SOCIALIST INDOCTRINATION

By: Marion Valentine April 20, 2009 at 11:36 am The International Agenda Skip down to Theosophy & Robert Muller | Global education Montessori | Regional Educational Laboratories Education for All | Communism or Global Socialism

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"[A] major goal...should be... to organize a worldwide education program... In the process, we should actively search for ways to promote a new way of thinking about the current relationship between human civilization and the earth."[i] Al Gore, The Earth in the Balance

"The basic goal of education is change -- human change...."[2] Harold Drummon, former president of the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD)

"Enlightened social engineering is required to face situations that demand global action now... Parents and the general public must be reached also, otherwise, children and youth enrolled in globally oriented programs may find themselves in conflict with values assumed in the home. And then the educational institution frequently comes under scrutiny and must pull back."[3] Professor John Goodlad, Foreword in Schooling for A Global Age

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"We can't teach that only America is good," said Seema Desai, a tenth-grader who moved from India to Florida in 1993. "That would hurt my feelings."[4]

Seema had joined an impassioned war--led by the local teachers' union--against three Lake County school board members who wanted Florida schools to emphasize America's unique merits. Seeking to overturn a requirement that would "indoctrinate" students with the intolerable old-paradigm notion that America is best, the union had sued the school board. Such ethnocentric teaching, it argued, emphasizes one culture over another. Therefore it breaks a state law that requires multicultural education.

Did you know that multiculturalism ruled out loyalty to our country? I didn't. Like most parents, I believed that multicultural education simply helps students understand other cultures and people. In reality, it trains students to view the world and its people from a global and pantheistic perspective rather than from a national and Judeo-Christian perspective. In other words, it is designed to speed the paradigm shift--the current transformation toward a radical new way of thinking, believing, and relating to "our global family."

This paradigm shift is supposed to prepare students for life in the 21st century "global village," the envisioned worldwide community of people joined together through high-tech superhighways and a common set of values. To mold world-class students, social engineers are testing the latest techniques in behavior modification on our children. As you will see in coming chapters, children must either reject their old home-taught faith or stretch it far beyond biblical boundaries to include the world's pantheistic, polytheistic belief systems.

"Multicultural education...strives to integrate multiethnic and global perspectives," wrote Christine Bennet in Comprehensive Multicultural Education, a popular textbook for student teachers. Its goal is not to teach factual history, but to "challenge [the student's] cultural assumptions" and mold global citizens with an "emotional commitment to the fundamental unity of all humans...."[5]

In other words, a new commitment to universal oneness must supercede commitments to God and country. While grandiose dreams of global unity reach back to the beginning of history, it was more recently documented in 1973 by the authors of the Humanist Manifesto II. They wrote, "We deplore the division of human-kind on nationalistic grounds. We have reached a turning point in human history where the best option is to transcend the limits of national sovereignty and to move toward the building of a world community...."[6]

Professor Philip Vander Velde, who taught "Foundations of Education" at Western Washington University, authored the book, Global Mandate: Pedagogy for Peace. Reflecting the views of countless other change agents, he wrote,

"...unless a new faith... overcomes the old ideologies and creates planetary synthesis, world government is doomed.... Nation-states have outlived their usefulness, and a new world order is necessary if we are to live in harmony with each other... The task of reordering our traditional values and institutions should be one of the major educational objectives of our schools."[7]

These revolutionary beliefs didn't originate with Vander Velde. When he penned these chilling words in 1985, his book merely articulated a transformation that was already well under way. Since then, this philosophy has permeated curriculum and teaching strategies from coast to coast.

Today's history lessons are designed to reflect and fuel the paradigm shift. Alarmed parents in every state report that they do.[8] "My son told me that he had seen some videos in his high school history class," said Pam Hoffecker, a Pennsylvania mother and co-author of Outcome-Based Education. "One of the videos, The Columbus Controversy, gave a politically correct view of Christopher Columbus. The other, The Puritan Experience, was about a girl who disobeys her parents, skips church, and helps the Indians. It showed that a formal religion like Christianity is bad, but disrespect toward traditional authority is good."

