Fifth graders in a public school in Corpus Christi, Texas will no longer be learning that the United States deserved the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks because of its foreign policy.
Kara Sands, the mother of a student at Flour Bluff Intermediate School, announced earlier this week that the school has agreed to stop teaching that America’s “negative effects” led to the attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people.
Sands says she made the discovery when she was perusing a quiz her son had taken earlier this month.
The third question on the controversial quiz was: “Why might the United States be a target for terrorism?” according to CBS Houston. The credited answer — which Sands’s son did, in fact, select — was (B.) “Decisions we made in the United States have had negative effects on people elsewhere.”
Other possible answers were (A.) “Other people just don’t like Americans,” (C.) “Terrorists hate everyone,” and, of course, (D.) “None of the above.”
The quiz occurred after students watched a half-hour-long video in class called “Remembering September 11th.”
It shows a girl asking an adult about the four coordinated terrorist attacks launched by Islamist terrorists. The adult reportedly answers that some people believe the United States has abused its superpower status.
The video and the corresponding test were both created by a California-based company called SAFARI Montage, says KRIS-TV, the local NBC affiliate.
Sands posted a picture of the quiz on her Facebook page.
“This appalling video blames our country for the murder of over 3,000 people,” she commented.
The irate mother contacted the the unnamed fifth-grade teacher and the (also unnamed) principal at her son’s school. She also called SAFARI Montage, which says it will change the question but is otherwise standing behind its video.
At a Thursday night school board meeting, Sands and other parents had their say against both the America-blaming video and quiz, reports local CBS affiliate KZTV. The school board also aired the video.
“I see it’s worse than I thought,” Sands said after the public screening, according to KZTV. “It prefaces with, ‘we can see what really happened or why it happened, and then we can move on.’ It talks about things that we have done, decisions that we have made is the reason why.”
“I’m not going to justify radical terrorists by saying we did anything to deserve that,” Sands also said, according to KRIS-TV.
The school board has apparently capitulated to Sands concerning the video.
“The Flour Bluff Independent School District has agreed to stop showing the offensive & misleading Safari Montage video ‘Remembering September 11th’!!!” a jubilant Sands reported on Facebook earlier this week
Sands has also charged that her son previously brought home a worksheet on the Bill of Rights that labels food and medicine as rights.
“He got marked wrong, because it is, it is our responsibility for shelter. It’s our responsibility for food for medicine. It’s not the government’s responsibility,” Sands told KRIS-TV.
Neither food nor medicine are anywhere mentioned in the Bill of Rights.
Flour Bluff school officials have stressed to KRIS-TV that Sands is the only parent to object to the test. On the other hand, the Facebook posting of the quiz now has nearly 5,000 likes and 11,000 shares.
The Flour Bluff Independent School District currently has 936 likes.
This kerfuffle is far from The Lone Star State’s first rodeo when it comes to problematic, politically-charged material allegedly seeping into school curriculums. The state seems to have an unrelenting problem in this regard.
The most common complaints relate to CSCOPE, a prefab curriculum that critics say is riddled with cultural relativism and downright leftist assumptions, particularly in social studies. (RELATED: Ten shocking lessons a huge Texas conglomerate has foisted on public school students)
A CSCOPE world history lesson plan that was available to teachers across Texas as recently as January of 2012 depicted the Boston Tea Party as an act of terrorism. “It is believed that the terrorist attack was a response to the policies enacted by the occupying country’s government,” the assignment read. (RELATED: Texas schools teach Boston Tea Party as act of terrorism)
Also, in a world geography class in Lumberton, Texas, a teacher allegedly encouraged high school girls to dress up in full-length Islamic burqas. The teacher also instructed the entire class that Muslim terrorists are actually freedom fighters. (RELATED: Texas public school students don burqas, learn that Muslim terrorists are freedom fighters)
