SEE: http://www.hmhco.com/about-hmh/executive-leadership
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THE VIDEO:
ALEX JONES INTERVIEWS O'KEEFE
Greedy Textbook Exec: Common Core,
‘It’s Never About The Kids’
CONSERVATIVE ACTIVIST JAMES O'KEEFE TARGETS COMMON CORE WITH NEW HIDDEN CAMERA VIDEO
BY EMMA BROWN
SEE: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/education/wp/2016/01/12/conservative-activist-james-okeefe-targets-common-core-with-new-hidden-camera-video/; republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, and research purposes:
Conservative activist James O’Keefe has targeted Common Core with a new video that purports to show that companies embraced the academic standards for their profit-making potential. It shows a woman identified as a textbook publishing employee saying that she “hates kids” and that aligning academic standards is “what they have to do to sell the books.”
“You don’t think that educational publishing companies are in it for the kids, do you?” the employee, identified as Dianne Barrow, an account manager for the publishing company Houghton-Mifflin, said in the heavily edited video released Tuesday by O’Keefe’s Project Veritas. “No, it’s all about the money.”
A woman who identified herself as Barrow, reached by telephone, told The Washington Post that she was fired Tuesday while at a sales meeting in Orlando. She said she was told she had put the company “in a bad light.”
She said she had not yet seen the video, but after being told about the statements attributed to her, she said they had been taken out of context. “None of those statements were standalone statements, and they were completely misconstrued,” she said.
Barrow, who said she began her career as a teacher, said she believes that Common Core is a good thing for children because it creates consistent academic expectations across the country. As for the statement about hating kids? “I said that as a joke,” she said. “Who hates kids?”
Linda Zecher, chief executive of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, moved quickly to distance the company from the video and the statements Barrow is shown making.
“Houghton Mifflin Harcourt is as appalled by these comments as we expect readers will be. These statements in no way reflect the views of HMH and the commitment of our over 4,000 employees who dedicate their lives to serving teachers and students every day,” Zecher said in a statement Tuesday. “The individual who made these comments is a former employee who was with HMH for less than a year.”
O’Keefe, whose previous undercover videos have targeted Planned Parenthood and the left-leaning advocacy organization ACORN, has been accused of editing footage in order to promote his point of view. The new video is framed as evidence that Common Core was designed to be good for corporations, not for students — a common charge among anti-Common Core activists.
Common Core supporters condemned the statements in the video, saying that they weren’t representative of the movement to adopt common academic standards across the country.
“While there are bad actors in every profession, it would be wrong and irresponsible to suggest that a few isolated incidents are representative of the tens of thousands of dedicated teachers and educators who support high academic standards and devote themselves daily to ensuring kids are prepared for success after high school,” said Blair Mann, spokeswoman for the Collaborative for Student Success, a pro-Common Core advocacy group, in a statement.
Blair added: “Still this incident, however isolated it may be, underscores the importance of states and local school districts exercising fully their local control over decisions involving books and curriculum. Common Core Standards are state-initiated, state-created, state-adopted and completely voluntary K-12 standards in math and English that are comparable across state lines. And while these education goals allow parents to compare student progress, they do not put any entity – including textbook publishers or the federal government – in charge of local decision making.”
The film shows undercover activists posing as political consultants and speaking to Barrow about textbook publishing and apparently about Common Core, the national academic standards that have been adopted by more than 40 states. The standards are a frequent target for many conservatives, who say they are evidence of federal overreach in education.
Barrow never says the words “Common Core” in the 7-minute video. But she alludes to the fact that common academic standards are good for publishers, whose bottom lines benefit when they don’t have to tailor their textbooks to 50 different sets of state standards: “The fact that they have to align the educational standards is what they have to do to sell the books,” Barrow says in the video.
“You know it’s just like any business. If you’re selling t-shirts, you want your t-shirts to fit everybody.”
Barrow appears to criticize the publishing giant Pearson in the video, saying she used to work for that company. “It owns the world. You know? They just do underhanded things,” she said.
Pearson spokeswoman Laura Howe issued a statement in response Tuesday: “The comments in this video in no way represent Pearson’s values or business practices. They are offensive to our 40,000 employees, many of whom are parents, former teachers, or students themselves, and are dedicated to working each and every day to help people make more of their lives through learning.”
