Second-Graders Taught Collectivist Propaganda Under Common Core

24 Oct, 2013 by Dave Blount

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“The philosophy of the classroom today will be the philosophy of government tomorrow.”

Given that our government now is vastly to the left of anything the Founding Fathers would have regarded as consistent with the libertarian principles the country was founded on, imagine the sort of Marxist regime the next generation is likely to subsist under, in light of revelations regarding what is being taught under Common Core:

A textbook company contracted to produce materials under the Common Core State Standards is trying to teach students as young as second grade about economic fairness by praising unions, protests and labor leader Cesar Chavez, according to an education watchdog group.

Zaner-Bloser, which is based in Columbus, Ohio, is distributing a lesson plan aimed at teaching second-graders about “equality” by highlighting labor issues, according to Education Action Group Foundation, a non-partisan organization that looks to promote education reform.

As part of the plan, students spend a week reading “Harvesting Hope,” a book about Chavez written by children’s author Kathleen Krull, and then discuss what the lesson plan calls “scales of fairness,” which compare the living conditions of farm workers to that of land owners.

“Fairness and equality exist when the scales are balanced,” teachers are prompted to instruct the students. They are then supposed to ask the students whether both sides, as presented in the plan, are equal, providing a correct answer of “no” in the teachers’ guides.

If educrats were interested in teaching actual fairness, instead of collectivist propaganda, they would try a different approach:

“Why are we teaching organized labor lessons to young children?” asked Kyle Olson, the publisher of the group’s website. “Isn’t there a simpler way to teach about fairness, like saying it’s not fair if Johnny works all day and gets one piece of candy while Jimmy plays video games all day and gets the same piece of candy?”

That is not a lesson our redistributionist government wants children to learn, let alone the slightly more complicated lesson of why it is both inevitable and desirable that given anything even vaguely resembling freedom, the people who own, manage, and take responsibility for a farm will make more money than unskilled laborers.