Pam borrowed the whole series from the school. Later, she summarized what she had seen in a telephone conversation:

"When I looked at the video about Columbus, I was very upset. It began with a teacher grabbing a purse from a student's desk, saying "This is my purse. I didn't steal Samantha's purse. I discovered this purse." Columbus was presented as an anti-hero who sought gold and slaves, brought genocide to the indigenous, and should be ridiculed. It never mentioned that the supposedly peaceloving Carob Indians owned slaves and would fatten, castrate and eat male babies in cannibalistic rituals. True, the European immigrants did exploit Indians, but there are two sides to the story...."

Let me read you an assignment from the pamphlet that came with the video. "Have students choose one of these consequences and explain how it was--or was not--caused by the Spanish Conquest of the Americas that Columbus initiated." All choices would lead students to emphasize social injustice from a revisionist perspective. Listen to the topics: The triumph of capitalism, The genocide of the indigenous, The slavery of people of color, The colonization of the world, The destruction of the primal environment, and The impending catastrophe of ecocide of the planet Earth."[9]

As Pam told her story, I shared her sadness at the growing hatred for a culture that has offered security, freedom and peace to millions of people from around the world. Her son, Timothy, had heard the missing facts from his parents, but most children who learn history from the new-paradigm perspective will never know why America was called the land of the free.

One thing is certain, the 1994 National Standards for American History would not provide the needed balance. That the newly elected conservative U.S. Senate refused to approve them, made little difference. Long before those standards were discussed in public, they had become the unofficial standards in our tax-funded regional educational laboratories, in curriculum guidelines, and in our public schools. In fact, Gary Nash, who authored our nation's most popular social studies text in the early nineties,[10] led the panel that wrote the official History Standards. Ponder his attitude toward Western culture.

Rewriting history to fit the global paradigm. "Imagine an outline for the teaching of American history in which George Washington makes only a fleeting appearance and is never described as our first president," suggested Lynne Cheney, former chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities. "Or in which the foundings of the Sierra Club and the National Organization for Women are considered noteworthy events, but the first gathering of the U.S. Congress is not... This is, in fact, the version of history set forth in the soon-to-be released National Standards for United States History." She continued:

"...not a single one of the 31 standards mentions the Constitution. True, it does come up in the 250 pages of supporting materials. It is even described as "the culmination of the most creative era of constitutionalism in American history"--but only in the dependent clause of a sentence that has as its main point that students should "ponder the paradox that the Constitution sidetracked the movement to abolish slavery...."

"African and Native American societies, like all societies, had their failings, but one would hardly know it from the National Standards. Students are encouraged to consider Aztec "architecture, skills, labor systems and agriculture." But not the practice of human sacrifice....

"What went wrong? ... According to [an unnamed member of the panel], those who were "pursuing the revisionist agenda" no longer bothered to conceal their "great hatred for traditional history."

Gary Nash represents the academic bureaucracy charged with training America's youth. His debate with Lynne Cheney on the MacNeil/Lehrer News Hour on October 26, 1994, highlights the two opposing paradigms in American culture.

[Cheney] "There is very little sense here of our nation's greatness, of our progress... It is a very grim and gloomy picture of the American past... You don't find Robert E. Lee... Thomas Edison and many other people who have the misfortune to have been born white males."

[Nash] "The hundreds of teachers, and the hundreds of historians from every part of the country who were collaborators and co-authors of this document would truly disagree that this is a gloomy dark picture.... We do not top up lists of names for students to absorb, in fact to memorize and attach to dates....

[Cheney] "We are asked to look at King Mansa Musa, an African king, and to admire his wealth. The point is that we don't hold everyone to the same standard. When we look at a phenomenon in another country we say, "Oh that was wonderful..." when we look at it in this country, it becomes an object of derision....

[Nash] "There are hundreds and thousands of people who have reviewed this book, who have never raised that objection. We have sent out over six thousand copies of five drafts of this book for review to every corner of this country. And this is the first criticism of this sort...

