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December 4, 2023 rww

Speaker of the House Mike Johnson wrote the foreword and publicly promoted a 2022 book that spread baseless and discredited conspiracy theories and used derogatory homophobic insults.

They had come out by the hundreds, decked out in patriotic attire this October evening in 2021, to hear from a man who was introduced to them as “America’s greatest living historian.” They had come for David Barton.

It reveals the deep-seated anti-intellectualism present among conservative evangelicals. It shows how politics has torn the church apart. As long as Connelly is able to secure funding to travel around the country with David Barton and tell lies about the American past in service to his “Christian” political agenda, the more anti-intellectualism and the political captivity of the evangelical church will persist.

Despite past controversy, Barton’s influence has found an eager audience with the rise of Christian nationalism in the age of Trump.’

Some members of the committee said such a ban, proposed two months after a prominent conservative activist was caught meeting with a famous white supremacist, might be a “slippery slope” or too vague.

Voters eligible to cast ballots are already being swept up in a grassroots effort to purge the nation’s registration rolls ahead of the 2024 presidential election, a CBS News investigation has found.

I don’t think it’s too salacious to come out and say that the accusations against Voris are of a sexual nature.

Enter Kirk Cameron, whose entire post-Growing Pains career has centered around trying to replicate his success in the secular world and failing in bigger and bigger ways. His latest gambit is to offer a right-wing alternative to Scholastic book fairs.

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ymail 1123

popular Information doesn't just break news; it creates change. Consider the impact of this newsletter in the last few weeks:

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Mysterious woman tells school board that Scholastic book sparked porn addiction

On November 14, a 20-year-old woman named Lanah Burkhardt appeared before the school board of the Conroe Independent School District in Texas. Burkhardt told the board that, when she was 11, she read a Scholastic book that introduced her to "a single kiss." According to Burkhardt, her exposure to this Scholastic book was directly responsible for her developing a debilitating addiction to pornography.

Burkhardt said that after reading the Scholastic book with the "single kiss," she "looked for other books that gave me pleasure." This "led to internet searches" that Burkhardt will "never forget." By the time she was 13, Burkhardt says her porn addiction left her depressed and suicidal.

Burkhardt cited her story as a reason to restrict access to Drama, a novel published by Scholastic. The book includes this image of two people kissing:

But Burkhardt went further, arguing that Conroe should remove all Scholastic books from schools and stop hosting Scholastic book fairs. These steps were necessary, Burkhardt argued, to protect children from "sexual obscenity." According to Burkhardt, "getting rid of Scholastic books and their book fairs will inevitably protect kids."

Burkhardt's appearance was promoted by SkyTree Book Fairs, a newly formed organization marketing itself as "an alternative to the sexually explicit content distributed in Scholastic's book fairs."

While SkyTree Book Fairs presents itself as an independent non-profit organization, it appears to be a hastily assembled offshoot of Brave Books, which publishes children's books by right-wing pundits and pseudo-celebrities.

The president of SkyTree Book Fairs, Riley Lee, was listed as an "Executive Assistant" at Brave Books earlier this year. (Lee has omitted her employment at Brave Books from her LinkedIn profile.) A website, stopscholastic.com, which previously redirected to a page promoting book fairs by Brave Books, now redirects to SkyTree Books Fairs. An "extensive report" on the dangers of Scholastic, previously offered by Brave Books, is now being distributed by SkyTree Book Fairs.

The link between SkyTree Book Fairs and Brave Books was first reported by Book Riot. Contacted by telephone for comment on Tuesday, Lee requested Popular Information send questions via email. Lee did not respond to the emailed questions.

Burkhardt's appearance at the Conroe school board was also promoted by Brave Books. The company called it a "must watch" and a "powerful message that needs to be heard." Burkhardt's story was also pushed by Kirk Cameron, the former child actor who has several titles published by Brave Books and is an advisor to SkyTree Book Fairs.

Neither Brave Books nor Burkhardt disclosed that Burkhardt is an employee of Brave Books. According to her LinkedIn profile, Burkhardt is the company's "public relations coordinator."

