We recently learned that the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction has proposed to adopt a civics course designed by the Bill of Rights Institute, which is funded by the highly political, very conservative billionaires, the Koch brothers. Fortunately, Bill Bigelow of “Rethinking Schools” has researched the materials produced by the Bill of Rights Institute. Bigelow says that the Koch brothers have donated millions of dollars to the Bill of Rights Institute, which promotes free-market libertarianism and above all, respect for property rights. The BRI was “launched in 1999 and funded by the Charles Koch Foundation, the Fred and Mary Koch Foundation, and David Koch. The BRI directors include Mark Humphrey, Koch Industries senior vice president; Ryan Stowers, director of higher education programs at the Charles Koch Foundation; and Todd Zywicki, a senior scholar of the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, funded with corporate donations from the likes of Koch and ExxonMobil. Until 2013, the Bill of Rights Institute president was the Koch operative Tony Woodlief, who headed the Market-Based Management Institute in the Kochs’ hometown of Wichita, Kansas, and served as president of the Mercatus Center….”
“In its materials for teachers and students, the Bill of Rights Institute cherry-picks the Constitution, history, and current events to hammer home its libertarian message that the owners of private property should be free to manage their wealth as they see fit. billofrightsinstitute_libertarianmssgAs one Bill of Rights lesson insists, “The Founders considered industry and property rights critical to the happiness of society.” This message that individual owners of property are the source of social good, their property sacred, and government the source of danger weaves through the entire Koch curriculum, sometimes with sophistication, other times in caricature. For example, in one “click-and-explore” activity at the BRI website, showing the many ways that government can oppress individuals—”Life Without the Bill of Rights?”—a cartoon character pops up with a dialogue bubble reading, “The gov’t took my home!” An illustration shows his home demolished.
“Educator resources for “Documents of Freedom” at the BRI site underscore this business-good/government-bad message: “When government officials can make any laws they please—and hold themselves above the law—there is less economic growth, less creativity, and less happiness. Entrepreneurs won’t be willing to risk time and money starting businesses. Writers and speakers will restrain their words. Everyone will worry that his freedoms can be destroyed at the whim of a powerful government agent….”
“Focusing narrowly on property rights to the exclusion of racism and issues of social inequality are not limited to history lessons in the BRI materials. One section on the website is “Teaching with Current Events,” and includes a lesson, “Stand Your Ground and Castle Doctrine Laws.” It offers quiet cover for Trayvon Martin’s killer, George Zimmerman, mentioned in the lesson’s introduction. Here’s the lesson’s first discussion question: “Florida’s ‘Stand-Your-Ground’ law states ‘A person who is not engaged in an unlawful activity and who is attacked in any other place where he or she has a right to be has no duty to retreat and has the right to stand his or her ground and meet force with force, including deadly force if he or she reasonably believes it is necessary to do so to prevent death or great bodily harm to himself or herself or another or to prevent the commission of a forcible felony.’ How would you put this law in your own words?”
“A follow-up question asks students to search the Constitution and Bill of Rights to support this law. But nothing in the lesson encourages students to search their own lives or to view Stand-Your-Ground from the standpoint of people who might be victimized by someone like George Zimmerman. The sanctity of an individual’s property is paramount—here and everywhere in the BRI materials.
“This lesson is especially disingenuous given that Florida’s “Stand-Your-Ground” law was a product of ALEC, the American Legislative Exchange Council—a Koch-funded outfit that promotes “model” conservative legislation. The Kochs not only pay for laws to be written and passed, they now pay for them to be legitimated in the school curriculum as well.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
This is awful and should have been more closely evaluated before it was even considered for adoption. At least it has been exposed now and will likely only be adopted by schools that have a similar mindset.
It would be counties, though, or school districts. Not just a school. Typically the central office tells the schools what they will use. I guess School boards will have to decide, if anyone disputes.
And counties are bad about saying ” we have to because the state told us to,” when that isn’t always true.
They support a “libertarian message that the owners of private property should be free to manage their wealth as they see fit.” The Koch Bros. are a driving force behind The Keystone Pipeline. It seems their respect for property rights does not apply to farmers in the heartland whose private property rights would be violated to enrich the Koch Bros.
In NC it is worrisome in regards to our rising Hispanic population. In other words, it sounds like a way for generation-set white Baptist NC families to shield themselves against any American compassion for immigrants. As if we weren’t all descended from immigrants.
