It is difficult to pinpoint just when progressive
indoctrination began at the college level in this country, it began slowly and
under the radar at first. What is
abundantly clear today is that indoctrination has reached levels that are
hazardous to our constitutional republic.
You can see just how dangerous the level of indoctrination has become
from the Federalist article 4
Reasons Socialism Is More Popular Among Americans Now Than Ever Before
The supporters of socialism are not simply the young, but they’re disproportionately young people who are college-educated. The more college they have, the hotter for socialism they get. According to a 2015 poll, support for socialism grows from 48 percent among those with a high school diploma or less, to 62 percent among college graduates, to 78 percent among those with post-graduate degrees.
Those on the left probably jump immediately to the conclusion that support for socialism is just a natural outgrowth of big brains and elite educations. But there is, in fact, a less obvious but ultimately far more compelling explanation: Something — something bad — is happening at universities to pull students toward the (far) left.
We have already seen above that what’s not happening at even elite universities today is a whole lot of education in important subjects such as history. What we are getting instead is a lot of groupthink and indoctrination. Universities have always skewed a bit left. But beginning in the early to mid 1990s (for reasons I’ve explained in some detail elsewhere), ideological diversity began to vanish entirely, as the leftward deviation turned tidal.
Unfortunately the progressive indoctrination has spread down
to high schools and grade schools because progressives infected teaching
colleges. The indoctrination has also
been spread down to this level by teacher unions.
Multiculturalism has always been a
vehicle used to spread progressive indoctrination. Here is a particularly
ridiculous example I found on Breitbart Seattle
Schools Plan Curriculum to ‘Explore’ Cultural Appropriation of Math.
The Seattle school district is putting into place a K-12 curriculum that encourages students “to explore how math has been ‘appropriated’ by Western culture and used in systems of power and oppression.”
Here is a quote from the Breitbart article that was originally
from an article in Education Week
In most places, if schools offer ethnic studies at all, it’s usually in a stand-alone course in high school. But increasingly, schools and districts are starting to sprinkle ethnic studies across the K-12 spectrum. Seattle is taking a highly unusual approach by weaving the field’s multicultural and political questions not just through all grade levels, but into all subjects.
Politically correct revisionist history has been a mainstay
of progressive indoctrination. It is a
particularly dangerous one because it is meant to undermine the entire
foundation of our constitutional republic.
This Daily Signal article Woke
History Is Making Big Inroads in America’s High Schools chronicles the
spread of this revisionist history.
Two years ago, the Indiana Legislature mandated that high schools offer an ethnic studies elective. As approved by the state’s Education Department, the class teaches about the contributions of ethnic and racial groups, various cultural practices, as well as such concepts as privilege, systematic oppression, and implicit bias. And now three states—California, Oregon, and Vermont—are trying to create authoritative statewide templates that, advocates hope, will make it easier for schools to adopt ethnic studies.
The statewide California ethnic studies curriculum was proposed in June by an advisory committee, composed of ethnic studies teachers and professors, and met with public outcry that such classes are designed to recruit students into political activism, indoctrinate them with ideological jargon, and promote the pro-Palestinian Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel.
Multiculturalism may seem warm and fuzzy on the surface however it is meant to tear down one particular culture, the culture of the United States. Here are two great Thomas Sowell Quotes which sum up this sham.
Much of what is promoted as “critical thinking” in our public schools is in fact uncritical negativism towards the history and institutions of America and an uncritical praise of the cultures of foreign countries and domestic minorities.
What “multiculturalism” boils down to is that you can praise any culture in the world except Western culture—and you cannot blame any culture in the world except Western culture.
It will be extremely difficult to turn the tide back on this progressive indoctrination but it is something we must do to save our constitutional republic. Ending Common Core and all other federal intrusions, while taking local control of K-12 schools, are important steps in the process, along with completely relaxing the iron grip of teacher unions.
