Truth About IB Offers $500 Scholarship to IB Students Who Speak Up Against the International Baccaulareate

Truth Against IB, the premier site fighting the global agenda of the International Baccalaureate, announced today on the Super Dave Radio Show they have launched a $500 scholarship. They will award one scholarship to the student who who attends an IB World Schools who writes the best article against the IB. Inspiration for the scholarship came from stories of students who attempted to write articles against the IB, and were censored or pressured by their schools not to write anything that exposes the IB.

Lisa McLoughlin writes about the inspiration of the scholarship as she heard the story of James Liu, a Seneca Valley High School Student.

I'm trying to get James to submit his article to TAIB. Then it occurred to me that another IB student from Ohio had attempted to interview me for an article on IB and when her advisor found out, they killed the article. These budding writers and journalists are being suppressed by the IB statists. Frankly, that upsets me. I think it would be cool if we could run a national essay contest and award a $500 scholarship to the winner. I would post the entries online and the public could vote. Waddya think? If you like the idea, you can DONATE HERE.

According to Truth About IB's McLoughlin on the Super Dave Radio Show, that scholarship is now a reality thanks to the student in Ohio and James Liu. Be sure to donate to help keep this scholarship a vital part of battling the IB.

Here's James Liu's account of the politics of the IB at his school:


I am a senior at Seneca Valley High School right now, in Montgomery County, sometimes considered Maryland's top school districts. However, that's offset by the fact that my school has the lowest SAT scores in said county. Most students just go to the local community college, with some even being kicked out of there, and a sizeable number fail to graduate. Yet, we are somehow an IB World School. Of course, the reasons are actually quite apparent. Having the IB is what keeps this school funded. A far cry from the other IB in our county, Richard Montgomery (a truly rigorous magnet ranking in the top 100 nationally), our school is desperate; the first IB Diploma class will be the year after mine. We've had 3 different principals in the past 4 years I've attended. The administration is blindly adamant on pushing unqualified kids into AP and IB courses in an attempt to raise our school's rankings.

Allow me to illustrate with numbers. With a PSAT of 229 and an SAT of 2230, I top both lists in my school, and am the only National Merit Semifinalists. Along with me, there are perhaps 20 others who pass their APs. My AP Language teacher from last year showed me the new numbers. Based on their 10th grade PSAT scores, over half of the incoming students fall in the lowest category, with a 0.3% chance of passing the exam. 0.3%, according to collegeboard's own predictions. Why, then, are these students allowed to even take AP? Might I add that these same students FAILED their HSAs. If you don't know, HSAs are a basic set of tests required in Maryland state for a student to graduate. In other words, even ESOL students, meaning non English-speaking students, are expected to pass. Last year, my year in AP Lang, out of 120 students, passing scores did not even amount to 30%, with only three 5's. The contradiction here is blatant.

As a middle schooler, I concede that my grades were too poor to get into RM, despite more than sufficient test scores.

At the time, I saw IB as just one other magnet, all of which share similar elitism. As a high schooler, the friends I stayed in contact with who went into the IB changed my impression into a more ominous one. However, I only really grew to oppose it after hearing the chatter through my teachers on its dark methodology, and participating in the program myself this year (though I'm certainly too late to pursue a Diploma). I won't get into the details of other issues with IB such as the cost and ideology. Those are already well documented throughout TAIB. However, I will share this anecdote:

Becoming fed up with the IB, I decided I would resist a bit. Having joined Journalism class this semester, I was presented with an opportunity: wouldn't a news article be perfect for expressing dissent? No one had dared such a thing before, so I thought I might be the first. My initial draft was, admittedly, rhetoric-heavy. However, as my article dealt primarily with the tone and ideology, it was not as if statistics could be used to back me up (my friend decided to write a similar article but with a separate focus on finances), so my main backup consisted of quotes. Aside from my sources amongst teachers and students as well as my own experiences, I thankfully stumbled upon TAIB for direct quotes from IB officials. All was looking well.

After cutting down my article to accomodate the size limit (there was much more I'd have liked to add), I showed a preliminary draft to a few people, including my current Literature teacher. He in turn showed it to the second Literature teacher (note that there are two, in addition to IB), who after but a brief skim decided to come to me immediately. She ranted about my lack of sources, or at least lack of reliable ones. First of all, my sources were confidential, so she had no way of guessing at their credibility. Second, my sources included teachers with far more experience than her, in both teaching and IB itself. She also said how the article quotes were slanted towards students who disliked the IB. Well, in acuality I only included students who participated in the IB.

She then spent a few minutes (I was already quite late for my next class, ironically an IB one; she held me back during an in-between period) ranting about how my article should be in the Opinion section, not the Editorial section. First, this was blatant red herring. Second, the newspaper doesn't even have an Opinion section; the Editorial section is reserved for opinionated pieces. Third, I don't decide what section the article goes in, that choice is reserved for the editor in chief, which brings me to my fourth point, that this arrogant teacher has no experience or expertise whatsoever regarding journalism.

She then said how Seneca wasn't a "real IB" anyway. I'm not sure what the point of that comment was, as it only undermined her own argument. Go figure. Anyway, I responded that I was late for class, and if she wanted to really respond, that she should do it in writing herself. I was then scolded for being disrespectful. I'm not sure why, as it was a legitimate suggestion. I'd already asked around, and other kids, even those in the IB, did not want to write a pro-IB response. This was because I'd already been asked to find a counterbalancing article by my journalism teacher.

I mentioned this, but they just dodged the point. While I'm on the subject of disrespect, I'll say that the behavior of the teacher in this case was the real example of disrespect. To harass a student for having a different opinion without any prior research and then play the high ground is nothing short of pathetic.

Honestly, though, I somewhat expected such a thing to happen. It was the first major resistance to my article. However, I soon found that my article would not be published at all. The editor in chief notified me that the administration had expressed extreme dislike. He told me that although they had not explicitly forbidden my article from being published, the disapproval was explicit. He elaborated, saying that it was essentially a threat that if the article was published, the journalism program would be subject to extreme scrutiny in the future, if not removal altogether. I decided that this was not worth that much, so I agreed and let it go.

Most of all, I'm disappointed that the administration is so immature as to resort to such underhanded methods. I'd at least prefer if I had received a proper response to the article, or at least a notification in person, or even an email. But, I was offered no such basic courtesies. Though this will not affect me personally, it will affect th entire school for years to come, including many of my friends. I wrote the article as an attempt to instill at least some measure of doubt, so that the IB would be watched with a weary eye. It's not as if I expected them to oust the program instantaneously. It seems, however, that any dissenting opinion is untolerable.