"'Cult' class slid under radar" - NY Post

i-0c4d01a1dd2f718eb2d34954734bd3de-New_York_Post_logo.png

The NY Post reported yesterday that a brain-training type programme had been taken up by dozens of schools in New York, despite its connections to the Dahn Yoga cult.

A controversial teaching program linked to an alleged cult leader managed to slip into 44 New York City public schools because it didn't cost enough to trigger detailed background checks, school officials said yesterday.

Fees for the Brain Power program, developed by Seung Huen Lee, founder of Dahn Yoga -- said to help kids improve their focus -- were well under the $25,000 cutoff, said Education Department spokesman David Cantor.

Dahn Yoga has been embroiled in a federal lawsuit in Arizona after dozens of former employees accused the organisation of cult-like practices. The Boston Magazine has an in-depth article about a man who asked intervention expert Steve Hassan to rescue his son from the group.

More like this

A fire last month at the Tazreen Fashions Ltd. factory in Ashulia, Bangladesh killed 112 workers and injured many more.  Now it's being reported that the fire department had refused to renew the factory's certification, and that only five of factory's eight floors were built illegally. The New York…
The two-year anniversary of OSHA's proposed silica rule being stuck at the White House Office of Management & Budget (which Celeste wrote about here) attracted some media attention. NPR's Nell Greenfieldboyce did an in-depth story on the hazards of airborne silica exposure, which increases the…
From The Washington Post: The D.C. Council, in a flourish of whereases, proclaimed March 16 Brain Education Day, responding to a nationwide call from a brain-wave guru in Sedona, Ariz. (The Montgomery County Council was set to make the same proclamation Tuesday but canceled at the last minute. And…
Massachusetts is trying to tackle the problem of hospital-acquired ('nosocomial') infections by adding $1 million dollars in funding to track and monitor hospital compliance with infection control measures. As I've discussed before, nosocomial infections are a huge problem, and may account for…

When are these educators going to start looking closer at the programs that go into the schools? This is not an isolated incident. Scientology's Narconon has been thrown out of public schools again and again, and Scientology's Applied Scholastics is currently used as a supplemental tutoring company in 11 states' Depts of Education.
(see studytech.org if this alarms you).

I don't mean to point the finger at the public educational system, but I think that the outside groups that get involved in the teaching process need a little harder scrutiny; at least 15 minutes of Google would be nice.

I remain, a dedicated fan of public education.