[Cheney] "The fact that Mr. Nash didn't receive a lot criticism, perhaps speaks for the state of history.... "

She is right. America's perception of the past has changed. Not only do recent social studies texts bring shame and anger, they drive wedge between parents and children. Poll after poll show that the majority of adult Americans still believe in God and appreciate the nation He established. But their children are taught that the Judeo-Christian values have failed us; now it's time to seek discard the old stories and find "new" models in the world's earth-centered cultures.

Contrary to revisionist rhetoric, the facts of history prove both America's uniqueness. For over two centuries, our nation offered shelter and freedom to the world's oppressed people. It built schools and hospitals in needy nations that showed no concern for their own poor. It demonstrated a compassion toward far-away tribes that was unthinkable in earth-centered cultures. Yet, the very cultures that abandoned their poor to karmic[11] laws and their enemies to cruel tortures have become classroom models for unity and tolerance. It makes no sense!

It doesn't have to make sense. The next chapter will show you that facts and reason have been tossed out along with history. Today's politicized curriculum undermines nationalism, discredits the "obsolete" traditions of capitalism and national sovereignty, and transfers children's loyalties from America to a utopian global welfare state.

From personal freedom to global oneness. While Gary Nash and his panel of historians were rewriting American history, others were gathering worldwide support for an international education system. "[I]ncreasing numbers of educators, particularly those in leadership roles, have moved toward cross-national educational concerns," wrote Professor John I. Goodlad in Schooling for a Global Age, funded by powerful globalist foundations such as the Danforth and Rockefeller Foundations as well as the U.S. Department of Education. Their common goal was "the preparation of better persons for a better world."[12] Around the earth, they would teach their students the same basic "global or humankind" beliefs using the same psychological strategies. If they could inspire all children with a common vision of a planet without national boundaries, the battle for global governance would be won.

They have come a long way. As if pulled by invisible strings, teachers around the world were introducing the same kind of psycho-social curriculum designed to reprogram children's minds until their beliefs and attitudes conform to global ideals. A report in the American Sociological Review summarized their global progress. It found that "primary-school curricula have become remarkably similar around the world, reflecting the increasing global dominance of a single concept of modern society."[13]

How did it happen? The chronology in Part 2 traces the steps back to 1919, but in this section we'll begin in November 1985. Leading educators from 12 nations had gathered in the Netherlands for an international-curriculum symposium. One of the sponsors was the ASCD (Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development), the influential curriculum arm of the powerful NEA (National Education Association). Naturally, its executive director, Dr. Gordon Cawelti, was one of the main speakers.

According to Education Week, Dr. Cawelti "urged representatives of other Western nations and Japan to press for the development of a 'world-core curriculum' based on knowledge that will ensure 'peaceful and cooperative existence among the human species on this planet'."

Knowledge that would ensure peace and cooperation? What kind of knowledge would that be?

Education Week explained: "Cawelti's world-core curriculum would be based... on proposals put forth by Robert Muller, assistant secretary-general of the United Nations, in his recent book New Genesis: Shaping a Global Spirituality."[14]

Do you wonder what kind of "global spirituality" that might be? The following Theosophical statement from Muller's book offers a clue:

"Once again, but this time on a universal scale, humankind is seeking no less than its reunion with the "divine," its transcendence into ever higher forms of life. Hindus call our earth Brahma, or God, for they rightly see no difference between our earth and the divine. This ancient simple truth is slowly dawning again upon humanity. Its full flowering be the real, great new story of humanity as we are about to enter our cosmic age...."[15]

After the symposium, Cawelti expressed his appreciation for the positive response to his suggestion. Despite "the pride all countries have in their own core curriculum," he said, all shared a common response "to the urgency of defining what global interdependency means for the schools."[16]

Since the ASCD so heartily endorsed Muller's World Core Curriculum, how have Muller's ideas influenced our schools? The answer will help us understand the seductive pull of holistic education, which, like holistic medicine, has suddenly won mainstream support. It provides globalists with the spiritual link needed for a plausible vision of a united world, of connectedness with nature, and of the oneness of the human family around the world.

