They think were crazy. They are the sneering defenders of Barack Obama who cant fathom the backlash against the presidents nationwide speech to schoolchildren next Tuesday. We are parents with eyes wide open to the potential for politicized abuse in Americas classrooms.
Ask moms and dads in Farmington Utah who discovered this week that their children sat through a Hollywood propaganda video promoting the cult of Obama.
In the clip a parade of entertainers vow to flush their toilets less buy hybrid vehicles end poverty and world hunger and commit to service for change. Actress Demi Moore leads the glitterati in a collective promise to be a servant to our president. Musician Anthony Kiedis pledges to be of service to Barack Obama.
The campaign commercial crescendos with the stars and starlets asking their audience: Whats your pledge?
This same Do Something ethos infected the U.S. Department of Education teachers guides accompanying the announcement of Obamas speech -- until late Wednesday that is when the White House removed some of the activist language exhorting students to come up with ways to help the president. Education Secretary Arne Duncan had disseminated the material directly to principals across the country -- circumventing elected school board members and superintendents now facing neighborhood revolts.
Os bureaucrats can whitewash offending language from the Sept. 8 speech-related documents but they cant remove the taint of left-wing radicalism that informs Obama and his education mentors. A spokesman maintained that the speech is about the value of education and the importance of staying in school as part of his effort to dramatically cut the dropout rate. But the historical subtext is far less innocent.
Obama served with Weather Underground terrorist and neighbor Bill Ayers on the Chicago Annenberg Challenge education initiative. Downplaying academic achievement in favor of left-wing radical activism in the public schools is rooted in Ayers pedagogical philosophy. Obama served as the programs first chairman of the board while Ayers steered its curricular policy. The two oversaw grants to welfare rights enterprise ACORN and to avowed communist Michael Klonsky -- a close pal of Ayers and member of the militant Students for a Democratic Society. SDS served as a precursor to the violent Weather Underground organization.
As investigative journalist Stanley Kurtz reported Klonsky and Ayers teamed up on the so-called small schools movement to steer schoolchildren away from core academics to left-wing politicking on issues of inequity war and violence.
A cadre of like-minded educators and national service administrators across the country share the same core commitment to transforming themselves from imparters of knowledge to transformers of society. The change agenda trains students to think only about what they should do for Obama -- and rarely to contemplate how his powers and ambitions should be limited and restrained.
Ayers preached his education-as-social justice agenda to his comrades at the World Education Forum in Caracas Venezuela three years ago:
This is my fourth visit to Venezuela each time at the invitation of my comrade and friend Luis Bonilla a brilliant educator and inspiring fighter for justice. Luis has taught me a great deal about the Bolivarian Revolution and about the profound educational reforms underway here in Venezuela under the leadership of President (Hugo) Chavez. We share the belief that education is the motor-force of revolution and Ive come to appreciate Luis as a major asset in both the Venezuelan and the international struggle -- I look forward to seeing how he and all of you continue to overcome the failings of capitalist education as you seek to create something truly new and deeply humane.
Ayers continued:
I walked out of jail and into my first teaching position -- and from that day until this Ive thought of myself as a teacher but Ive also understood teaching as a project intimately connected with social justice. After all the fundamental message of the teacher is this: You can change your life -- whoever you are wherever youve been whatever youve done another world is possible. As students and teachers begin to see themselves as linked to one another as tied to history and capable of collective action the fundamental message of teaching shifts slightly and becomes broader more generous: We must change ourselves as we come together to change the world. Teaching invites transformations it urges revolutions small and large. La educacion es revolucion!
This is why informed parents do not trust the Educator-in-Chief and his comrades. You can take Obama from the radicals in Chicago. But you cant take the Chicago radicalism out of Obama.
Michelle Malkin makes news and waves with a unique combination of investigative journalism and incisive commentary. She is the author of Unhinged: Exposing Liberals Gone Wild .
