Starve the Beast! (yes, Big Bird)

By Mary Grabar

This first appeared here.

Although it might seem hopeless with a Democrat-controlled Senate, funds should be eliminated for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and for Americorps, the national service program. That's what Republicans in the House want to do in the budget, with alarm raised by the Associated Press (ever so subtly) about it pleasing the Tea Party (and by implication only a few extremists). But while the media may want to present PBS and Americorps as sacrosanct American institutions, the truth is that both are taxpayer-funded programs for indoctrinating the youth of the country.

Democrat Representative Norm Dicks called it an "extremely partisan proposal"; however, he seemed not to notice that both programs are not written into the Constitution. Indeed, they were started by partisan Democrats in the latter part of the 20th century. In the case of CPB, it was a product of Lyndon Johnson's "Great Society" program (and the mug of Johnson's aid Bill Moyers shows up repeatedly in its programming, including "educational" programming). Americorps was the baby of Ted Kennedy.

This Washington Times editorial sums up CPB's history and its left-wing bias, and why the beast should be starved. Taxpayers of all political persuasions are forced to pay for news and programming that they don't want to watch or listen to.

What is worse is that the programming is foisted onto innocent school children. No doubt "educational benefit" will once again be an argument for keeping funding. But I hope that those making the decisions read my and Tina Trent's report on PBS curricula--curricula that can hardly be called fair or educational. (Feel free to send on to your representatives.)

And there is no reason that a free republic should have a state-sponsored media. There is no reason that taxpayers should be funding a program that functions as a National Youth Service. Volunteerism should be voluntary; the vast majority of efforts funded by Americorps are directed towards left-wing indoctrination.

As we pointed out in our Accuracy in Media report on "Re-Educating America's Schoolchildren," funding for CPB also comes from taxpayers indirectly through public schools and universities. Here in Georgia, Georgia Public Broadcasting is disseminating teacher-orientation videos for the Common Core Curriculum, which is looking very much like a national curriculum.

For a thorough analysis, see the white paper, by Jane Robbins and Emmett McGroarty, at the American Principles Project here.

And despite all the hype, Common Core will not likely raise standards but lower them. And that includes college standards, for the objective of making everyone college-ready will likely have the result of lowering college standards so everyone will be ready. Just as standards had to be lowered so "No Child Would Be Left Behind," so the "Race to the Top" competition (for the federal dollars in exchange for adoption of Common Core Standards) is really a "Race to the Bottom."

To see why, read "Common Core Is Heavy on the 'Common,'" by Jane Robbins and Heather Crossin here. College professors and administrators should be concerned and fighting Common Core.