I am catching up on some reading while waiting on hold (I don’t think this conference call is happening today). Just saw this from Pam Slim:
The bill, sponsored by Rep. Mark Anderson from my hometown of Mesa, “would have put three K-12 schools in the northern, central and southern parts of the state, where kids would begin a second language in kindergarten, and set up new international programs at seven high schools. Big business and universities pledged to partner with the schools.”
…
Senator Karen Johnson, also from Mesa and chairwoman of the K-12 Education Committee, never let the proposal out of the committee. Instead, she brought in Allen Quist, a professor from Bethany Lutheran College in Mankato, Minnesota to “educate lawmakers on the dangers of a popular international studies program, the International Baccalaureate.” Says Quist:
“The International Baccalaureate is un-American.” “It teaches students to see the American system of government as one of many, not as the only one that protects universal and God-given rights to property, to bear arms and free speech.”
Mesa Representative Russell Pearce agrees, saying:
“Our schools ought to be focusing on education that we, as Americans, espouse. We ought to concentrate on United States history and United States heroes.”
Wow, that is obtuse almost beyond comprehension. You probably shouldn’t study United States history or heroes either because you might still be exposed to something other than the “universal and God-given rights to property, to bear arms and free speech.” Not everyone and everything in American history supports those values.
I guess I’ve become so accustomed to participating in the Global Village via the Web that I find it hard to believe that such narrow-sighted and isolationist attitudes can be held by elected leaders. Wow.
(For what it’s worth, I take exception to the notion of a God-given right to bear arms. Of course being Canadian I was not brought up on the doctrine of the “right to bear arms” and I find it hard to believe that carrying weapons around is how God wants us to behave.)