Josh Barry, of Camp Hill, Penn., wants to know why the president of the local teacher’s union thinks he’s a neo-Nazi after he complained about a classroom assignment that he believed to be biased.

“I’m Jewish and my wife is half-black, half-white,” Barry told me in a telephone interview. “I am the furthest thing from a neo-Nazi.”

Last week, his daughter’s eighth grade American History class at East Pennsboro Middle School was asked to analyze a New York Times story about the recent government shutdown.

“I’m Jewish and my wife is half-black, half-white,” Barry told me in a telephone interview. “I am the furthest thing from a neo-Nazi.”
Barry, who said he is a registered independent, read the story and then read a list of questions his daughter was required to answer and he immediately determined the assignment was “grossly slanted.”

The worksheet included questions like “To what issue do House Republican leaders insist on tying the federal budget?” and “Whom do you hold most responsible for the government shutdown?”

Barry fired off letters complaining about the assignment to his daughter’s teacher as well as the school board. But a few days later, he was shocked to discover that the head of the local teacher’s union was making calls around town – asking if he was a neo-Nazi.

The story was first reported on the website Examiner.com.

“It is safe to say that I am less than pleased with your non-objective approach to education when it pertains to current political discussions in the classroom,” he wrote. “You have a duty to be objective and your information you provided my child was not only grossly slanted but it is incompetently incomplete.”

He pointed out the questions in the lesson were loaded with political ideology and “pre-loaded with incorrect premises.”

The teacher responded by explaining that the lesson was not about politics -- it was about literacy.

“The objective was not to promote any political agenda but to work on non-fiction reading skills,” the teacher wrote in an email obtained by Fox News.

Barry was not satisfied with the explanation.

“You will not indoctrinate my child,” he wrote. “If you are going to present articles with a slant to one side you are morally and ethically required to present the opposing views, to give an opportunity for the student, your captive audience, to come to their own conclusions.”

Barry also reached out to the principal, who defended the teacher’s assignment and allegedly told him The New York Times story was not slanted.

On Friday the story took a bizarre turn.

A friend of Barry’s received a telephone call that he says came from Cydnee Cohen, the president of the East Pennsboro Education Association. Barry’s friend was a mutual friend of Cohen’s.

“We’re having some problems with a parent in our school district,” Cohen allegedly told Barry’s friend. “I would like to know -- some of it seems like he’s a neo-Nazi.”

Barry’s friend, who he declined to name, sent Cohen a text message, refuting the charge.

“Just got your message,” the friend wrote. “Josh is the furthest thing from a neo-Nazi. He is JEWISH.”

Afterwards, the friend called Barry and alerted him to the neo-Nazi allegation.

Cohen did not return messages seeking comment.

Bruce Deveney, the superintendent of the school district, told me they are investigating the incident.

“A teacher that was not involved with the assignment took it upon themselves to address the issue that was made public by the parent,” Deveney said. “The teacher’s actions are not supported or sanctioned by the administration and school board of East Pennsboro Area School District.”

Deveny did not respond to questions about Cohen’s employment status in the school district.

“The district is looking further into this situation and will take appropriate actions,” he said.

Barry accused the union president of “embarking on a campaign to dig up dirt on me and to make me look like a neo-Nazi.”

“It’s a smear,” he told me. “Instead of dealing with the issue at hand in a logical, adult manner, she embarked on a campaign to smear me. That’s their union thuggery tactics.”

For the record, Barry said he is not a neo-Nazi. After he went public with Cohen’s accusation, his friend received a rather heated phone call from the union boss.

“She was swearing at her,” he said. “When my friend questioned (Cohen) about her motive - she said, ‘I’m a union officer. These are my teachers.’”

Barry said he wants the union president fired.

“Anything less than accepting her resignation or firing her is condoning her actions,” he said. “This is unacceptable.”

And he’s also got a message for the local teacher’s union: he’s not backing down.

“It’s going to be very difficult to intimidate me,” he said. “I’m not going to submit to their bullying tactics.”

 LordofHats wrote:
Wow. If she wanted to call around and ask if he was a hardcore conservative or a tea bagger at least you know there'd be some kind of rational line of thought behind that irrational reaction. How the hell did he/she get neo-Nazi XD

 SlaveToDorkness wrote:
I'm guessing this is the usual "jump to conclusions and leave out everything that's not outrageous" type of journalism that's so common nowadays. There's literally GOT to be more to this story.

It's exactly what critics of the Common Core school curriculum warned about: Partisan political statements masquerading as English lessons finding their way into elementary school classrooms.

Teaching materials aligned with the controversial national educational standards ask fifth-graders to edit such sentences as “(The president) makes sure the laws of the country are fair,” “The wants of an individual are less important than the well-being of the nation” and “the commands of government officials must be obeyed by all.” The sentences, which appear in worksheets published by New Jersey-based Pearson Education, are presented not only for their substance, but also to teach children how to streamline bulky writing.



“We are doing a terrible disservice to this generation and the next if we only present them with one side of the argument and bombard them with ideas contrary to the American ideal."

