Educational Biases
By Ari Kaufman (02/06/06)
It is no longer a grand secret that many public and private universities are awash in military-demeaning, left-leaning, inculcating faculty and receptive students. The two factions meet daily, coagulating their inherent anti-Americanism into a deep bond. Even the staunchest naysayer would have major difficulties debating this; the facts are overwhelming. Conservative speakers like Messieurs David Horowitz and William Kristol have had pies slammed into their faces by so-called tolerant students, just for pointing out the dangers in these blatant heterodoxies.
As a mid-20s former public school teacher who has spent his entire life living in blue states and the "bluest" cities in these states, I encounter this unfortunate rhetoric far too often. I have driven cross country twice in 2005, and meandered through the most radical college campuses - from Boulder to Madison to Cambridge! - and I feel dismay in reporting that some of the worst brainwashing of eager youths occurs at much younger (and doubtlessly more impressionable) ages these days.
Teaching public school for the past two years in one of the lowest performing elementary schools in the equally inferior-performing LA Unified School District, I spent much time instructing my students' young, athirst minds as objectively as I could, and I believe they benefited from this. In comparison to many other faculty members, donning Red Union shirts each Tuesday and skipping out of work to their protests seemingly too often, I surmised I did have a very positive effect upon these low-income 4th and 5th graders.
Disconcertingly, one of our faculty members missed the first week of last school year because she was incarcerated (with the school's video camera) while at the Republican National Convention in New York City. She even had to fly back to retrieve the camera, as well as for her court date. Dissent may be patriotic in the eyes of some, but this is hardly helping student test scores. A substitute, who was known to have elementary-aged students sign random petitions during his various stints at our school, stuffed my classroom's American flag in the closet when it accidentally fell. Can we question his patriotism? He most likely gleaned, from three quarters of our faculty's lack of saying the daily pledge that this would not be frowned upon. It wasn't. These folks must have been harbingers of secular society's recent quest to abolish the pledge, or at least the "under G-d" portion.
On Columbus Day 2004, I can vividly recall my conversation at the morning b! ell with a grade level colleague.
He started, "Hey, Mr. K, happy Murdering of Indigenous people Day! I'll tell my kids the "real" Columbus story today; the one NOT in the textbooks!"
To which I replied, "Manifest Destiny, my friend! How do you think you came to be born, and are able to live here with the freedom to say inane things like that? I'll tell MY kids the TRUE Columbus story; the one ORIGINALLY IN the textbooks, NOT the Howard Zinn books they feed us these days in higher ed."
Indeed I may have stooped down to his level of petulance, but an observant person would be cognizant of the revisionist history now being taught throughout our school systems, in which I am sure he often partook. This fellow often mused about how he "enjoys pointing our history's little inaccuracies." If I could only believe his in-class actions were as innocuous as those words. I surely never did.
As a youngster gradually progresses, the teachers also get more "progressive." That adjective is most often used to depict liberal biases, but it sounds so guileless that most do not see its ulterior motives.
For every observant college student like my friend who claims, "as if I or others don't realize there are professors with agendas," there are ! students who spend their academic lives at college (we won't even go into social mischief) in total insouciance, and when asked which political side they stand with, ambivalence takes over. However, in the 2004 election, the polls showed that these (mostly) apathetic college students conveniently followed the leads and recommendations of their hallowed professors to an astonishingly Democratic tune. After the election, kids were pondering suicide and "drinking heavily at eight in the morning," claiming there is "no reason to care about life anymore now that Bush won." This was relayed to me by friends at the University of Michigan. Personally, knowing many of these kids, I can't fathom! how any president's policies could have an impact upon their upper-middle class lives on Long Island and in the Northern Chicago suburbs.
While we all know Michael Moore picked up five-figure paychecks at a multitude of college campuses during the summer of 2004, my girlfriend also informed me that at her Florida college, Moveon.org brought Ashley Judd and Kirsten Dunst to her small campus in order to espouse anti-Bush balderdash to 18 year-old freshmen donning "John Kerry is my Homeboy" t-shirts. Considering this, coupled with Bruce Springsteen, Jack Black and The Dave Matthews Band playing music while preaching about politics, how could anyone not vote for John Kerry? Much as I regula! rly opine, "it's just more fun to be liberal when you are young. It takes maturing - and certainly isn't “fun” - to be patriotic, have morals and fight terrorism." No fun at all.
Lastly, grad schools have now fused into this list. We all can reasonably speculate what a graduate level journalism, political science or sociology class would deduce about modern political events; however, the most fast-moving and fervent anti-Conservative, politically correct indoctrination is coming from the instructors at the teacher credential programs. If you think about it, this makes perfect sense. How else can future K-12 teachers be trained and prepared to follow the lead of their predecessors, "mobilizing" to "fight the power" after these heroes retire?
While erudite articles from Thomas Sowell and Dennis Prager, pointing out the pitfalls of the condescension with which teachers treat low-income "minorities," are available and relevant, teacher trainers (many with PhDs) balk on these pieces, in order to sell their own articles or those from colleagues of a like mindset. For one who honestly didn't notice a great deal of brainwashing when I was a pre-9/11 undergrad, my times as a grad student in education (2000-2002), engulfed me with subjective views in an overwhelmingly conspicuous fashion.
Teachers I know have discouragingly taken these balkanizing theories into the classrooms.
While learning my chosen trade, along with just 16 weeks of hands-on experience in classrooms, I was subjected to two different ESL (English as a Second Language) classes, two Special Ed classes (even though I was teaching mainstream), an "Urban Studies" class, an African American Studies class, Chicano Studies, Health Sciences, Educational Psychology and a Physical Education class. It wasn't until I was teaching full-time and voluntarily enrolled in Saturday classes on Classroom Management, that I learned more relevant methods of instruction to augment my! chances for success as a teacher.
It should concern everyone - irrespective of political affiliation - that our students, and we as a society, seemingly have little choice but to accept this academic dominance by the liberal intelligentsia. We have reached the antithesis of the 1960s in some ways: a new world where the Left now curtails and quells any Conservative thoughts from their students. Hopefully, sites like "Students for Academic Freedom" can expose some of these macabre circumstances and perhaps implore congress to pass important legislation. If not, our future generations will be forced, like a reader of my website explained, to "have to listen to my professor talk about her Prius, her trips to Massachusetts, her trip to last week's big anti-war protest in Washington..."
That is just unnecessary. As someone who also taught a group of high school students in a university setting this past summer, it is appalling that educated professors don't appreciate that! their objectivity is a cherished part of higher education, and all education, in general. Should students not receive the education that they paid for, and which they entrusted their university's faculty to bequeath upon them? In essence, our youth must get more than just half the story.
A slightly shorter version of this essay appeared at Intellectual Conservative.com on October 20, 2005. This is the elongated, updated version
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