Anti-Semitic 9/11 Article By K-12 Education Giant Sparks Outrage
Newsela is in 75% of America’s K-12 classrooms
Newsela is a relatively recently-established educational resource that purportedly specializes in non-fiction content for the nation’s K-12 schools, teachers, and students. It sprung up as a private partner of Common Core, and the service reaches at least 75% of America’s K-12 classrooms.
Newsela recently came under fire for its 9/11 instructional material. Newsela’s 9/11 “Fact Sheet” included reference to Israel’s “long and shady history” and to Israel as belonging, originally, to Muslims. A historical impossibility. Nonetheless, this drivel was published far and wide, and America’s 5th and 6th grade students across the nation were spoon-fed it.
Newsela has, under pressure from parents and alarmed educators, retracted and corrected the materials, but not before the damage was done.
The Washington Free Beacon reports:
An educational non-fiction content provider has issued an apology for offering teachers across the country a fact sheet on the September 11 attacks that included commentary about Israel having a “shady history” and having previously “belonged to the Muslims.”
Newsela prides itself in being a reliable source of current event pieces and historical articles, each edited by Newsela staff to meet multiple reading skill levels, for teachers to use in their elementary and middle school classrooms. On 9/11, fifth and sixth grade teachers found available an article, adapted by Newsela staff from a History.com piece, outlining the day’s attacks and an overview of Osama Bin Laden’s alleged reasons for attacking the United States.
One level of the sixth-grade article read, “They were angry that the U.S. gave money to the country of Israel, an area with a long and shady history in the Middle East.”
“[Bin Laden] thought the United States was too involved in the Middle East. … The United States also gave money to Israel. It is a Jewish country in the Middle East. Many Muslims live there. Before Israel was Jewish, the land belonged to Muslims. Bin Laden believed that Jews should leave the land,” read a version of the fifth-grade article.
IsraellyCool published the following image of the text before it was corrected.
One teacher reportedly stated that she could not use the materials because they were “inappropriately written,” but teachers from California to Kansas did use them in their classrooms.
The Washington Free Beacon continues:
The fifth-grade piece was used in one class at California’s Louis E. Stocklmeir Elementary School, according to parents, and the articles were assigned to both fifth and sixth graders at Highlands Elementary School in Kansas, according to a tweet from the school.
A D.C.-based sixth-grade educator wrote on Facebook to Newsela that she could not use the “inappropriately written” material.
Newsela’s commentary on Israel was markedly different from the original History.com article, which stated that the terrorists “were allegedly acting in retaliation for America’s support of Israel, its involvement in the Persian Gulf War, and its continued military presence in the Middle East.”
Following complaints, Newsela said it edited the material. A copy of the updated fifth-grade version seen by the Washington Free Beacon shows a swap of the line “Before Israel was Jewish, the land belonged to Muslims” for “The land has been fought over for centuries.”
Fifth and Sixth Grade students are reading a Newsela article about 9/11 today. #neverforget @Newsela @theSMSD pic.twitter.com/n40emAyp5p
— Highlands Hawks (@512Hawks) September 11, 2017
Learning about 9/11 today with @brainpop @Newsela and a virtual field trip to the memorial in NYC, we also observed a moment of silence pic.twitter.com/TlCBKceVkS
— Miss Peirson's Class (@PeirsonsPupils) September 11, 2017
An interesting discussion regarding 9/11 in the classroom using @Newsela Your Ss were fired up! @TeachingInCali pic.twitter.com/O0IAcvvgl4
— Natasha Jones, Ed.D (@drjonesie17) September 11, 2017
WUSA9 verified the publication and wide distribution of these materials and published the statement released by a Newsela spokesperson.
“We are dedicated to keeping bias and misinformation out of our content. As a result of this incident we are implementing new review procedures to ensure we have more checks in place for bias for controversial topics.
We apologize for this oversight and as a company our intention is to remain as objective as possible. We’re particularly grateful for educators who help us improve by speaking up and holding us accountable. Our goal is always to help children learn to read, become critical thinkers and help foster empathy across the board.”
Newslea said they took these following steps to correct the situation once they learned about the language used in the article:
· We amended the article as quickly as possible.
· We posted banners, alerting teachers who may have assigned the article prior to the correction that a mistake had been made.
· Our managing editor emailed individuals who contacted us about the article with an apology and offered to discuss further.
While Newsela is not well-known unless one is involved in some way in K-12 education, it came to the attention of PJ Media last year. Writing about Newsela, PJMedia asked, “Are Your Kids Getting a Daily Dose of News Propaganda with Their Common Core?” The answer is a resounding “yes.”
Many public schools are now assigning their students children’s versions of newspaper articles through a new company called Newsela. Newsela takes articles from outlets such as Washington Post and Associated Press, rewrites each one to fit five reading levels, and publishes them online.
