A former marketing executive for textbook publishing giant Pearson Education reveals the anti-American agenda behind Common Core and the Advanced Placement U.S. History framework in the third video of a series produced by Project Veritas and focused on the corporate cronyism behind the education reform known as Common Core.
Kim Koerber, a former Pearson executive who now works as a sales consultant for National Geographic – another Gates Foundation-funded Common Core publisher – tells the Project Veritas undercover journalist that “conservative voters are afraid of everything,” and proceeds to say why Common Core is important in her view.
She explains that those behind Common Core and the new AP U.S. History framework have attempted to minimize the Constitution and remove Christianity from the core concepts, while they also stress the importance of teaching about Islam:
“The dead white guys did not create this country,” Koerber says. “They [presumably conservatives] want to talk about those dead white guys.”
Koerber continues that Common Core is necessary because “it needs to be come cohesion between the states.” She expresses frustration, however, that “Texas keeps screwing it up over and over again.”
“People who say they want to teach the Constitution, only want to teach the part of the Constitution that they like,” she tells the journalist, who then asks her about the Second Amendment.
“But yet they don’t want to teach all of it,” she replies. “Damn the Second Amendment.”
The discussion continues:
Kim Koerber (KK): People that are not educated, Fox TV viewers think that Common Core comes from the educated liberal groups and that’s why they are against it. They don’t know anything about it. They think it’s liberal so they’re against it. That’s what I think it is. It’s a knee jerk reaction. My mother, oh my God, she’s a Fox person. If I could remove Fox from my television set, I would…
I did a big presentation yesterday for AP US History and the AP US History agenda was set, until Texas got upset about it and they wanted to have their founders – they wanted founders in it. And it’s like – come on. The dead white guys did not create this country. It was a whole bunch of different kinds of people. And yes there were women, and yes there were people of color, and yes…you need to talk about them too. But they want to talk about those dead white guys.
And that’s the problem. You’re getting pushback, because there’s a bunch of Republican people, conservatives that don’t like being told what to do by people they don’t agree with. For example, in AP U.S. History a long time ago, Texas wanted to have U.S. History books, right? Pearson made them. And it talked about the Wild West and how there were prostitutes, right. And Texas was really upset. They didn’t want to mention…I’m like…You’re too young to… Did you watch Gun Smoke? It was a TV show, and you had Marshall Dillon and Ms. Kitty was his friend. She owned a bar and she was a prostitute. They never mentioned it but that’s what she was. It’s like who was Ms. Kitty? Who were these people who went out and serviced these men that went out in the world? That was real. The Wild West was not a nice place. And our kids need to know that that’s what it was like, you know.
Project Veritas Journalist (PV): But these people in Texas are really upset that the Constitution is not being covered.
KK: It is being covered, but not the way they…cause they’re idiots and they don’t know what’s in it.
PV: Is it covered as much as it would have been?
KK: In 12th grade government it certainly is, and in 5th grade it is. Yes.
PV: “It’s not a necessity for the kids.”
KK: You should know a little bit about it, you shouldn’t have to memorize the thing.
Republicans want to get in there and talk about stuff and change things about school stuff because they want to, they want to influence what is being taught. Common core doesn’t put up with that.
PV: Yeah. And, so it’s not really being… A lot of these complaints about it are not so much about the content yeah…
KK: They’re misunderstanding; they are people that don’t really know what they are talking about.
I…I can’t stand it. If they talk to me one more time about…climate change not being real, I’m just gonna scream.
PV: I am really glad I’m here in California, whatever religious affiliation you want to take is fine, but in Texas they want to push the Christianity.
KK: Because they think it’s the only one.
PV: They do, and I see that.
KK: That’s why it’s so offensive to have these prayers in the school board.
PV: Christianity is totally out of the common core?
KK: Yes it is. Totally. It’s not a core concept at all.
PV: But then there is a mention of other religions like Islam.
KK: Yeah well you have to because …
PV: So how did Islam get worked in?
KK: Islam…they said you have to talk about Islam, you have to talk about Judaism and you have to talk about Christianity and they wanted to make it big about Christianity; no it’s like, everybody needs to know about everything else…
PV: Is that one of the complaints, that common core does have a liberal bias?
KK: Yes, they feel like we’d be educating their kids to the world which they don’t want to do that. They want their kids to only know this… It’s like birth control. They don’t want their kids to know about it, yet Chlamydia is huge in Texas. So it’s like, you know…In the schools that have kids that, because the kids don’t learn about anything about what they’re doing and they’re messing around and they get in trouble because they didn’t get educated. So, I think the progressive bias is the more educated you are, the better you are, and the conservative bias is the less they know the better they are going to be. Yeah.
PV: What is it that they don’t agree with?
KK: They don’t agree with Islam, so they don’t want their kids to be taught it. They don’t agree with birth control so they don’t want their kids to talk about it. They don’t agree with math because they don’t understand it. It’s not the same math they did in high school. So they don’t want their kids to know about it.
It’s conservative push back, that, they are afraid. So these conservative, these conservative voters are afraid of everything.
PV: I’m just wondering why Common Core specifically…before Common Core kids were learning about math and science.
KK: Because it’s the government telling me what to do.
People who say they want to teach the Constitution, only want to teach the part of the Constitution that they like.
PV: Second Amendment?
KK: But yet they don’t want to teach all of it. Damn the Second Amendment. I don’t think personal handguns need to be on anyone except the government, the police. What is the purpose of having a gun?
The separation of church and state they don’t understand.
They don’t like that. They don’t like equal rights between all groups. The voter suppression that is going on in the south is just unbelievably awful.
People who are not educated are easy flim flam. And that they react by fear instead of by knowledge.
The Project Veritas journalist asks Koerber about the profits for textbook publishers with the Common Core reform.
KK: Anytime anybody changes something in a textbook its profitable for the textbook companies. So the textbooks have to change and the school district has to adopt the new ones, that’s profitable.
PV: Say that again.
KK: Anytime a change happens that has to be put in a textbook suddenly the school district has to adopt new books.
The video also includes footage of Project Veritas president James O’Keefe at the South Carolina Tea Party convention, during which Republican 2016 frontrunner Donald Trump told his audience Common Core is a “disaster,” and that no candidate can win who is in favor of Common Core.
“We spend more than anybody else and to a large extent that’s Common Core, because these people in Washington – the bureaucrats – are making a fortune,” Trump said. “They don’t give a damn about your kids in South Carolina.”
O’Keefe asked Sen. Ted Cruz about the corporate cronyism behind Common Core.
“I’ll tell you this, as President, I will instruct the Department of Education to end Common Core on day one,” Cruz said.
Former Sen. Rick Santorum also asserted, “I am very much against Common Core, against any kind of federal intervention into our schools. That’s the big problem.”
Asked about the major issues surrounding Common Core, Santorum replied:
The elites in our culture who want to indoctrinate our young people into a certain way to think, a certain belief structure, and it’s all spread out through Common Core. I believe the best and safest way to maintain our values in this country is to leave it up to the people at the grass roots level.
“It doesn’t matter if it’s corporate cronyism or liberal ideology, if you are slipping your agenda into our education system, we are going to expose you, one by one, until the whole rotten system is revealed,” O’Keefe tells Breitbart News about his project on Common Core and education. “Corporate cronyism and underhanded political deals have contributed to Common Core’s massive disruption and the unraveling of America’s educational fabric.”
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