All right, I want to talk to about this. This book came out today. It’s available at GlennBeck.com or wherever books are sold. It’s called Conform. The government has a hostile takeover of our system, and the co-author is Kyle Olson. As he mentioned in the meeting, Common Core wasn’t created by teachers, wasn’t created by educators. Worse yet, they weren’t even consulted in this.
It was created by a board of directors of governors and business leaders like Bill Gates. There were no laws passed. There was no debate, nothing happening in Congress, nothing that happened in your local area. There was no research done to see if any of this actually worked. Common Core just seemingly appeared out of thin air and after some fancy talk and bribery, Race to the Top, that’s what the stimulus was about, hey, we’ll give you the stimulus package in your states, you just have to do what we’re telling you to do. That’s what it is, Common Core.
And now we and the teachers are waking up to the fact that none of us are in control anymore. In early America, things were much different. There was zero federal involvement in the schools. States were barely involved. It was all local control, closest to the parent. You’ll never guess what began to change all of that. Say it with me, come on, who was it? Woodrow Wilson, the progressive era.
The system for schools was mostly private until the late 1800s, and I’d like to introduce you to one evil dude, John Dewey. He was a professor at the University of Chicago and then Columbia University. He was a leading champion of progressive education. And it’s one thing to say well, I’m a progressive. Okay, that doesn’t necessarily make you a bad dude. This guy was brilliant. What made him a progressive and so evil was he was a social engineer.
He insisted that among a school’s primary goals should be creating social change and reform. He said, and I quote, “I believe, therefore, that the true center of correlation on the school subjects is not science, nor literature, nor history, nor geography, but the child’s own social activities.” Look at your kid’s curriculum at school. Does it make any sense at all? Are they focusing on science or literature or history or math? Are they? No, it social engineering.
It’s let’s focus on making, let’s make the children into the people we want them to be. And when I say we, I mean the, you know, government progressives but also the corporations. We are really, look at what happens in China. What happens with China? In China, they grab your kid at six years old because they’ve identified that they’re going to be good at this. They take the child away from the parent and make them into whatever it is because the child, listen carefully, belongs to society and the state, not to the parents. Does that sound familiar?
He said, John Dewey, that we should use techniques that were “previously ignored as trivial, futile, or even condemned us positively evil.” Any surprise 100 years later our schools are teaching things that are positively evil, they’re questioning the existence of the Holocaust or equating the founders to terrorists?
This is one of those fights that exposes the frauds on both sides of the aisle. This is one that can bring all Americans together. The establishment Republicans, the Lindsey Grahams, the John McCains, the Jeb Bushes of the world, and the Democrats, they’re beholden to the almighty corporation and the progressive agenda, both of them, and they’re dutifully escorting Common Core into every classroom against your will.
What credibility does the federal government have on this issue? Ask yourself that question. Have our schools gotten better or worse since the federal government got involved? Why should we listen to the people who gave us the Department of Education in the 1970s? Since its inception, spending per child has tripled while student performance has flatlined or declined. What evidence is there to suggest that they have any earthly idea on what they are doing?
Parents have to stand up. Teachers must stand up. Education needs a Rick Santelli moment, it does, a leader to stand up and cry out and rally the troops. And Ralph Ratto might be that man. He’s an elementary teacher in Long Island, New York. Ralph is the president of his local teachers union. His sixth day of administering the New York State Common Core assessment test, he had had enough.
He said, “I watched my students…,” this is the Washington Post, by the way, “I watched my students valiantly attempt math questions that most adults could not answer. As I watched my students, I was angry that my efforts to stop this madness were not successful. I was angry at my students’ parents for not opting out their children.”
Today, he writes, “…I am ashamed. I am ashamed I didn’t do enough to stop this madness. But I am not done. I am pledging to double my efforts to stop this form of institutional abuse. If my state senator and assemblyman do not work to end this madness, I will work to have them replaced.” Listen to that line, I’m ashamed. Remember when I told you, I told you before, you have the opportunity to not hang your head in shame in coming generations. This guy will be able to do that.
In the Washington Post, “I will work to expose the governor’s education agenda. I will work to have King replaced. Today is a dark day but not for long.” Everybody says that I am a coward for not wanting to go grab a gun and defend a rancher. Not so, I would go stand for any man’s rights, any man’s rights, but I will do it peacefully. And I will stand against injustice every time. Yes, I will not conform. I will not comply. I will resist, but I will do it peacefully. That’s what he’s doing, peaceful resistance.
They are trying to intimidate anyone who disagrees. That’s all right. We as a nation have seen billy clubs to the head and dogs and fire hoses open up. We’ve seen it before, we’ll see it again. Are you prepared to be the peaceful person that stands up? We showed you a couple of months ago the parent in Maryland who was violently escorted out of a school board meeting. Well, the latest comes today.
A concerned parent, William Baer, now, this guy, there he is, and he’s very calm. He’s just very upset that his daughter, he was complaining about the fact that his daughter had to read a book that had incredibly strong sexual content. His daughter is 14 years old. And she had to read it, and he wasn’t happy about it. So he goes and meets in the library, and because he speaks out of turn and goes over his two-minute time limit, he’s escorted out, handcuffed, and arrested. Two minutes, you have two minutes to respond, that’s all you get? It’s a hostile takeover.
Wear that as a badge of honor. If you can’t see yourself getting arrested, look at the sheep that were around him. They didn’t even look at him. They sat there like sheep. They didn’t look at him. They didn’t say come on, this is ridiculous. Nobody in the room? They were afraid. Only people with courage and enough courage to get yourself arrested and be peaceful about it will win.
You are in the crosshairs, and we’re trying to arm you with everything we can. Today, this came out. This has everything we think you need to make this argument, and the back has all of the footnotes so you don’t make the argument and say Glenn Beck said. No, read the footnotes. This has all of the things, you have somebody who’s not awake, give this to them. Rip the cover off the front and say here, read this. It doesn’t need my name on it.
We’ve made it as cheap as we can, and we’ve made it accurate.
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