The Left's Efforts To Control Education

Education, Education, Education . . .

Give me four years to teach the children and the seed I have sown will never be uprooted.

– quotes from Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

As I worte in a post earlier this year, "the acceptance, and indeed, ascendancy of socialism across most of the Western world is a testament to the strategy of Lenin and his progeny - to control the education of children." Ceding the educational system to the left is, perhaps, the most fundamentel failing of our nation.

In order to control the education of our young, it is incumbent on the left to influence, if not control, the teachers of our children. Thus we see people such as Bill Ayers making it their life's work to "teach the teachers." All of this ilk propose a curriculum that emphasizes the teaching of "social justice," a toxic mix combining the socialism, multiculturalism and identity politics of the far left. It is almost always coupled with a deemphasis on history.

There can be no doubt that the left has largely succeeded in this effort. The vast majority of those in the education profession identify themselves as left wing. The effect on our education system has been devastating. As summed up by Robert Martin, publishing in "Business First,"

As many as 20 percent of Americans are functionally illiterate, and our high school math and science achievement test scores rank near the bottom of industrialized nations.

But the victory for the left has not yet been complete and the left's efforts to destroy any last vestiage of heretical thought continues unabated. The most recent example comes from the Univ. of Minnesotta, where College of Education was considering adopting a litmus test to screen out any who would not fully adopt the "social justice" curriculum.

This from WND, with a hat tip to Crusader Rabbit:

A program proposed at the University of Minnesota would result in required examinations of teacher candidates on "white privilege" as well as "remedial re-education" for those who hold the "wrong" views, according to the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education.

. . . "If the Race, Culture, Class, and Gender Task Group achieves its stated goals, the result will be political and ideological screening of applicants, remedial re-education for those with the 'wrong' views and values, [and] withholding of degrees from those upon whom the university's political reeducation efforts proved ineffective."

. . . Among the issues discussed in the plans are requirements that teachers would be able to instruct students on the "myth of meritocracy" in the United States, "the history of demands for assimilation to white, middle-class, Christian meanings and values," and the "history of white racism."

The demands appear to be similar to those promoted earlier at the University of Delaware. . . .

You can read the entire horror story here. There are many things that need to happen in our schools. Curriculum needs to be returned to content neutrality, with the social justice and left wing advocacy stripped from the class rooms. Students need to learn the basic skills, history, economics and financial management. Social justice and advocacy for any particular philosophy is a parent's job. How do we get to something akin to this, given the current state of our education system? I don't know, but I am sure of one thing, Lenin was right. We fail to figure out how to stop this insidious march at our own peril - as well as that of our children.