A Civics Trojan Horse – S. 860

A Civics Trojan Horse – S. 860

EdAction Alert —
September 2, 2005

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     The newest federal
civics bill (S 860) was introduced by Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN). 
Alexander’s  S 860 is the next step in the federal takeover of education
and would further extend the power of a special interest group, the
Center for Civic Education (CCE), over schools and their civics
curricula.

     As in previous legislation, S 860 is being promoted under the
banner of preserving our history and founding principles of freedom, and
many well-meaning people have been misled into believing it will do just
that.  Instead, just as in Alexander’s 2004

legislation to set up federal history and civics “academies,” S 860
will undermine the teaching of our founding principles and extend the
CCE’s already substantial power over what schools must teach.
     Ted Kennedy (D-MA) is co-sponsoring Alexander’s bill. Does anyone
believe that Ted Kennedy is an ally in defending the teaching of
America’s founding principles?

The Center for
Civic Education
       The CCE is the special
interest group (or NGO) that produces and sells the left-leaning
curriculum We The People: The Citizen and the Constitution
which redefines and undermines America’s founding principles of freedom.
(See EdWatch’s

Textbook Review of We The People.) For example, in the CCE
curriculum the principles of inalienable rights, self-evident truth,
natural law, national sovereignty, the 2nd amendment, and the 10th
amendment are either missing, minimized, or redefined.

      Lamar Alexander and Ted Kennedy’s S 860 would expand the role of
the CCE and federal bureaucrats over school curriculum by mandating that
states administer the federal test (National Assessment of Educational
Progress – NAEP) in civics and U.S. history, beginning with ten selected
states. At the NAEP’s inception by Congress in 1969, however, state
participation in the NAEP was sold to lawmakers on the basis of being
voluntary. In 2002 federal law under No Child Left Behind for the first
time mandated that all states administer the math, reading, and science
NAEP. The Alexander bill would now extend the de facto federal
curriculum to civics and U.S. history.
 
     Will the U.S. History and Civics NAEP encourage our schools to
teach “the liberties and rights of the oldest living constitution in the
world,” as

Nat Hentoff hopes (Washington Times, August 29, 2005)? Or
does the federal curriculum rather redefine our basic principles?
 
    A little known but highly relevant fact is that the NAEP’s
Civics Framework was also conveniently written by the CCE,
specifically by CCE Associate Director Margaret Branson, under contract
with federal agencies. Here we have a special interest group the CCE
with the non-competitive federal contract authorized and funded first to
write Congressionally un-reviewed federal civics standards, then to
write and distribute a curriculum (We The People) based on those
standards, and then to write federal assessments of those standards (the
NAEP). 
 
    The nature of the CCE’s civics curriculum can be seen in the CCE’s
publication, “Teaching
Democracy Globally, Internationally, and Comparatively: The 21st Century
Civic Mission of School,” which states that the most important goal
of civic education is to teach democracy globally and internationally.
Education for democracy in a sovereign state, such as the United
States, says the CCE, is a thing of the past that involved
“mind-numbing inculcation of uncontested political loyalty to the state
and society.”
 
     In addition, the CCE defines its civics education as teaching
“globally accepted and internationally transcendent principles.”
(pp. 1-2) 
Is the U.S. Bill of Rights “globally accepted”? Ask Fidel Castro if he
supports our Bill of Rights. He does, however, agree with the principles
of the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights. 
At least the CCE is consistent when its We the People curriculum
promotes the UN Declaration of Human Rights over the U.S. Bill of
Rights. (For more on the CCE and WTP, see the classic book

FedEd: The New Federal Curriculum and How It’s Enforced, and the

Textbook Review of We The People.)

     In 2004 Alexander’s “Federal Academies” were authorized
and funded by Congress to teach the brightest students in the country
about civics and U.S. history. How can we possibly believe that students
will be taught anything other than the controversial CCE national
standards and curriculum that the NAEP tests? This new legislation (S 
860) would now require states to administer the CCE-written NAEP test to
assess students’ progress toward that globalist curriculum.

     What is tested will be taught. Since the NAEP defines success in
the public eye, and since the NAEP is used by the federal government as
a check on what the states test, schools will understandably teach to
the NAEP test. As senior editor of The American School Board Journal,
Kevin Bushweller (“Teaching
to the Test”) noted, “Increasingly, schools are finding it just
makes sense to align curriculum and assessment.”      

Who is
Lamar Alexander?
     Lamar Alexander has been an
early advocate of the federal takeover of education. As President Bush,
Sr.’s Secretary of Education, Alexander directed “America 2000,” the
precursor to the 1994 Goals 2000. In spite of Goals 2000 being
supposedly “sunsetted” in 2002 (in name only, in most respects),
Alexander’s new legislation follows its road map establishing federal
oversight over school curriculum in every major area of study: English,
math, science, foreign languages, civics and government, economics,
arts, history, and geography. [Goals 2000:

Title I, Section 102].  In S 860, Alexander and Kennedy would expand
the federal oversight to the CCE’s civics and history.
 
     In a 1991 U.S. Department of Education publication, “America 2000:
An Education Strategy, Education Secretary Alexander stated,
“Substantial, even radical changes, will have to be made.” The words
“radical” or “revolution” were used approvingly nine times in that short
publication. The CCE’s approach to civics is radical. Forcing states to
administer the CCE test to measure “progress” essentially forces this
radically anti-American curriculum on all the states.   

Julie M. Quist
EdWatch Board of Directors

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