Time to regulate what charters are teaching

[Starry Messenger]

http://articles.sfgate.com/2010-03-19/opinion/18838566_1_traditional-schools-charter-schools-two-charters

Two charters, both cited as models that traditional schools should emulate, must include a warped version of the First Amendment in their civics curriculum. The schools, American Indian Model Schools in Oakland and Green Dot Public Schools' Locke High School in Los Angeles, are so committed to indoctrinating students with their promoters' economic ideology that they require students to recite pro-capitalist pledges or prove that they believe in the economics of Adam Smith.


California's social studies guidelines do not even mention capitalism, although the economics section could have been written by Milton Friedman.

At Oakland's American Indian Public Charter School, the school's director, John P. Glover, refuses to confirm that his students are required to recite a pledge to capitalism, yet that the kids recited such a statement - to be "productive members in a free-market capitalist society" - was reported by Los Angeles Times staff writer Mitchell Landsberg in May 2009 after he visited the school.

...

Financed by conservative billionaire philanthropists like Bill Gates and Eli Broad, charters willingly carry out the indoctrination their benefactors seek. Their loyalty oaths ban students who don't kowtow to a school's ideology. Not all residents of the state are deemed equal. Their families may pay taxes, but the kids are banned from the schools because they won't demonstrate a belief in capitalism or pledge to be productive capitalist citizens.

The article is further explored at this link here:
http://dailycensored.com/2010/03/21/brainwashing-in-our-charter-schools/

[RKP5637]

1. I'm starting to wonder if all of the schools across this nation need to adhere to

a core curriculum. What Texas is trying to do with textbooks is pretty outrageous too.

[GreenPartyVoter]

2. I wonder how many schools would be willing to not buy those new rewritten books.

[RKP5637]

3. I'm hoping a lot will not. Another poster was discussing in another thread that

with the publishing techniques available today, the internet, etc., it well might be possible to publish cost competitive textbooks instead of being held hostage to Texas.

I find this very concerning wherein one RW state is preposterous enough to try to dictate by default the education of a nations' children.

[Starry Messenger]

4. Well, these are charter schools doing this

They'd be exempt from that kind of control. I agree with you about the textbooks though.

[Starry Messenger]

6. Sorry ignored.

You'll have to google those terms yourself. As established, teachers don't teach for free.

[mzteris]

5. Please provide your definition of:

"free market capitalist society". Along with your reasons why you think America is, or is not, a free market capitalist society. Please include your reasons for favoring or rejecting such system.