This is no trivial fringe vision. The much-acclaimed Chech President Vaclav Havel, who joined Michael Gorbachev and other world leaders in San Francisco for the 1995 anniversary celebration of the U.N. Charter, shared the same dream in a speech in Philadelphia on July 4, 1994, when he was awarded the Philadelphia Liberty Medal. Compare his words with those of Robert Muller:

"The central political task of the final years of this century, then, is the creation of a new model of coexistence within a single interconnected civilization.... The only real hope for people today is probably a renewal of our certainty that we are rooted in the Earth, and at the same time in the cosmos. This awareness endows us with the capacity for self-transcendence.... Transcendence is the only real alternative to extinction.[17]

Theosophy, Robert Muller and his World Core Curriculum. During a visit to Arlington, Texas, some years ago, a friend took me to see the original Robert Muller school. While she waited in the car, I walked past a little Buddha, climbed the steps to the front door, and rang the bell. Gloria Crook, the Director opened the door and asked why I had come. I listed my credentials: I was interested in global education, was concerned about the environment, and was an immigrant from Norway -- a country well known for its global concerns and admiration for the United Nations.[18]

I must have passed the test, because she invited me in and led me into a massive hallway. Looking to the left, I saw a room full of young mothers and pregnant women in yoga position. On a table next to the doorway, I noticed a stack of papers. The title startled me: "Occult Meditation."

To those who don't know God, the occult seems good, not bad, I thought to myself.

"Are you familiar with Alice Bailey?" she asked me as we entered a large cluttered office.

"Yes." I nodded, well aware of her links to Theosophy and the occult messages she channeled from her favorite spirit guide. "Didn't she write books full of messages she received from the Tibetan Master, Djwhal Khul?"

"Yes," answered Ms Crook. "Here, sit down and look at some of them." She pulled down several of Bailey's books from a shelf and put them in my lap. I silently thanked God for His spiritual protection as I flipped through the pages of the first one, Education in the New Age.

Then she handed me the Robert Muller World Core Curriculum Manual. I turned a few pages and read,

"The underlying philosophy upon which the Robert Muller School is based will be found in the teaching set forth in the books of Alice A. Bailey by the Tibetan teacher, Djwhal Khul ...."[19]

The back of the manual contained two certificates. The first announced that The Robert Muller School "is a participating institution in the UNESCO Associated Schools Project in Education for International Co-operation and Peace." The other confirmed its accreditation by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools. On behalf of the Southern Association's review team, Dr. Eileen Lynch wrote,

"The visiting team... was so impressed with the Robert Muller School that they thought the educational process and the general curriculum would be most valuable as a model for teacher education... Throughout this report the committee has recommended that information of the school's educational processes be shared with educators everywhere as much as possible."[20] (Emphasis added)

Finally Ms Crook pulled two large golden frames from the wall and showed them to me. I shivered when I looked at the first. It pictured a beautiful calligraphied rendition of "The Great Invocation," an occult prayer used around the world to invoke a global outpouring of spiritual light and power.[21]

The other frame displayed a letter from the White House. President Bush had sent his greetings and appreciation for the contributions made by the school. Did the former president know whom he had endorsed?

Whether Bush knew Muller or not, the former U.N. leader is no stranger to the educational establishment. You saw that back in 1985, Muller's vision of a World Core Curriculum, as outlined in his book New Genesis: Shaping a Global Spirituality, was endorsed by the powerful ASCD[22] and recommended to enthusiastic educators at an international curriculum symposium. Two years later, it was promoted by Andy LePage in his well-endorsed book on holistic learning, Transforming Education. In the nineties, it is spreading into local school districts.[23]

For example, Eugene, Oregon, School District 4J developed and published its "Integrated Curriculum K-5" in 1989. Page eleven in this public school curriculum acknowledges that "The three curriculum strands are adapted from the World Core Curriculum by Robert Muller...." The three curriculum strands match those in Muller's book: "Oneness with the planet," "Unity with people," and "Harmony with self." Muller's fourth strand, which deals with evolution through time, is incorporated into the other three strands. In New Genesis: Muller pulls the strands together into one utopian vision:

