The New York State United Teachers held an event at the Robert F. Kennedy High School in Queens today to unveil three lesson plans on the life of the late former Senator and Attorney General.“What we’re trying to do is connect the lesson plans with the vision of social justice,” said NYSUT President Dick Iannuzzi.
These fraudulent lesson plans were first brought to the wide attention of New Yorkers in my Daily News op-ed on Sunday.
The lessons plans, which can be read here, are a lie. They purposely ignore the inconvenient, complete truth about Kennedy's career.
One of the worst things a teacher can do is distort history. But that's exactly what NYSUT is perpetrating. They're exerting political pressure on our Empire State principals, superintendents and teachers to adopt lesson plans that are a comic book chronicle of RFK's life.
New York's public school students won't be learning about Kennedy's direct involvement in the wiretapping of Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Or how he served as counsel to United States Senator Joe McCarthy. The man is so thoroughly reviled "McCarthyism" is today a catch-all attack word in response to smears, real and perceived.
In addition, he was widely viewed as an unprincipled opportunist by his fellow Democrats when he joined the 1968 presidential race only after Senator Eugene McCarthy exposed President Lyndon Johnson's weakness in the New Hampshire primary.
Historical facts don't matter to NYSUT. The union's lesson plans about Kennedy read like Soviet-style manuals circa 1938.
What is important to New York's largest teachers union is assisting the Kennedy family's obsession with glorifying itself. The union states these lesson plans began "with a phone call to Iannuzzi from Kerry Kennedy, the seventh of RFK's 11 children."
Thanks to Iannuzzi, Kerry Kennedy imposed a Pravda-like version of her father on the public school children of New York. It's a disgrace.
What would happen if NYSUT sent three lesson plans to Empire State teachers celebrating - and fictionalizing - the life of President Ronald Reagan? That left out the Iran-Contra scandal, for example? There would be an outcry from the same people canonizing Kennedy.
Lesson plans should be left to local school districts. NYSUT has thoroughly politicized our public schools, and Iannuzzi should be ashamed of himself for helping to lead such an outrageous assault on the truth.