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EXCLUSIVE VIDEO: TEXTBOOK EXEC REVEALS GREEDY TRUTH BEHIND COMMON CORE: ‘IT’S NEVER ABOUT THE KIDS’
"There's always money in it," admits publishing company executive
BY ADAN SALAZAR
republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, and research purposes
“It’s never about the kids,” an executive for one of the largest Common Core textbook publishing companies admits in a recent undercover sting video released exclusively to Infowars.
“There’s always money in it,” according to Amelia Petties, Strategic Account Executive for Houghton-Mifflin Harcourt, who told undercover journalists with Project Veritas that rebranding Common Core would generate huge profits, kids be damned.
In the video, Petties claims the Common Core curriculum is here to stay, but that “slapping a new name on it” couldn’t hurt, “Because I can sell a shit ton of training around whatever you’re calling it.”
When asked whether the quality of children’s lessons ever influence the sales of textbooks, Petties replies, “It’s never about the kids.”
Petties’ admission makes her the second Houghton Mifflin representative to be caught on tape admitting that profits trump their textbooks’ educational value.
On Tuesday, Project Veritas released another video exposing questionable comments made by Houghton-Mifflin West Coast sales manager Dianne Barrow, who made it a point to proclaim, “I hate kids.”
“I’m in it to sell books,” Barrow told undercover reporters. “Don’t even kid yourself for a heartbeat.”
“It’s all about the money,” she added. “What are you, crazy? It’s all about the money.”
“You don’t think that the educational publishing companies are in it for education, do you? No, they’re in it for the money,” she stated.
Houghton-Mifflin Senior Vice President Bianca Olson confirmed to the Daily MailTuesday Barrow has since been terminated.
Project Veritas took off in 2009 after the group shed light on community organizer ACORN’s nefarious activities, and has since worked to expose voter fraud, the wide open border and now the dangers behind the Common Core curriculum.
The latest admissions will no doubt bolster the growing movement to repeal federal Common Core standards.
Amelia Petties has not yet responded to Infowars’ request for comment. Infowars is also awaiting reply from Houghton Mifflin.
If you’d like to ask about the status of Ms. Petties, contact the Senior Vice President of Corporate Affairs at Houghton-Mifflin Harcourt, Bianca Olson at bianca.olson@hmhco.com
The CEO is Linda Zecher. Her email (we think) islinda.zecher@hmhco.com.
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BUILDING THE MACHINE -
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BUILDING THE MACHINE -
The Common Core Documentary
by Home School Legal Defense
http://hslda.org/
Ex-Textbook Company Exec. Admits: Common Core Has Anti-American, Anti-Christian Agenda
by SELWYN DUKE
SEE: http://www.thenewamerican.com/culture/education/item/22377-ex-textbook-company-exec-admits-common-core-has-anti-american-anti-christian-agenda; republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, and research purposes:
VIDEO:
Islam is in and Christianity is out, the Founding Fathers are just “dead white guys,” “D**n the Second Amendment,” and people who oppose Common Core are “idiots.” These are just a few of the sentiments expressed by a former marketing executive for textbook publishing giant Pearson Education, as she reveals on hidden camera that the federal government’s Common Core and Advanced Placement U.S. History framework are designed to indoctrinate America’s children with a leftist world view.
Kim Koerber made the startling comments in the third video (below) of a Project Veritas series on Common Core, the controversial educational scheme Barack Obama has sought to impose on states nationwide. As Project Veritas reports, the former Pearson insider, “who now works for National Geographic, was caught on camera justifying the Common Core curriculum on the grounds of anti-American and unconstitutional values. ‘People that are not educated, Fox TV viewers, think that Common Core comes from the educated liberal groups and that’s why they are against it…,’ revealed Koerber to undercover Project Veritas journalists.”
Unaware she was being recorded, Koerber let her hair down — and the put-downs flowed freely. On the Founding Fathers she said, “I did a big presentation yesterday for AP US History and the AP US History agenda was set, until Texas got upset about it and they wanted to have their founders — they wanted founders in it. And it’s like, come on, the dead white guys did not create this country. It was a whole bunch of different kinds of people.... They want to talk about those dead white guys.”
Critics might wonder how Koerber would react if Martin Luther King were diminished by being characterized as merely a “dead black guy.” Regardless, history is what it is, not what social engineers might wish it to be. The fact is that all 56 signatories to the Declaration of Independence and all those who crafted our Constitution — the very foundation for our government — were white men.