They think were crazy. They are the sneering defenders of Barack Obama who cant fathom the backlash against the presidents nationwide speech to schoolchildren next Tuesday. We are parents with eyes wide open to the potential for politicized abuse in Americas classrooms.
Ask moms and dads in Farmington Utah who discovered this week that their children sat through a Hollywood propaganda video promoting the cult of Obama.
In the clip a parade of entertainers vow to flush their toilets less buy hybrid vehicles end poverty and world hunger and commit to service for change. Actress Demi Moore leads the glitterati in a collective promise to be a servant to our president. Musician Anthony Kiedis pledges to be of service to Barack Obama.
The campaign commercial crescendos with the stars and starlets asking their audience: Whats your pledge?
This same Do Something ethos infected the U.S. Department of Education teachers guides accompanying the announcement of Obamas speech -- until late Wednesday that is when the White House removed some of the activist language exhorting students to come up with ways to help the president. Education Secretary Arne Duncan had disseminated the material directly to principals across the country -- circumventing elected school board members and superintendents now facing neighborhood revolts.
Os bureaucrats can whitewash offending language from the Sept. 8 speech-related documents but they cant remove the taint of left-wing radicalism that informs Obama and his education mentors. A spokesman maintained that the speech is about the value of education and the importance of staying in school as part of his effort to dramatically cut the dropout rate. But the historical subtext is far less innocent.
Obama served with Weather Underground terrorist and neighbor Bill Ayers on the Chicago Annenberg Challenge education initiative. Downplaying academic achievement in favor of left-wing radical activism in the public schools is rooted in Ayers pedagogical philosophy. Obama served as the programs first chairman of the board while Ayers steered its curricular policy. The two oversaw grants to welfare rights enterprise ACORN and to avowed communist Michael Klonsky -- a close pal of Ayers and member of the militant Students for a Democratic Society. SDS served as a precursor to the violent Weather Underground organization.
As investigative journalist Stanley Kurtz reported Klonsky and Ayers teamed up on the so-called small schools movement to steer schoolchildren away from core academics to left-wing politicking on issues of inequity war and violence.
A cadre of like-minded educators and national service administrators across the country share the same core commitment to transforming themselves from imparters of knowledge to transformers of society. The change agenda trains students to think only about what they should do for Obama -- and rarely to contemplate how his powers and ambitions should be limited and restrained.
Ayers preached his education-as-social justice agenda to his comrades at the World Education Forum in Caracas Venezuela three years ago:
This is my fourth visit to Venezuela each time at the invitation of my comrade and friend Luis Bonilla a brilliant educator and inspiring fighter for justice. Luis has taught me a great deal about the Bolivarian Revolution and about the profound educational reforms underway here in Venezuela under the leadership of President (Hugo) Chavez. We share the belief that education is the motor-force of revolution and Ive come to appreciate Luis as a major asset in both the Venezuelan and the international struggle -- I look forward to seeing how he and all of you continue to overcome the failings of capitalist education as you seek to create something truly new and deeply humane.
Ayers continued:
I walked out of jail and into my first teaching position -- and from that day until this Ive thought of myself as a teacher but Ive also understood teaching as a project intimately connected with social justice. After all the fundamental message of the teacher is this: You can change your life -- whoever you are wherever youve been whatever youve done another world is possible. As students and teachers begin to see themselves as linked to one another as tied to history and capable of collective action the fundamental message of teaching shifts slightly and becomes broader more generous: We must change ourselves as we come together to change the world. Teaching invites transformations it urges revolutions small and large. La educacion es revolucion!
This is why informed parents do not trust the Educator-in-Chief and his comrades. You can take Obama from the radicals in Chicago. But you cant take the Chicago radicalism out of Obama.
Michelle Malkin makes news and waves with a unique combination of investigative journalism and incisive commentary. She is the author of Unhinged: Exposing Liberals Gone Wild .