"The ecumenical teachings of the Christ [not the Biblical Jesus] - peace, justice, love, compassion, kindness, human brotherhood... must also find their way in world-wide global education. We must give the newcomers into the ceaseless renewed stream of human life the right education about their planetary home, about their human family, about their past, present and future, about their place in the universe and in time, so that they can flower to their utmost beauty - physically, mentally and spiritually - and become joyful and grateful members of the universe or kingdom of God."[24]

Muller's vision can be seen at a glance in two diagrams for "Defining World Class Education" designed by the Iowa Department of Education. The first diagram, called "The Old Story: Conventional Wisdom" shows an oval picture of the earth with its land and oceans. The globe is surrounded by arrows pointing toward the center and bombarding the planet with terrors like "Domination," "Biocide," "Ecocide," "Earth is Man's to Exploit," "WAR," "Intercultural Conflicts," and "Boundaries."[25]

The second diagram shows students "the right education about their planetary home." It pictures a rounder, more mystical planet. Titled "The New Story: Transformation," it shows arrows radiating out from the earth. Here the descriptions reflect the vision of a healthy harmonious planet: "Beyond War," "Humanity Evolving," "Reverence for all Life," "Interconnectedness; We are All One," and "Gaia"--a spiritualized Earth renamed after an ancient Greek goddess.

This mystical teaching tool was fabricated by tax-funded educators, not fringe fanaticals. The paradigm shift it promotes has gained enough acceptance to be established in local classrooms as well at global symposiums. Listen to the message in "The Peacemakers Planetary Anthem" sung to the melody of the Star Spangled Banner during an assembly at an elementary school in Sunnyvale, California. Encouraging children to imagine a peaceful planet with pristine forests and crystal-clear rivers, it begins with this millennial view:

O say can you see

by the one light in all,

A New Age to embrace

at the call of the nations....[26]

Now compare the Iowa chart and the California song to Muller's vision of a world united through global education and evolving spiritually toward ultimate perfection:

"We need a new world education. Global education, namely the education of the children into our global home and into the human family, is making good progress. But we have to go beyond. We need the cosmic education foreseen by the religions and by people like Maria Montessori. We need a holistic education, teaching the holism of the universe and of the planet...."[27]

Muller didn't mention Waldorf Schools, but they fit right in. Their founder, Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925), shared Alice Bailey's occult roots in Theosophy, but broke away to start his own cult, Anthroposophy, which he described as "knowledge produced by the higher self in man."[28] Like the Robert Muller schools, Waldorf schools offer holistic education and have long used the strategies now implemented in all states through Mastery Learning: whole language instead of phonics, stories and "literature" instead of factual history, and a strong emphasis on myth, imagination, guided imagery, art, creativity, movement (Steiner's founded eurythmy: movement as as art), and spiritual oneness with nature.[29]

Global Education is still Muller's driving ambition. His main headquarters are now in Costa Rica where he serves as Chancellor of the University of Peace, which is sponsored by the United Nations as a model for education in the 21st Century.

In 1989, UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) awarded him its Peace Education Prize. In his acceptance speech, Muller shared his vision of the new world education program. Part of his dream was...

• "That all schools and universities of this Earth will teach peace and non-violence and become schools and universities for peace;

• "That UNESCO will study and recommend by the year 2000 a world core curriculum for adoption by all nations;

• "That all human beings of this earth become instruments of peace, thus fulfilling the cosmic function deeply engraved in each of us...[30]

By the time Muller shared this vision, the world had already made a giant leap toward fulfilling it.

The World Conference on Education for All (WCEFA). When UNESCO convened a conference that drew delegates from 155 countriestp Jomtien, Thailand, in 1990 to plan the international agenda for education, Muller's heart must have been singing. His vision for world education was nearing reality. Within five days in early March, the world's leaders reached consensus on six international goals. Like the six U.S. goals prepared by the Bush administration (America 2000) and later adopted by the Clinton administration (Goals 2000 added two goals ), the international goals call for implementation by year 2000. Notice the similarities between the two sets of goals:


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