Education secretary calls for more time in school to indoctrinate your children

July 28, 2010 06:24


‘The focus on charter schools has duped many on the right to support the Race to the Top program. But before cheering for charter schools, parents need to be reminded that the camouflage-clad, militant youth chanting and praising President Obama came from a Kansas City, Missouri, charter school. In reality, that school’s model much more closely resembles the vision of both Obama and Duncan.’ Sarah Durand at Pajamas Media

Paul Conner at The Daily Caller has an article ‘Education secretary calls for 12-hour school days, longer school years‘ which sounds like a propaganda posting for Obama’s Race to the Top program where schools are competing for funds from the federal government. In it he quotes Education Secretary Arne Duncan as saying:

‘“In all seriousness, I think schools should be open 12, 13, 14 hours a day, seven days a week, 11-12 months of the year,” Duncan said. “This is not just more of the same. There would be a whole variety of after-school programs. Obviously academics would be at the heart of that. But you top it off with dancing, art, drama, music, yearbook, robotics, activities for older siblings and parents, ESL classes.”’

But an article by Sarah Durand at Pajamas Media ‘Indoctrination Disguised as Education Reform – How Arne Duncan’s well-funded Race to the Top program will inject (even more) propaganda into your child’s head’ points out some more disturbing facets of the agenda. She quotes Texas Governor Rick Perry on the program:

Texas Governor Rick Perry, one of the few staunch opponents of the program, stated that it would be “foolish and irresponsible to place our children’s future in the hands of unelected bureaucrats and special interest groups thousands of miles away in Washington, virtually eliminating parents’ participation in their children’s education.” He added that if Washington truly cared about education, it would give the money to the states with “no strings attached.” Among those “strings attached” is a commitment to abandon local curricula to adopt unproven, national curriculum standards.

Most alarming is the program’s plan to use Obama’s Americorps members as teachers.

From Sarah Durand at Pajamas Media:

With their newly defined charters, they’ll not only be able to change what students are learning, but more easily change who is teaching them. Traditionally, charter schools have been free from the burdens of teachers’ unions so that they can more easily fire and replace bad teachers. When a school becomes a charter school, its teachers even have to reapply for their jobs; enter AmeriCorps.

One of the most startling facets of Race to the Top is its attempt to get rid of as many traditionally educated teachers — i.e., those who go to a college to earn a master’s degree in education — and replace them with “alternatively” certified teachers; and, not just any alternatively certified teachers, but those certified by AmeriCorps’ Teach for America (TFA) and Teaching Fellows, which it runs jointly with the New Teacher Project (TNTP).

Many school districts are already adding AmeriCorps workers with hopes of appearing more competitive for the federal dollars. For example, Colorado agreed to “more than quadruple the number of Teach for America teachers in classrooms, from 175 to more than 800.” And in Indiana’s Race to the Top application, the state agreed to “double the number of teachers entering each year from Teach for America and the New Teacher Project.

Replacing traditionally educated teachers with AmeriCorps-certified teachers is not a new idea to Duncan. Despite laying off hundreds of teachers during his tenure as CEO for Chicago Public Schools, he still managed to add hundreds of TFA teachers to Chicago schools.

Is this the type of ‘education’ you want for your children? Arne Duncan and the Obama administration are the greatest reason to shut down the federal Department of Education and return school control to the states where it rightfully belongs before it becomes even more openly the Department of Indoctrination.



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