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West Texas Leaders Speak Out on CSCOPE’s Anti-American Claims
West Texas Leaders Speak Out on CSCOPE’s Anti-American Claims 2/5/13
fbolton@cbs7.com
CBS 7 News Reporter
February 05, 2013
ODESSA, TX- Accusations of CSCOPE 's connections with Islam and Communism are spreading across the state. Many say it's hiding religious ties and needs to taken out of the classroom.
Jeanine McGregor, a certified teacher against CSCOPE, says the program’s lessons have reoccurring trends of anti- American values through out the curriculum, especially in Social Studies.
"The latest lesson on children designing a flag, which sounds harmless, but the flag that they had to design was one for a socialist country. They had to pretend they were developing a socialist country and then design a flag for that," said Jeanine McGregor, Certified Teacher & Education Researcher.
She says the lessons allow children to role-play, which influences their views.
Last week she went before the Texas Senate Education Committee to present data against CSCOPE. It’s data she never saw first hand. McGregor says she received the information from teachers breaching their disclosure contracts with the company.
McGregor says she has researched the curriculum for 3 years. But she has never logged into the teacher's side of the program once and has never seen the complete curriculum step by step first hand.
“The only way you can get first hand knowledge, even Senator Patrick cannot get first hand knowledge ... unless you have a password. That password is not given to you unless you have signed that user agreement,” said Jeanine McGregor, Certified Teacher and Education Researcher.
Chuck Isner with the Texas State Teachers Association and a former teacher has seen teachers’ lessons plans and did sign the user agreement.
As a member of the association, he says these accusations don’t add up.
"I think there is just one more conspiracy theory. To the best of my knowledge it is not based on any facts," said Chuck Isner, President, Region 2c Texas State Teachers Association.
Isner does not deny having mixed feelings over the program methods of teaching. But he says the contract is to protect the copyrighted material, not to limit or hide the information taught.
"I may not be able to show a copy of the exact page as it appears on the computer. But the basic lesson, the questions, that type of thing…there's no problem sharing that," said Isner.
As for the accusations of ties to Islam, he says the program is not promoting the religion, only teaching on the subject.
"If you’re talking about World History than Islam has been a part of world history and you would be poorly serving children, in my opinion, not to discuss that," said Isner.
For a look at the authorized user agreement that teachers have to sign, click here.