Utahs Republic

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This is an LDS related article, but whether or not you are LDS, I believe there is something for everyone here in the principles I’m discussing. These are my thoughts alone and should not be construed as an official LDS church position.

I’d been thinking about writing this article for a while and then a few weeks ago a friend sent me this quote and that triggered the impetus to get writing. In April 1983 General Conference of the LDS church, President Marion G. Romney made this statement.

“We of this Church can come to a unity and a oneness which will give us strength beyond anything we have yet enjoyed if we will obtain a sounder understanding of the principles of the gospel and come to a unity in our interpretations of present world conditions and trends. This we can do by prayerful study of the Lord’s word, including that given to us through the living prophet.

This is the way to come to a unity. If we will study the word of the Lord as it comes to us through the standard works and through the instructions of the living prophet and not harden our hearts, but humble ourselves and develop a real desire to understand its application to us in our own peculiar circumstances, and then ask the Lord in faith, believing that we shall receive (see Doctrine & Covenants 18:18), all the while being diligent in keeping the commandments of the Lord, surely the path we should follow will be made known unto us, and we will be able to face the world as a solid unit.”

President Romney gives a powerful promise toward unifying the church and all mankind as they understand the gospel. I would like to address the most basic tenet of the LDS faith, the foundation principle of all of God’s eternal laws, and the one point of doctrine which I believe if everyone understood and lived would serve to fulfill this statement by a prophet of God. The law is agency.

In the LDS church we often hear the phrase “free agency” in gospel discussions. What does that mean? The term “free agency” doesn’t appear in scripture, so what is agency and is it really free? Can a person be on the Lord’s side if they follow the devil’s means to get to the Lord’s end? Read the rest of this entry »

I doubt this will satisfy the site critics who say I never admit when I’m wrong, :) but I was wrong in saying Vern Henshaw’s son’s hiring shouldn’t be investigated. Any time something like that happens it should be followed up on to ensure the proper procedure was followed and there isn’t any favoritism being engaged in. It is inappropriate. It is certainly viable that the hiring person was swayed by the “Henshaw” name knowing it was the superintendent’s son, even if he was a great interviewee.

Someone emailed me after seeing the editorial in the Herald and asked if since Kevin is conservative I was OK with potential wrongdoing. Absolutely not. When I sent out the first email, a friend emailed and told me how sharp Kevin was and that he probably was the best and I started thinking I’d over-reacted and quite honestly I didn’t have the energy to open up another issue related to ASD and I just dropped it.

Then the Herald published the article a week ago which didn’t even tell the full story and honestly, I tried to distance myself from it because I don’t have time and energy to do “one more thing.” However, that isn’t right and the situation does call for looking into.

On Saturday, September 18, 2010, there was a fantastic Constitution conference held in Salt Lake City with a wide variety of presentations. If you didn’t get a chance to attend, please try to do so the next time the opportunity arises. Stephen Pratt and other people from around the country came in to educate and present on various ways they have succeeded in taking back states’ rights. Personally, the coolest thing for me was when Sharon Angle spoke at the end of the day about her activist efforts in Nevada and how she finally found an attorney who found a way around the state Supreme Court which had a ruling that violated state law. Someone else may remember the story itself better than I at this point, but her solution was meaningful to me because this attorney used Article 4, Section 4 of the constitution to get the federal government to overturn the state court based on the duty the federal government has to protect republican government in the states. That clause in my amendment to the Republican Party platform is what caused it to be shot down last May by people who didn’t want to hear the feds have a duty to intervene in instances like this, and it’s exactly what saved Nevada citizens from an illegal tax hike. That was cool. :)

A close second was being able to co-present one of the workshops with Susie Schnell. Susie, if you don’t recall, is the parent in Highland who had the extremely negative experience with her daughter’s teachers and the school district democracy issue, that led to the Green Party radical in CA who believed the Founding Fathers were “predatory elitists.” You can read her story here if you’ve never seen it. It gets worse than that too.

Anyway, the workshop we presented was on education issues and how the national movement to dumb our children down and make them good little socialists is seeping into Utah schools. There are some quotes we found just last week before the presentation that you’ve never seen but will make your hair stand on end when you understand what the people behind public education intend for our children.

Here is a link to download the Powerpoint presentation, and here are the 5 parts of our 45 minute presentation, uploaded by Joyce Mitchell who was in attendance and filmed it. There is a higher quality version that will be out in a couple weeks by the official people that filmed the presentation, but you can hear and see everything here just fine.

