"A major goal...should be... to organize a worldwide education program…"                          Al Gore (2000)

The Gullible Person of the Year is anyone who leaves their children in a public school after learning what’s truly going on inside their child’s classroom. This previous statement has nothing to do with the quality of teachers, administrators or local school board members. This installment has everything to do with who is determining what American children should learn and how they should learn it. It is abundantly obvious, based on following the data trail, that the American public education system, through a series of programs (e.g., Goals 2000, School to Work, No Child Left Behind) is being internationally guided for the express purposes of intentionally “dumbing down” American kids and de-emphasizing the value of American citizenship. One would be justified in asking why anyone would want to do such a thing. The answer is multifaceted and this agenda will be unwrapped for all to examine in the next few parts of this series. When one examines the data, it quickly becomes apparent that today’s American children are overtly being prepared for a life of mediocrity. Time honored principles such as patriotism and the teaching of American students to honor and respect American sovereignty are rapidly being ripped out of American classrooms and being replaced with notions of global governance and the promotion of a plethora of “global sustainability” programs which owe their origins to the United Nations.

It is rare to find the public school student who is able to tell you about the United Nations and Agenda 21 and their plans for the establishment of system of global governance. Also, American students are not being educated about the impact and influence of such groups as the Council on Foreign Relations, the Central American Free Trade Agreement, the North American Free Trade Agreement, the fraud which was used to perpetuate the Iraq War, the self severing fiat money system of the Federal Reserve and why the American government, through inaction, is granting de facto amnesty to millions of felonious trespassers at American taxpayers expense. Amazingly, the American student knows next to nothing about the plan for a North American Union with Mexico and Canada. However, America’s school children are experiencing unprecedented social freedom as they attend school with their eyebrows, noses and tongues pierced. Many of today’s school kids have unsightly tattoos, obscene slogans on their T-shirts and many of the male students wear their jeans below their collective rear ends while several of their female counterparts dress with all the appropriateness of an exotic dancer. Yet, the American student of today is not allowed to wear clothing which bears the name of God and they are forbidden to speak of their faith in Jesus Christ while they are subjected to horrors of “political correctness” under the banners of the homosexual agenda, the transnational corporate propaganda which states that it is an economic necessity for America to continue to harbor illegal aliens because they will do the jobs that Americans will not. Given the present state of American education, the jobs that illegals currently perform will be the only jobs that many American young adults will be able to do. But rest assured that American children are learning all they need to about the “dire” need for global sustainability at the expense of the American middle class lifestyle in the latest Hegelian Dialectic euphemistically known as shortage ecology.

Meanwhile, Johnny still can’t read and write. On our present course, only seventy percent of our children will ever graduate from high school. A staggering fifty percent of our minority children will not obtain a high school diploma; thus, creating a permanent underclass based on race. Disturbingly, SAT scores are at a 31 year low. Average SAT reading scores fell from 508 to 503 and math scores fell from 520 to 518 (College Board, 2006). American school children repeatedly finish last in measures of math and science in comparison to their international counterparts. Are American children really less talented than children from developed countries? Or, are their collective potentials intentionally being left undeveloped? Are American teachers the most incompetent in the world? Or, is there an agenda? Indeed, there is an agenda; Agenda 21, to be specific. The tenets of Agenda 21 are robbing American children of their future with the complicit participation of several key American politicians acting at the behest of global corporations which are cleverly concealing their agenda within United Nations doctrine which is covertly making its winding way into American classrooms.  

