Subject: Re: Center for Civic Education (CCE)
From: Rebecca O'Dell Townsend
Date: Wed, 31 May 2006 17:09:06 -0400


 For more information, go to www.EdWatch.org.  Also, you need the book, FedEd by Allen Quist.  

    In 1994, Congress passed and President Clinton signed into law 3 bills to restructure America's educational system.  Most Congressmen were not aware of its implications or implementation. These bills were: (1) Goals 2000:Educate America Act; (2) School to Work: Opportunities Act; and (3) HR6, the appropriations bill for most federal education programs.  HR6 authorized the Secretary of Education to enter into a contract and award a grant to one NGO - the Center for Civic Education (CCE).  That single NGO now determines the mandated curriculum to all states that accept federal education funding.  (That includes all 50 states as far as I know.  My suggestion for 100 Ideas for Florida's Future was to stop accepting federal education funding.  It is eaten up in administration anyway and never makes it to the classroom to accomplish anything positive).  
    In 1994, the CCE published the federal government's standards for civics and government.  These standards were to be implemented as interdisciplinary standards (i.e. taught in all subjects) and were to include a "political action" component.  The primary purpose of the new curriculum is to move America from a national to a global society.  Its primary focus is the restructuring of American education from teaching "reading, writing and arithmetic" to teaching "civic education."  Education is now considered political and designed to achieve a political purpose.  No Congressmen or citizen group approved this change or curriculum.  It was the product of the CCE.  A copy of the standards can be purchased at the CCE 1(800)591-9330.  In addition to the CCE, the Department of Education has established a "partnership" with "The Communitarian Network."  The Network's platform includes eliminating the right to bear arms.  According to the Network, only the government should own and bear arms.
    In order to achieve its new educational goal, the CCE and its approved textbooks, such as "We the People: the Citizen and the Constitution" present only the facts that support its political viewpoint.  Other factual information is ignored or undermined. (For instance, the Second Amendment is never mentioned, even when discussing the Bill of Rights).   Therefore, the federal curriculum is designed to indoctrinate, not educate.  Education is about teaching facts so that free citizens can make informed decisions.  
The federal curriculum also affects private schools and homeschools because these students must pass the same tests that public school students take, such as the Iowas Basics, SAT and ACT.  These tests require the corrent answers to those "themes"  in the federal curriculum.
The principal themes required by the federal curriculum are:
1.    Undermining national sovereignty.
2.    Redefining natural rights (i.e., truths that are self-evident/inalienable rights-the only legitimate purpose of gov't according to our Declaration of Independence is to secure those God-given rights)(Under the federal curriculum, as in totalitarian governments, human rights have second priority over the "needs of society," making these rights meaningless).
3.    Mininizing natural law (God's absolute, immutable laws that are to be discovered and applied).
4.    Promoting religious environmentalism.
5.    Requiring multiculturism, including homosexuality.
6.    Restructuring government.
7.    Redefining education as job skills.

    These themes, as you will notice, are not "subjects," but attitudes or worldviews.  All these themes, you will also notice, have the overreaching objective of promoting globalism/one-world government.  As an example, the National Standards on Civics and Government published by the CCE states: "The world is divided into nation-states that claim sovereignty over a defined territory and jurisdiction over everyone within it."  The primary polical entity, according to the CCE is "the world."  The "nation-states" simply "claim" sovereignty.  The National Standards states that our forefathers "argued that the principal purpose of government is the protection of individual rights ... . However, another view is that the primary purpose of government is to promote the common good of the whole society rather than that of one particular class or segment of society."  The CCE's model textbook, "We the People" states, "As fundamental and lasting as its guarantees have been, the U.S. Bill of Rights is a document of the eighteenth century, reflecting the issues and concerns of the age in which it was written...other national guarantees of rights also reflect the cultures that created them."  In other words, the doctrine of natural rights may have been fine for the 18th century, but we are more enlightened now.  The National Standards asks students to "Explain how awareness of the nature of American constitutional democracy may give citizens the ability to reaffirm or change fundamental constitutional values."  

Under the Iowa Basics Test, the number of questions dealing with:
The U.S. Constitution    0
Any U.S. President      0
Any explorer such as Christopher Columbus    0
Any U.S. leader    0
Any U.S. wars    0
Life, liberty or property rights    0
Importance of free enterprise    0
Meaning of republic or democracy    0
Location of any state, river, city, territory, ocean or nation    0
Environment    12

NAEP Questions:
Environment    10
Multiculturism    4   
Basic principles of freedom    0
Geography    0
History other than Native American history    0
National sovereignty, natural law, natural rights    0


    In the curriculum, students are taught religious environmentalism, such as that “trees are your brothers and sisters.”  (Language arts text).  Religious environmentalism is the religion of paganism, spiritism and pantheism.  Required activities include: discussing the spiritual value of water in Walden; reading and analyzing the river myths of various cultures; Dalai Lama’s Spirit of Nature video; meditating and maintaining field journals.  The curriculum also contains attacks against Christianity.  The 6th grade Iowa Basic Test, for instance, asks this question:
“What is the best evidence that the Roman Catholic Church was a powerful force in the Middle Ages?
J.    Many people were serfs.
K.    Most European languages are based on Latin.
L.    Most Christian leaders could read and write.
M.    Large armies were persuaded to fight for the Holy Land.
The correct answer is “M.”  There is, of course, no mention of the Moslem invasion of most of Europe and its fight for the preservation of western civilization.
Christians are also pictured as primitive, such as its reading sections involving the Amish. 
European settlers are described as gold worshippers and “crazy.”  (NAEP test).  Native Americans are described as peace-loving and noble.  Islam is portrayed in a positive light.  Christianity is associated, in contrast, with the Salem witch hunts and the Inquisition.
 
    Teamwork is considered more important than efficiency under the federal curriculum (i.e. collectivism and socialism).  Students are considered “human resources,” i.e. human “capital” and it is considered a waste of resources to educate someone who will be a truck driver the same as someone who will need a college degree.  Thus, students are supposed to pick a career path by 8th grade. (An educated citizenry is only necessary in a democracy).
 
    The federal curriculum teaches the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and puts it on an equal, if not superior, plane with our Declaration and Constitution.  The UDHR states that “rights and freedoms may in no case be exercised contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations.”  The United Nations trumps human rights!

I hope that this helps you with your public service and your understanding of the changes and problems within our educational system.