Sunday, March 5, 2017

School-Based Propaganda

LEFTIST HATE GROUP MEETS 'WEEKLY READER', Online teachers' resources gives Progressives open door to school children, by Bob Unruh, 3/2/17, WND

Remember the Southern Poverty Law Center? The nonprofit started out fighting the KKK. But now, it’s advocating homosexuality and transgenderism, and going even further to condemn and label as “haters” those who don’t support that agenda because of their faith.

It’s the group that put Dr. Ben Carson, one of the most respected men in America, on a list of “haters.” It’s the group formally linked in a federal court case to domestic terror after describing an ordinary Christian organization, the Family Research Council, as a “hate” group, inspiring a man who intended mass murder to launch an attack.

Now SPLC is being used as an online resource for school teachers and children across America by Newsela. The company describes itself as “an education technology startup dedicated to transforming the way students access the world through words.”


“Our team combines powerful technological know-how with real-world experience earned in the classroom, the newsroom, and the boardroom. We publish high-interest news and nonfiction articles daily at five levels of complexity for grades 2-12 using a proprietary, rapid text-leveling process. By combining relevant and interesting nonfiction content with standards-aligned assessments, Newsela gives educators the primary solution to dramatically improve students’ literacy skills for the 21st century.”

Essentially, Newslea offers online lessons to teachers, who can use then as an ongoing resource much like the “Weekly Reader,” the Scholastic publication for school children that dates to about 1928. It offers library resources “news” on a variety of topics and various “text sets” for teachers to use. An announcement from Newslea explains it is offering a “new program” to “teach empathy and diversity.”

“This coming at a time when our country is seeing an uptick in bullying and hate-crimes in schools, and an increasingly divisive tone when it comes to the ‘other.’ The program entitled ‘A Mile in Our Shoes’ is designed to help kids across the country begin to soften their tone and broaden their horizons.” For that effort, Newslea says it is “is partnering with Teaching Tolerance (a project of the Southern Poverty Law Center).”

“Newsela will feature text sets, quizzes, webinars and more designed to help educators better teach empathy and the value of diversity. The text sets will feature important articles and essays relating to veterans, immigrants, the LGBTQ community, refugees, enslaved Americans, women’s rights/groundbreaking women, people with disabilities, African Americans, Asian Americans, Latino/Hispanic Americans, Native Americans, and more,” the group explains.

Under its “Text set: A mile in our shoes: Supporting articles,” Newslea reveals its agenda, with titles including “Children start believing gender stereotypes as young as 6,” “Opponents of affirmative action are using a flawed theory” and “Implicit racial bias often begins as early as preschool.”

Under SPLC’s Teaching Tolerance instructional materials, which it posts not on the SPLC site, but on the Tolerance.org site, SPLC boasts of “webinars [that] offer helpful guidance and great ideas, from our highly experienced teaching and learning specialists and from other educators in the Teaching Tolerance community.”

For example, one seminar talks about “extreme prejudice” and warns of “anti-Muslim rhetoric” following the Muslim terror attacks in Paris, San Bernardino and other cities.
“The truth is, even before the Paris attacks, the California chapter of CAIR, released survey results showing more than half of California’s Muslim students endure bullying based on their religion,” it states.

But SPLC’s source has been rejected by the FBI “due to questions about the Hamas ties of its top leaders” and was named an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation trial, the largest terror-financing case in American history. The United Arab Emirates classifies CAIR as a terrorist organization.

Also among the SPLC teaching tools recommended by Newsela, which boasts of being used in three-quarters of U.S. schools and by over 10 million students and 1 million teachers, are titles such as “Confronting implicit bias,” “Teaching Black Lives Matter,” “Developing Empathy,” “Understanding Equity Literacy” and “Engaging Families Through Home Visits,” which instructs school teachers how to set up times to go to students’ homes, “sit down on a couch, have a normal conversation, [get] tours of the home, check out the kiddos’ selection of toys.”

Despite WND’s response to Newsela’s invitation for an “interview with our CEO,” the organization declined to respond to WND’s request for comment by publication.

‘Reckless labeling‘
WND has reported extensively on the SPLC agenda, including when in 2016 SPLC President Richard Cohen, who is paid more than $300,000 a year to run the nonprofit, was named in an Alabama Bar Association complaint for allegedly making “unethical statements” about two conservative justices on the Alabama Supreme Court, including Chief Justice Roy Moore, who have been in the organization’s crosshairs.

The complaint alleged Cohen repeatedly violated Rule 8.2 of the Rules of Professional Conduct, which states, “A lawyer shall not make a statement that the lawyer knows to be false or with reckless disregard as to its truth or falsity concerning the qualifications or integrity of a judge, adjudicatory officer or public legal officer, or of a candidate for election or appointment to judicial or legal office.”

Liberty Counsel, which also has been targeted by SPLC, said in a report last fall that by “falsely and recklessly labeling Christian ministries as ‘hate groups,’ SPLC is directly responsible for the first conviction of a man who intended to commit mass murder targeted against a policy organization in Washington, D.C.”

“On August 15, 2012, Floyd Corkins went to the Family Research Council with a gun and a bag filled with ammunition and Chick-fil-A sandwiches. His stated purpose was to kill as many employees of the Family Research Council as possible and then to smear Chick-fil-A sandwiches in their faces (because the founder of the food chain said he believed in marriage as a man and a woman). Fortunately, Mr. Corkins was stopped by the security guard, who was shot in the process. Corkins is now serving time in prison. Mr. Corkins admitted to the court that he learned of the Family Research Council by reading the SPLC’s hate map.”

WND reported a video showed Corkins entering the FRC offices and confronting Leo Johnson. Corkins later was sentenced to prison for domestic terrorism. It was during an interview with FBI officers when Corkins named the Southern Poverty Law Center as his source of information.

Central to the case, according to the government’s document, was that Corkins “had identified the FRC as an anti-gay organization on the Southern Poverty Law Center website.” FRC officials repeatedly have explained that they adhere to a biblical perspective on homosexuality but are not “anti-gay.”

Liberty Counsel also has sued on behalf of Alabama Supreme Court Justice Tom Parker over the speech restrictions included in the Alabama Canons of Judicial Ethics as well as a procedure that automatically suspends a judge if there has been an accusation against him.

“These provisions are being used by the Southern Poverty Law Center and its allies on the Alabama Judicial Inquiry Commission in an attempt to intimidate, silence, and punish Justice Parker for his originalist judicial philosophy and protected speech,” the legal organization explained.

WND reported Liberty Counsel has pointed out that under the standard SPLC uses to call group’s “hate” organizations, the Catholic Church would qualify, as well as virtually every major Christian group in the world.

The SPLC’s “hate” label also would have applied to Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton before they “evolved” to become ardent supporters of “same-sex marriage,” noted Liberty Counsel Chairman Mathew Staver.



http://www.wnd.com/2017/03/leftist-hate-group-meets-weekly-reader/

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