ugonow
Senior Member
Joined: Dec 21, 2010 10:15:55 GMT -5
Posts: 3,397
|
Post by ugonow on Jun 7, 2011 8:27:03 GMT -5
with ties to Turkey and Islamics are popping up in the state and funded with tax money. The article states they are even importing staff members... No teachers available in Texas? Texas has one of the poorest rated school systems, but I don't think this is a good way to try to improve it----- www.nytimes.com/2011/06/07/education/07charter.html?partner=rss&emc=rss
|
|
ugonow
Senior Member
Joined: Dec 21, 2010 10:15:55 GMT -5
Posts: 3,397
|
Post by ugonow on Jun 7, 2011 9:15:07 GMT -5
<<<"Some of the schools’ operators and founders, and many of their suppliers, are followers of Fethullah Gulen, a charismatic Turkish preacher of a moderate brand of Islam whose devotees have built a worldwide religious, social and nationalistic movement in his name. Gulen followers have been involved in starting similar schools around the country — there are about 120 in all, mostly in urban centers in 25 states, one of the largest collections of charter schools in America.
The growth of these “Turkish schools,” as they are often called, has come with a measure of backlash, not all of it untainted by xenophobia. Nationwide, the primary focus of complaints has been on hundreds of teachers and administrators imported from Turkey: in Ohio and Illinois, the federal Department of Labor is investigating union accusations that the schools have abused a special visa program in bringing in their expatriate employees.
But an examination by The New York Times of the Harmony Schools in Texas casts light on a different area: the way they spend public money. And it raises questions about whether, ultimately, the schools are using taxpayer dollars to benefit the Gulen movement — by giving business to Gulen followers, or through financial arrangements with local foundations that promote Gulen teachings and Turkish culture. ">>> Hmmm union involvement. Is the hatred for unions strong enough to support the importing of these teachers?
|
|
Deleted
Joined: May 6, 2024 9:04:58 GMT -5
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Jun 7, 2011 10:16:35 GMT -5
Texas has one of the poorest rated school systems,
Sadly Texas schools have gone liberal & teachers have very limited options. Once again kids are passed even if they don't meet the minimum (so that they will feel good about themselves). I don't see a big difference in giving a lot of kids a HS diploma when they graduate kindergarten, because they aren't going to learn anyway. Sad.
|
|
ugonow
Senior Member
Joined: Dec 21, 2010 10:15:55 GMT -5
Posts: 3,397
|
Post by ugonow on Jun 7, 2011 10:31:20 GMT -5
It could save money.Be careful of what you wish for...When I was a kid and messed up in a class,I blamed the teacher.My parents never believed me,and made me work harder at it. It isgood to know I was right and they were wrong.
|
|
Deleted
Joined: May 6, 2024 9:04:58 GMT -5
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Jun 7, 2011 10:32:36 GMT -5
|
|
Deleted
Joined: May 6, 2024 9:04:58 GMT -5
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Jun 7, 2011 10:38:39 GMT -5
It all sounds pretty benign--- except they import Turkish Muslim teachers, and award contracts to Turkish businesses, and have your basic tentacle connections to Muslim organizations. I never heard of THIS group, but I have sure seen others like it. Since I have time to blow, I am going to blow some looking in to the names associated with this group, and the mission statements. I guess Bush is to blame for this. No need for it, none at all, not with Americans out of work. Certainly brings to mind creeping incrementalism..
|
|
henryclay
Senior Member
Joined: Feb 5, 2011 19:03:37 GMT -5
Posts: 3,685
|
Post by henryclay on Jun 7, 2011 10:44:05 GMT -5
As the article is written, I can't find anything to fault with the schools, and applaud them instead. But . . . .
After the additional posts below have been reviewed I am convinced that there may be a skunk in the woodpile and, pending further study I should edit my original post and withhold my prior knee jerk response.
