"Welcoming Schools" Comes to MN

Found this article in the Minneapolis Star Tribune this week. It discusses the new "Welcoming Schools" curriculum that is being piloted in a few schools in the metro. I'll add more information as I find out more.


http://ww3.startribune.com/kerstenblog/?p=430

The real agenda behind schools' anti-bullying
curriculum
KATHERINE KERSTEN, Star Tribune

The bully is the scourge of the elementary school playground. So who
could object to a new anti-bullying curriculum scheduled to be tested in three
Minneapolis elementary schools -- Hale, Jefferson and Park View -- and adopted
districtwide if successful?

But what if that curriculum is really a disguise for a very different
agenda brought to Minneapolis by the Human Rights Campaign, a Washington,
D.C.-based gay and transgender advocacy group? What if its lessons have little
to do with bullying, and much to do with ensuring that kids as young as age 5
submit to HRC's orthodoxy on family structure, even if it differs from their own
parents' view?

What if students who dissent are subjected to teacher-directed peer
pressure and negative evaluations?

In other words, what if anti-bullying advocates themselves turn out to
be the bullies?
Welcome to the "Welcoming Schools" curriculum.

In March, Minneapolis Superintendent Bill Green praised "Welcoming
Schools" as "a tool to combat bullying, by focusing on diversity, gender
stereotyping and name-calling." But the curriculum's underlying social/political
agenda leaps from every page.

"Welcoming Schools" has three sections. The first, on "family
diversity," drums into kids the idea that "traditional families" are outdated.
To emphasize this point, kids in grades 3-5 "act out" being members of
nontraditional families, including same-gender-headed families.

K-3 students study words like "lesbian" and "gay," while fourth- and
fifth-graders learn "bisexual," "dyke" and "transgender."

In the curriculum's second section -- "Looking at Gender Roles and
Stereotyping" -- children learn to "expand their notions of gender-appropriate
behavior." They read books such as "Sissy Duckling," which deals with
"characters challenging gender norms," and "King and King," in which a prince
proposes to and marries another prince.

"Welcoming Schools" does not address bullying until its third and final
section. It says relatively little about bullies' traditional targets -- kids
who are overweight, short or the wrong skin color, for example -- and places
heavy emphasis on anti-gay name-calling.

To promote its agenda, "Welcoming Schools" employs classic
indoctrination techniques.
Teachers begin lessons by questioning students to
identify their current beliefs. Then they use group exercises, films and books
to convince the kids that any traditional attitudes they harbor about family
structure and homosexuality are harmful "stereotypes." At the end of a lesson,
teachers "evaluate" students to ensure that their views now pass official
muster.

One fill-in-the-blank phrase that students are to complete during
evaluation says it all: "I used to think, but now I know ..."

The "Family Diversity Photo Puzzle," a typical lesson for grades 1-3,
exemplifies this approach.
In the exercise, the teacher instructs students
to arrange photos of adults and children to create seven families. But the
exercise is rigged, though children don't know it.

"The packets of photographs selected make it impossible to create seven
'traditional' families: that is, families that include a mother, a father and
children," says the curriculum guide. "Students will find that they must create
some families with adults of the same gender. ..." and then decide how to label
the members.

The guide advises teachers to use their authority to encourage the
right answer: "[I]t is helpful for students if you use your own set of photos to
create a family with two moms and/or two dads."

When the lesson is over, the teacher exhorts students to examine their
beliefs, confess their errors and commit to reform.

"Were there types of families you didn't create?" asks the teacher.
"Why do you think you didn't create those families?" (In other words, what's
wrong with you?) "If you did this activity again, would you do anything
differently?" (Hmm, I wonder what the right answer is to that one?)

"Welcoming Schools" uses the same strategy in its section on expanding
"gender norms." (The guide advises teachers to avoid referring to their class as
"boys and girls." "For some children," it explains, "identifying as a boy or
girl in order to participate in an activity creates internal dissonance.")
Students are evaluated on "whether or not [they] feel comfortable making choices
outside gender expectations."

