Liberty school teaches kids Tea Party-style values: During the five-day Vacation Liberty School, talks, skits and activities mixed conservative values and early American history. The school is sponsored by Glenn Beck's 9/12 Project.
During the five-day Vacation Liberty School, talks, skits and activities mixed conservative values and early American history, including stories about how colonists' prayers once helped turn back a threatening French fleet and the principle of equal opportunity, but not necessarily equal results.
It marked the latest of a growing number of Vacation Liberty Schools, volunteer-run programs for children mostly aged 10-15 that resemble a mix between vacation Bible school, U.S. history and tea party-style conservative ideas that supporters say aren't taught in public schools.
They're run by members of conservative commentator Glenn Beck's 9/12 Project, a group that holds to a series of nine principles, including “America is good,” God is “the center of my life” and “My spouse and I are the ultimate authority, not the government,” which “cannot force me to be charitable.”
“What we need to do is get this country back on track,” said Penny Lister, of Perryville, who brought her 9-year-old son, Jacob McCowan, to the Danville session to “learn about responsibility.”
The first Liberty school was held in Georgetown, Ky., in 2010 by 9/12 members including Lisa Abler, who fashioned a curriculum and made it available for free online on the Vacation Liberty School website.
Since then, the summer schools have been held in Owensboro, Versailles and Danville. An estimated 1,000 children have attended 40 similar schools across the country this year in states including Florida and Michigan, most using a curriculum developed in Kentucky, according to Eric Wilson, head of the Kentucky 9/12 project.
The lessons on founding-father history and virtues, peppered with patriotism and faith, have proved a draw for 9/12 members, tea party followers and other conservatives, said Wilson, whose 9/12 groups has about 3,000 members in 13 chapters that meet monthly.
“There's a growing liberty movement in the past couple of years,” said Eric Wilson, head of the Kentucky 9/12 Project, who said demand for the schools is rooted in a desire to teach the “self-governing leadership and personal responsibility” that “this country was founded on.”
The schools, held for about three hours a day, are mostly free, though some charge nominal fees, funded primarily by volunteers and participants and held in churches. They have garnered media attention in several states, and some criticism.
'Very troubling'
Joseph Conn, a spokesman for Washington, D.C.-based Americans United for Separation of Church and State, said the teachings are “clearly biased toward a particular religious and political viewpoint” and part of a larger movement to teach “a Christian version of American history,” which he said tends to “take history and rewrite it. We see it as very troubling.”
But 9/12 members contend the material is “fact-based” and uses original documents, including the written words of the founding fathers. And Wilson contends they steer clear of politics, and are not a form of political indoctrination. “People say it's politically driven — it's not,” Abler said. “I look at it as revealing the truth.”
Abler said her curriculum is based on the 1981 book “The 5,000 Year Leap,” by the late anti-communist author W. Cleon Skousen, who advocated private property, minimal government regulation and the belief that that the U.S. Constitution is rooted in the Bible. Copies of the book sat on a table at the Danville camp.
Skousen's work has been criticized by scholars and groups such as the Southern Poverty Law Center, which has called it a “recipe for turning the United States into 50 little theocracies.”
Abler said the curriculum has gained a strong following, especially after Beck highlighted the effort last year on his TV show — saying the schools gave him “great hope” because children weren't hearing enough about faith, the Constitution and founding fathers.
Beck, who has been criticized by some for promoting conspiracy theories, had his Fox News show canceled earlier this year.
“I'm hoping it'll whet their appetite to learn more,” said Anne Nagy, a Danville-area conservative and 9/12 member who decided to hold the Danville school after feeling “disheartened about the direction of our country” on issue such as health care reform and gun control.
On the first night of the Danville school held at Faith Church, children began by escaping a tyrannical Old World Europe, where the king's representative stood in a candle-lit room. He provided only water and bread and made them repeatedly sing “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.”
Then they snaked through a “path to liberty” to arrive in another room representing New World America, filled with such games as Twister and checkers, soda, confetti, patriotic music and colonially dressed adults.
But they had to clean up afterward — learning that with freedom comes responsibility.
Individualism rewarded
Later they played a game where they blew bubbles from a single container, earning candy for popping each other's bubbles with squirt guns. Then they tried making and shooting their own bubbles, learning that individual efforts, rather than collectivism or socialism, was a better way to earn candy that represented gold nuggets.
They were asked which was better.
“Having your own bubbles,” Jacob said.
They could use their nuggets in a general store to buy snacks, toys and gifts. Later in the week, a man playing a central banker offered to buy the gold for government paper money, whose value, the children would learn, would decline in relation to gold.
“The gold standard — that's how the country started,” said Jim Fishback, a retiree who was volunteering to play the central banker.
Volunteer Seth Slone, a local resident dressed as a founding father, gave the children a lecture about how collectivism and communism in the New World led to starvation until settlers found that the use of individual property worked better.
“Let's apply communism to schools,” he told the children, arguing that no one would study if good grades were given to everyone, regardless of how hard they worked.
The weeklong curriculum includes themes of hope, charity and sustaining liberty in the Revolutionary War and founders such as George Washington and Ben Franklin.
According to the curriculum, it also includes such lessons as “understanding false extensions of separation of church and state,” “faith's role in the Revolutionary War,” “avoiding the enslavement of debt” and how charity should not be forced through the government or “enable dependency.”
Emily Knetsche, 12, said she enjoyed learning about the economy and lessons on “relying on yourself.” Her mother, Lisa Knetsche, said she heard about the school from friends.
“The values are in line with what we teach in our household,” she said. “We want our kids to understand that we need to defend the Constitution … to get back to our roots.”
Carolyn Underwood, a home-schooling mother from Danville, brought her children Mattie, 11, and Michael, 10, to the school, saying she appreciates what was being taught partly because it fits into the American history she's teaching at home.
Robin Rodgers, who brought her daughter, 11-year-old Faith, said she enrolled because “it's something important the kids aren't learning school.”
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