Follow the funding

This story is one, long, clear indictment of powerful foreign influence on our nation’s school curricula, operating freely under the provisions of a federal program – Title VI of the Higher Education Act. And Stanley Kurtz knows what he’s talking about here.

Unless we counteract the influence of Saudi money on the education of the young, we’re going to find it very difficult to win the war on terror. I only wish I was referring to Saudi-funded madrassas in Pakistan. Unfortunately, I’m talking about K-12 education in the United States. Believe it or not, the Saudis have figured out how to make an end-run around America’s K-12 curriculum safeguards, thereby gaining control over much of what children in the United States learn about the Middle East. While we’ve had only limited success paring back education for Islamist fundamentalism abroad, the Saudis have taken a surprising degree of control over America’s Middle-East studies curriculum at home.

Chances are, you never heard of this. It has scarcely been exposed, and we don’t pay much – if any – attention to stories about provisions of federal programs. We have some fast catching up to do.

So let’s review. The United States government gives money — and a federal seal of approval — to a university Middle East Studies center. That center offers a government-approved K-12 Middle East studies curriculum to America’s teachers. But in fact, that curriculum has been bought and paid for by the Saudis, who may even have trained the personnel who operate the university’s outreach program. Meanwhile, the American government is asleep at the wheel — paying scant attention to how its federally mandated public outreach programs actually work. So without ever realizing it, America’s taxpayers end up subsidizing — and providing official federal approval for — K-12 educational materials on the Middle East that have been created under Saudi auspices. Game, set, match: Saudis.

And, Kurtz asks rhetorically, how do we know all this? From the alert investigative work of Sandra Stotsky, former Harvard development institute director, former commissioner of the Massachusetts Department of Education, and author of the book “The Stealth Curriculum: Manipulating America’s History Teachers.”

Whereas Stotsky and the Massachusetts Department of Education had asked for seminars covering Islamic history, and including balanced discussions of contemporary Middle Eastern problems, Harvard’s outreach program delivered seminars that virtually promoted Islam as a religion, while sharply criticizing alleged American prejudice against the Muslim world…

Instead of training teachers in the history and contemporary challenges of the Muslim world, Stotsky concluded that Harvard’s outreach program was “manipulating” apolitical teachers with a “barely disguised” attempt to “shape…attitudes on specific political issues.” The lesson plans designed by K-12 teachers who participated in these Harvard-run seminars included exercises in which students were asked to watch newscasts and spot out instances in which Muslims were stereotyped as violent or barbaric.

Imagine the consequences if the lesson plans called for scrutinizing the media for instances of Christian sterotyping…

This indoctrination propaganda has been ridden into our school system in a Trojan Horse, the article aptly points out.

Introducing Stotsky’s study, Fordham Foundation president, and noted education expert, Chester Finn, calls the use of teacher-training seminars a “vast dark continent within our public (and private) educational system.” According to Finn “interest groups and ideologues” have used these seminars to “fly under the radar” of ordinary curriculum safeguards, promulgating “bias, misinformation, and politically charged conclusions, though never acknowledging their semi-covert agendas.” All too often, says Finn, those agendas include viewing “the history of freedom as the history of oppression” and urging students “to be more sympathetic to cultures that don’t value individual rights than to those that do.” It’s a sad commentary on Title VI subsidies to American universities to think that this high-profile federally-funded program has become the parade example of a much broader educational scandal…

In The Stealth Curriculum, she wrote: “Most of these materials have been prepared and/or funded by Islamic sources here and abroad, and are distributed or sold directly to schools or individual teachers, thereby bypassing public scrutiny.” 

The New York Times and other big media have revealed information about intelligence gathering programs that the public should not know. On the contrary, they have not covered this very critical connection between Middle Eastern influence and the nation’s school curricula. You should know about this, and you do now.