Re-Posted from FoxNews.com

By Todd Starnes Published December 20, 2014

Parents in Farmville, North Carolina want to know why their children were given a Common Core vocabulary assignment in an English class that promoted the Prophet Muhammad and the Islamic faith.

“It really caught me off guard,” a Farmville Central High School student who was in the class told me. “If we are not allowed to talk about any other religions in school – how is this appropriate?”

The Islamic vocabulary worksheet was assigned to seniors.

“I was reading it and it caught me off guard,” the student told me. “I just looked at it and knew something was not right – so I emailed the pages to my mom.”

I asked the school district to provide me with a copy of vocabulary worksheets that promoted the Jewish, Hindu and Christian faiths. The school district did not reply.

“In the following exercises, you will have the opportunity to expand your vocabulary by reading about Muhammad and the Islamic word,” the worksheet read.

The lesson used words like astute, conducive, erratic, mosque, pastoral, and zenith in sentences about the Islamic faith.

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“The zenith of any Muslim’s life is a trip to Mecca,” one sentence read. For “erratic,” the lesson included this statement: “The responses to Muhammad’s teachings were at first erratic. Some people responded favorably, while other resisted his claim that ‘there is no God but Allah and Muhammad his Prophet.”

Another section required students to complete a sentence:

“There are such vast numbers of people who are anxious to spread the Muslim faith that it would be impossible to give a(n)___ amount.”

I spoke to one parent who asked not to be identified. She was extremely troubled by what her child was exposed to in the classroom.

“What if right after Pearl Harbor our educational system was talking about how great the Japanese emperor was?” the parent asked. “What if during the Cold War our educational system was telling students how wonderful Russia was?”

The parent said the material was classwork disguised as Islamic propaganda.

“It’s very shocking,” she said. “I just told my daughter to read it as if it’s fiction. It’s no different than another of fictional book you’ve read.”

A spokesman for Pitt County Schools defended the lesson  – noting that it came from a state-adopted supplemental workbook and met the “Common Core standards for English Language Arts.”

“The course is designed to accompany the world literature text, which emphasizes culture in literature,” the statement read.

The problem is it’s emphasizing a specific culture and religion – and the school district acknowledged there were concerns “related to the religious nature of sentences providing vocabulary words in context.”

“Our school system understands all concerns related to proselytizing, and there is no place for it in our instruction,” the statement goes on to say. “However, this particular lesson was one of many the students in this class have had and will have that expose them to the various religions and how they shape cultures throughout the world.”

I asked the school district to provide me with a copy of vocabulary worksheets that promoted the Jewish, Hindu and Christian faiths.

The school district did not reply.

I also asked for the past or future dates when the students would be given those vocabulary worksheets.

The school district has yet to reply.

The student I spoke with told me they have not had any other assignments dealing with religion – other than the one about Islam.

Why is that not surprising?

Based on its official statement, Pitt County Schools seems confident that the vocabulary lessons are in compliance with three Common Core standards related to literacy. If you want to look up those standards, reference CCSSELA-Literary L11-12.4.A, 12.4.D and 12.6.

Since the Common Core folks seem to be infatuated with sentence completion – let me try one out on them.

Use “Islamic” and “proselytizing” in the following sentence: Somebody got their ____ hand caught in the ____ cookie jar.

UPDATE: I asked the school district if there had been similar vocabulary assignments about Judaism, Christianity or other religions. I also asked for the exact dates of those assignments. Here’s the reply I received from the school district:

“The class recently finished reading Night by Elie Wiesel. As part of the study of this book, students were exposed to Judaism. I’m told that one of the next couple of lessons that will be taught in this class includes an examination of Psalm 23 as part of the lesson. Additionally, the workbook in question has another vocabulary lesson with words used in a passage about India’s three great beliefs (Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism). Keep in mind that this workbook is just one of numerous resources used in the course. Students are exposed to various cultures, values, and beliefs through the reading of multiple types of literature, but teachers certainly aren’t advocating for any of them.”

Notice how the school district dodged my question?

Todd Starnes is host of Fox News & Commentary, heard on hundreds of radio stations. Sign up for his American Dispatch newsletter, be sure to join his Facebook page, and follow him on Twitter. His latest book is “God Less America.”

I think we need to tighten up the entry requirements for college, for if this is the caliber of the students — the colleges might just as well be shut down!

The New York Mayor and the Governor along with the US AG and the President and his inner circle all have blood on their hands!

Support the NYPD and your people they are getting a bad rap and they are our last line of defense against the forces of evil!

