Valentine’s Day Chocolate Maligned, Politicized
Shame on any public schools that choose to promote this nonsense!
We now cannot even enjoy without guilt a once-a-year token of affection that we might receive from our admirers. Yes folks, the progressive geniuses at the AFT are telling young students that chocolate should be rejected.
In an article from EIA Online entitled “This Valentine’s Day, Give Her the Gift of Guilt” the American Federation of Teachers (shame on them!) or AFT, is promoting a “Valentine’s Day of Action” to protest the use of child labor in cocoa production in West Africa:
“For many American children—and their parents—chocolate is a delightful treat that adds to the joy of special occasions such as Valentine’s Day. But for children in West Africa, there will be nothing special about that day. It will simply be another desolate day of harvesting cocoa under inexcusable conditions. For that reason, the American Federation of Teachers is organizing a Valentine’s Day of Action to stop the importation of child-harvested cocoa beans or chocolate made from them.”
AFT is savvy enough to avoid suggesting you shouldn’t buy chocolate for Valentine’s Day, but instead limits its recommended action to writing a letter to U.S. Secretary of Agriculture (and former NEA lobbyist) Tom Vilsack, demanding he take the bold action of… issuing guidelines.
But that’s not all. AFT also provides a “Fair Trade Curriculum Unit for Kids” and activity book, designed for grades 2-5. The activity book reads like a bad parody of liberal activism in the schools. Here are a few excerpts:
* Do you think the cocoa farmers get a lot of the money you pay for the chocolate?
Because they don’t get paid very much, many cocoa farmers and their families are poor! How do you feel about that? Do you think that is right?
* Sometimes people create plantations, or large farms, of cocoa trees. Instead of growing the cocoa right inside the forest, while keeping the trees and animals that live there safe, these farms cut down the forest so there is nothing left and then plant only cocoa trees. Many plants and animals lose their homes and cannot survive anymore. (Ed. note: Save the homeless plants!)
* These chemicals make the water and air dirty. Many of the people and animals who breathe the dirty air and drink the dirty water get very sick.
* Kids eat chocolate. When you buy chocolate, companies that sell chocolate make money. They want you to like their chocolate so you will buy it. That is why they care a lot about what you think. And, if thousands of kids tell chocolate companies and businesses that sell chocolate that they want Fair Trade chocolate, then they will change!!!
* One thing you can do is take a pledge to buy Fair Trade chocolate. Let’s take the pledge now together! Repeat after me!
I pledge to buy Fair Trade chocolate so cocoa farmers can build a future full of hope for their families!
The 63-page curriculum guide has a lot more in the same vein, and lets you finish a lesson with a large group activity – repeating the Chocolate Rhyme:
One, two, three, cho
One, two, three, co
One, two, three, late!
Chocolate, chocolate
Fair Trade chocolate!
As you might suspect, the “fair trade” issue is a little more nuanced than AFT suggests, but who needs a lecture on economics when you’ve got a roomful of second-graders chanting the Chocolate Rhyme?
Potential admirers take note; all gifts of Valentine chocolate will be gratefully accepted!