Washington, DC – In what many analysts believe is both an unprecedented and wildly inappropriate partisan move, President Obama has announced that on Tuesday, September 8, he will do an end run around parents and directly target children in what is widely perceived as an effort to implement his extreme leftist political agenda. As millions of parents across the country learn more about his scheme, they have become justifiably outraged. The backlash has been tremendous.
But Obama’s extreme overreach goes well beyond political tastelessness. It’s actually a violation of federal law.
U.S. Department of Education Secretary Arne Duncan recently sent a letter to school principals encouraging them to cease academic instruction and have classes tune in to a live speech Obama will give to children during school hours on Tuesday at noon. The DOE even provided lesson plans, sample activities and questions that teachers can use to promote the event. The letter encourages teachers to “build background knowledge about the president by reading books about Barack Obama.”
Secretary Duncan is a left-wing Chicagoland politician who chose Kevin Jennings as Assistant Deputy Secretary of the Office of Safe and Drug-Free Schools. Jennings is founder of GLSEN (Gay, Lesbian, Straight Education Network), an extremist group that promotes forced acceptance of homosexuality and transexuality in schools to children as young as five.
Although, due to the backlash, some of the most offensive language has been softened, students as young as kindergarten will, nonetheless, be asked: “Why is it important that we listen to the president? What is the president asking me to do? What specific job is he asking me to do?” Children’s writings would later be used “to make students accountable to their goals.”
However, Federal law specifically forbids Obama, Duncan or any officer from exercising “any direction, supervision, or control over the curriculum, program of instruction, administration, or personnel of any educational institution, school, or school system.” 20 U.S.C. § 3403.
Matt Barber, Director of Cultural Affairs with both Liberty Counsel and Liberty Alliance Action, has notified his children’s school to either opt them out of the President’s illegal indoctrination activities on Tuesday, or they will be homeschooled for the day and “taught a lesson in the Bill of Rights.”
Said Barber: “Not only is this a violation of federal law, it’s just plain creepy. It’s surreal. Obama’s actions here are right out of the playbooks of Saul Alinsky and Chairman Mao. Soviet Russia? Sure. America? No way. I’m furious. Hands off my children, Mr. President!
“We are a nation of laws,” continued Barber, “not a federal cult of personality. Obama and the DOE had better pull the plug on this or outraged parents across the country may just insist that members of Congress dust of their ‘high crimes and misdemeanors’ cheat sheets from the 1990s.”
Liberty Counsel is urging parents to “demand that schools not participate. If the school allows Obama and the DOE to indoctrinate school children, parents ought to opt their children out of this illegal program.”
