Long time member of the John Birch Society LeRoy Chaffee sorts through lots of info from the society Monday April 29, 2013 in Bristol. (Truth Photo By Larry Tebo)
ELKHART — The woman in the video is stern, no-nonsense, warning against the dangers of the so-called common core educational standards.
“Parents will no longer be able to control or even influence what their children are taught,” says Jane Robbins, senior fellow at the conservative American Principles Project. Ultimately, the federal government will control school programming and students will become “cogs in a national industrial system.”
The six men watching at the gathering of the Elkhart chapter of the John Birch Society take it in, then, when it’s over, trade comments.
“This is about control of the federal government,” says Ralph Searer, organizer of the gathering. Common core, a set of national educational guidelines, is at the center of debate among proponents, who say they’ll help augment the education of U.S. students, and critics, many from the right, who worry about loss of local control over education.
Another man expresses disbelief that the common core standards, focus of debate in the Indiana General Assembly during the last legislative session, would even be considered. “How can they think it’s a great program when everybody’s going to be like robots?” he wonders.
The scene is a meeting room of an Elkhart church, Abundant Life Ministries, and on one wall hangs a poster, decorated with bats, reading, “We’re batty about the bible.”
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