Madeleine Morgenstern
The Blaze
9/29/2011
Two Florida school districts won’t be handing out pocket-sized Constitutions to their eighth graders because they were donated by the local 9/12 Project, prompting concerns from school officials about the “opinions and viewpoints” the booklets contain.
According to the St. Petersburg Times, the Nature Coast 9/12 Project gave thousands of copies of the Constitution to the Hernando and Citrus school districts in central Florida in August. But because of certain handouts and forewords that accompanied some of the booklets, along with the organization’s name and website, officials decided not to pass them out.
“It doesn’t matter what group it is,” Hernando superintendent Bryan Blavatt said. “The question is, are we giving out resources that are primary sources … or is it subject to opinions and viewpoints and selective choice of materials?”
The St. Petersburg Times reported:
Some booklets donated to Hernando were published by the Scottish Rite of Freemasonry, whose website describes its mission as serving communities through “fellowship, compassion, and dedication to God, family and country.”
These booklets contained other primary texts such as the Declaration of Independence, Abraham Lincoln‘s Gettysburg Address and Patrick Henry’s Call to Arms. A foreword to the booklet reads: “Unless Americans remember and preserve our rich heritage of liberty, a new Dark Age of tyranny could lock the majority of mankind into the harsh chains of totalitarian slavery.”
Some booklets donated to Hernando were accompanied by a one-page sheet from the Cato Institute, a conservative think tank, with the heading “Constitutional Authority.” The sheet asserts that the Constitution has been misinterpreted, leading to “a government that’s effectively unlimited … and increasingly unaffordable.”…
The article continues at The Blaze.
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