Shades of Common Core and CSCOPE. Who’s behind the lesson plans? via Terrorists driven by low self-esteem, Florida high schoolers told
It’s low self-esteem and the need for a
“sense of belonging” that drives terrorists to join groups that kill in
the name of religion, according to an online lesson plan for Florida
high school students.
The world history course on “Invisible
Warfare” — offered by the Florida Virtual School, the nation’s first
statewide Internet-based public high school — begins by asking students
“what comes to mind” when considering the concept of fundamentalism and
then prompts them to think of the term in a religious context. It later
defines terrorism as the act of using fear or violence to accomplish
certain political or religious goals.
“Common traits that psychologists have
found in terrorists are that they are often risk-takers and many suffer
from low self-esteem,” according to the lesson plan, which was obtained
by FoxNews.com. “Sometimes joining a terrorist group provides these
individuals with a sense of belonging.”
Earlier in the lesson plan, students are
asked to consider how “this type of fundamentalism” has affected Islam
and notes that some Islamic fundamentalist groups have reinterpreted the
word jihad, which means “struggle” in Arabic, to mean a “holy war”
against non-Muslims. Some critics including the Global Dispatch claimed
that the transition from Christianity to Islam within the lesson plan
“softly could imply Christianity may be affecting (therefore causing)
Muslim extremism.”
“For example, some passages in the Bible
could be used to justify the slaughter of men, women and children in
ways we have difficulty understanding today,” the plan reads. “Would
anyone condone this now? How would you react to someone who insisted
that holding these beliefs was fundamental to Christianity?”
Representatives at the Florida Virtual
School denied those claims, saying the lesson plan does not suggest a
link between fundamentalists within Islam and Christianity. Tania Clow, a
spokeswoman for the Florida Virtual School, told FoxNews.com in a
statement that the purpose of the lesson was to lay foundational
knowledge in order for students to understand the more complex issue of
global terrorism and the impact religious fundamentalism is having
globally.
“Yes, the Bible is referenced, but only as
an example of how some passages may no longer be compatible with the
modern world, prompting students to think about whether the ideas would
be condoned today,” Clow wrote in an email. “The lesson does not suggest
that there is a link between Islam and Christianity as fundamentalist
groups.”
Two key issues are specifically addressed
in the lesson, Clow said, including the impact of religious
fundamentalism in the last half of the 20th century and the impact and
global response to international terrorism.
State-certified instructors at the online
school are not allowed to change the actual lesson text, but are
encouraged to engage students in thoughtful debate, Clow said.
Not everyone, however, agrees that the
lesson plan as presented is useful for young minds, including Bill
Donohue, president of the Catholic League, who claimed the lesson plan
unfairly compared fundamentalists within Christianity and Islam.
“Fundamentalist Christians pray for
people, they pray for their own members who convert to another
religion,” Donohue told FoxNews.com. “Fundamentalist Muslims will kill
you. So, right off the bat, the equation is pernicious.”
Dr. Keith Ablow, a psychiatrist and Fox
News contributor, said it takes more than low self-esteem to prompt
someone to don a suicide vest in the name of religion.
“Much more in the way of psychiatric
disorder is required to create a terrorist than just low self-esteem,”
Ablow said. “The real key is a failure of empathy, and while it might be
true that many terrorists have low self-esteem, there are lots of
people with low self-esteem that are either depressed, homeless, or are
in relationships with people that abuse them – but not terrorists.”
Robert Jones, CEO of the Public Religion
Research Institute, cited a 2011 study that found that Americans are
more willing — by more than a 3-to-1 margin — to separate the violence
of self-professed Christians from Christianity than they are to separate
violent behavior of self-professed Muslims from Islam.
The poll, entitled ““Pluralism,
Immigration and Civic Integration Survey,” found that 44 percent of all
Americans believed self-professed Muslims who committed acts of violence
in the name of Islam to truly be Muslims, compared to just 13 percent
of those committed acts of violence in the name of Christianity to truly
be Christians.
What acts of violence in the name of Christianity? Can they
provide recent examples where this occurred and the verses the
perpetrators quoted from the Bible that justified it? Were the
perpetrators holding a decapitated head and shouting “Thou shall not
kill”?
As a whole, younger Americans and college
graduates are overwhelmingly more likely to believe that Islam — as
practiced by most Muslims — does not promote violence, Jones said.
A 3-1 margin and percentage points are listed above to present
Muslims as victims. But Jones provides no statistics for his statement
above suggesting a bias by older, uneducated (presumably white,
Christian, gun-owning, Constitution-supporting, tax-paying) Americans.
“If you ask that question, Americans are
basically divided,” Jones told FoxNews.com. “But education and age is
driving a lot of it.”
One aspect may be true. The older you are, the less you have to
rely on false narratives of rewritten history books and the political
cowardice of media and can rely on real world examples of Muslims waging
a relentless jihad of death and destruction. As dictated in the Koran.
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