The “ELA” part of Newsela’s name evokes the “English Language Arts” component of the Common Core State Standards, which has established national teaching norms for K-12 schools. One of the core characteristics of the Common Core is its emphasis on “informational texts” – its term for nonfiction. Thus, textbooks take primacy over literature in the English Language Arts world of Common Core.
News is the informational text par excellence. The creators of Newsela found an opportunity to profit from the Common Core standards by adapting news to the classroom and selling it to schools as “Common Core-aligned.” It offers grade-appropriate versions of newspaper articles as reading exercises, coupled with four-question quizzes to test students’ comprehension.
. . . . when Newsela chooses articles with an ideological flavor, that flavor is distinctly progressive. It abounds with articles that sound the alarm on global warming, pollution, or animal extinction (“The role of climate change in the Louisiana floods”); praise President Obama (“President Obama is protecting more water off the coast of Hawaii”); or focus on racial and ethnic grievance (“Indian tribe sues over river damage”).
A quick glance at Newsela’s Twitter feed reinforces this impression that Newsela peddles progressive propaganda rooted in identity politics and assorted divisive progressive priorities:
Celebrate #HispanicHeritageMonth with this Text Set, comprised of 7 lessons and corresponding student activities. https://t.co/Mq5QYINhTh pic.twitter.com/uljYmWs2lK
— Newsela (@Newsela) September 16, 2017
"What surprised you?" Thank you @KyleneBeers and @Newsela for the tools to teach my Ss to read nonfiction. #noticeandnote @NatGeoEducation pic.twitter.com/EvnYIVMMC2
— Jim Bentley (he/him) (@Curiosity_Films) September 16, 2017
We've got your ticket to see #Hamilton! Enter our giveaway today as we celebrate the launch of Units! https://t.co/U1itKhMqXk pic.twitter.com/n1T4VIFWlh
— Newsela (@Newsela) September 15, 2017
Going "home" to Ecuador, part two: Where do I belong? https://t.co/mwKBUgmJI9 pic.twitter.com/c5fIb3134H
— Newsela (@Newsela) September 15, 2017
Disparity between rich and poor evident in surviving #HurricaneIrma. https://t.co/d0kLlO7Fgd pic.twitter.com/gTzN4ImWBJ
— Newsela (@Newsela) September 14, 2017
California teachers are advised to give up traditional mission projects. https://t.co/gPRmciJu4o pic.twitter.com/QJGdwVb0LU
— Newsela (@Newsela) September 14, 2017
A3. A Mile In Our Shoes Text Sets were created to showcase diverse perspectives and build empathy: https://t.co/vyzr9XZXb7 #5thchat pic.twitter.com/MZHHEz0fUX
— Newsela (@Newsela) September 13, 2017
PRO/CON: Did #HurricaneHarvey show the reality of climate change? https://t.co/PMef0toW4r pic.twitter.com/kfy2NRVEkC
— Newsela (@Newsela) September 12, 2017
This Newsela 9/11 incident is yet another in a long series of such incidents that reveal our nation’s youth are being targeted for anti-Israel and anti-American propaganda long before they ever see a college campus.
As we have covered in recent years, anti-Israeli sentiment being pushed on impressionable grade schoolers is a particular problem.
VIDEO: Activists manipulate third-graders into hating Israel
Anti-Israel Third Grade event a “microcosm of what’s happening to our educational system”
Revealed: Student “suffering from nightmares” after 3rd grade anti-Israel event
Case study: Biased curriculum on Israel and Islam in a Massachusetts school system
With its reach into 75% of the nation’s K-12 classrooms, the pervasiveness of Newsela is alarming.
Whether we have children or grandchildren of school age or not, this trend matters because these “lessons” are intended to grow the sort of SJWs who are terrorizing our nation’s college campuses . . . as both students and as “professors.” They are, in other words, future leaders in education, government, public policy, business, law enforcement, and on. What they are learning now matters immensely.
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Comments
Fire the Newsela staff person who wrote this libel.
That leaves a glaring omission: it says nothing about anything being done, said, or otherwise communicated to the writer who wrote those lines and the editor who approved it. From what we can tell it appears they didn’t even get an email telling them not to do it again. So why would we think they won’t? Or that they’re even aware they caused a problem?
This was not a “mistake”; this was not an “aberration”; this was not “just one editor getting it wrong”.
This is WHY Newsela was created. This IS it’s fundamental mission, when all of the happy talk and “lets pretend its for the kids” is stripped away.
