NEW YORK SUN
by Betsy McCaughey
June 10, 2014

…..Contrary to what the public is told, Common Core is not about standards. It’s about content — what pupils are taught. In the Social Studies Framework approved on April 29th by New York State’s education authorities (but not parents), American history is presented as four centuries of racism, economic oppression, and gender discrimination. Teachers are encouraged to help students identify their differences instead of their common American identity. Gone are heroes, ideals, and American exceptionalism.

Eleventh grade American history begins with the colonial period, but Puritans and their churches, standing on virtually every New England town green to this day, are erased. Amazingly, Puritan leader John Winthrop’s “city on a hill” vision, an enduring symbol of American exceptionalism cited by politicians from John F. Kennedy to Ronald Reagan and Michael Dukakis, is gone. Religion is expunged from New York State’s account of how this nation began.

Instead, the focus is on “Native Americans who eventually lost much of their land and experienced a drastic decline in population through diseases and armed conflict.” The other focus is on slavery and indentured servitude. True, the curriculum includes political developments and democratic principles. But overall, it’s so slanted as to be untrue.

The indoctrination begins early. In grade three, “students are introduced to the concepts of prejudice, discrimination and human rights, as well as social action.” Grade four suggested reading includes “The Kid’s Guide to Social Action.”…..All in all, 45 states signed on to a program that had never been tested in even one school. What pomposity…..But what’s most at stake is truth. Novelist George Orwell warned in “1984” how distorting history destroyed freedom: “The past was erased, the erasure was forgotten, the lie became truth.”

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