Yes, the headline is ridiculous, but that’s what it says. And the article on the fringe-right WorldNetDaily website is even more ridiculous. (WorldNutDaily?) Right-wing activists in Texas are circulating the article in emails and tweets as if it were wisdom passed down from on high.
The curriculum in question is CSCOPE, which has become the prey in a right-wing feeding frenzy in Texas. As we have reported before, CSCOPE is a curriculum management system developed through a collaboration of Education Service Centers that were created by the state in the 1960s. A committee of the State Board of Education heard complaints about CSCOPE last November. In short, critics have claimed that the program is anti-American, anti-Christian and pro-Muslim. But even many (though not all) members of the State Board of Education — hardly a bastion of moderation in Texas — have rolled their eyes over such claims.
Even so, the folks who write for WorldNetDaily — a website perhaps best known for its anti-Obama diatribes, birther conspiracies and other craziness — are now wading into the issue. But like other critics, when they finally get around to offering specific examples of lessons they see as evidence of CSCOPE treachery, you find that they’re often distorting the lessons. Case in point: an argument that CSCOPE calls the Boston Tea Party an act of terrorism isn’t true. The lesson used the Boston Tea Party as a tool for getting students to think about what is terrorism and what’s not. The newest WorldNetDaily article claims another CSCOPE lesson portrays Christianity as a cult of cannibals. No. The lesson and related links discuss how some EARLY ROMANS saw Christianity. The same article links to a previous piece (by the same author) that claims CSCOPE has a “pro-Islam bias.” But CSCOPE is simply addressing a curriculum requirement — adopted by the State Board of Education — that students learn about Islam and other major world religions.
Anyway, the WorldNetDaily article ties the “pro-Islam” CSCOPE to the Common Core State Standards and then to the Obama administration. Good grief.
Some of the most bizarre stuff, by the way, can be found on a website created by CSCOPE critics. A recent rant on that website actually tries to link CSCOPE and the murder of 26 students and educators in the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut last December. Good grief again. These folks need to get a grip on reality.