But while this anti-American spirit characterizes Common Core, it’s nothing new. As I reported in 2006, “In the textbook Creating America (A better title would be Creating History), the authors identify 10 representative American heroes. But while neither Thomas Jefferson nor Benjamin Franklin was among them, the list does include: Abigail Adams, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Ida B. Wells, Queen Liliuokalani and … Zitkala-Sa…. Yet another book had five pages about Marilyn Monroe but only five lines about George Washington.”
Speaking of the Founders, John Adams wrote in 1796, “The Christian religion is, above all the religions that ever prevailed or existed in ancient or modern times, the religion of wisdom, virtue, equity and humanity.” But Koerber obviously disagrees. She also had the following exchange with the Project Veritas reporter:
Project Veritas: Christianity is totally out of the common core?
Koerber: Yes it is, totally. It’s not a core concept at all.
Project Veritas: But then there is a mention of other religions like Islam.
Koerber: Yeah well you have to because...
Project Veritas: So how did Islam get worked in?
Koerber: Islam … they said you have to talk about Islam, you have to talk about Judaism and you have to talk about Christianity and they wanted to make it big about Christianity; no it’s like, everybody needs to know about everything else.
In the same vein, Koerber also said that it’s “offensive to have these [Christian] prayers in the school board.” The reality, however, is that Congress has opened with prayers from the time of our nation’s very founding, evidencing how government — even the central government — could acknowledge God’s providence and appeal to Him for guidance. The phrase “the separation of church and state,” which Koerber claimed conservatives “don’t understand,” is not in the Constitution because it was a minority view when the document was crafted; and even among that minority, the “separation” involved keeping government out of religion, not religion out of government. As for the Establishment Clause, it merely prohibits the creation of a national church. Anyone saying otherwise is making the tacit claim that he understands the Constitution better than the men who wrote it.
While Koerber condemned conservatives for supposedly not wanting to teach all of the Constitution, she seemingly contradicted herself, saying that you “should know a little bit about” the document but “shouldn’t have to memorize the thing” and that it’s “not a necessity for the kids.” She also wasn’t very fond of some of it, saying “D**n the Second Amendment. I don’t think personal handguns need to be on anyone except the government, the police. What is the purpose of having a gun?” Of course, one could then ask: What’s the purpose of the police having guns? If Koerber can answer that question, she’ll be able to answer her own. Note that the Supreme Court ruled in 2005 that the police have no constitutional obligation to protect you from harm.
Koerber’s apparent contempt for our history and traditions not surprisingly extended to the old West. While defending Pearson’s insistence on relating to schoolchildren that there were prostitutes present during that era (as if that’s unusual), she said, “The Wild West was not a nice place. And our kids need to know that that’s what it was like, you know.”
The truth, however, is that the “Wild West” wasn’t all that wild. As the Independent Review wrote in its 2010 essay “The Culture of Violence in the American West: Myth versus Reality”: “Contrary to popular perception, the Old West was much more peaceful than American cities are today.... Actual history concludes that the civil society of the American West in the nineteenth century was not very violent.” The notion of a “Wild West” largely comes from Dime Western novelists, who, like modern filmmakers, fictionalized accounts of frontier happenings in order to make money and entertain the public.
Yet despite Koerber’s apparent ignorance, she calls opponents of Common Core “idiots.” But she also reveals that the textbook companies, in collusion with the government, are playing Americans for fools. Alluding to how Common Core is a money-making scheme, she revealed, “Anytime a change happens that has to be put in a textbook, suddenly the school district has to adopt new books.” Ka-ching.
The good news is that a great number of states are rejecting Common Core, and presidential hopefuls are speaking out against it. As Project Veritas writes:
“Nobody can win when you’re in favor of Common Core. It’s a disaster,” said Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump [speaking to a South Carolina audience]….
“I haven’t seen the video on Common Core,” said Senator Ted Cruz. “I saw that he [PV head James O’Keefe] did it. I’ve seen a lot of his other videos…. I’ll tell you this, as President I will instruct the Department of Education to end Common Core on day one.”
“The real issues for Common Core is the elites in our culture who want to indoctrinate our young people into a certain way to think, a certain belief structure, and it’s all spread out through Common Core,” said former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum.
For sure. And as Abraham Lincoln warned, "The philosophy of the school room in one generation will be the philosophy of government in the next." Common Core today — communist corps tomorrow.