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

Steve Baugh is a man who is appreciated by many in our community for his years of service as a teacher and former superintendent of Alpine School District (ASD). I have met Mr. Baugh once at an ASD function and he’s a very pleasant individual. However, now that he is entering the political arena running as a candidate for the Utah House of Representatives, it is fair to look at some of the decisions he has made and associations he has entered into to determine what type of person we would be electing to the legislature. I think when you consider the information below, you will come to the conclusion that although we may agree on many things, Mr. Baugh doesn’t represent the traditional values we hold dear in Utah county.

INVESTIGATIONS MATH

On his candidate website, he lists his first pledge as “Trust me to fight for world-class education for all children.” It is disappointing that he would lead off with this when he was the superintendent of Alpine School District who initiated the process of bringing residents the disastrous Investigations math program. Not a good foot to start on. Nor is it positive that his CITES organization (detailed below) pushes constructivist math in all their training.

EMPLOYMENT & JOHN GOODLAD ASSOCIATION

Mr. Baugh seems intentionally vague on his website about his current employment. He merely states “I am an associate professor of educational leadership at BYU where I direct a school-university partnership centered in the school of education.”

To be specific, Steve Baugh is the director of CITES, the Center for the Improvement of Teacher Education and Schooling. This organization disseminates John Goodlad’s “Agenda for Education in a Democracy,” to teachers and administrators in several surrounding school districts which are part of the BYU-PSP (Public School Partnership).

John Goodlad is a dangerous man as anyone that has read this website knows. He is in favor of the fundamental transformation of America from a republic to socialism and emphasizes teaching people the humanistic philosophy of moral relativism (ex. since there is no God and no absolutes we should democratically vote on morals, knowledge, patriotism, etc…). Reinforcing this notion is the fact that Goodlad has invited Bill Ayers the terrorist turned educator to be the keynote speaker at his October NNER conference (National Network for Educational Renewal).

How tied is Mr. Baugh to Goodlad? From the research section of Mr. Baugh’s bio page (https://education.byu.edu/edlf/faculty/baugh_steven.html) on BYU’s website, he lists,

“Moral Dimensions of Teaching. I am interested in the moral dimensions of teaching as identified by Dr. John Goodlad and his associates. Included in this interest are issues of how to help people develop a deeper understanding of the moral dimensions and then to use that understanding to make applications in their work for the benefit of both adults and children.”

Really Mr. Baugh? One of John Goodlad’s “Moral Dimensions” is “Enculturating the young in a social and political democracy.” A social democracy is defined as the gradual transformation of a capitalist society to a democratic welfare state and I believe we should not come anywhere near indoctrinating our children into that philosophy.

Here’s a few quotes from Mr. Goodlad related to his “moral dimensions of teaching” (footnote references at the end):

• “Most youth still hold the same values of their parents… if we do not alter this pattern, if we don’t resocialize, our system will decay.” (1)
• “Parents do not own their children. They have no ‘natural right’ to control their education fully.” (2)
• “The curriculum of the future ‘will be what one might call the humanistic curriculum.’” (3)
• “Enlightened social engineering is required to face situations that demand global action now.” (4)
• “…the state we should strive for is better described in Deweyan terms as a social democracy.” (5)
• “…educators must resist the quest for certainty.  If there were certainty there would be no scientific advancement. So it is with morals and patriotism.” (6)
• “Education is a task for both parents and state. The state, parents, and children all have interests that must be protected.” (7)

This sounds like a nightmare scenario for God-fearing parents.

Utah, with less than 1% of the nation’s population, has the rare and unfortunate distinction of possessing 13% of the nation’s AED Scholars (Goodlad’s national title for those fully indoctrinated in his “Agenda for Education in a Democracy” effort). Mr. Baugh is one of these special recipients along with another member of the McKay School of Education at BYU, and 2 others who are administrators at Alpine School District. Why Mr. Baugh doesn’t cite this distinction on his campaign website isn’t surprising when you understand the controversy. (https://education.byu.edu/news/2007/01/01/aed-scholars/)

How involved is Mr. Baugh with Goodlad’s organizations? Very. Over the years he has presented at Goodlad conferences and been very involved. In 2009 he was on the planning committee for Goodlad’s NNER conference that year (National Network for Educational Renewal). He was on an expert study panel that presented at the conference; he presented with others on the democratic purpose of schooling; and he presented “A Continuing Struggle for a Center of Pedagogy: The Evolution of CITES at Brigham Young University.” (lets hope the struggle continues…)(from https://depts.washington.edu/nner2009/nner_program.pdf)

“Well,” say those who embrace Goodlad and understand his philosophies, “we only take the good and reject the bad.” The problem is, by associating with someone known to have radically *bad* ideas, it gives credence to their organization to be able to say, “well even the people at the McKay School of Education and Alpine School District administration embrace Goodlad so you should too.” This promotes the full philosophy to those that never look into the true Goodlad Agenda.

