K-12 Brainwashing
- From: "jose" <josefsoplar@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: 4 Nov 2005 09:01:01 -0800
K-12 Brainwashing
By Ari Kaufman
FrontPageMagazine.com | November 4, 2005
It is no longer a secret that many public and private universities are
populated by professors who use their classrooms to recruit students to
their political agendas. But while the politicization of the
universities is now common knowledge, an even more distressing instance
of this abuse is to be found in the nation's K-12 schools.
I have that on good authority. I have been a teacher in Los
Angeles-area elementary and middle schools and have witnessed first
hand how students who are younger and more impressionable are being
regularly indoctrinated by leftwing teachers. Having worked in a number
of different school districts over the past five years, from the
well-to-do Palisades to the hardscrabble Watts neighborhood, I can
further attest that cases of indoctrination occur far more often than
many would believe possible.
One such case involved a substitute teacher of my acquaintance. During
his various stints at our school, he was notorious for compelling
elementary-school students to sign random petitions in support of the
political causes he favored. He wasn't shy about foisting his views
on other teachers, either. Once, when my classroom's American flag
accidentally fell, he immediately stuffed it into the closet. And, in a
sense, who could blame him? Seeing that three quarters of our faculty
were declining to recite the daily pledge with their students he had
probably concluded that mistreating the flag would not be frowned upon.
In indoctrinating students in his politics, he was by no means an
anomaly. I can vividly recall the greeting of a grade school colleague
last Columbus Day, as the bell for morning class rang. "Hey, Mr. K,
Happy Murdering of Indigenous people Day!" Then he said: "I'll tell
my kids the real Columbus story today. The one not in the textbooks!"
In responding that I intended to teach the story of Columbus as it
happened, not the Howard Zinn version, I admit that I may have stooped
to his level of petulance. But it is difficult not to despair at the
anti-American history now being taught throughout our public school
systems.
It was the same story at a middle school in a more affluent part of Los
Angeles County. Most of the 8th grade American history classrooms held
polls in which students got to vote on "who really discovered
America?" I am not naive enough to believe that teacher influence
played no role in the eventual results, which showed "Chief Howling
Wind" easily defeating Columbus, 178 to 2. How different things are
from when I was in 8th grade, a mere 13 years ago. Back then, we took
part in essay-writing contests about the heroic deeds of Columbus on
his 500th Anniversary. By 1996, however, the holiday had been replaced
on Los Angeles school calendars with Cesar Chavez Day, in honor of the
labor radical.
School assemblies were arguably the most blatant forums for political
indoctrination. By my rough estimate, 80 percent of these were focused
on promoting an environmentalist agenda. It wasn't enough to
encourage elementary school students to recycle. No, the kids had to
endure sermons on the supposed wickedness of humanity, especially
corporate humanity. An over-the-top presentation by a yoga instructor
was representative of the genre. After showing pictures of dead
animals, meant to symbolize the victims of environmental depredation,
she led the children in a mournful chant expressly aimed at stirring
their emotions. "How does the seal look?" she would intone.
"Sad!" they would echo. When I voiced my concerns about the
patently exploitative demonstration to another teacher, she concurred.
Nonetheless, she insisted on keeping her concerns to herself. She had a
point: objecting to the assembly might prove unpopular with the
faculty, not a few of whom were radical environmentalists and Green
Party members.
In a similar vein, consider the presentation made by a college theater
group from UCLA. Showing no interest in a balanced engagement with the
issues, the group instead staged a 20-minute play whose theme can be
summarized thusly: Once upon a time, the Earth was beautiful. Then
humans came and destroyed it. To appreciate the effect of such
simplistic narratives on students, consider the reaction of a little
girl in my classroom. Visibly upset, she approached me after the play
to ask: "Are we really ruining the Earth"? I did my best to
explain, as objectively as possible, that the reality was a bit more
complicated that the play would have her believe. But this had little
effect.
In case the assemblies proved inadequate to steeping the kids in
environmentalist dogma, there were also field trips designed to achieve
the same end. The preferred field trip of most teachers was something
called "Ocean Day. Organized by the Malibu Foundation, a non-profit
group whose declared mission is "creating conservationists" out of
school children, it was annual day set aside for environmental
activism, or as it is euphemistically called, "in-school
environmental education."
