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SKOKIE, IL, September 4, 2013 (LifeSiteNews) – Children in at least one Illinois public school are being taught that “government is like a nation’s family” because it keeps people safe, takes care of their physical and emotional needs, and punishes bad behavior, just like mom and dad.

Fourth-graders at East Prairie School in Skokie were assigned a worksheet from Carson-Dellosa Publishing’s “U.S. Government and Presidents” workbook last week that said:

“Government is like a nation’s family. Families take care of children and make sure they are safe, healthy and educated, and free to enjoy life. Families encourage children to be independent hardworking and responsible.  Families make and enforce rules and give appropriate punishments when rules are broken. Government does these things for its citizens, too.”

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The comparison was printed alongside a cartoon drawing of Uncle Sam holding a stars-and-stripes-clad baby. 

The worksheet then asked students to compare their families to the U.S. government by having them answer the questions describing and comparing how their family and the government keeps them safe, healthy, educated, and how they each punish misdemeanors.

After a concerned parent sent a copy of the assignment to the Washington Blaze, school district superintendent Teri Madl denied the school was pushing a political message.

“In response to your questions and said worksheet, it is meant to offer a simple analogy that helps children understand that part of a government’s role is to set rules, enforce those rules, and provide safety, security and freedom for its citizens,” Madl told the Blaze in a statement. “It is not an attempt to include and/or promote a political message.”

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Laurie Higgins of the Illinois Family Institute said, however, the worksheet appears to be another in a disturbing string of incidents that seem to reveal an agenda aimed at handing parental rights over to the government.  “This assignment brings to mind MSNBC's Melissa Harris-Perry's startling statement that ‘we have to break through our kind of private idea that kids belong to their parents or kids belong to their families, and recognize that kids belong to their communities,’” Higgins told LifeSiteNews.com. 

“This assignment reveals a number of very troubling ideas,” Higgins told LifeSiteNews.com. “It reveals the supreme place many ‘educators’ assume for the role of government in the lives of citizens – a role that at least equals if not supersedes that of family.”

Higgins said she thought the better approach would have been to contrast the government with the family unit by pointing out parents’ superiority in providing for children's safety, health, education, training, and discipline – or, failing that, to simply leave the family out of discussions of the role of government.