PBS Pushes Lesson Plans Encouraging Students to... Sympathize with Terrorists?!
Kudos to The Blaze for this. At first I was going to point out that a PBS Lesson Plan encouraging students to "understand" suicide bombers puts the "high" in "higher education." Then I read closely and apparently it's not college... It's for high school. I immediately started homeschooling my kids. Or, I would have if I had any.
Anyway, read on...
“Dying to be a Martyr.” That’s the name of a lesson plan offered to students and teachers at no cost by the Public Broadcasting Service, a taxpayer-funded nonprofit, and some of the material seems to encourage students to learn to sympathize with radical Islamic terrorists.The “Dying to be a Martyr” lesson plan is offered through PBS’ LearningMedia website, “a media-on-demand service offering educators access to the best of public media and delivers research-based, classroom-ready digital learning experiences,” according to the PBS website.
Okay, so the title is a dead give away. "Dying to be a Martyr," is as unbiased a title as "Starving For Love" a memoir by Jeffery Dahmer.
The stated “objectives” for the lesson plan, which is designed for use by students in grades nine through 12, include analyzing “why the Middle East conflict began and continues today,” discussing “how religions can unite or divide people” and explaining “why individuals and groups sometimes turn to tactics of terrorism, and evaluate how terrorism affects the world we live in.”
Part 5 of the lesson is Vogue Model Murdered. For “Not Wearing Islamic Clothing…” and Part 6 is New Study Finds People Who Read News More Likely to be ‘Islamophobic’.
Ok, so it's not. But it should be.
Look, I've no issue with people getting inside the heads of the opposition, understanding them, knowing their motivations. Someone famous somewhere once said "Know thy enemy" after all. But understanding your enemy and sympathizing with your enemy are not the same thing. Alas, this is 2017 where it's hate speech to say men are not women.
Also, high school students are not CIA agents who'll be tasked with going undercover with ISIS. So how teaching high schoolers about how soft and cuddly Islamists are once you understand them, is a bit inappropriate. Maybe we could balance out the curriculum with "Fighting for Life: Why Anti-Abortion Advocates are Champions."
Oh, no, too controversial? Uh huh...