I see this tension every day. Many good old white, church going North Carolinians don’t mind being embracing, so long as they have the upper hand and are calling the shots. They claim to be “color blind,” but only when unchallenged, I have noticed.
I watched Francis Fukuyama speak about his new book and thought of the Koch Brother’s effort to control lessons this generation learns about their rights and responsibilities as citizens and why others want to limit these. Here is the gist from A New York Time book review.
“Over the past few decades, American political development has gone into reverse, Fukuyama says, as its state has become weaker, less efficient and more corrupt. One cause is growing economic inequality and concentration of wealth, which has allowed elites to purchase immense political power and manipulate the system to further their own interests. Another cause is the permeability of American political institutions to interest groups, allowing an array of factions that “are collectively unrepresentative of the public as a whole” to exercise disproportionate influence on government. The result is a vicious cycle in which the American state deals poorly with major challenges, which reinforces the public’s distrust of the state, which leads to the state’s being starved of resources and authority, which leads to even poorer performance.
Where this cycle leads even the vastly knowledgeable Fukuyama can’t predict, but suffice to say it is nowhere good. And he fears that America’s problems may increasingly come to characterize other liberal democracies as well, including those of Europe, where “the growth of the European Union and the shift of policy making away from national capitals to Brussels” has made “the European system as a whole . . . resemble that of the United States to an increasing degree.”
Fukuyama’s readers are thus left with a depressing paradox. Liberal democracy remains the best system for dealing with the challenges of modernity, and there is little reason to believe that Chinese, Russian or Islamist alternatives can provide the diverse range of economic, social and political goods that all humans crave. But unless liberal democracies can somehow manage to reform themselves and combat institutional decay, history will end not with a bang but with a resounding whimper.”
I am sure the Koch Brothers would NOT want students to think about this paradox and how they might address it other than buying more stuff and having more grit.
POLITICAL ORDER AND POLITICAL DECAY;From the Industrial Revolution to the Globalization of Democracy. By Francis Fukuyama Illustrated. 658 pp. Farrar, Straus & Giroux. $35.
The reviewer, Sheri Berman teaches political science at Barnard College, Columbia University.
It figures. These men along with other corporate CEOs have bought off our politicians and own the mass media to the extent that they control 80% of the “news” so now they wish to indoctrinate our children with charters, rewriting their version of history now, ad nauseum. Money corrupts. Absolute money devastates. [Rewriting an aphorism] Hitler had Goebels, we have corporate CEOs.
It is an invisible fascism that is not using weapons to control the people.
Well thought out….The comparison between EU to US is only about the UNION…..but Europe believes in SOCIAL DEMOCRACY and has great benefits whereas US does not like Safety nets and the NEW DEAL and is in the process of rolling back and privatization
“only a fool would let his enemy teach his children”
– Malcolm X
Good and appropriate quote. +1 like
Just about to post the same quote. I sometimes only use “X” as the author. Too many people have trouble seeing the message if properly attributed. Sad but true.
BTW,
One other favorite, “people see not through their eyes as much as through their beliefs” -LD
If we do not continue to spread this to the general public then we will be flooded by the propaganda/advertising of the moneyed elite and the masses will be saluting the destroyers and demonizing the messengers of the truth.
As a high school social studies teacher, I find it vital to help youngsters learn from a variety of materials, including original source materials, to understand key, ongoing issues.
Where this is heading is fascism, plain and simple.
I am wondering, as a social studies teacher in Pennsylvania where tenure has been under attack by the same groups who fund the Bill of Rights Institute, do teachers in North Carolina have tenure, or is that history and do they have to use this garbage?
By the way, if anyone can use some John Stossel “educational” videos, I’ve got plenty to spare. Otherwise they are going in my circular file.
They took our due process away this year. It will no longer be given and in 2018, nobody will have it anymore (tenure, which is of course not really tenure–it is known as “career status” and just guarantees due process in the case of dismissal).
I am curious too what “encouraged to use” means (as far as DPI providing the resource to LEAs).
The Koch brothers clearly do not care for Jefferson and his push for an amendment in the Bill of Rights granting a freedom from monopolies. He also warned against corporations and banks. He would have muzzled their corporate voice right quickly, he did not believe the laughable fantasy that corporations are people. He believed corporate charters should have a finite life and that corporations should have a short life span.