Burkhardt's employment was first reported by Frank Strong. It is unclear how an 11-year-old Burkhardt obtained the Scholastic book that allegedly caused her porn addiction. It appears she was home-schooled. Burkhardt did not respond to a request for comment sent via Facebook.

Burkhardt's gambit has already had an impact. The Conroe school board, after listening to her story, voted to restrict access to Drama, the Scholastic book featuring a kiss, from all students in the 8th grade and below. One of the school board members, Melissa Dungan, suggested replacing Scholastic with SkyTree Book Fairs. "All glory to God," Burkhardt posted in response to the news.

Inside Brave Books

Brave Books was founded by Trent Talbot, an ophthalmologist with no apparent background in education. According to Talbot’s LinkedIn profile, he founded the company in February 2021 after he “realized there was a war going on for the hearts and minds of our children and the wrong side was winning.” The company’s website states that it sells “[f]aith-based children’s books” and aims to “help parents instill a love of truth in their children” so that they can “withstand harmful progressive influences.”

Brave Books offers a slew of children’s books with conservative messaging written by right-wing influencers and politicians. Authors on Brave Books’ website include actor Kevin Sorbo, United States Representative Dan Crenshaw (R-TX), Donald Trump's former press secretary Sean Spicer, and Trump’s former national security adviser Michael Flynn.

Many of the titles published by Brave Books are set in an imaginary world based on the United States called Freedom Island. According to Politico, each book based on Freedom Island contains a “fold-out map marked with villages and mountain ranges,” with the southwestern corner of the map being called the “Car-a-Lago Coast.” The books also include “an afterword for parents” that is “filled with suggested games and discussion questions to drive home political concepts.”

One of the books sold by Brave Books is “Elephants Are Not Birds” by Ashley St. Clair. The book, which sells for $22.99, follows an elephant named Kevin “as he learns that even though he can sing, he is not a bird.” The villain of the story, a “vulture named Culture,” “gives [the] elephant a beak and a set of fake wings and watches as he plummets out of a tree.” Culture is a recurring character in the books set on Freedom Island who, according to Politico, “tries to poison innocent animals with progressive ideas.” In an interview with the New York Post, St. Clair described the book as “an unapologetic rebuke of transgender acceptance and the growing number of young people identifying as trans.”

Brave Books also sells a book called “Paws Off My Cannon” by Dana Loesch, a former spokesperson for the National Rifle Association (NRA). According to Brave Books’ website, the book “teaches kids the importance of the Second Amendment” by following the story of Bongo, a gorilla, who is shot at with a coconut cannon by a “villainous hyena.” Bongo’s friend Bonnie then “suggests the village ban all coconut cannons,” but “Bongo thinks that the hyenas are the problem, not the coconut cannons.”

Another book sold on Brave Books’ website is “No More Secrets: The Candy Cavern” by right-wing influencer Chaya Raichik. Raichik runs the X account Libs of TikTok, known for anti-LGBTQ rhetoric. The book is about “Rose the Lamb” and how her teacher is “focused more on candy than teaching.” According to the New York Post, the subtext of the book is “based on longstanding criticisms by parents that schools are encouraging gender transition in young students without informing parents.” Brave Books’ website advertises that “Donald Trump Posted in Support of the Book!”

Brave Books also sells “The Island of Free Ice Cream” by Jack Posobiec, which is a story about communism. Posobiec is a right-wing personality who “promoted the false Pizzagate conspiracy theory” and has ties to white supremacists.

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srcwtch

The American Coal Foundation is a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit funded by coal and mining interests that creates and distributes educational materials, like school curricula, to teachers in an effort to positively influence children's perception of the extractive energy industries.