|
|
Deleted
Joined: May 6, 2024 9:04:58 GMT -5
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Jun 7, 2011 10:45:10 GMT -5
|
|
Deleted
Joined: May 6, 2024 9:04:58 GMT -5
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Jun 7, 2011 11:07:28 GMT -5
www.todayszaman.com/news-246564-bahcelis-comments-on-gulen-to-likely-cost-mhp-votes-in-erzurum.htmlThere is a lot of info in here on this Gulen guy. Turkey sure doesn't want his brand is Islamism.. and we give him a free pass.. The guy has a 5th grade education, and is allowed to stay here on an extended Visa as some scholar.. I would NOT let my child go to one of these schools, and I am glad they are being looked at. Another US blunder?? Let's read some of Gulen's words: What Are Gülen's Intentions? Conglomerates have long had a dominant position in Turkish society. Secular businessmen such as Aydın Doğan and Mehmet Emin Karamehmet have interests not only in industry but also in media, the banking sector, and even education. Never before, though, has a single individual started a movement that seeks to transform Turkish society so fundamentally. Gülen now wields a vocal partisan media; a vast network of loyal bureaucrats; partisan universities and academia; partisan prosecutors and judges; partisan security and intelligence agencies; partisan capitalists, business associations, NGOs, and labor unions; and partisan teachers, doctors, and hospitals. What makes Gülen so dangerous? Gülen's own teaching and sermons provide the best answers. In 1999, Turkish television aired footage of Gülen delivering sermons to a crowd of followers in which he revealed his aspirations for an Islamist Turkey ruled by Shari‘a (Islamic law) as well as the methods that should be used to attain that goal. In the sermons, he said: You must move in the arteries of the system without anyone noticing your existence until you reach all the power centers … until the conditions are ripe, they [the followers] must continue like this. If they do something prematurely, the world will crush our heads, and Muslims will suffer everywhere, like in the tragedies in Algeria, like in 1982 [in] Syria … like in the yearly disasters and tragedies in Egypt. The time is not yet right. You must wait for the time when you are complete and conditions are ripe, until we can shoulder the entire world and carry it … You must wait until such time as you have gotten all the state power, until you have brought to your side all the power of the constitutional institutions in Turkey … Until that time, any step taken would be too early—like breaking an egg without waiting the full forty days for it to hatch. It would be like killing the chick inside. The work to be done is [in] confronting the world. Now, I have expressed my feelings and thoughts to you all—in confidence … trusting your loyalty and secrecy. I know that when you leave here—[just] as you discard your empty juice boxes, you must discard the thoughts and the feelings that I expressed here. He continued, When everything was closed and all doors were locked, our houses of isik [light] assumed a mission greater than that of older times. In the past, some of the duties of these houses were carried out by madrasas [Islamic schools], some by schools, some by tekkes [Islamist lodges] … These isik homes had to be the schools, had to be madrasas, [had to be] tekkes all at the same time. The permission did not come from the state, or the state's laws, or the people who govern us. The permission was given by God … who wanted His name learned and talked about, studied, and discussed in those houses, as it used to be in the mosques.[47] In another sermon, Gülen said, Now it is a painful spring that we live in. A nation is being born again. A nation of millions [is] being born—one that will live for long centuries, God willing … It is being born with its own culture, its own civilization. If giving birth to one person is so painful, the birth of millions cannot be pain-free. Naturally we will suffer pain. It won't be easy for a nation that has accepted atheism, has accepted materialism, a nation accustomed to running away from itself, to come back riding on its horse. It will not be easy, but it is worth all our suffering and the sacrifices.[48] And, in yet another sermon, he declared, The philosophy of our service is that we open a house somewhere and, with the patience of a spider, we lay our web to wait for people to get caught in the web; and we teach those who do. We don't lay the web to eat or consume them but to show them the way to their resurrection, to blow life into their dead bodies and souls, to give them a life.[49] Many Gülen supporters and members of the Islamist media affiliated with the cemaat suggested the sermons were somehow forged[50] but the denials are unconvincing given the video footage and reports by Gülen movement defectors.
|
|
Deleted
Joined: May 6, 2024 9:04:58 GMT -5
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Jun 7, 2011 11:09:33 GMT -5
Now let's read what they say about the US involvement with Gulan: U.S. Government Support for Gülen?
Many Turkish analysts believe that, prior to Erdoğan's election, Gülen and his supporters in the U.S. government helped obtain an invitation to the White House for him at a time when Erdoğan was banned from politics in Turkey due to his Islamist activities—an event viewed as a U.S. endorsement ahead of the 2002 Turkish elections. That the U.S. government and, specifically, the Central Intelligence Agency support the Gülen movement is conventional wisdom among Turkey's secular elite even though no hard evidence exists to support such allegations.
When Turkish secularists are asked to defend the view that Gülen enjoys U.S. support, they often point to his almost 20-year residence in eastern Pennsylvania. After the Supreme Court of Appeals in Turkey (Yargıtay) confirmed on June 24, 2008, a lower court's ruling to acquit Gülen on charges that he organized an illegal terrorist organization to overthrow the secular government in Turkey, Gülen won another legal battle, this time in the United States. A federal court reversed U.S. Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service decisions that would have denied Gülen's application for permanent residency in the United States on the basis that Gülen did not fit the criteria as someone with "extraordinary ability in the field of education." The Department of Homeland Security characterized Gülen as neither an expert in the field of education nor an educator but rather as "the leader of a large and influential religious and political movement with immense commercial holdings."[51]
While the court ruling that allowed Gülen to remain in the United States may provide fodder for Turkish analysts who suggest U.S. support for Gülen, the process is actually more revealing. Indeed, the U.S. government noted that much of the acclaim Gülen touts is sponsored or financed by his own movement. Gülen attached twenty-nine letters of reference to his June 18, 2008 motion, mostly from theologians or Turkish political figures close to or affiliated with his organization. John Esposito, founding director of the Saudi-financed Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding, who, after receiving donations from the Gülen movement sponsored a conference in his honor, also supplied a reference. Two former CIA officials, George Fidas and Graham Fuller, and former U.S. ambassador to Turkey Morton Abramowitz also supplied references.