Written by Allen West on December 18, 2014

I often read stories which claim the U.S. economy is on its way back. However, the Dow Jones is not a true indicator of what’s happening down on Main Street.

Wages for Americans are still depressed and our workforce participation rate remains at a catastrophic almost 36-year low. The ruse of printing money and artificially keeping interest rates low can’t hide the truth forever — we no longer have a free market/free enterprise economy. We are entering the era of a government-driven economy.

And there’s another disconcerting aspect of our economy — the expansion of the welfare nanny-state and the dependency society, which is becoming generationally entrenched.

As CNS News writes, “The Census Bureau reported in a study released this week that 65 percent of American children lived in households taking aid from one or more federal program as of the fall of 2011. “Almost two-thirds (65 percent) of children,” said the Census Bureau, “lived in households that participated in at least one or more of the following government aid programs: Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC), Medicaid, and the National School Lunch Program.”

Now, I could be happier if this statistic included kids attending college who were receiving some type of financial aid — but then again, how much debt will they accumulate in an economy where they’re struggling to find a good paying job?

My concern is that the “new normal” seems to be that the temporary safety net is becoming a permanent hammock for subsequent generations. What are we teaching kids who grow up in government housing on government assistance?

And trust me, I lived in the inner city and back in the day, we black kids who lived in single-family homes kinda considered ourselves on a different scale. We watched our parents — notice I said “parents” — head off to work and at the dinner table tell us about what happened at work, while we told them about what happened at school. I remember the pride that swelled in my chest when Mom and Dad purchased their new cars with cash (of course they were old school and bought Lincolns – which actually are cool again).

Now, imagine the impact that had on us as their sons, as well as our extended family who grew up around Buck and Snooks. I grew up in the time of “layaway.” Kids in the inner city today are growing up in the time of “EBT.”

But perhaps most disturbing is the rapid rise of this dependency. As CNS News reports, “In 2003, according to the Census Bureau, there were a total of 72,658,000 children 17 and under in the United States, and 40,337,000 of these children — or 56 percent — lived in households receiving aid from one of more of these programs. That included 30,023,000 children in the National School Lunch Program, 18,175,000 in households on Medicaid, 8,287,000 in households on food stamps, 4,808,000 in households on WIC, and by 2011, there were 74,294,000 children 17 and under and 47,939,000 of these children — or 65 percent — lived in households receiving aid from one or more of these programs. That included 34,959,000 in the National School Lunch Program; 26,350,000 in households on Medicaid; 17,321,000 in households on food stamps; 6,350,000 in households on WIC; and 2,279,000 in households on TANF.”

So what is the ensuing result –and consequence – of having a minority of children living in households that have never taken federal assistance? In the future, they will be among a minority of adults. We will have established a permanent American dependency society – as opposed to that which makes American exceptional, the opportunity society.

Next year will be the 50th anniversary of President Lyndon Baines Johnson’s Great Society –the ramifications of which I address in my book Guardian of the Republic. I believe that if we do a hard analysis of the “War on Poverty” and this progressive socialist big government policy response, we’ll see it clearly as an abject failure and one of primary victims — the family.

The statistics show that as marriages dissolve, poverty rises.

CNS News says, “As recently as 1970, according to the Census Bureau, 85.2 percent of American children were living with two parents. Of the 74,294,000 children 17 and under in the United States in the fall of 2011, 50,442,000 — or 68 percent — were living with two parents. However, 3,760,000 of those children were living with two parents who were not married, leaving only 46,682,000 children — or 63 percent — living with two married parents.

“The economic status of children living with cohabitating parents more closely resembled single-parent families,” the study said. After children living with a single parent, they were the most likely to be in poverty. Among children living with one parent, 40.9 percent were in poverty. Among children living with two unmarried parents, 37.3 percent were in poverty. And among children living with a guardian (including a grandparent or another relative), 29.8 percent were in poverty. But among children living with two married parents, only 14.0 percent were in poverty.”

The real conversation needed in America — the one Al Sharpton and the progressive left don’t want to have — heck, they don’t want you to know about — is the cultural issue of the breakdown of the American family, particularly the black American family.

And when I talk about the American family, I mean the traditional family of one man, a dad, and one woman, a mom, not Spouse 1 and Spouse 2. The progressive socialist march towards the redefinition of the American family has meant the decimation of traditional marriage and the horrific consequence will be meted out on the future generations of Americans.

And sadly, this issue has a direct relation to the case of Michael Brown, about which no one is allowed to speak, because it doesn’t fit the narrative.