The interests of UNESCO, the education arm of the United Nations, and the United States Department of Education (DOE) have successfully merged under the No Child Left Behind Act which was implemented shortly after President Bush’s 2000 election victory. Former Secretary of Education Secretary, Ron Paige, while addressing (10/3/2003) the United Nations Round Table on Education, best sums up the marriage between UNESCO and the DOE as he stated: “The United States is pleased to return to UNESCO… we agree that we must make education a universal reality. Our governments have entrusted us with the responsibility of preparing our children to become citizens of the world. … UNESCO…knows the importance of education on a global level by coordinating the Education for All initiative (EFA). EFA is consistent with our recent legislation, the No Child Left Behind Act celebrating our new partnership with UNESCO” (Paige, 2003). In other words, the United States and UNESCO’s goals for education are one in the same and are being implemented through No Child Left Behind. Most Americans parents blindly assume that American schools are enthusiastically teaching the values of American citizenship to American school children. Is America’s trust in the DOE misplaced? It would seem so, as it is quite clear that UNESCO’s EFA programs and the subsequent No Child Left Behind Act hold American values (e.g., national sovereignty, the value of American citizenship) in complete disdain.

The globalizing of the education of our American children follows a distinct and traceable chain of custody. From the think tanks of the shadowy utopian social planners behind UNESCO, Agenda 21and its socialist programs makes it way into the Clinton-created (1993) Presidential Council on Sustainability (see part one of this series), then it proceeds to the United States Department of Education. Subsequently, the DOE farms out various Agenda 21 programs to a variety of non governmental organizations (NGO). In turn, the NGO’s promote world citizenship over honoring the values American citizenship. By default, this philosophy of global allegiance is now the official United States government policy for education.

The implementation arm of Agenda 21 education goals lies inside a little known NGO called the Center for Civic Education (CCE). The CCE is a NGO funded by the United States Department of Education. In 1994, the CCE was commissioned to write America’s “National Standards for Civics and Government.” Any informed American is aware that these national standards have mutated into state standards within all 50 states. The implementation of these standards by all school districts is not an option under the threat of withholding federal tax dollars to local school districts. In other words, the abduction of our children’s education is being accomplished through a distinct act of federal bribery with money that Americans have already paid to the government in the form of federal income tax.

The CCE has been given unprecedented power to mold civics education, in the United States, in its own image. And its own image, has a very “international flavor.” The CCE's headquarters are in Calabasas, California with an office in Washington, D.C. Since its origin in 1969, Center materials have been used in all fifty states and the District of Columbia, the trust territories, and a long list of 77 foreign countries, including Argentina, Australia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Canada, the Czech Republic, Ethiopia, Germany, Ghana, Hungary, Israel, Japan, Lithuania, Mexico, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Poland, Romania, and Russia. With this decisively international approach, education is no longer about preserving inalienable rights based on United States Constitutional principles. Rather, education is becoming a case of brainwashing America’s youth into a world view based on international principles of global management.

Most states are now requiring a high-stakes high school graduation exam which is ferociously dedicated to these principles. The CCE and its model Civics textbook, We the People, continue to be specifically named and funded by No Child Left Behind (CCE, 2005). In their text, the CCE is actively encouraging the de-emphasis of American excellence when teaching civics to American students.

I personally sat through an education conference in March of 2006, in Tempe, Arizona, in which the leaders of the conference boldly stated that “American excellence must be dramatically downplayed when teaching social studies to America’s youth…..” ”The teaching of American excellence and superiority is not fair to other nations and people whose children may be attending our American schools.” I was dumbstruck. My sensibilities received another jolt when, at the same conference on Global Sustainability, I listened to representatives from Arizona State University proudly announce that the university was unveiling an undergraduate and graduate program in global sustainability within the Arizona State School of Sustainability (ASU, 2006). These programs were birthed in January of 2007. The principles of Agenda 21 form the foundation of the Arizona State University sustainability program (e.g., Smart Growth, countering man-made global warming, a dramatic reduction in American consumer patterns, educating students in a manner consistent with UNESCO, etc.). One of the stated goals of the Arizona State University Global Sustainability program is to produce a “global citizen who adheres to principles of sustainability.” In other words, our young people are being propagandized into accepting United Nations principles over notions of national sovereignty.