At Hale School, some parents are up in arms. While they oppose
bullying, they say, this is not the way to address it. They have been explaining
their concerns since February, when Principal Bob Brancale announced in an
e-mail that "Welcoming Schools" "will be piloted ... regardless of the personal
issues or concerns of parents or staff."

"It's a direct slap at parents' face," said Hale parent Arbuc Flomo of
the newly formed Coalition for Parents' Rights. " 'I used to think, but now I
know ...'? It's like a teacher saying to your first-grader, 'what you learned in
your seven years before coming to first grade here -- what you learned from your
parents -- is wrong.' "

Dan Loewenson of the Minneapolis School District says that parents are
free to opt their children out of the program.

After Hale parents filed formal objections to "Welcoming Schools" in
March, district leaders referred the matter to the district's Curriculum and
Instruction Committee. On May 28, the committee will deliberate about next steps
after hearing from parents and staff.

The Cost of Immorality

I ran across a great article from Chuck Colson this past week from his Breakpoint daily ministry. He takes a look at our current economic predicament here in the United States and how much of it can be directly related to the decline of morals.

Why We Whisper
The Economic Costs of Sin
May 2, 2008

Imagine the following social experiment: You divide up Americans into two groups. Those who agreed to live by traditional moral values live in certain states. Those who reject traditional values take up residence in other states that would allow them to do whatever they pleased, morally speaking.

After 20 years, which states would be better off—economically speaking? The traditional values states would be far better off, because the liberal states would be spending $500 billion dollars every year dealing with the economic costs of their moral decisions.

Senator Jim DeMint and David Woodward outline those costs in their book, titled: Why We Whisper: Restoring Our Right to Say It's Wrong. As the authors note, "As elected officials and judges continue to throw traditions overboard from the ship of state," conspicuously absent from the political debate "is the mounting cost in dollars [and] debt."

For example, there is the cost in treating sexually transmitted diseases. Research shows that more than half of all Americans will contract a sexually transmitted disease at some point. The cost: Some $17 billion in higher taxes and health insurance costs every year. And that does not include secondary costs, like treating cervical
cancer, infertility, birth defects, and brain damage. And yet, our government does little or nothing to discourage premarital sex.

And then there are the huge costs of out-of-wedlock childbearing. Welfare costs alone to single-parent families amount to $148 billion per year. We pay indirectly, as well, through costs associated with child abuse—much more common in single-parent homes—and in higher crime rates.

We know about this at Prison Fellowship. We see it in the faces of the inmates day after day. Crime and incarceration rates are soaring—so much so that corrections budgets in many states exceed education budgets. And what is the leading cause of crime? Fatherless families, the lack of moral training during the morally formative years, according to respected studies.

Americans spend billions on abortions—mostly to single women—not counting the expense of treating post-abortion medical and psychological problems.

We also pay huge economic bills associated with pornography and government-sponsored gambling. We pay for the easy availability of divorce and for the choice of many to cohabit instead of marry. In time we will, like Scandinavian countries, be asked to pay the economic costs of destroying traditional marriage.

As DeMint and Woodward write, the quest for unfettered moral freedom has come at a very steep price—a price we all pay, whether we engage in these behaviors or not. And at the same time as we pay—more and more each year—we are being told we are narrow-minded bigots if we speak out against the destructive behaviors that are causing the increased costs.

The economic costs—not to mention the costs in human suffering—are why you and I need to speak out. We ought to insist that our lawmakers support policies that make good economic sense and relieve human misery. Instead of making biblical arguments, which sadly, most people do not listen to anymore, we ought to make prudential ones: that encouraging destructive behavior is destroying the economic health of our nation. And it is demonstrable.

If special-interest groups and liberal lawmakers tell us to pipe down and stop trying to "impose our morality" on everyone else, we need to remind our leaders of that little clause in the Constitution: the one that talks about promoting the general welfare.