FOX “News” posted a slanderous, absurd, dim-witted article about public schools, based on the complaints of a rightwing fringe group group called “No Left Turn in Education.” This group specializes in scare tactics and has a long list of books that they think should be banned.
In their eyes, educating “the whole child” is a nefarious plot to take away the role of parents. Social and emotional learning—like teaching children to be kind, to be considerate of others, to talk instead of fight—is insidious. No wonder people who watch FOX nonstop turn to homeschooling or religious schools, where their kids will get an inferior education.
FOX reports:
Educators at over 120 districts across the country are implementing a pervasive school curriculum that has been denounced by opponents as an effort to manipulate children’s values and beliefs and replace parents as the primary moral authority in their child’s lives, with many critics specifically pointing to similarities with programs from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) as a major point of contention.
The School Superintendent’s Association (AASA), with the help of superintendents, board members and school administrators, is implementing the Learning 2025 program, which calls for an equity-focused, “holistic redesign” of the United States’ public education system by 2025, in districts across the country
The parents’ advocacy group, No Left Turn in Education (NLTE), is sounding the alarm about the curriculum’s alleged ties to the CDC, especially since Learning 2025 outlines its plans as a solution to the fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Learning 2025 frequently references the idea of a “Whole Child” educational framework to promote the notion that school districts should focus on a collective, whole community vision that is strikingly similar to the Whole School, Whole Community, Whole Child (WSCC) educational framework devised by the CDC.
Both programs place a strong emphasis on students’ and teachers’ social and emotional health, including employee wellness programs, as well as psychological and social services like school-based health and counseling centers.
NLTE Chief Operating Officer Melissa Jackson said Learning 2025 is just a new way to make money on the same CDC product because “the components are still the same” with the emphasis on utilizing the community to influence and curate the “Whole Child” and their personal ideals beyond reading, writing and arithmetic.
The CDC’s “Whole Child” approach places its focus on psychological counseling and social services for students and teachers to further the “collaboration between education leaders and health sectors to improve each child’s cognitive, physical, social, and emotional development,” which is often referred to as social emotional learning (SEL).
SEL is advertised as a way to teach students social skills in support of their mental health and emotional wellbeing, but it has been criticized as a way to implement controversial topics like Critical Race Theory and Gender Theory. As a result, it has become a point of contention among parents, teachers and politicians who advocate for a strong academic emphasis at school and against classroom discussions that they feel should be left up to parents’ discretion at home.
NLTE refers to SEL as “socially engineered learning” because instead of placing the emphasis on reading, writing and arithmetic, they argue it moves the focus away from academics to center on higher cognitive skills, like self-awareness, empathy and control of emotions.
When reached for comment, the CDC told Fox News Digital that Learning 2025 “is not a CDC program,” but a document about the program indicates a connection between the CDC and AASA.
“AASA is using the new model with our superintendent cadre,” a document about the CDC’s Whole Child program states. “We’ve updated all of our coordinated school health training materials to include the new model as the model for coordinated school health” and “We’ve created a booster session and updated training materials to reflect the WSCC [CDC] model.”
The Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has been criticized and mocked from all sides after a series of muddled messages have baffled Americans amid a record surge in COVID-19 cases and the spread of the omicron variant. (iStock) (iStock)
NLTE’s Chief Research Officer Apryl Dukes pointed out that most people abided by the rules of the CDC and shut down when the COVID-19 pandemic hit in 2020, but she doesn’t believe their framework is the answer to getting students back on track.
“Learning 2025 is [billed as] the answer to what has happened to the children,” but “the root of the problem is not the COVID shutdown … goes back to the attack on culture,” Dukes said.
“I have a problem accepting a program from the very same people that caused the problem,” she added. “That’s what I want parents to know, is that these organizations were part of it, and now they’re offering you a solution to the problem.”
BIDEN EXECUTIVE ORDER FOR ‘WOKE’ ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE CALLED ‘SOCIAL CANCER’
Holly Terei serves as NLTE’s National Director of Teacher Coalition and attended a Learning 2025 conference last summer, where she observed the curriculum’s framework in action. She said she also noticed the similarities between Learning 2025 and the CDC model.
The article goes on with more baloney, fear-mibgering, and lies. Parents who believe this garbage are being programmed to distrust and hate public schools.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
To understand NLTE, review the bio of board member, David A. Clarke, a former sheriff in Wisconsin who made the national news for how jail inmates were treated during his tenure. Wikipedia described- one man died of thirst and a pregnant woman was handcuffed and shackled while in labor.
After leaving the Sheriff’s office, Clarke joined the Trump PAC.
He is described as a “deeply religious Catholic.” He attended Marquette H.S., a private, all male Jesuit school.
