The New America | Alex Newman – January 27, 2023
Weaponizing public schools for sinister purposes, an obscure United Nations institute is quietly working to transform education worldwide to impose radical political and spiritual values and beliefs on children. It is all happening under the guise of “social-emotional learning,” or SEL, a scheme hatched at a New Age organization whose founder and namesake was a follower of Lucifer Publishing Company chief Alice Bailey.
The organization in question, part of the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), is known as the Mahatma Gandhi Institute of Education for Peace and Sustainable Development, or UNESCO MGIEP for short. Dominated by pagans, communists, New Agers, and fringe psychiatrists, the India-based UN institute has global reach, boasting that it guides education policy worldwide. Even a brief perusal of its website and reports reveals serious cause for alarm.
At first glance, those unfamiliar with the manipulation of language used by New Agers and communists may not even notice the warning signs. For instance, the organization publicly claims it is merely working to give children “kinder brains” through its programs so the world can be more peaceful and “sustainable.” But in reality, the institute is a key vehicle for injecting occult “spirituality” into classrooms worldwide, as called for in Chapter 36 of the UN’s Agenda 21 global plan for “sustainable development.”
Like SEL promoters in the United States, where the controversial indoctrination tools were invented and developed, the UN outfit argues that children need this sort of emotional manipulation to form healthy relationships and regulate their emotions. Proponents never explain how children regulated their emotions or developed healthy relationships prior to SEL. But in any case, it is all just cover for something much darker.
In a very revealing video posted on the organization’s homepage, numerous red flags can be observed. One of the books that flashes by, for example, is “Blinded by Faith.” When one of the students in the video logs on to her “virtual platform,” her options are “climate change and ethics,” “math in life,” and “migration and conflict.” Upon clicking the math option, one of the three sub-options is “carbon footprint.”
At the end of the short video, the UN institute sums up its aims: “Changing mindsets,” “Challenging norms,” and “Transforming education for humanity.” And the desire to transform education to change mindsets comes through very clearly. On its webpage, for instance, the outfit touts the “mass mobilisation of youth towards sustainable development” as something that is “central” to its mission, even saying it “aims to mobilize the world’s youth” to achieve the UN’s tyrannical Agenda 2030 scheme — much more on that later.
The individuals involved also give the agenda away. Consider, for example, that the institute was launched by scandal-plagued UNESCO boss Irina Bokova. Before joining the UN, Bokova served as a high-ranking official in the mass-murdering Communist regime in Bulgaria. The New American exposed Bokova’s history of extremism in a series of articles years ago when she was being groomed for even higher office.
She is hardly the only known and unrepentant communist who has been instrumental in the UN’s “education” outfit. Another, Roza Otunbayeva, served as minister of foreign affairs and deputy head of government for the mass-murdering Soviet Kyrgyz Republic before serving as president of the Soviet National Commission of UNESCO and then taking a leadership role at the UNESCO MGIEP.
Numerous pagans and New Age religious leaders have also been instrumental in the creation and governing of the UN outfit. Consider the late Dr. Karan Singh, an Indian politician and advocate of global spirituality who served as the chair of the UNESCO MGIEP governing board. His connections to occult one-world “spirituality” and barbaric population-control schemes are well known.
One of Singh’s key posts, for instance, was serving as co-chair of the highly controversial World Commission on Global Consciousness and Spirituality, a front for global New Age “spirituality.” While there, he served alongside former UN Assistant Secretary-General Robert Muller, the “father of global education,” creator of the UN’s “World Core Curriculum,” and a self-proclaimed disciple of New Age occultist leader Alice Bailey.
Dr. Singh, who led the UNESCO MGIEP before his death, was also a key speaker at the 12th World Confluence of Humanity, Power, and Spirituality, which claims that its logo, “through its different representations, serves humanity by making them aware that the final aim for all human beings is the path to enlightenment.” Contrast that with the Westminster Catechism’s biblical argument that the chief end of man is to “glorify God and enjoy Him forever.” In an interview, Singh said, “in my mind, the significance of these [global spirituality] conferences is simply this, that we realize the essential unity of all religions.”
