AFA of PA ACTION ALERT

November 19, 2013

Issues

150 Years Ago Today

Details

President Abraham Lincoln’s historic address came during the dedication of Soldiers’ National Cemetery in Gettysburg.  Are our Pennsylvania students learning/memorizing these words and the context in which they were spoken?  Not likely, but definitely not if PA Core Standards are implemented!!

November 19, 1863

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate — we can not consecrate — we can not hallow — this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

Action Steps

1.)  Pray that as the Independent Regulatory Review Commission (IRRC) hears testimony concerning the PA Core Standards later this week that they will see the truth about these standards — weakens existing standards, ignores students as individuals with individual abilities to learn, unfunded mandate, no one knows what implementation will cost, rewrites our history to an even greater degree than current textbooks, takes away even more local control, etc.  Here’s the written testimony submitted by the AFA of PA:    Testimony to IRRC 11.18.13  and IRRC Testimony – page 2 11.18.13

2.)   Pray for Pennsylvania’s elected officials on all levels.  As the Keystone State we should take seriously the role of the keystone or capstone in locking the other pieces of an arch in place.

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