James O’Keefe’s Focus on Common Core

Many of you probably know who James O’Keefe is—an activist who specializes in undercover exposés. He and Lila Rose shot onto the national stage when they filmed two videos at Planned Parenthood in which she posed as a teenager who was a victim of statutory rape seeking an illegal abortion. The duo exposed Planned Parenthood’s willingness to thwart the law and enable double child abuse: abortion and statutory rape. Lila has gone on to found LiveAction, a large and successful, nation-wide pro-life organization. She speaks at many conferences across the country and is a bright and articulate advocate for the life movement.

O’Keefe has also continued with his more militant approach, and recently released another set of undercover videos. Interestingly, he has shifted his focus to a new target: Common Core.   In a series of videos, the undercover reporter interviews a number of people involved with Pearson Education, the creators of the Common Core textbooks.

In one video, Kim Koerber who was once an executive at Pearson, discusses Common Core, the new “standardized” system in which Pearson has an incredible amount of money invested. Pearson Education has a lot invested in Common Core and holding their monopoly on the American testing system. Common Dreams—a progressive news source–reported a year ago:

 Pearson Education, the British-owned, for-profit education publishing and high-stakes testing service, rakes in tens of millions in profits at all levels of the American education system—”even when its results don’t measure up.”. . .The education behemoth writes textbooks, workbooks, and standardized tests “that drive instruction in public schools across the nation.” It has developed myriad educational technology products, including software that grades student essays, tracks student behavior, and diagnoses—and allegedly “treats”—attention deficit disorder. At the other end of the pipeline, the company administers teacher licensing exams and coaches teachers once they’re in the classroom.[1]

With her background at Pearson, Ms. Koerber’s candid analysis of Common Core’s principles are troubling. The program, she admits, aims at removing Christianity from curriculums, teaching children about other world religions, particularly Islam, and de-emphasizing the importance of the Founding Fathers in America’s history.

Throughout the video, Ms. Koerber displays a distain for parental rights and local control, two fundamental building blocks of family and society, and freedom. This elite attitude that only certain, enlightened people can decide how parents raise their children and choose what they will be taught had manifested itself more than a few times in the course of human history, and always with disastrous outcomes.

Common Core is an aggressive final push to control the minds of the next generation, to reshape society in a new and un-American mold. It is imperative that we fight for our children’s education—so they have a chance at the future they deserve. It is great to see that James O’Keefe, who has worked to save those young lives from abortion, is continuing to fight for them now in the classroom as the struggle for truth and control continues.

[1] Bad Apples: One Companies Stranglehold on the American Education System, 2/10/15