What if your local public school district offered a program for high-achieving high school students that required:

1. In-depth, college-level study of core fields (biology/chemistry, mathematics, history, literature, language) and elective fields (economics, computer science, physics),
2. An integrated curriculum where connections and common threads are woven between the fields of study in the students' coursework,
   
3. A focus on critical reasoning and analysis skills (including discussions on differing points of views), including a course dedicated to the philosophies of knowledge and developing such critical reasoning skills,
   
4. A graded, lengthy essay on a topic of the student's choosing, requiring independent research and critical analysis,
5. Hours of community service,
6. Oral and written competence in a non-native language,
   
7. And, a final exam for each course that is common to and graded against all students taking the same courses throughout the world?
   

To me, I'd hope that my children would have the benefit of such a program in my public schools.

Unfortunately, for other conservatives, such a program is a sign of anti-American influence on the American educational system.

The program is called International Baccalaureate (IB, for short).

I was fortunate to be given the opportunity to earn an International Baccalaureate Diploma from Wausau East High School, as part of my education. I found the coursework to be rigorous, the teachers to be involved and connected, and completion of the program to be very enlightening, clarifying my thoughts on how I look at world events today, as a conservative. I very much wish the same opportunity for other students to help them separate the wheat from the chaff, fact from fiction, truth from propaganda.

More school districts (including my neighboring Minnetonka, Minnesota school district) are including this program into their course offerings, but some groups like EdWatch are shamefully raising suspicions and FUD (fear, uncertainty, and doubt) to scare parents into rejecting the program outright, because of concerns about its connections to the United Nations and the program's global (and, therefore, supposedly implied anti-American) nature.

Our public educational system needs more courses and programs like IB to educate our youth in the areas of critical reasoning to separate the facts from the opinions and to make informed decisions about the future. Opponents of these types of programs really appear to be barking up the wrong tree if they want to improve the American educational system.