ACF's elementary school lesson plans include an activity called "Cookie Mining," where students participate in a simulation of the mining process using chocolate chip cookies and toothpicks.[1] Other subjects covered include "clean coal" and mining reclamation.[2]

Contents

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Controversy over materials: coal curriculum

In May 2011, it was reported that the American Coal Foundation paid Scholastic to help produce and place in classrooms maps and worksheets called the "United States of Energy," with much of the information from the National Mining Association, a coal-lobbying group. One widely distributed chart did not mention damage from mining or pollution. The Coal Foundation had been distributing materials on its own, then partnered with Scholastic so that 66,000 fourth grade teachers received materials to build into lesson plans.

In the Appalachian mining communities of Kentucky, Virginia, and West Virginia, mining companies sponsor Coal Education Development and Resources (CEDAR), which offers teachers booklets and DVDs produced by coal-burning utility AEP and mining giant Peabody Coal. One emphasizes how Kentucky has benefited from coal mine reclamation, with little mention of any negatives of strip mining. And on the issue of coal's carbon dioxide emissions, CEDAR offers teachers a video, titled "The Greening of Planet Earth" that asserts: "As more and more scientists are confirming, our world is deficient in carbon dioxide and a doubling of atmospheric CO2 is very beneficial."[3]

On May 13, 2011, Scholastic, Inc., issued the following statement regarding its partnership with the American Coal Foundation: "This week, Scholastic came under criticism for an 11" x 16" poster map which displays different sources of energy – coal, nuclear, hydroelectric, solar, wind and natural gas – not so much for the content of the poster but primarily for its sponsorship by the American Coal Foundation. We acknowledge that the mere fact of sponsorship may call into question the authenticity of the information, and therefore conclude that we were not vigilant enough as to the effect of sponsorship in this instance. We have no plans to further distribute this particular program."[3]

The New York Times noted that materials from the American Coal Foundation fail to mention the downsides of burning coal, particularly its negative effects on the environment and human life, such as the removal of Appalachian mountaintops; the release of sulfur dioxide, mercury and arsenic; the toxic wastes; the mining accidents; and the lung disease.[4]

The organization also stated that the publisher would be undertaking a thorough review of its policy and editorial procedures on sponsored content in the future.[5]

Contact details

American Coal Foundation

101 Constitution Avenue, NW

Suite 525 East

Washington, DC 20001-2133

Phone: 202-463-9785

Fax: 202-463-9786

E-Mail: info@teachcoal.org

http://www.teachcoal.org/

Articles and resources

References

  1. :{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important;-webkit-user-select:none"):}:↑ American Coal Foundation Lesson Plans - Elementary, organizational web site, accessed May 17, 2011
  2. :{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important;-webkit-user-select:none"):}:↑ American Coal Foundation Lessons by Subject, organizational web site, accessed May 17, 2011
  3. ↑ ^Jump ^up to:3.0 3.1 Jeff Young, "Scholastic distributed coal propaganda in schools" PRI's Living on Earth, May 16, 2011.
  4. :{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important;-webkit-user-select:none"):}:↑ Tamar Lewin Coal Curriculum Called Unfit for 4th Graders, New York Times/Education, May 11, 2011
  5. :{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important;-webkit-user-select:none"):}:↑ Chris Morran, "Scholastic Pulls Big Coal-Sponsored Kids Guide To Energy", The Consumerist, May 17, 2011.

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The danger of climate change as "questionable"? ExxonMobil itself could not have produced a more skeptical approach.

These textbooks are not mere egregious outliers; they are typical of commercially produced science and social studies teaching materials. In fact, a partnership between the American Coal Foundation and Scholastic to create a propagandistic 4th grade curriculum was ended only last year, when educators and environmentalists exposed the lessons' absurd pro-industry biases. Scholastic's curriculum, The United States of Energy, was distributed free to tens of thousands of elementary teachers. It showed gleaming piles of coal, along with many of its alleged benefits. Students didn't learn of a single problem, including coal's huge contribution to climate change.

