newman also addressed another one of Klein’s five “extreme” claims: that Common Core will turn kids into communists and/or socialists. She accused Glenn Beck and Rep. Jim Bridenstine, R-Okla., of making those assertions. However, as Newman pointed out, that’s not exactly what Beck and Bridenstine said.
“In fact, what Beck and Bridenstine suggested – that elements of socialist philosophy underpin much of the ideology behind the standards – was entirely accurate, despite Klein’s attempt to distort it and take it out of context,” Newman said.
Klein’s fifth “extreme” claim was Family Research Council President Tony Perkins’ assertion that Common Core will turn kids against Christianity.
Newman said he agreed with Perkins on that score, and in “Crimes of the Educators,” Newman detailed many of the ways public education tries to stamp out Christianity in children.
“Perhaps it is no surprise, then, that Ms. Klein and the Huffington Post made no effort to actually address the ‘extreme’ claims or show why they were extreme, much less inaccurate,” Newman concluded. “Of course, the Huffington Post is not known as a reliable source for news or information, but this half-baked attempt at propaganda was especially pitiful.”
from PropagandaGuard https://propagandaguard.wordpress.com/2015/06/20/huffington-writer-challenged-to-debate-common-core/
from WordPress https://toddmsiebert.wordpress.com/2015/06/20/huffington-writer-challenged-to-debate-common-core/
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