EdAction
Maple River Education Coalition PAC
105 Peavey Rd, St 116 
Chaska, MN  55318 
952-361-4931
http://www.EdAction.org
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Telltale Characteristics to Look for in Suspect Curriculum

Decision making process. Students are told they must go through a process of evaluating options and making their own decisions. Variations of this process are sometimes called:

• values clarification
• helping youth decide
• it’s up to me
• problem solving
• critical thinking

Nonjudgmental or directive. The teacher is told not to moralize, lecture, direct, preach, or intimidate. Teachers are told not to impose their opinions on students. Everything is opinion rather than right or wrong, good or bad. It is important to review teacher handbooks and manuals as well as the student curriculum.

Personal disclosure. Students are required to reveal their innermost feelings, and attitudes, as well as intimate and even incriminating details about their family, through –

• detailed surveys and questionnaires
• “magic circle” discussions
• encounter sessions
• filling out incomplete sentences

Emotional attitudes. Students are required to spend class time discussing emotions, feelings, and attitudes. These lessons include –

• questions about suicide/depression
• emotional worlds evoking fear, anger, or sadness
• preoccupation with stress

Role playing. This is psychological manipulation and necessarily includes negative roles. Children are sometimes even required to role-play a negative character.

Anti-parent innuendoes. Many courses drive psychological wedges between child and parent. They each the child to look within himself for wisdom and his own decision instead of looking to parent, church, or the law.

Emphasis on “self-esteem” and “social skills.” Curriculum of this nature is definitively psychological, not academic. Students need objective information plus the appropriate moral direction of right and wrong. Spending class time teaching children to “feel good” about themselves is a fraud, takes time away from academic work, and invades a student’s private thoughts.

Overemphasis on cooperative/group learning. The “group” is stressed and encourages the child to be a “go-alonger” to win the approval of his peers rather than sticking with moral law or parental instructions.

New age religious practices. These have been found in many courses and area violation of students’ First Amendment religion rights. Some are:

• progressive relaxation/meditation
• centering and anchoring
• imagery and visualization
• affirmations

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