Chamber distributes books on energy to children

In 2010, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce joined with Scholastic Books to distribute roughly 100,000 books about the potential perils of government fossil fuel regulation to classrooms across the country, as part of its “Shedding Light on Energy" campaign. The book asks, “What do you think could happen if one of our energy sources was suddenly unavailable (e.g., power plant maintenance, government curb on production, etc.)?” Chamber officials maintain that there is no “hidden agenda” behind the question or the educational outreach effort in general, although the book is notably being distributed at a time when the Environmental Protection Agency is set to regulate greenhouse gas emissions.[39]

The energy industry has a long history of working to get its perspective into classrooms. In the 1970s, for example, nuclear power officials distributed comic books in schools as it dealt with the PR fallout from the near meltdown at Three Mile Island. And BP helped develop environmental lesson plans in California, the Sacramento Bee reported last month. The posters and worksheets that the Chamber will be sending out to schools aross the country is based on statistics from the U.S. Energy Information Administration, and the assignments are mostly aimed at teaching students how to use charts and graphs to convey where U.S. energy comes from and how it is used.[39]

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By Bill McKibben and Bill Bigelow

If We Knew Our History Series

Posted on: Huffington Post | Common Dreams

Maybe you’ve heard. We are facing a climate crisis that threatens life on our planet. Climate scientists are unequivocal: we are changing the world in deep, measurable, dangerous ways—and the pace of this change will accelerate dramatically in the decades to come.

Then again, if you’ve been a middle school or high school student recently, you may not know this.

That’s because the gap between our climate emergency and the attention paid to climate change in the school curriculum is immense. Individual teachers around the country are doing outstanding work, but the educational establishment is not. Look at our textbooks. The widely used Pearson/Prentice Hall text, Physical Science: Concepts in Action, waits until page 782 to tell high school students about climate change, but then only in four oh-by-the-way paragraphs. A photo of a bustling city includes the caption: “Carbon dioxide emissions from motor vehicles, power plants, and other sources may contribute to global warming.” Or they may not, the book seems to suggest.

IAT’s Coordinated Science: Physical, Earth and Space Science devotes several pages late in the book to climate change, and concludes with this doubt-soaked passage: “Some people take the position that the increase in carbon dioxide should be reversed. They believe this is necessary even though the size of the contribution to global warming is not certain. It is their belief that the consequences would be very difficult to handle. Other people take a different position. They consider that it would be unwise to disrupt the world’s present economy. They consider the future danger to be questionable. The big problem is that no one is certain that rapid global warming will take place. If it does, it may be too late to do anything about it!”

The danger of climate change as “questionable”? ExxonMobil itself could not have produced a more skeptical approach.

These textbooks are not mere egregious outliers; they are typical of commercially produced science and social studies teaching materials. In fact, a partnership between the American Coal Foundation and Scholastic to create a propagandistic 4th grade curriculum was ended only last year, when educators and environmentalists exposed the lessons’ absurd pro-industry biases. Scholastic’s curriculum, The United States of Energy, was distributed free to tens of thousands of elementary teachers. It showed gleaming piles of coal, along with many of its alleged benefits. Students didn’t learn of a single problem, including coal’s huge contribution climate change.

But as state legislatures get into the business of writing school curricula, things may go from awful to worse. Take Tennessee. It just became the fourth state—following Louisiana, Texas, and South Dakota—to pass a law that requires global warming to be taught as one of a number of “scientific controversies.”

The fact that Tennessee is home of the infamous 1925 Scopes Monkey Trial makes the new law ironic, but not funny. As the American Association for the Advancement of Science explains, “asserting that there are significant scientific controversies about the overall nature of these concepts when there are none will only confuse students, not enlighten them.”

If you happen to be a member of the one percent that owns a coal company, oil wells, or a pipeline, young people’s confusion is a good thing. For the rest of humanity, the passivity generated by this confusion is tragic.

Of course, educators cannot simply blame the lack of climate education on greedy corporations and the legislators they buy. In high schools, too often teachers regard the walls between disciplines as fixed and legitimate. Most social studies teachers thus far seem willing to leave discussion of carbon dioxide, the mechanics of the greenhouse effect, and “feedback loops” to the science department. And science teachers, overwhelmed by the requirements of their own discipline, are reluctant to trespass into the social causes and consequences of climate change. Teachers of other disciplines—drama, language arts, math—may wonder about the relevance of the climate for their subjects. And elementary teachers may think that climate change is too depressing or too complicated for their children.

