July 2, 2008, - 3:27 pm
Another Reason I Oppose Charter Schools: Actor Will Smith, Wife Start Scientology Science Fiction School
By Debbie Schlussel
As readers know, I oppose charter schools and have for many years. They are merely vehicles to suck your tax money into funding bizarre religious ideologies and further separate America.
I’m all for a competitive marketplace, and that’s where school choice among public schools takes place and, perhaps, vouchers (but those, too, can go for religious schools disguised as secular ones). Charter schools–all based on certain beliefs and other means of separation–take away from the common American experience. And there is very little oversight. One Islamic charter school I know of is “overseen” by a small community college, the personnel of which have never set foot within 100 miles of the school.
There is no reason you should be funding the extremist Muslim Tarek Ibn Zayid Academy in Minnesota, other Islamic charter schools around the country, and now, this latest adventure into the absurd: Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith’s new experiment in tax-wasting, a Scientology charter school, which they claim–just like the Muslims–won’t be a Scientology school based on the cult started by failed science fiction writer, L. Ron Hubbard and his non-existent “thetan” buddies.
While the Smiths are not saying the school will be a charter school, it appears it will be, and there’s nothing to stop it from becoming one. They’ve donated only $900,000 for the school, 80% of the kids will be there on scholarship, and the money will have to come from somewhere.
The founders of New Village Academy are . . . stars: Will Smith and his wife Jada Pinkett Smith. . . .
But the school’s Sept. 3 opening, on the leased campus of a former school in Calabasas, will be accompanied by a whiff of controversy. Some of its teachers are members of the Church of Scientology, and it will use teaching methods developed by Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard. . . .
One teaching method the school uses is study technology, which was developed by Hubbard and focuses on students gaining hands-on experience, mastering subject matter before moving to the next level, and being taught not to read past words they don’t understand. . . .
New Village plans to have nonprofit status [DS: That’s where your tax money comes in], as well as accreditation from the California Assn. of Independent Schools . . . .
The New Village curriculum includes literacy and math, and subjects such as living skills, Spanish, karate, yoga, robotics, technology, etiquette and art. Parental involvement is encouraged, as is limited access to television and sugary foods.
But critics contend that the school is not being honest about its links to Scientology. David S. Touretzky, a professor of computer science at Carnegie Mellon University, created a website that dissects study technology and asserts that it is Scientology religion disguised as education.
Touretzky said many phrases and concepts on the school’s website are specific to Scientology. For example, the school lists a “Director of Qualifications” and another teacher who is an assistant in the “Qual” department. The “Qual,” said Touretzky, is where people who have completed a Scientology counseling, or “auditing,” session or a course in the Church of Scientology are tested by a qualifications teacher.
“There is no reputable educator anywhere who endorses [study technology],” said Touretzky, a critic of Scientology. “What happens is that children are inculcated with Scientology jargon and are led to regard L.R. Hubbard as an authority figure. They are laying the groundwork for later bringing people into Scientology.”
Scary. Almost as scary as the Muslim charter schools that claim they are not Muslim. Time to end this separation of American education into miniaturized tax-funded bins of the most loony thought imaginable. Islam, Scientology–none of this should be a part of K-12 tax-funded education.
Just wondering when the Jim Jones Charter School will be opening. I hear they serve Kool-Aid as the lunch beverage.
Scientology is proof that Hollywood airheads have no credibility whatsoever. That should make their leftist views all the more suspect. Anyone who sends their kid to this indoctrination tank should be charged with abuse.
spiffo on July 2, 2008 at 4:58 pm