Here is yet another reason to focus on standardized test scores in math and English – doing so crowds out time for teaching Social Studies. Let’s teach the kids to never question authority, but to obey (c.f. charter schools’ disciplinary policies), believe they’re not good enough (“failing” test scores), and be ignorant of any other perspective than that fed to them. Good show, plutocrats!
“The Right To Bills”
The Bill of Rights
Or Right to Bills?
The Kochs have sights
On bills that kills
OMG…The Hunger Games, Brave New World, Animal Farm…
All roads lead to money nowadays. This was the strategy used behind implementation of common core. Today I happened to have the tv on after watching Sunday Morning and one of those dreadful tired old week in review shows which Bob Sheiffer moderates was on. His words of “wisdom” were in effect that if Americans do not like what is going on in the US, then they need to get out and vote (and he talked about how people did not get out and vote in this last election). WELL someone should inform Schieffer of how the Supreme Court decision over campaign financing has enable candidates to be basically bought by the highest bidder. People do not feel they have any choice in who gets nominated for an election anymore. Only the uber wealthy have a choice (they dig into their deep monied pockets and pay for a candidate).
Politics has become their new version of horse racing; buy a candidate and see him run, run, and run. You get to train him and run him through his paces. If he loses, run him for another office and then get what you want by offering lobbying jobs to the winner who may have publicly disagreed with you. As on oligarch said, you bet I’m buying influence, and paying well for it!
Public education has always presented a sanitized version of history. e.g. Columbus. The focus is just moving further to the right. Support public libraries and an open internet, so that those who want to read the source material can find it. Remember Aaron Swartz.
When the corporate world thinks “property rights”, it sees workers as property and an unrestricted right to own the individual.
I pledge obeisance to the PACs of the Corporate States of America, and to the oligarchy for which they shill, a gov’ment, under Greed, corrupt and paid for, with poverty and no hope for us. – new pledge, since the old one’s obsolete.
Of course, the Koch Bros and their ilk are crafty. But part of the blame can also go to those educators who don’t recognize how one sided the materials are or just don’t care -for whatever reasons. I suppose there’s the old, “I’m only following orders,” rationale, too.
I remember many years ago when I first started there was a longtime teacher who had the job of procuring movies for our small school. He was the “AV guy” in literally a 1950s sense. And, once in a while, out of the blue he’d present me with a pile of 16mm films he got from….who knows where. One day I’m looking through this heap of films and I find one from the South African government (apartheid-era) touting the praises of their society. And, I thought, holy crap, this guy is giving me propaganda to show in class! I mentioned it to him and I’m not sure he understood or cared. I then figured out how to work one of those big, clunky projectors and did a whole lesson on propaganda and what was REALLY going in South Africa.
I wish I could say this was the only time I experienced this sort of thing but sad to say that isn’t the case. A guy I like kept offering me John Stoessel’s free, libertarian videos, for example. I mean, there are some interesting points that Stoessel makes but the videos are so one-sided that it’s impossible to screen them without showing another film clip with an opposing viewpoint. And, of course, someone with deep pockets has been funding the production of all this material.
And, THAT is one of the things that REALLY BOTHERS me about the common core. Once again, we’ve got this one-sided narrative that too many people are either “embracing”, not seeing or refusing to do anything about.
The pro-apartheid film I remember from my first years teaching was so ham-handed, the giant 16 mm projector so out-of-touch with newer technology that the whole thing seemed absurd to me, even way back then.
This time around the pressure coming down on our classrooms is pervasive, well funded and tactically organized. And the technology is so, so much more sophisticated today and all of us are that much busier….
Of course, all I have to do is think of that day when Nelson Mandela walked out of prison a free man….. And, I think, yup, it can be done. The truth….the better angels of our nature can win out.
Reblogged this on We Are More.
The idea that something as controversial as Stand Your Ground laws could be taught without encouraging “students to search their own lives or to view Stand-Your-Ground from the standpoint of people who might be victimized by someone like George Zimmerman” is truly detrimental to education. There are almost surely students in the classroom who might identify strongly with Trayvon Martin, and to discount their viewpoints is dangerous. How can a student feel engaged in a class that argues, subconsciously or not, that his or her safety is less important the individual rights of property owners?