Daily Archives: December 9, 2015

The FBI’s new “Don’t Be a Puppet” program promotes the policing of student thought in our nation’s classrooms, and would turn our students and teachers into spies and snitches.

Tell them no.

The FBI plans to launch the program soon, but advocates will meet later this week with officials at the Department of Homeland Security to object.

Add your voice to ours. We need 5,000 signatures on this petition by Thursday, December 10.

Excerpts from the petition:

“(T)he program, aimed at middle and high schools students, turns teachers into FBI puppets and surveillance surrogates. The main responsibility of teachers should be to teach our children, not to probe or surveil them. The “Don’t Be a Puppet” program will call for teachers to monitor our children’s conversations and thoughts both inside and outside the classroom. Through the program, the FBI will interfere with the creation of a positive learning environment that encourages the exchange of different ideas, and create an environment of fear instead. Children will no longer trust their teachers and will be unable to discuss their personal fears and adolescent issues. I believe that the FBI’s intention is to take advantage of the trust and authority that teachers establish with our children.”

“The program includes “games” and exercises that perpetuate and bolster stereotypes and present unreliable indicators that children are “at risk” of radicalization because they are quiet, have an Arabic name, practice a particular religion, or use social media to express themselves. With the rise of bullying and discrimination by individuals and by educational institutions, this web-based program does not aid in assuring a safe environment for our children. It will lead to the “othering” of children of color which will ensure more bullying, bias, misperception, alienation, as well as racial and religious profiling. Arab and Muslim students, and those perceived to be Arab or Muslim, will be singled out, targeted and reported back to FBI.

Alarmingly, the FBI’s CVE programs may be used to criminalize children. Under the program, children may be subjected to interrogation, intimidation, coercion to become an informant, and even prison because the program told a teacher what an “at risk” child was, looked-like, sounded-like, and/or would say. ”

Please help keep bigotry and oppressive government out of your child’s classroom, speak out today.