The idea that it can be “reformed” or “fixed” would be laughable if it wasn’t so sad. The entire reason for central control of messages to schoolchildren is the CENTRAL CONTROL. And who would insist on that except those who are dedicated to sending their own political propaganda to children daily, in any way they can, disguised as “news”??? The writer who put this out, and the editor who approved it, were fulfilling the designed mission of Newsela, the true mission it was created for. Why would they be “punished” by the people who are cheering and clapping for them?
Does anyone seriously want to fix this, as opposed to just standing around and harrumphing about how awful it is? Abolish Common Core. Abolish “Newsela”. Abolish all federal level involvement in education and return it to local jurisdictions immediately. Anything less will be a half measure doomed to failure in the long run.
abolish it? what does that even mean? how do you abolish a private company?
Semantics…you are deliberately being argumentative. You quite simply ban biased, ideological propaganda from use in public school curricula nationwide.
semantically it means not one red cent to these anti American and anti Semites, and if any of them are illegals (any, hah),
they need to be thrown in jail and then deported to Kubah, where they belong –
another fine legacy of B-Hussein-O and the wookie.
Here’s how you “abolish” a private company – one that exists solely off the nipple of our government: fire them.
They’ll be abolished.
Betsy DeVos’ idea might work, if they can get it done. School choice. There are existing public schools and it’s very hard to change them. They are SJW through and through, on many levels.
So leave them alone but allow alternatives.
It’s a nice subversive idea. Actually, it’s not a new idea. It was hated in the desegregation era, because the blacks (and those who saw the racially mixed classroom as a goal in itself) didn’t want the whites to leave the public schools just as they were coming in. They wanted to force the whites to stay.
I agree wholeheartedly this is not a mistake as this explains http://www.invisibleserfscollar.com/manipulating-the-human-mind-and-personality-via-p-12-education-to-engineer-transformational-social-change/
Learning Standards, which is what outcomes-based education was about in the 90s and what its succssor the Common Core is now, are about developing common shared understandings about the world and how it works and what is wrong that students have internalized. Hence the accompanying graphic images. It uses a concept called Guiding Fictions which are not factually true, but are designed to guide students’ motivations to change the world. To transform it.
These 9/11 materials fit with the Guiding Fiction function just like man-made global warming.
Given how progressive the educational system has become from top to bottom and start to finish, this is hardly a surprise. You would also think the material got some level of vetting and was deemed acceptable.
Vetting Instructions for Newsela: “Okay, now when you write that Jews mix the blood of innocent children in with their matzo’s, that’s a bit over the top, you’ve got to be more subtle than that. Ok?”
“We are dedicated to keeping bias and misinformation out of our content.”
Only toward one [mohammedan] demographic, the rest of us are on notice.
Homeschool.
I’m sure our federal education controllers are all over this.
As long as people abdicate their responsibility both financially and morally for raising their children there will be vultures waiting to prey on those children. ANY public “service” will become politicized and usually veer hard left when given the government to run it. Do poor children really fair better with this system or would it be better to do the awful inhumane thing of forcing them to seek charity of even be uneducated? We still as a society can’t come to terms with this reality.
It’s really a shame because I believe that I did get a good elementary education–but that was in the 60s. I spent the 90s and early 2000s countering the biased teachers my kids sat in front of all through their k-12 life.
I’m now telling my kids that PUBLIC SCHOOL EDUCATION IS CHILD ABUSE…https://twitter.com/ChrisHarrisJr/status/910261364958093312/video/1
Aww, see how sorry they are now that they’ve been caught red-handed as the anti-Semites that they are?
Words like these: “Israel’s “long and shady history” and to Israel as belonging, originally, to Muslims” appear in an textbook by accident. It is all a part of Common Cores dedication to creating a generation(s)of indoctrinated little democrat voters. And it’s working fairly well. Now after they get the vote for all the illegals…
We will all soon be strangers in a strange land, a land we once called ours.
We need to dismiss the idiotic idea that politics or “journalism” is a fit reading medium for grade schoolers. Of course literature is the best medium! Think of it — twelve years to learn reading, writing, arithmetic, geography, basic history, science and hopefully a second language. That, along with exercise, sports, games, music, crafts, hobbies, should fill the plate of every K-12 kid.
I fail to see a basic difference between Palestinians’ poisoning the minds of children with a homicidal hatred of Jews — using Disney-like characters! — and the more subtle manipulation of Newsela. Turning kids into political animals is messing with them — a form of molestation.
Just imagine if those rats mcconnell or ryan were replaced by patriots: this company – and all the likes of them – would be dragged before congressional hearings for the nation to see the sinister corruption in our educational system.
Our demise will not be because of the likes of this company and the people within in: our nation’s demise will be because of the Crying Boehenrs, who hogged leadership positions, and then just sat by and got fat while the nation rotted from within.
The GOPe is solely responsible for a tumor like this company remaining active in our educational system.