Occult New Age spirituality is not Singh’s only claim to fame. Interestingly, he served as “Minister of Family Planning” during the brutal forced sterilization campaigns undertaken by Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi under the guise of “family planning.” The barbaric policy, backed by the UN Population Fund and the World Bank, involuntarily sterilized millions of poor and lower-caste Indians — about 15 times more people than the National Socialist (Nazi) regime in Germany sterilized. Thousands of victims were killed by the “procedure.”
Another leading advocate of UN-backed global spirituality with close ties to the population-control agenda is Azza Karam, the head of Religions for Peace. The global alliance of self-proclaimed religious leaders ranging from self-styled Christians to full-blown pagans is funded by the UN, the U.S. State Department, billionaire globalist George Soros, the Rockefeller clan, and more. Prior to taking over as secretary-general of the outfit, Karam worked at the ruthless population-control agency UN Population Fund (UNFPA), infamous for cooperating on forced abortions and other atrocities with the mass-murdering Chinese Communist regime in enforcing its barbaric one-child policy.
Even the namesake of UNESCO MGIEP, Gandhi, had views on religion that were deeply troubling to orthodox believers in any religion, including his own Hindu paganism, which he said “I certainly prize above all other religions.” Despite his reputation as a peace-loving activist, as described in an exposé published by The New American headlined Gandhi Reconsidered: When Paganism Met Progressivism, Gandhi was also notoriously racist against Africans. He apparently picked up this view while living in South Africa as he agitated for war against the native Zulus, describing Indians as “undoubtedly infinitely superior to the [derogatory term for Africans].” He also famously referred to fascist dictator Benito Mussolini as a “superman” and Adolf Hitler as “my friend.”
Another member of UNESCO MGIEP’s governing board is Dr. Richard Davidson, who is affiliated with everything from the fascist Great Reset-promoting World Economic Forum to New Age occultism. Perhaps even more important is that he co-authored a book with Daniel Goleman of CASEL, the premier outfit promoting highly sophisticated psychological manipulation and conditioning of children using social-emotional learning (SEL). CASEL admitted on its website that the whole idea for SEL came from the Fetzer Institute, an occult New Age organization founded by a disciple of Lucifer Publishing’s Alice Bailey.
The New American has done extensive work exposing social-emotional learning. Under the guise of helping children learn “social” and “emotional” skills, SEL represents the latest frontier in scientific indoctrination. In fact, SEL’s own proponents readily admit that the scheme aims to help children develop the “correct” attitudes on controversial issues including sexuality, “racial justice,” migration, abortion, global citizenship, environmentalism, and more. Perhaps even more important, though, is the nexus with New Age “spirituality” that is incompatible with biblical views and teachings.
One of the disturbing elements that becomes obvious just by scratching the surface is that the same organizations and individuals promoting New Age global spirituality are also those promoting SEL and occult “mindfulness” schemes in public schools. One critic who has researched this phenomenon told The New American that “global citizenship education” may be seen by its advocates as a necessary element for global spirituality, “a means to an end” rather than an objective in and of itself.
Also troubling is that those peddling this agenda are openly weaponizing “neuroscience” along with education to create the type of person they want, displaying the values and beliefs they want, without regard to parents, families, or even the individuals being manipulated. While described as a “kinder brain” and “prosocial behavior,” this admittedly involves the
use of education for “transforming, shaping, [and] rewiring” the minds of children entrusted to “educators.”
All of this is presented by the UN as positive and without risk, even though freedom and even free will are never mentioned, continued the researcher, who did not want to be identified. “They are also very open about the way the adolescent brain is structured and view this vulnerable age as a particular opportunity for transformation,” the critic pointed out, highlighting a variety of documents such as MGIEP’s “Global Citizenship Curriculum” designed for children aged 12 through 14 based on “understanding the neuroscience and psychology of how an adolescent brain learns.”
Writing in the foreword of the MGIEP’s 2020 “Rethinking Learning” document, Buddhist monk Matthieu Ricard offers some alarming insight into what is really going on at the intersection of SEL and spirituality. “One of the groundbreaking developments in neuroscience has been to show that any form of training changes the brain and, consequently, our ways of being,” wrote the Buddhist cleric. “Our brains remain pliant throughout life but are particularly malleable during young age.”