But the enormity of the climate crisis demands that educators, scientists, environmental activists, parents, and students join together to pull down the barriers between disciplines, and to rethink the curriculum. The cost of continuing with business as usual is too steep.

The good news is that addressing this crisis with the urgency that it deserves offers the possibility of revitalizing schools as young people develop the consciousness and commitment that the earth desperately needs.

‘Don’t Take Our Voices Away’: A Role Play on the Indigenous Peoples’ Global Summit on Climate Change available as PDF download.

And this work needn’t be grim, as some educators have already discovered. For instance, a workgroup of teachers in Portland, Oregon wrote a role-play on the impact of climate change on indigenous peoples throughout the world—from island nations like Kiribati to the Yup’ik of Alaska—in which students assume the personas of indigenous activists and propose global solutions.

And of course there’s always straight-up physics and chemistry—understanding the mechanics of climate change is classic science education.

A curricular full-court press on the climate offers a compelling renunciation of the numbing test-preparation that passes for education in so many schools these days. As Rethinking Schoolseditors wrote recently, “This endeavor demands that young people exercise their utopian imaginations to consider alternatives of all kinds. And it invites them to ‘talk back’ to those interests that promote and benefit from endless consumption—including the publishers of their own textbooks.”

This is our chance to develop a generation for whom climate awareness is as natural as logging onto Facebook.

Scholastic: From Big Coal to Big Egg

—By Kate Sheppard

| Thu Aug. 4, 2011 12:22 PM PDT

Earlier this year environmental and educational groups criticized the publishing giant Scholastic for partnering with the coal lobby to produce classroom materials on energy. The company ended up apologizing for it shortly thereafter and promising to be more vigilant in the future when partnering with outside organizations. But even with the a new advisory board and standards, the company still plans to partner with Big Egg for classroom educational materials.

Last week, the company issued a statement from its president and CEO Richard Robinson with an update on the actions it's taken since the coal kerfuffle. It noted that it is now focusing on working "only with a carefully selected list of non-profit, corporate and government partners," which will be vetted by a new board it created. Robinson predicted that this will result in axing a number of their corporate partners and about 40 percent fewer partnerships overall in the next year. The company also stated that it is "strengthening the editorial review of sponsored supplemental educational content and putting additional checks in place to ensure the accuracy and impartiality of the content."

In an interview with the *New York Times*, Robinson acknowledged that "once in a while there was a slip-up in editorial judgment" when it came to their sponsorship program, and vowed to improve. In addition to the coal group, its corporate partners have included the water filter company Brita, Microsoft, Disney, Nestlé and Shell.

But as the Times noted, the company still plans to partner with trade groups like the American Egg Board—the flacks behind the "Incredible Edible Egg" slogan. From the piece:

In the 2010-11 school year, the program included a Back to Breakfast contest in which 12 teachers each won $5,000 for short essays describing how they would use that grant, with the winners creating videos to post on YouTube. In one video, "Eggucation Week Back to Breakfast Challenge," a Chicago fourth-grade teacher tells of teaching her students about the benefits of eating eggs, and asking them to create egg recipes. Susan Linn, director of the Boston advocacy group, said the egg program raised many of the same issues that the discontinued ones had.

The Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood points out that while healthy eating is of course an excellent educational topic, that information is probably not best presented by Big Egg.

Meanwhile, a conservative Christian group is now going after the Scholastic for another item in its collection: The Magic School Bus and the Climate Challenge. The Magic School Bus series is among its most popular, but the Cornwall Alliance argues that the book is promoting "global warming alarmism" in schools. The group also uses this as an opportunity to promote their own video series about how environmentalists are pushing "anti-Christian" views. Perhaps they'd prefer that Scholastic keep the lessons sponsored by Big Coal?