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Lefty magazine promotes teachers’ guides, claims schools aren’t providing a liberal viewpoint

Chris Moody Chris Moody is a reporter for The Daily Caller.
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Teachers who may be worried that their pupils don’t have enough access to curriculum materials with a liberal slant will be pleased to know that the lefty Nation magazine is revamping their Educators Program, which includes a weekly series of teacher guides designed to influence what is taught in schools.

A spokesman for the magazine told The Daily Caller that the magazine wants to ensure students are exposed to liberal thinking, citing what he said was a tendency for classes to exclude progressive ideas and viewpoints.

“The real idea behind it is to bring the left perspective to issues to make sure students have both left and right available to them,” the Nation’s Vice President of Circulation Art Stupar told TheDC. “This is an opportunity for students to view what the progressive left thinks about a particular issue.”

The liberal magazine sends online curriculum guides each week to teachers that include experts from the magazine, talking points about current events and suggested discussion topics for the classroom. The guides are a part of the magazine’s “learning packs,” which offer educators access to its archives dating back to shortly after the Civil War.

“In this year of economic uncertainty and critical mid-term elections, the corporate-owned media will not be offering lessons about: our rigged political system; the conservative crusade against Muslims; the phony ‘panic’ over debt; vets abandoned by the VA; taxes and the Tea Party and much, much more,” read the magazine’s announcement for the new school year, which begins today for many students around the country.

Critics told TheDC that the idea that American teachers need more liberal education materials to keep “balance” in classrooms is preposterous.

“I like my friends over there [at the Nation], but that is laughable,” said Jack Fowler, publisher of National Review, a conservative magazine. “That’s like dropping water into the ocean.”

According to the Nation’s spokesman Ben Wyskida, the magazine has proposed teaming up with National Review on a collaborative education program, but no decisions have been made. Fowler said they were open to it, but he was not making it a priority.

“If there was a backburner for the backburner for the backburner, this would be on it,” he said.

After five years of offering the curriculum guides, the Nation reaches about 1,500 educators around the country. National Review does not have a similar program.

“We have no outreach to the three conservative professors that there are,” Fowler said.

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