- Glyn Wright, Eagle Forum


“Parents should insist on reviewing their children’s school assignments,” said Glyn Wright, executive director of the Eagle Forum, a think tank that opposes implementation of Common Core. “Many parents will be shocked to find that some ‘Common Core-approved’ curriculum is full of inappropriate left-wing notions, disinformation, and fails to teach the truth of American exceptionalism and opportunity.”

The politically charged lesson appears in a worksheet titled “Hold the Flag High,” in which students are taught about Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War. The assignment asks students to make examples of sentences; “less wordy by replacing the underlined words with a possessive noun phrase.” They are then presented with a half-dozen sentences describing the job duties of a U.S. president.

CLICK HERE FOR THE FULL WORKSHEET

But if the lessons are meant as a primer on the Constitution, there's another problem, note critics. The job of making sure laws are fair is not the president's, but the judicial branch's. The executive branch's duty is to administer laws. And the example that places the well-being of the nation above the "wants of an individual" appears to run counter to the basic principles of the Bill of Rights.
“We are doing a terrible disservice to this generation and the next if we only present them with one side of the argument and bombard them with ideas contrary to the American ideal," Wright said. "In doing so, we allow our children to be indoctrinated instead of educated.”

A Pearson spokesperson told FoxNews.com the “Hold the Flag High” worksheet will undergo some editing of its own, based on issues raised by critics, including Education Action Group Foundation.

“These particular questions appear in a fifth-grade unit of Pearson’s Reading Street, an English Language Arts program,” the Pearson official said. “They accompany a selection about soldiers during the Civil War, and they attempt to make a connection between that passage and language skills. As with all our curricular materials, they underwent a thorough development and review process. Still, we are always open to improving our work … Based on this feedback, we will be modifying the worksheet to clarify these questions.”

The official adds that while they are currently being used as common core material, versions of this worksheet including the questions of the Possessive Nouns section have been around and copyrighted since 2007.

The Common Core State Standards Initiative was devised by an association of the nation's governors and backed by the Obama administration in 2009 with the goal of setting a uniform standard for grades K-12 nationwide. Some 45 states, in many cases enticed by federal grants, have signed on and testing of students in grades 3-8 and once in high school is scheduled to begin next year.

Critics of the initiative say that school districts will devise curriculums to maximize their students' performance on the national exams; some in fact, have already done so. The same critics also claim that Common Core math standards barely cover basic geometry or second-year algebra and that the classics are all but ignored in English classes.

While Common Core has plenty of defenders -- and may prove beneficial -- critics maintain that it is not the federal government's job to impose educational standards.

chaos0xomega wrote:
I agree with slavetodorkness... I'm having a lot of trouble understanding how the jump was made from "please present both sides of the argument" to "NEO-NAZI!!!"

 Seaward wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:
I agree with slavetodorkness... I'm having a lot of trouble understanding how the jump was made from "please present both sides of the argument" to "NEO-NAZI!!!"

Go post something even vaguely Republican-sounding on any leftist site you care to name and see how quickly you get called at the very least a racist.

 Seaward wrote:
Go post something even vaguely Republican-sounding on any leftist site you care to name and see how quickly you get called at the very least a racist.

 Dreadclaw69 wrote:

 Seaward wrote:
Go post something even vaguely Republican-sounding on any leftist site you care to name and see how quickly you get called at the very least a racist.

Doubly true if you post anything concerning immigration reform

Spoiler:

 Hlaine Larkin mk2 wrote:
How can you jump to the conclusion he's a neo-nazi just because of this incident?

 juraigamer wrote:

 Hlaine Larkin mk2 wrote:
How can you jump to the conclusion he's a neo-nazi just because of this incident?

It came from fox news?

 LordofHats wrote:
Wow. If she wanted to call around and ask if he was a hardcore conservative or a tea bagger at least you know there'd be some kind of rational line of thought behind that irrational reaction. How the hell did he/she get neo-Nazi XD

 juraigamer wrote:

 Hlaine Larkin mk2 wrote:
How can you jump to the conclusion he's a neo-nazi just because of this incident?

It came from fox news?

Oh and by popular request, it's bushes fault, because the stars aligned.

The worksheet included questions like “To what issue do House Republican leaders insist on tying the federal budget?” and “Whom do you hold most responsible for the government shutdown?”

 Tannhauser42 wrote:

The worksheet included questions like “To what issue do House Republican leaders insist on tying the federal budget?” and “Whom do you hold most responsible for the government shutdown?”

I wouldn't mind seeing the whole worksheet, because questions like that are incredibly basic and are absolutely nothing to get angry about (they're basic questions that any informed citizen should be able to answer at the time). Is it just because it used the word Republican? I agree with previous statements, there's either more to this, or the parent is just an overreacting nut,

 hotsauceman1 wrote:
Just because it is the source does not mean the info is less valid.

 sebster wrote:

 hotsauceman1 wrote:
Just because it is the source does not mean the info is less valid.

It makes the story less reliable. It means there is a significant chance that there are other elements at play that aren't reported, and even a reasonable chance that parts of the story aren't even true. Now, it is possible to go and find out more about the story, but its a story about some random guy questioning a homework assignment, even by the standards of off topic spending time researching that would be ridiculous.

The only thing that makes sense is to conclude that an unreliable news service has printed a very trivial story, and just walk away.