[LINK] US Military Think Tank Rewriting History of Spirituality Program?

[Tom Worthington]

This one must be a gift for conspiracy fans who think the US government 
runs secret brainwashing programs: "An Outcome Evaluation of the 
Spirituality for Kids Program" (Maestas, Nicole  and Sarah J. Gaillot, 
2008). This was a report by the RAND Corporation, evaluating an after 
school program run by a tax deductible chartable organisation endorsed 
by film celebrities. But after claims the program was set up by a 
religious cult involved in tax evasion, RAND rewrote their report and 
removed the original version from the web.

RAND was set up to advise the US military. They do evaluate some school 
programs, but spirituality is a little outside their usual area.

When I went to the RAND web site to get a copy of the report (it is a 
reading for a course in teaching I am doing), it was not there. Instead 
there was a note saying "This document has been superseded": 
http://www.rand.org/pubs/technical_reports/TR575.html

The superseding document has been renamed "An Outcome Evaluation of the 
Success for Kids Program". The word "Spirituality" has been removed from 
the title of the report, and systematically throughout the document: 
http://www.rand.org/pubs/technical_reports/TR575-1.html

"Spirituality for Kids" appears to have been removed from the report 
after there were allegations of US tax investigations: 
http://articles.latimes.com/2011/may/21/local/la-me-0521-kabbalah-charity-20110521
and concern the program was from a religious cult: 
http://www.jewishjournal.com/community/article/after-school_kabbalah_comes_to_lausd_campuses_20090402/

It seems a little odd that RAND decided to rewrite history by editing 
their report without mentioning why. In particular the RAND report 
states: "SFK Success for Kids began working with a small number of 
schools in Los Angeles six years ago ...". That statement appears to be 
untrue, as the organisation at the time was called: "Spirituality for 
Kids": http://web.archive.org/web/20051026084848/http://www.sfk.org/

RAND could have at least said "Success for Kids (then known as 
Spirituality for Kids) ...".


-- 
Tom Worthington FACS CP, TomW Communications Pty Ltd. t: 0419496150
PO Box 13, Belconnen ACT 2617, Australia  http://www.tomw.net.au
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Adjunct Senior Lecturer, Research School of Computer Science,
Australian National University http://cs.anu.edu.au/courses/COMP7310/