CITES FINANCIAL CONCERNS

Two years ago (January 2008) I discovered on www.UtahsRight.com that ASD had 3 employees identified not as teachers or administrators, but had positions labeled “1,” “2,” and “3.” I had no idea what that meant since everyone else had a title, so I Googled the names and discovered that although ASD had these three on payroll, they actually worked for CITES at BYU. I don’t know if they were getting a BYU salary in addition to this salary, but they were making between $41,000 and $66,000. Two years later, the UtahsRight.com site shows these individuals now work for ASD, two of them as teachers and one as a principal. I’m honestly not sure what has transpired over the past couple years but I am curious to know why they were on ASD’s salary but working for CITES, and now they are apparently working for ASD. They now make between $50,000 and $74,000. Not bad promotions for a down economy.

CITES has received public grant funds but haven’t cooperated in showing where that money has gone. Senator Margaret Dayton has gone to great lengths to find out what happened to this money and she has been stonewalled at every turn. Why aren’t these public funds being instantly revealed? They aren’t private grants, they are public tax dollars and the public has a right to know how they’re being spent and if it’s in accordance with the reason for which they were applied.

This following table provided by the Utah State Office of the Legislative Fiscal Analyst shows self-reported funds these “Public School Partnership” districts have received from local and federal sources and then sent to CITES during the last couple years. I have reorganized the chart for formatting purposes in this document. I do not know why there is such a large discrepancy between districts, but if ASD was indeed paying salaries for CITES employees, those dollars are not included in the totals below.

Brigham Young University
Center for the Improvement of Teacher Education & Schooling (CITES)
School District Funding to CITES

2008-2009 Funding School District*

District	Local	Federal	Total
Alpine	$ 29,180	$ 12,050	$ 41,230
Jordan	$ 143,698		$ 143,698
Nebo			$ 71,375
Provo	$ 20,000	$ 507,027	$ 527,027
Wasatch	$ 31,250		$ 31,250
Total	$ 227,998	$ 532,527	$ 831,900

2009-2010 Funding

District	Local	Federal	Total
Alpine	$ 29,180	$ 12,050	$ 41,230
Jordan	$ 73,718		$ 73,718
Nebo			$ 71,375
Provo	$ 10,730	$ 380,957	$ 391,687
Wasatch	$ 8,755		$ 8,755
Total	$ 122,383	$ 393,007	$ 568,455

*Note: Information is self‐reported by school districts. No information was included by Nebo SD on their mix of funds

Prepared by Office of the Legislative Fiscal Analyst, 05/2010 PL

These charts make one wonder about a lot of things related to this “partnership” and what’s really happening with the public tax dollars being funneled to CITES by our school districts. Nice transparency with our tax dollars. Regardless of what’s actually happening, it smells bad and is perhaps another reason Mr. Baugh doesn’t list his association as the CITES director on his campaign website.

UTAH CITIZENS ETHICS INITIATIVE

However, these things all pale in comparison to what I consider the most troubling aspect of Mr. Baugh’s public statements, that of his support of the Citizens Ethics Initiative (https://www.deseretnews.com/article/700014368/Former-Alpine-school-chief-Steven-Baugh-running-for-Utah-Legislature.html).

Standing outside your local grocery stores you may have seen individuals asking people if they want ethics in our government. “Of course” is the constant reply. “Then sign here” comes the workers’ response. Those unfortunate enough to sign onto the document don’t realize they are signing away their government into the hands of political elitists who would transformation Utah into an oligarchy.

What is this “ethics initiative?” Anyone who has read the proposed language should be shocked enough to never sign onto it, but those who have endorsed it openly and seek public office after such openness should be rejected by the voters by a wide margin.

A few details about the initiative should illustrate why there is concern.

1. Gives the writers of the initiative power to select who sits on the ethics committee if the Republicans and Democrats in the legislature can’t agree. (ie. A stalemate means those who support the bill writers win)
2. Once on the committee, you can’t be removed except by death or your choice.
3. The committee is able to investigate both current and past legislators.
4. The commission can issue subpoenas.
5. Legislators must disclose client lists even if they would be protected under a professional client confidentiality agreement.
6. The independence of the ethics committee cannot be threatened (ie. Funding cuts) or impaired without violating the bill so they become the untouchables.
7. Once a person is accused of a violation, they may not participate in the proceedings, but the accusers CAN.
8. The committee is not subject to judicial review and the Attorney General is forbidden from imposing him/herself into a role as counsel for the commission.

The constitutional thieves that wrote this bill should be run out of state on a rail. They’re better suited to a life in a communist dictatorship than to live in a free country.

For more information see https://www.unethicalreform.org/.