The United Nations brainwashing of our youth does not stop at the front door of our colleges and universities. Our elementary, middle school and high school students are being transformed in much the same manner. CCE’S national standards have been implemented in a series of high stakes, state-mandated graduation tests which have filtered down from the devised “standards.” Subsequently, the text book manufacturers have been reworking their text books to reflect this new agenda. Are UN mandates being successfully integrated into our children’s learning? Consider the nearly decade old practice of honoring communist dictators while simultaneously honoring the virtues of belonging to the world community:

1.       A high school lesson on Soviet dictator, Joseph Stalin, reads as follows: “An economy completely controlled by government is called a command economy. Within just 20 years the Soviet Union became one of the world’s strongest industrial nations…” (World Adventures in Time and Place, 1997, p. 538). 

2.       With regard to Communist dictator, Fidel Castro, and his Marxist style of rule over the Cuban citizens, American students read the following passage: “For some people life became better under Castro’s communist dictatorship… There is less poverty since Castro gained control” (The World Past and Present, 1993).

3.       In a fourth grade Houghton-Mifflin text, nine year old children read: “To be a community, people must share the same customs and have some common purpose…. You also belong to the world community..”  “…ask students to find out more about the idea of a ‘global village” commands the teacher manual (This is My Country, 1994).

Are these lessons having the desired globalizing effect on American students? The answer is a resounding yes when one considers that the National Center for Education Statistics report, “What Democracy Means to Ninth-Graders” (Department of Education, 2001), demonstrates widespread acceptance of socialism and complete government interference in our lives:

    1. 84% of 9th-graders now believe it’s the government’s  responsibility to set prices.

    2. 64% of 9th graders believe government is responsible for “reducing differences in income and wealth among people.”

Chapter 36 of Agenda 21 emphasizes “that education is critical for promoting sustainable development and improving capacity of the people to address environment and development issues.” Ever since sustainable development has been a common concern in all United Nations conferences, there has been a common belief that education is a driving force for the change needed (United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs Division for Sustainable Development, 2003).

The CCE (2005) states that "Looking forward, we can envision the 21st century as an age of global democracy in which there will be coexistence and tension between international and national or state-centered conceptions of democracy. And we can imagine the slow but steady rise to prominence of transnational conceptions and institutions of democracy.”

"In this century, by contrast with the past, we may reasonably speculate that education for citizenship in a democracy will, with each decade, become everywhere more global, international, and comparative in curricular content and processes of teaching and learning. And we ought to think now about how to improve our current curricular frameworks and standards for a world transformed by globally accepted and internationally transcendent principles and processes of democracy" (CCE, 2005, pp. 1-2).

I was left wondering what transnational conceptions and globally accepted and internationally transcendent principles and process of democracy consist of? Whatever happened to simply teaching American school children about the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights and the rest of the United States Constitution? It is true that these American documents do not espouse “internationally transcendent principles… of democracy?” And all Americans should be glad that it does not. These principles of government are what separate America from the rest of the world. It is abundantly clear that the public school of today is imposing international standards and global curriculum upon American children.

The No Child Left Behind is unconstitutional as it violates the 10th amendment. The Founding Fathers placed a premium on the power of local rule in order to avoid the imposition of tyranny from a centralized government. With regard to education, the 10th amendment has been turned on its ear. Local control of education has largely been forfeited to an unelected group of corporate bureaucrats who clearly have an agenda to transform the patriotic beliefs of American children. If America wants its children educated according to the dictates of shadowy international forces, then let’s make a conscious decision, in the light of day, to do so. And let’s do so by consensus, not be decree. Until we make such an overt choice, American parents have a right to demand that their American children be taught the values which generations of Americans have been taught (e.g., duty to country, the value of American citizenship, inalienable rights, secure the borders, etc.). Perhaps we should push for the abolition of the 10th amendment. Again, until we do, we need to get the United Nations, and its subservient NGO’s, out of American classrooms and out of our American children’s minds. No NGO, such as the CCE, should be given the authority to usurp the power of elected school boards and to arbitrarily set educational standards for every child in America.

