Tea at Trianon: Common Core Goes Global

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Friday, November 29, 2013

Common Core Goes Global

From Mary Jo Anderson:

The education reform known as Common Core State Standards (CCSS) for grades K-12, adopted by forty plus states and more than half of the U.S. dioceses, is designed to produce a universal “work force ready” population prepared to self-identify as “global citizens.” Many education professionals have been critical of CCSS. But even they may not know the philosophical reason why financiers like Bill Gates have bankrolled the Common Core system. The same sources of funding for Common Core in the United States are promoting similar methods and aligned texts world wide through the auspices of the United Nations.

In Crisis, readers learned that Common Core is financed with over $150 million from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The collaboration of the Gates Foundation and the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has been well publicized. In addition, Gates, on behalf of his Microsoft Corporation, signed a 26-page Cooperation Agreement in 2004 between Microsoft and UNESCO to develop a “master curriculum” which included benchmarks and assessments. The agreement stipulates that “UNESCO will explore how to facilitate content development.”

Some have decried Common Core as the nationalization of American education. Far more dangerous, however, is the globalism of Common Core that demotes American values, undermines American constitutional principles and detaches students from their families and faith. Common Core is simply the newest attempt in the decades-old battle (Outcome Based Education, Goals 2000) to impose a U.N. globalist worldview aimed at “peace,” sustainability and economic stability at the expense of freedom.

Briefly, the globalist philosophy calls for the establishment of a global culture based on a commitment to sustainable processes and humanistic ethics to ensure world peace and “fair” distribution of natural resources. The U.N. serves as the hub for this globalist hope. Adherents believe that some form of world congress and world citizenship is the end point of political evolution, and, therefore it is inevitable. What is not certain, in their view, is the time of fulfillment. (Read more.)