The point of the annual trip was to clean up trash on California
beaches. Their work done, the children would then pose for photographs
conveying the message of the trip. On one occasion, for instance, they
were asked to line up in the outline of a fish with an oxygen mask -
a standard piece of environmentalist propaganda - while an aerial
photograph http://www.oceanday.net/2005.html was taken. My attempts to
recommend a more educational venue for a field trip - for instance,
the Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles - met with indifference from
school administrators. My fellow teachers were even less open to
persuasion. Once, when I questioned the wisdom of ferrying the kids to
spend yet another day picking up trash and reciting environmentalist
slogans, two teachers in my grade level, both convinced
environmentalists, dismissed my objections out of hand.
Environmentalist indoctrination is not the only problem in our public
schools, however. It is not uncommon, for instance, for teachers to put
their political commitments ahead of their teaching responsibilities.
One such incident occurred at a school in Southwest Los Angeles, where
I have taught full-time for the past two years. One of our faculty
members missed the first week of the last school year. The reason? She
was incarcerated, along with the school's video camera, while
protesting at the Republican National Convention in New York City. That
teacher, who displays a "No War in Iraq" poster in her classroom,
had already missed our training days in order to walk alongside Michael
Moore and Jesse Jackson outside Madison Square Garden.
Upon her return, she regaled the faculty with her "protest"
stories. Proudly displaying a picture from her stint in jail, she
announced sarcastically, "this is our democracy at work!" She later
had to miss more school in order to fly back to New York to retrieve
the school's camera and attend her court date. It was hard in the end
to avoid the conclusion that she was more interested in boosting the
fortunes of the political left than her students' test scores. Yet
the school's administration looked the other way: This teacher was
not disciplined and few people mentioned the incident afterwards; it
was as though it never happened.
What does draw faculty and administrative attention on campus is
anything that expresses a contrary or conservative point of view.
Indeed, experience has taught me that a culture of intimidation obtains
in our public schools. The case of one of teacher I knew provides an
illuminating example. A 20 year veteran at the school, he had long
hidden the fact that he supported the Republican Party, fearing, not
without justice, that this would do him irreparable damage. The fact
that his son was serving in Iraq had failed to prevent the pilfering of
his "Support the Troops" sticker from his car in the school parking
lot.
Besides him, there were only two other Republicans at my school: myself
and a friend of mine. Both young and idealistic educators, we had not
yet been apprised of the unspoken rule against challenging the
school's political culture. We learned the hard way last spring, when
we published an article in the Orange County Register supportive of
Governor Schwarzenegger and critical of the powerful Los Angeles
Teacher's Union.
The reaction at the school was as swift as it was severe. Formerly
friendly teachers now refused even to acknowledge our presence; the
convivial chatter ceased. One outraged teacher wondered how anyone
could support Republicans, much less say a word against the teachers
unions. (The evils of the Republican Party, on the other hand, were
received wisdom; an African-American teacher who spotted a photograph
of Condoleezza Rice in my classroom exclaimed, "That's so
racist!') My skepticism about the teachers' policy of leaving the
school promptly at 2:30, part of the union-organized protest against
the governor's education policies, only added more tarnish to my
reputation.
Ultimately, it was the teachers' insistence on putting their own
agendas ahead of the students that led me to resign my teaching post.
It was bad enough that teachers neglected students in order to stick it
to the Republican governor, that nearly a quarter of the faculty spent
weekends at union rallies, marching alongside pro-terrorist
organizations like International A.N.S.W.E.R., and that they believed
as an article of faith that, as one teacher put it, "you can't be a
teacher and also be a Republican." But when it was announced this
fall $8 would be subtracted from our salaries to fund campaigns against
Governor Schwarzenegger's reform initiatives, I resigned my teaching
position out of principle.
Looking back on it now, I see that I was a poor fit for the public
schools. While I love teaching, it has become clear to me that
educational progress must take a back seat to the "progressive"
political agendas of the teachers. I guess I had my priorities
backwards.
.
- Follow-Ups:
- Re: K-12 Brainwashing
- From: Roger
- Re: K-12 Brainwashing
- From: Chief
- Re: K-12 Brainwashing
- Prev by Date: Re: Political Song
- Next by Date: Re: Political Song
- Previous by thread: Vatican to Catholics:
- Next by thread: Re: K-12 Brainwashing
- Index(es):
Relevant Pages
|
Loading