Similarly, Sinclair Broadcasting continuously runs a daily “Crisis in the Classroom” feature. The past month has mostly focused on the fabricated library book “scandal.” The goal of these media outlets is to inspire mistrust in public schools with their fake scandals and unsubstantiated claims.
The reason that David D Smith, executive director of Sinclair, fits so well in the Republican Party is described at Wikipedia.
It’s really simple. Create a public school “crisis” by driving a wedge between so-called “moral” parents and teachers. It’s just a front for creating and maintaining the white Christian supremacist social order (Nazi homeschool, anyone?) that they feel they are entitled. Their version of “morality” includes hatred of blacks, Jews, people of color, LGBTQ, commies, Marxists, atheists, coupled with their love of guns and God. The list keeps getting longer and longer, but sadly this is exactly the kind of morality they want to impose on their own children. So who is doing the indoctrination now?
Thank you, Oakland mom.
TRUE!
The religion of Nick Fuentes is?
Recommended reading, Mary Jo McConahay’s new book, “Playing God…”
“Their version of “morality” includes hatred of blacks, Jews, people of color, LGBTQ, commies, Marxists, atheists, coupled with their love of guns and God.”
C’mon now you have to know that god is #1 and guns are #2. Gotta luv god before guns.
For a lot of people, their gun is their God…
Bravo to AASA for once again taking a stance on issues that may not be welcomed by a significant number of their members.
Not lost is that there was once a time when a national, professional association paired with the CDC would be a solid endorsement of what is good for children.
There was a time when AASA, NAESP, NASSP, NCTE, NCSS, NSTA… would take a bold stance on politicized issues (not political issues but politicized issues) such as book bans, teaching evolution, high stakes testing, whole child approaches (whatever that means), community schools, and more and they would lead the way.
Apolitical professional groups stand for all things researched and noble. Not perfect and of course contested (new/old math, reading wars…) but we witnessed what happened when NCLB knocked used Common Core standards knocked “national professional standards off the table and the publishers’ to-use list).
No doubt, many school districts will stop paying for superintendent’s dues to AASA and probably forbid travel to or participation in a conference. Similar to school boards in many states dropped membership in NSBA because of their “liberal” stance.
Once again, the right does whatever it can to dispute and discredit educated, professional, career focused organizations and people who know what they’re taking about and care about more than a groups wanting to turn American schools into one big home-school bubble.
Of course Fox News hates Public Schools. They are the mouthpiece of the billionaires and their agenda to do away with public education. They definitely seem to be winning.
The Fox, “mouthpieces”, on air, are largely right wing religious like Laura Ingraham.
We live in a country where 40 percent of the population has learned to hate and distrust those institutions that protect public health.
Freaking bizarre.
And Fox News bears a lot of the responsibility. It’s a LOT MORE than just lying about the election, folks.
Yes, it is!!
I’m not surprised that FOX (Murdock) hates public schools.
Did you read the news today that Tucker Carlson has already had a job offer?
I wasn’t surprised about that either, considering who made the offer.
Tucker Carlson didn’t get fired for his lies. He got fired for calling them lies when he wasn’t in front of his MAGA RINO audience, and being careless about it.
Now, one of his biggest foreign fans has offered him a job.
Yeah, the Russians want to hire him for RT, their propaganda station.
Tucker Carlson didn’t get fired for his lies. He got fired for calling them lies when he wasn’t in front of his MAGA RINO audience, and being careless about it.
NAILED IT, LLOYD.
FOX “NEWS” hates everything
Jill,
FOX succeeds by selling hate.
Hate. Their brand.
Hate blacks.
Hate immigrants.
Hate gays.
Hate. Hate. Hate
“The School Superintendent’s Association (AASA), with the help of superintendents, board members and school administrators, is implementing the Learning 2025 program, which calls for an equity-focused, ‘holistic redesign’ of the United States’ public education system by 2025, in districts across the country>
Our nation’s public education systems do not need “redesign,” “holistic” or otherwise. Our nation’s public education systems need improvement-continual improvement. They always have, and they always will.
Does anybody every talk about “redesign” of those inherently idiosyncratic, sometimes cantankerous systems we call “children?”
No! And that’s because, just like our public education systems are social systems, so are children, just smaller. Nonetheless, we commit to providing for our children to develop and continually improve as decent human beings. We need to start doing the same for our public education systems.
The more we treat our public education systems mechanically, the more our public education systems treat children mechanically. Then, guess what we get?
We get some kid or a young adult or other mechanistic-minded person with a “machine” gun, all primed to treat others as if they were just things to be “mowed down!” For example.
At some point, we must get away for the folly of mechanistic thinking implicit in “redesign” thinking.
Educators have been talking about “meeting the needs of the whole child” for about a century. This is not a radical WOKR idea.