Will they ever stop? Tea Party forces schools to teach Constitution via conserv. Idaho publisher.

from today's AJC: http://www.ajc.com/news/nation-world/tea-party-targets-schools-956828.html


By JOHN MIILLER

The Associated Press

MALTA, Idaho — America's kids will be learning about the U.S. Constitution this coming school year with help from a decidedly conservative Idaho publishing house, if a tea party group gets its way. Tea Party Patriots is instructing members to remind teachers that a 2004 federal law requires public schools to teach Constitution lessons the week of Sept. 17, commemorating the day the document was signed.

In this photo taken Friday, May 20, 2011, Zeldon Nelson, the chief executive officer of the National Center for Constitutional Studies, poses in the shipping center located in the basement of his home on his 700-acre family farm just north of the Utah-Idaho border in Malta, Idaho. The Tea Party Patriots national umbrella group is promoting Nelson's center as a constitutional resource for public school children, but some groups including the Washington, D.C.-based Constitutional Accountability Center say using a group that believes the constitution is divinely inspired is "indoctrination, not education."

The Tea Party Patriots, Georgia-based but claiming 1,000 chapters nationally, are instructing members to remind teachers that a 2004 federal law requires public schools to teach Constitution lessons the week of Sept. 17, commemorating the day the document was signed. And they'd like the teachers to use material from the Malta, Idaho-based National Center for Constitutional Studies, which promotes the Constitution as a divinely-inspired document.

The center's founder, W. Cleon Skousen, once called Jamestown's original settlers communists, wrote end-of-days prophecy and suggested Russians stole Sputnik from the United States. In 1987, one of his books was criticized for suggesting American slave children were freer than white non-slaves.

About this Skousen goober: From WIkipedia:

Willard Cleon Skousen (January 20, 1913 – January 9, 2006) was an American author, conservative American Constitutionalist and faith-based political theorist.<2> He was also a prolific popularizer among Latter-day Saints of their theology. A notable anti-communist and supporter of the John Birch Society,<3> Skousen's works involved a wide range of subjects including the Six-Day War, Mormon eschatology, New World Order conspiracies, and parenting.<4> His most popular works are The 5,000 Year Leap and The Naked Communist. A book by Skousen on end times prophecy, The Cleansing of America, was published by Valor Publishing Group in 2010, four years after his death.<5>

...promotes the Constitution as a divinely-inspired document. :eyes:

The next thing you know they'll be teaching that the founding fathers worked feverishly to abolish slavery. I believe Michelle Bachmann is writing that chapter...

Learn something new everyday on DU