Obama and Ayers Pushed Radicalism On Schools

The Wall Street Journal had a well-researched article detailing the connections between presidential candidate Barack Obama and William Ayers.  Ayers is a former member of the radical 1960s group called the Weathermen Underground.  Amongst other actions, they were responsible for bombing the Pentagon.  The opening paragraph does a good job of setting up the rest.

Despite having authored two autobiographies, Barack Obama has never written about his most important executive experience. From 1995 to 1999, he led an education foundation called the Chicago Annenberg Challenge (CAC), and remained on the board until 2001. The group poured more than $100 million into the hands of community organizers and radical education activists.

The CAC had some interesting criteria for selecting schools to receive funding:

The CAC's agenda flowed from Mr. Ayers's educational philosophy, which called for infusing students and their parents with a radical political commitment, and which downplayed achievement tests in favor of activism. In the mid-1960s, Mr. Ayers taught at a radical alternative school, and served as a community organizer in Cleveland's ghetto.

The theme of radicalism and protest put forth by Ayers and the CAC, with Obama as chairman, doesn't sound like any educational platform put forth by his campaign:

Mr. Ayers is the founder of the "small schools" movement (heavily funded by CAC), in which individual schools built around specific political themes push students to "confront issues of inequity, war, and violence." He believes teacher education programs should serve as "sites of resistance" to an oppressive system. (His teacher-training programs were also CAC funded.) The point, says Mr. Ayers in his "Teaching Toward Freedom," is to "teach against oppression," against America's history of evil and racism, thereby forcing social transformation.

The most interesting fact about the entire Ayers/Obama episode is the candidate's continued denial of having worked closely with Ayers.

The Obama campaign has cried foul when Bill Ayers comes up, claiming "guilt by association." Yet the issue here isn't guilt by association; it's guilt by participation. As CAC chairman, Mr. Obama was lending moral and financial support to Mr. Ayers and his radical circle. That is a story even if Mr. Ayers had never planted a single bomb 40 years ago.

I don't think that the American people are seeking to educate their children in Bill Ayer's model.