Classroom brainwashing

kurtsprincess

Active Member
Jul 15, 2005
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in my hammock
Thomas Sowell always seems to be able to cut right to the bone about the underlying issue.

Classroom brainwashing
Mar 14, 2006
by Thomas Sowell

Governor Bill Owens of Colorado has cut through the cant about "free speech" and come to the defense of a 16-year-old high school student who tape-recorded his geography teacher using class time to rant against President Bush and compare him to Hitler.

The teacher's lawyer talks about First Amendment rights to free speech but free speech has never meant speech free of consequences. Even aside from laws against libel or extortion, you can insult your boss or your spouse only at your own risk.

Unfortunately, there is much confusion about both free speech and academic freedom. At too many schools and colleges across the country, teachers feel free to use a captive audience to vent their politics when they are supposed to be teaching geography or math or other subjects.

While the public occasionally hears about weird rantings by some teacher or professor, what seldom gets any media attention is the far more pervasive classroom brainwashing by people whose views may not be so extreme, but are no less irrelevant to what they are being paid to teach. Some say teachers should give "both sides" -- but they should give neither side if it is off the subject.


Academic freedom is the freedom to do academic things -- teach chemistry or accounting the way you think chemistry or accounting should be taught. It is also freedom to engage in the political activities of other citizens -- on their own time, outside the classroom -- without being fired.

Nowhere else do people think that it is OK to engage in politics instead of doing the job for which they are being paid. When you hire a plumber to fix a leak, you don't want to find your home being flooded while he whiles away the hours talking about Congressional elections or foreign policy.

It doesn't matter whether his political opinions are good, bad, or indifferent if he is being paid to do a different job.

Only among "educators" is there such confusion that merely exposing what they are doing behind the backs of parents and taxpayers is regarded as a violation of their rights. Tenure is apparently supposed to confer carte blanche.

The Colorado geography teacher is not unique. A professor at UCLA wrote an indignant article in the Chronicle of Higher Education, denouncing organized efforts of students to record lectures of professors who impose their politics in class instead of teaching the subject they were hired to teach.

All across the country, from the elementary schools to the universities, students report being propagandized. That the propaganda is almost invariably from the political left is secondary. The fact that it is political propaganda instead of the subject matter of the class is what is crucial.

The lopsided imbalance among college professors in their political parties is a symptom of the problem, rather than the fundamental problem itself.

If physicists taught physics and economists taught economics, what they did on their own time politically would be no more relevant than whether they go swimming or sky diving on their days off. But politics is intruded, not only into the classroom, but into hiring decisions as well.

Even top scholars who are conservatives are unlikely to be hired by many colleges and universities. Similarly with people training to become public school teachers. Some in schools of education have said that, to be qualified, you have to see teaching as a means of social change -- meaning change in a leftward direction.

Such attitudes lead to lopsided politics among professors. At Stanford University, for example, the faculty includes 275 registered Democrats and 36 registered Republicans.

Such ratios are not uncommon at other universities -- despite all the rhetoric about "diversity." Only physical diversity seems to matter.

Inbred ideological narrowness shows up, not only in hiring and teaching, but also in restrictive campus speech codes for students, created by the very academics who complain loudly when their own "free speech" is challenged.

So long as voters, taxpayers, university trustees, and parents tolerate all this, so long it will continue.

http://www.townhall.com/opinion/column/thomassowell/2006/03/14/189664.html
 
Great article, KP.

Kids learn early on what it takes to do well in public school. My 14 year old just took our State's NCLB writing exam, and the topic was what is success in business. She told me that she made sure to write from a liberal pov, so she wouldn't harm her chance of getting a good grade. She came to this conclusion on her own.

In addition, her language arts teacher talks anti-Bush politics consistently.
 
Good evening Abbey........thanks!

Just goes to show you that your daughter has the right kind of smarts .... how to survive. But I'm sure she is getting a balanced view from her parents.

Unfortunately, not all of our youth are able to discern the truth because they haven't had involved parents who provide a balanced view of the world. Too many parents depend on the school to "babysit" for them and are not savvy enough to understand that their children are being brainwashed.
 
Yeah, I haven't had any encounters of that sort, though my English teacher is the head of the Gay-Straight Alliance. I always write papers on guns and generally right-wing stuff, the military's heroism, etc. Sometimes just to see what her reaction would be, look at my gun love poem in the writing section to see a sample. She accepts it pretty well, and I'mn told by fellow students I'm on her "good-list", which is good, of course.

My buddy on the other hand, has an extremely liberal US History teacher, so much that he calls the class African-American History, and complains about it alot to me.

By the way, Abbey, your daughter sounds smart, is she looking for anyone? (just kidding)
 
This is why I like the engineering school. Yeah, it's hard, but all the teachers really care about is the same kind of stuff that they teach. The last time one of my teachers got off topic, it was my Calculus 2 teacher who, with permission from the students, gave the lecture on the nature of infinity he was giving the next day at a conference instead of our scheduled lesson.
 
Hobbit said:
This is why I like the engineering school. Yeah, it's hard, but all the teachers really care about is the same kind of stuff that they teach. The last time one of my teachers got off topic, it was my Calculus 2 teacher who, with permission from the students, gave the lecture on the nature of infinity he was giving the next day at a conference instead of our scheduled lesson.
Aawwww! Engineers! I love engineers. They're special people. My daddy was a pocket-protector-wearing, slide-rule-carrying, physics-problem-solving geek. He explained infinity to me when I was in the second grade.

Hobbit... I have a daughter. If you could just wait about 10 years, I'd love to have you meet her. ;)
 
mom4 said:
Aawwww! Engineers! I love engineers. They're special people. My daddy was a pocket-protector-wearing, slide-rule-carrying, physics-problem-solving geek. He explained infinity to me when I was in the second grade.

Hobbit... I have a daughter. If you could just wait about 10 years, I'd love to have you meet her. ;)

I'll be 33 by then, but I'll let ya know.

Oh, and thanks to computer advancements, the pocket protector and slide rule have been changes to jazz drives and graphing calculators. Mine does 3D mapping in color and I can carry Diablo II around in my pocket if I want.

And I've already given a thought to how I'm going to mess up my kids. When they start doing area and volume, I'm going to show them how to do it using Calculus, or at least enough that they can passably explain it to their poor teachers. I know, it's evil.
 
Hobbit said:
I'll be 33 by then, but I'll let ya know.

Oh, and thanks to computer advancements, the pocket protector and slide rule have been changes to jazz drives and graphing calculators. Mine does 3D mapping in color and I can carry Diablo II around in my pocket if I want.

And I've already given a thought to how I'm going to mess up my kids. When they start doing area and volume, I'm going to show them how to do it using Calculus, or at least enough that they can passably explain it to their poor teachers. I know, it's evil.

Hobbit, you are very cruel. That's all I'm gonna say.

And how can you carry Diablo II in your pocket??!!
 
Semper Fi said:
Hobbit, you are very cruel. That's all I'm gonna say.

And how can you carry Diablo II in your pocket??!!

Like I said, the jazz drive. I've got a gig of space on that thing, just enough to install Diablo II.
 
Hobbit said:
I'll be 33 by then, but I'll let ya know.

Oh, and thanks to computer advancements, the pocket protector and slide rule have been changes to jazz drives and graphing calculators. Mine does 3D mapping in color and I can carry Diablo II around in my pocket if I want.

And I've already given a thought to how I'm going to mess up my kids. When they start doing area and volume, I'm going to show them how to do it using Calculus, or at least enough that they can passably explain it to their poor teachers. I know, it's evil.
I think it's beautiful.

:D
 

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