With summer coming to a close, the Koch brothers have created a handy shopping list for all of your Back to School needs:
- Pencils
- Erasers
- 3-ring binders
- Anti-government propaganda
One of these items may not seem like the others, but according to Slate, the Koch-funded Institute for Humane Studies thinks that teaching materials that “vilify the government” deserve a place in the classroom right alongside the dry-erase markers. This marks the first full school year that The Edvantage, a project of IHS, will make its radical libertarian curriculum materials available online to teachers for free.
According to the report, The Edvantage’s online hub is replete with “educational videos, articles and podcasts on topics including economics, history and philosophy,” that go out of their way to decry the Environmental Protection Agency and the minimum wage while touting sweatshops as being beneficial to workers in the developing world. All of these positions are tenets of the Kochs self-serving agenda, suggesting that The Edvantage is yet another effort by the Kochs to indoctrinate students. Lest you think that The Edvantage’s similarities to the Koch platform are mere coincidence, consider that the materials are short on opposing viewpoints and lack “ideological balance,” according to Slate.
All of the aforementioned, Libertarian-tinged Edvantage resources are free for teachers, which is as calculated as it is charitable. As the Huffington Post noted about the Kochs’ “Young Entrepreneurs” program, many of our country’s struggling, underfunded school districts are not in a position to turn down free curriculum resources. Conveniently, the Kochs support the abolishment of the federal Department of Education and with it, all federal education funding, in addition to backing Republican candidates like Scott Walker and Thom Tillis who have slashed their respective state education budgets.
It would appear that The Edvantage lacks a math curriculum, so we’ve started one for them:
(Schools – School Funding) + Free Koch-inspired teaching materials = Koch indoctrination machines