The letters may have worked. On July 16, 2008, U.S. district judge Stewart Dalzell issued a memorandum and order granting Gülen's motion for partial summary judgment and ordering the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service to approve his petition for alien worker status as an alien of extraordinary ability by August 1, 2008. The court found that the immigration examiner improperly concluded that the field of education was the only statutory category in which Gülen's accomplishments could fit and that Gülen's accomplishments in such fields as theology, political science, and Islamic studies should also be considered. The court further determined that the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service Administrative Appeals Office erred in concluding that Gülen's work was not "scholarly" by applying an unduly narrow definition of the term. Finally, with regard to the statutory requirement that the applicant show that his or her entry into the United States would substantially benefit the United States, the court found that Gülen had met the requirement.[52]
Regardless of the legal rationale behind his current stay, the U.S. decision to grant Gülen residency will enable his movement to continue to imply Washington's endorsement as the AKP and its Fethullahist supporters seek to push Turkey further away from the secularism upon which it was built.
|
|
Deleted
Joined: May 6, 2024 9:04:58 GMT -5
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Jun 7, 2011 11:10:25 GMT -5
Creeping incrementalism..
|
|
Deleted
Joined: May 6, 2024 9:04:58 GMT -5
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Jun 7, 2011 11:14:42 GMT -5
That is a LONG article. People should read it. This guy is an Islamist, does not want a secular Turkey, wants Sharia law. He's just like all these people the USA defends when promoting their mosques, etc. If you look at their backgrounds they are what we do not want to happen to our country. But, ever PC-- we keep letting them in..
|
|
Deleted
Joined: May 6, 2024 9:04:58 GMT -5
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Jun 7, 2011 11:52:03 GMT -5
gulencharterschools.weebly.com/how-the-harmony-schools-serve-the-gulen-movement.htmlHow the Harmony schools serve the Gulen Movement Gulen charter schools provide revenue for Gulenist businesses, and “win over” students in various ways that benefit the Gulen Movement, either by steering them towards a positive view of Turkey and Gulenist Turkish culture, or by recruiting them to perform various services for the Gulen Movement. Some specific examples for the Harmony Public Schools in Texas are given here. Here is an outline: 1. Schools contracting to Gulenist businesses 2. Students used for political advocacy 3. Students taken on field trips that advertise for Gulenist businesses or orgs. 4. Graduates steered towards serving as future teachers in Harmony schools 5. Mysterious land deals between schools and Gulenist organizations Details for each point are below. MORE
|
|
txbo
Familiar Member
Joined: Apr 1, 2011 4:07:47 GMT -5
Posts: 547
|
Post by txbo on Jun 7, 2011 11:57:50 GMT -5
Texas has one of the poorest rated school systems,
Here is how conservative Texas works. We have some very but few affluent communities that have the best public, private and religious schools. Our students score as high if not higher than the best school districts in the country and most will attend universities. On the other end of the spectrum, which is most of Texas, you have poor districts that teach children with non-certified teachers because they cannot afford more. They will hire a part-time certified teacher for preparation of the TASK test. Texas will usually cut educational spending first if a city is low on finances. We have 28,000 students right now that will not graduate because they did not pass the TASK test. On the other hand, we can supply our employers with cheap under-educated labor that are loyal and thankful just to have a job. Our large corporations will import highly educated foreign workers who again will live in affluent communities to insure the best education.
|
|
Deleted
Joined: May 6, 2024 9:04:58 GMT -5
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Jun 7, 2011 12:05:27 GMT -5
I'm from Tx. Yeah, the schools rate low. SO-- because of that the kids should be educated in schools based on the philosophies of the above? My oldest son is finally getting married, in TX, because they want a kid now. He's a smart man, though. No way he would put his kid in a Gulen school. Sure, just forget improving education-- heck, let the Islamists do it.
|
|
txbo
Familiar Member
Joined: Apr 1, 2011 4:07:47 GMT -5
Posts: 547
|
Post by txbo on Jun 7, 2011 12:20:59 GMT -5
I'm from Tx. Yeah, the schools rate low. SO-- because of that the kids should be educated in schools based on the philosophies of the above? My oldest son is finally getting married, in TX, because they want a kid now. He's a smart man, though. No way he would put his kid in a Gulen school. Sure, just forget improving education-- heck, let the Islamists do it. I would assume most Christians would not send the children to an Islamic schools but one that is in line with the Christian philosophy and vis-à-vis
|
|
Deleted
Joined: May 6, 2024 9:04:58 GMT -5
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Jun 7, 2011 12:28:45 GMT -5
There IS no Christ in schools, in case you missed that, except for private schools. No, the people that will send their kids to Gulen schools are the libs that would NEVER send their kid to a private Christian school, but will gladly send them to a Gulan school. Then pat themselves on their progressive backs all the way home-- while the Islamists laugh at them, and spend their money to grow the cause in the USA and abroad.
