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You didn’t really think Bill Ayers was going to sit on the sidelines, did you? The election’s over and he’s off the radar now! And so, free to go right back to buddying up to his pal, our President-Elect, Barack Obama.
E.M. Zanotti did a little investigation into just what we’re getting into with Arne Duncan as Secretary of Education.
My favorite subject in all of this Chicago mess is the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, which is the project on whose board Bill Ayers and Barack Obama served together. I love this project because right up the street from me, I have an Annenberg Challenge school, which I think is known in the community as the “Peace School,” and is very interactive with residents of my little neighborhood. They hold peace studies rallies, drum circles, indoctrinate children in what appear to be Marxist values and hold the weekly farmers market (who said communism couldn’t taste fresh?). They are a continual annoyance to me, particularly because, in the summer, my favorite Thai restaurant has a mini-cafe right across the street and I have to stare at their peace signs and “Vote” posters until I seethe, and it ruins my basil chicken.
Anywho, Arne Duncan is Bestest Buddies with the Chicago Annenberg Challenge. In fact, he worked with the Annenberg Challenge to program curriculum in Chicago Public Schools.
In that piece, Stanley Kurtz carefully outlines how Ayers served on the board of and influences the activities of the Annenberg Challenge. According to Kurtz, Ayers had much more control over the direction of the project than either then Annenberg Challenge or Duncan will ever be willing to admit. And the Annenberg Project, according to Education Week, which is a go-to resource on all things curriculum related in public schools, had a heavy influence on Duncan’s curriculum agenda.
… If there’s one person I don’t want influencing nationwide educational policy, that person would be Lindsay Lohan, Britney Spears, the creators of Still Standing, Margaret Sanger, or, for that matter, Kirk Cameron, but lets just say that Bill Ayers is near or at the top of that list. As much as I love a good protest, I’m not entirely sure teaching a generation of children that the Weather Underground had the right ideas about domestic terrorism, or really ANYTHING, is a good idea.
Make sure you go to E.M.’s page and read the whole thing.
Makes you a little bit nervous, doesn’t it? Unless, of course, Bill Ayers is the type of person you want influencing the education your children will receive.
I bet homeschooling or private schools are looking more and more appealing now, aren’t they?
Hat Tip: Michelle Malkin
William says: We’re hoping here in my state (which I will withold) that we can convince the Republicans to start pushing through secession proceedings next month. Only then can we avoid crap like this.
Melinda P says: This is just scary! And people wonder why I choose to homeschool my children? Can we say, to get away from the idiots who don’t know what they believe in because they don’t have all of the facts. Is it any wonder why homeschoolers do so well academically….they can actually think for themselves.
I’m a little wary of home schooling. Learning to think for oneself often involves breaking away from home and getting into an environment where you interact with others who you may not share the same views with.
This Annenberg program was actually not too bad. Billionaire Walter Annenberg was former ambassador to the UK under Nixon. He gave a lot of his money to funding public education because he felt the government had a responsibility to it’s children. Especially those in impovershed neighborhoods. The Ayers connection is being exploited here. It would be like saying Annenberg and Ayers were connected. A stretch to say the least.
There are also no ‘Marxist’ values. This isn’t an economic school. And the farmer’s market quip is rather silly. What’s wrong with fresh food grown and sold by farmers?
Mat says: Um ModDem,
Homeschooled kids generally have much better academic scores than those who go to public school. That and they usually do have better critical thinking skills than public schooled kids (can’t imagine why…). Given the teachers that are in those schools today, parents can’t do much worse, and can probably do better. I went through education school and what I saw in the prospective people going through it horrified me enough that I didn’t want to finish (and ended up not doing so because I had different opinions than others in the class…so much for not sharing the same viewpoint).
Ayers had a big influence in the Chicago-based Annenberg Challenge program, so I don’t see how you can argue otherwise. The facts are there, but since you’re a liberal, facts don’t seem to mean much.
By the way, if someone has a first-person account of something versus someone just saying “that person is just silly for saying that” with no first-person angle themselves, I think I’ll go with the original first-person account, thanks.
duke says: “He gave a lot of his money to funding public education because he felt the government had a responsibility to it’s children,”
My arse.
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