Ozark High School students are excited about a new program called the International Baccalaureate. The education program promotes "global values" in the classroom, values that don't always parallel with the American values promoted with our Constitution and Bill of Rights.
Teachers have been instructed to promote the IB to students during classroom time, and many students are hearing they will be better prepared for college without asking why isn't the current curriculum working? Parents trust their schools will prepare their children for college, but now they are being told their children won't be prepared enough if Ozark Schools don't adopt the IB program. The problems need to be fixed locally instead of looking to Europe to prepare students for college. None-the-less, the IB brainwashing has begun in the classroom, the same IB promoted by Barack Obama and unrepentant domestic terrorist William Ayers in the Chicago School District. That should fly red flags for most parents in the conservative community of Ozark.
While Ozark teachers are filling these young minds with visions of grandeur, and Ozark students are getting excited about shedding their American values for "global citizen" status of an IB diploma, the local school district of St. Helena has a problem with students' enthusiasm for the International Baccalaureate. One-third of the students in the St. Helena school district have signed a letter of petition against the IB calling the education curriculum worthless. Of course, you aren't going to hear many Ozark teachers, administrators, and school board members tell members of the community this truth, with the exception of one, and I get the feeling that one person is starting to feel pressured and threatened because of his opposition to IB.
The St. Helena Star Reports:
More than 170 high school students are urging the St. Helena School Board to eliminate the International Baccalaureate program in favor of traditional Advanced Placement classes.
A letter signed by 177 high school students — about a third of the student body — says IB is unnecessary, impractical, and less useful to students than AP classes, which have mostly been phased out over the last few years.
The school district has been polling staff, parents, students and the community as it considers scaling back the district’s K-12 IB program. The board is scheduled to discuss IB at 6:30 p.m. Thursday, March 10, at Vintage Hall.
The letter claims that IB doesn’t benefit the majority of high school students because “only a fraction of (the) student population is enrolled in an IB class.”
Only eight high school seniors are enrolled in the IB Diploma Program for juniors and seniors, but 110 students are enrolled in at least one IB class.
“The IB Diploma Program has essentially created an exclusive prep school within a public high school, funded with moneys that should be available for the benefit of all students,” the letter argues.
Students say the Diploma Program “isolates students from one another.”
“All juniors and seniors in the (diploma) program, and the majority of students taking more than one or two IB classes, are with the same students throughout the school day,” the letter states. “This contributes to a lack of student unity, and creates apathy as well as antipathy on campus.”