“Over the last twenty years, scientists and meditators have collaborated to advance new fields of research such as contemplative neuroscience, mindfulness-based stress reduction and mindfulness-based cognitive therapy,” he added, with “mindfulness” referring to a Buddhist practice with deep connections to the occult that is now widespread in American schools. “Various kinds of interventions for cultivating these basic human qualities in young children have been designed, tested and evaluated, such as the ‘kindness curriculum’ devised at the Center for Healthy Minds by a team guided by neuroscientist Richard Davidson.”
In a piece for the MGIEP publication Blue Dot headlined “Rewiring the Brain to Be Future Ready,” the UN outfit offers more details on this. “Mindfulness is known as one process that can intentionally rewire a reactive neural circuitry into one that chooses kind and wise responses,” the article declares. “Our children are active changemakers who can help us grow up and become a more conscious, aware and mindful society.” The UN frequently refers to children under its tutelage as “agents of change” and “changemakers,” including in the UN’s Agenda 2030 “Sustainable Development Goals” (SDGs).
Indeed, even officially, a key focus of the India-based UN “education” institute is achieving Agenda 2030 “Sustainable Development Goal 4.7,” a subsection of one of the global organization’s 17 SDGs. Taken together, the goals — dubbed the “masterplan for humanity” by the head of the UN General Assembly in 2015 when it was being adopted — are a roadmap toward global technocratic government, complete with international wealth redistribution and tyranny.
Goal 4.7 calls for ensuring, by 2030, that “all learners acquire knowledge and skills needed to promote sustainable development, including among others through education for sustainable development and sustainable lifestyles, human rights, gender equality, promotion of a culture of peace and non-violence, global citizenship, and appreciation of cultural diversity and of culture’s contribution to sustainable development.”
In other words, every child on the planet must be so indoctrinated that he or she will submit to the UN’s perverse “masterplan for humanity.” Breaking down those elements further, it is clear that this indoctrination is incompatible with Christianity, Western civilization, patriotism, the nuclear family, and a genuine understanding of God-given rights as enshrined by America’s Founding Fathers in the Declaration of Independence and U.S. Constitution. And notice, it applies to “all learners,” potentially even roping in adults. Religious leaders around the world funded by the UN have rallied around the UN scheme.
Of course, Agenda 2030 actually builds on the 1992 UN scheme known as Agenda 21, signed by George H.W. Bush for the U.S. government. In Chapter 36, the UN claims “education” is “indispensable” for “changing people’s attitudes.” The document calls on governments to inject sustainability propaganda into all subjects. And perhaps most troubling of all, it demands that “spirituality” become a key component of what passes for education — and not any “spirituality” that Christians of any denomination would recognize. Again, the UN’s own “World Core Curriculum” was based on the teachings of the founder of Lucifer Publishing and the “Ascended Master” spiritual entity she claimed to be communicating with.
As these UN-backed ideas get produced and developed in institutions such as UNESCO’s MGIEP, they are then injected into classrooms worldwide through a complex network of organizations. This includes government agencies, teachers unions, (mostly tax-funded) nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), universities, foundations, and more. It happens with help from tax-funded grants and “free” educational materials offered to schools and governments, and is incorporated into curricula, textbooks, teacher training programs, and other means. This is how the “global” vision gets down to the local school your children or grandchildren might attend.
The emerging use of neuroscience and SEL to promote New Age pagan spirituality, “woke” values, and “global citizenship” to children around the world is beyond dangerous. The UN is even working to bring artificial intelligence into the process of indoctrinating and fundamentally transforming the minds of future generations — for more on this see the 2019 UN meeting in Beijing on using AI in education. Families who value their children, their faith, their nations, their liberties, and their God must sever all ties with the system, before it is too late.
Alex Newman
Alex Newman is a senior editor for The New American. He can be reached at anewman@thenewamerican.com or through Liberty Sentinel Media. Follow him on Twitter @ALEXNEWMAN_JOU or on Facebook.