High school Common Core lesson promotes Muhammad, Islamic faith

[PeteWaldo]

http://www.examiner.com/article/high-school-common-core-lesson-promotes-muhammad-islamic-faith

High school Common Core lesson promotes Muhammad, Islamic faith

On Friday, Fox News' Todd Starnes reported that a high school in Farmville, North Carolina, promotes Islam and the Prophet Muhammad in a Common Core vocabulary assignment handed out to seniors in an English class. Starnes said one parent he spoke to was troubled by the assignment, calling it classwork disguised as Islamic propaganda.

“In the following exercises, you will have the opportunity to expand your vocabulary by reading about Muhammad and the Islamic word,” the worksheet said. Starnes said the lesson uses words like astute, conducive, erratic, mosque, pastoral, and zenith in sentences about Islam.

For example, the reading says that, "The zenith of any Muslim’s life is a trip to Mecca.” Another sentence reads: "The responses to Muhammad’s teachings were at first erratic. Some people responded favorably, while other resisted his claim that ‘there is no God but Allah and Muhammad his Prophet.”

“It’s very shocking,” the parent told Starnes. “I just told my daughter to read it as if it’s fiction. It’s no different than another of fictional book you’ve read.”

A Pitt County School District spokesman defended the lesson, explaining that it came from a state-adopted supplemental workbook and met the “Common Core standards for English Language Arts.” The spokesman also said it "is designed to accompany the world literature text, which emphasizes culture in literature."

But, Starnes added, the problem with the lesson is that it emphasizes a specific culture and religion. The school district even acknowledged concerns “related to the religious nature of sentences providing vocabulary words in context.”

“Our school system understands all concerns related to proselytizing, and there is no place for it in our instruction,” the district spokesman added in a statement to Starnes. “However, this particular lesson was one of many the students in this class have had and will have that expose them to the various religions and how they shape cultures throughout the world.”

Starnes said he followed up by requesting copies of worksheets that promoted the Jewish, Hindu and Christian faiths. The school district did not respond. He also asked for past or future dates when students would receive the handouts. Again, the district failed to respond.

One student he spoke to said there were no other assignments dealing with religion other than the one dealing with Islam. “If we are not allowed to talk about any other religions in school – how is this appropriate?” the student asked. Others might rightly ask where are groups like the Freedom from Religion Foundation, and why aren't they demanding the district dump the lesson.

This is not the first controversy caused by Common Core. One assignment, for example, asked students in California to question the Holocaust. Another lesson teaches a messianic view of Barack Obama, while a third falsely claims white voters rejected Obama due to race. Last August, we reported that a Common Core lesson taught in Arkansas asked students to remove and replace two amendments from an allegedly "outdated" Bill of Rights.

In January 2014, a high school student shredded Common Core while addressing the Knox County, Tennessee, school board, comparing it to something approaching Chinese sweatshops. He was denied an extra minute, despite the board giving supporters of Common Core extra time. The reliably liberal Daily Beast went so far as to claim that opposition to Common Core is part of a radical plot by conservatives to destroy public education as a whole.

But as Hillsdale professor Terrence Moore said, parents need to be concerned about much more than the actual lessons and assignments. They also need to be concerned about the teaching notes that are part of the curriculum. Those notes not only indicate what is to be taught, but how the lesson is to be taught. In one case, he said, teachers are instructed to tell students that "all right-wing extremist groups” -- presumably meaning organizations like the Tea Party -- are fascist. One can only imagine what is written in the notes included with the lesson promoting Islam.