CONCLUSION

While I’m sure Mr. Baugh and I would agree on so much more than we disagree on, the above items are so troubling that I could never vote for an individual who has been involved in such activities and associations. I encourage you to re-elect Representative Stephen Sandstrom rather than bring Mr. Baugh into power where his philosophical views would carry an even stronger statewide weight.

Sincerely,

Oak Norton

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John Goodlad quote references:

1) John Goodlad, “Report of Task Force C: Strategies for Change,” Schooling for the Future, a report to the President’s Commission on Schools Finance, Issue #9, 1971
2) John Goodlad, Roger Soder & Timothy McMannon, “Developing Democratic Character in the Young”, pg. 164
3) John Goodlad, “Directions of Curriculum Change”, The NEA Journal, March 1966
4) John Goodlad, “Schooling for a Global Age,” pg. xiii
5) John Goodlad, “Developing Democratic Character in the Young”, 2001, pg. 153
6) John Goodlad, Corinne Mantle-Bromley, Stephen John Goodlad, “Education for Everyone: Agenda for Education in a Democracy”, Woods Learning Center, pg. 6
7) John Goodlad, “Developing Democratic Character in the Young”, 2001, pg. 164

What happens when a piano company builds for a communist country and then suddenly stops? It has to figure out what a quality product is. Check out this neat video of a piano manufacturer in Estonia someone sent me.

Thomas Jefferson said, “it is better to tolerate the rare instance of a parent refusing to let his child be educated, than to shock the common feelings and ideas by the forcible asportation and education of the infant against the will of the father.”

So should we end compulsory schooling started by Horace Mann in the 1800’s? Vote and then leave a comment why or why not. What would the major obstacles be?

[poll id=”3″]

Kim Komando to the rescue! I’ve never heard Kim get political and she tries to not get overtly political here, but she does a good job explaining the situation. If you’re unfamiliar with the issue, this is a good introduction.

In this clip from a talk by the late Neal A. Maxwell (a Seventy and later Apostle in the LDS church), he lays out the battle of our day over the push for “ir-religion” in our schools. It is time the silent majority awoke.

This is a great video from an interview Yuri did with Ed Griffin (author of “The Creature from Jekyll Island”) back in the 80’s regarding the methodology the communists use to take over a country.

To summarize, Yuri says the Communist purpose is to prevent people from coming to sensible conclusions about what is happening around them.

The stages of infiltration Bezmenov talks about center around a long term plan that leads to the socialization and eventual takeover of a nation. The four steps he says the Soviets aimed for were:

1) Demoralization-pump Marxism into the heads of children – takes 15-20 years so that that generation become the next teachers – due to lack of moral standards a person is unable to assess true information even when directly presented to this person.

2) Destabilization- 2-5 years – economy, foreign relations, defense systems

3) Crisis-6 weeks, violent change in structure and economy

4) Normalization-Leaders promise a paradise on earth and remove free market economy. Government takeover.

Notice how by teaching kids about Marxism and socialism, and degrading their society, they can’t even see truth when it’s plainly in front of them. The Soviets then work on destabilizing the country to the point that they can trigger a crisis. At that point, the leaders promise they will take care of everything for you and in our ignorant bliss, we accept their offer and wind up with a Communist utopia based on social justice as the Communists view it.

After forwarding out the announcement from Parents for Choice in Education (PCE) a few weeks ago as a courtesy to them on Jeb Bush’s visit and presentation on education progress in Florida, some of you were happy to get it, and some of you were surprised that I sent it out. I actually wrestled with the decision to send it out because I’m not a Bush-clan fan because of the Bush family stance on global government. I explained to one of you that the reason I sent it out was because there are 2 issues we are dealing with.

1) How do we improve the effectiveness of the current system until we achieve needed reforms?
2) What is the ideal education system and how do we move toward it?

Jeb Bush has had some success on item 1 and I forwarded out the email since it was directly pertaining to improvements to the current system. Some of you attended Jeb’s presentation and were very excited about the material presented. I believe the current system is in need of reform. Scores keep declining and we keep getting tapped for more money to prop up a system that is slow to respond and largely ineffective at course corrections (for many reasons).

A couple months ago, I asked the question if you were king for a day, what would you change about the education system. I got a number of great responses. Before you read those responses, I’d like to ask you to read this article I recently came across. Changes are coming to the education field. Whenever technology can dramatically reduce costs, change becomes inevitable. If an industry won’t adapt, they’ll get passed by eventually and go the way of the typewriter in the face of the computer.

Please read this article and then continue below.
https://www.lewrockwell.com/north/north874.html

The “King for a Day” project can then be found here (or the link at the top of the screen). I struggled to find the best way to do this, and there are probably better ways, but please contribute and then come back frequently to see what people are posting and help vote the best ideas to the top in each category.
https://www.utahsrepublic.org/king-for-a-day/

Oak