|
|
|
Post by marshabar1 on Jun 7, 2011 12:37:58 GMT -5
|
|
Deleted
Joined: May 6, 2024 9:04:58 GMT -5
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Jun 7, 2011 12:59:59 GMT -5
Sure is cultish. Which is why he is guarded by men in black, and they can't marry until age 50, and then their women have to wear full head to toe garb... but somehow his schools here are seen as "progressive."
|
|
|
Post by marshabar1 on Jun 7, 2011 13:03:08 GMT -5
Libs trying to damage the successful and conservative Texas, they'd marry Satan to do it.
|
|
txbo
Familiar Member
Joined: Apr 1, 2011 4:07:47 GMT -5
Posts: 547
|
Post by txbo on Jun 7, 2011 13:45:31 GMT -5
Libs trying to damage the successful and conservative Texas, they'd marry Satan to do it. LMAO, I did marry a religious conservative small town Texas girl and occasionally I believe I married Satan.
|
|
ugonow
Senior Member
Joined: Dec 21, 2010 10:15:55 GMT -5
Posts: 3,397
|
Post by ugonow on Jun 7, 2011 17:04:34 GMT -5
So I can assume you are on board with Texans tax money being spent on promoting Islamic growth in the US at the expense of American workers??
|
|
ugonow
Senior Member
Joined: Dec 21, 2010 10:15:55 GMT -5
Posts: 3,397
|
Post by ugonow on Jun 8, 2011 8:32:56 GMT -5
I have to wonder...what would the responses be if the word Texas was replaced with California?
|
|
Deleted
Joined: May 6, 2024 9:04:58 GMT -5
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Jun 8, 2011 12:59:54 GMT -5
Seems Gulan is all over the place, not just Texas. It is just Texas asking questions. Gotta give it to my home state-- they will go down fighting if they go down. Now I have to go see if these schools are in CA, also. Maybe not-- terrible business climate there...
|
|
Deleted
Joined: May 6, 2024 9:04:58 GMT -5
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Jun 8, 2011 13:26:32 GMT -5
Sure they are in CA. Not posting a specific link, this one instead. They are even here in Tucson... they are everywhere... gulencharterschools.weebly.com/Lots of info in there. This is so weird-- I never knew.. Now I am thinking of something I saw last week about Obama coming down on charter schools... Can't remember, something about funding.. and since my youngest went to a great charter school, graduated with honors (NOT a Gulen school!!) I didn't like what Obama was doing... trying to do, whatever. I want to go look more at it now.. maybe it is related to this somehow.. Geez, this thread taught me stuff. More to learn, I think.
|
|
ugonow
Senior Member
Joined: Dec 21, 2010 10:15:55 GMT -5
Posts: 3,397
|
Post by ugonow on Jun 8, 2011 13:32:23 GMT -5
You are correct, krickitt.I had never hear of them before this article,and appreciate your fine dectective work.
|
|
Deleted
Joined: May 6, 2024 9:04:58 GMT -5
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Jun 8, 2011 13:34:56 GMT -5
Oh, man, there is so much info out there on charter school funding.. It is making my head spin. I have to take a break. Ugo-- do you have an interest in this, or just posted the article? Help me research this. I'm not used to starting from scratch on something. I'm babysitting, so can't totally focus on anything.
|
|
Deleted
Joined: May 6, 2024 9:04:58 GMT -5
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Jun 8, 2011 13:37:06 GMT -5
This is freaking me out a little, ugo. Thx for the topic. Keep looking. Thx. Did you read that last link I posted? I have to take a break... regroup. Creeping incrementalism.. just like wacky Beck says,...
|
|
ugonow
Senior Member
Joined: Dec 21, 2010 10:15:55 GMT -5
Posts: 3,397
|
Post by ugonow on Jun 8, 2011 13:37:35 GMT -5
It has peaked my interest,but I come here on and off while doing other work.I do plan on looking into it more though as I can..It is curious as to why this is going so strong.
|
|
Deleted
Joined: May 6, 2024 9:04:58 GMT -5
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Jun 8, 2011 13:43:47 GMT -5
Because we live in this PC "climate" where some folks are never questioned like the rest of us-- like the whole issue of Gulen living here, which is in some link up there somewhere. He's no scholar!! No education beyond grade school, but we let him in-- you read the reasons. This is the weirdest thing I have seen in awhile.
|
|