Farmville Central High School in North Carolina is coming under fire for what conservatives believe is an attempt to indoctrinate children into the Muslim faith using Common Core vocabulary exercises.
Fox News commentator Todd Starnes attacked the school on behalf of anonymous parents he spoke to. “What if right after Pearl Harbor our educational system was talking about how great the Japanese emperor was?” one such parent asked. “What if during the Cold War our educational system was telling students how wonderful Russia was?”
The exercises in question are designed to broaden students’ vocabulary while also teaching them about the Islamic faith. For example, the word “mosque” is defined in one sentence, and students are later asked to use the word in a fill-in-the-blank exercise.
In a statement, the Pitt County School District stated that “[t]he course is designed to accompany the world literature text, which emphasizes culture in literature.”
But that was not enough for one friend of a mother of a student at Farmville High, Floridian Dianne Lynn Savage, who posted a video about the assignment on Facebook that went viral over the weekend.
“Can you see my rage?” Savage asked as she read from the vocabulary building exercise. “This is not made up, this isn’t paranoia, this isn’t Islamophobia – this is just fact.”
“You all understand what they’re doing?” she asked. “Bringing in this type of worksheet and this particular lesson, it’s very subliminal. And the fact that you’re using words like, ‘exciting’ and ‘imaginary,’ and that you’re trying to look like it’s a wonderful thing. They’re infiltrating our children’s minds!”
“When was the last time you saw your son or daughter, or grandson or granddaughter, come home from public school with a lesson built around God or Jesus Christ?” she asked. “I thought this wasn’t allowed. I thought they didn’t allow religion in public schools.”
“Now, I know that Muslim isn’t a religion,” Savage continued. “But everybody else wants to classify it as a religion, so why is it being allowed in the schools? They are indoctrinating our children again! They are continuing to indoctrinate them! Only now they’re taking it to a whole new level, my friends.”
In a different video featuring Savage’s husband, Darcy, he discussed his views on why he “doesn’t want Muslims here [in America].”
After noting that some Muslims are secular and “probably going skiing on weekends,” he said that he still does “not want them here, because I tell you what – I trust none of them. For one thing, they don’t condemn what’s in the Koran. You are what you’re taught, and you grow up learning this,” he said, holding up a copy of the Koran, “then you are this.”
“This shit is horrible,” he added, “horrible, horrible, horrible stuff. Research Sharia, people! We have never coexisted, we do not coexist now, and we will never coexist – and the more you try to put us together, the more bloodshed that will be out there.”