Are we to believe that the dumbing down of our kids in favor of a more global view of the world is just bad education masquerading as principles which occupy the high moral ground (e.g., global sustainability)? Finally, am I the only American who sees beyond the coincidence of the relatively silent imposition of the North American Union upon the American people and the globalizing and dumbing down of America’s education curriculum combined with millions of illegal aliens entering the United States with no sense of American traditions and constitutional practices? If America is indeed in line for a hostile takeover (i.e., North American Union), the logical first step would be to remove the memories and knowledge of what America has traditionally stood for. This means controlling what American school children learn. Make no mistake about it, this is an educational coup de tat.

Part four of this series on Agenda 21 will take a critical look at the tumultuous battleground which we call a classroom. Record numbers of teachers are leaving the profession. Both gifted and average children are largely being left untaught because teachers and administrators are being forced to cater to a plethora of No Child Left Behind regulations which ignore the learning needs of normal IQ, non disabled and English speaking children (and we wonder why SAT scores have dropped to a 31 year low). Future installments of this series will also revisit the forced mental health testing and drugging of American children through Teen Screen. We will also examine why the politicians would support such an agenda? And of course, no analysis would be complete until we take a look at how the money is changing hands.

                                   References

Arizona State University School of Sustainability (2006). http://schoolofsustainability.asu.edu/ (Retrieved January 6, 2007).

Center for Civic Education. (2005). www.civiced.org/articlesPatrick.global.pdf p.1-2. (Retrieved June 21, 2006).

College Board, (2006). http://www.collegeboard.com (Retrieved January 9, 2007).

Department of Education (2001). What Democracy Means to 9th Graders, US Results From the IEA Civic Education Study. United States Department of Education, NCES 2001-096, 2001, p.62

Gore, Al  (2000) Earth in the Balance: Ecology and the Human Spirit, Houghton Mifflin, Boston, MA, 

National Standards for Civics and Government (1997), Center for Civic Education, Calabasas, California: see the inside cover flap:

Paige, R. (2003). Speech given to the United Nations Roundtable. www.ed.gov/news/speeches/2003/10/10032 003 (Retrieved July 5, 2005).

This is My Country (1994).  HMSS Teachers' Edition, Boston, p. 334 & 336, see margin.

United Nations, Sustainable Development, Agenda 21. (2005). http://www.un.org/esa/sustdev/documents/agenda21/english/agenda21chapter36.htm  (Retrieved June 18, 2006).

United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs Division for Sustainable Development. (2003). http://www.un.org/esa/sustdev/sdissues/education/edu.htm (Retrieved June 15, 2006).

World: Adventures in Time and Place. (1997). Macmillan/McGraw-Hill, New York, p. 538.

The World Past and Present, Teacher's Edition. (1993). Macmillan/McGraw-Hill, p. 649

© 2007  All Rights Reserved

Dave Hodges is a former Republican who left the party, in 2003, because he felt that the party was failing to represent the people. Dave Hodges is not aligned with the political right or the political left. He is a constitutionalist and believes that the answer to our country’s problems lies in following the wisdom of the Founding Fathers and following the United States Constitution. Dave Hodges is currently the spokesperson for the Arizona Coalition to Protect Personal Property Rights which is a grass roots organization which is tasked with the responsibility in assisting Arizonans in the defense of their personal property rights. Dave Hodges is also the Chairperson of the Constitution Party of Arizona. Nationally, the Constitution Party is the fastest growing party in the country and the party now stands as the third largest party. Presently in Arizona, a ballot eligibility drive is underway and will be completed by the fall of 2007. To find out more about the Constitution Party, please visit the web site at www.constitutionparty.org. Dave has appeared on several radio shows and has written on several web sites across the country. If you would like Dave Hodges to speak to your group, or organization, he can be contacted at azconstitutionparty@yahoo.com.