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Jeanfromfillmore
03-08-2011, 12:14 PM
Public Education: Progressive Indoctrination Camps
Why should liberals want to change the public educational system when it is turning out the product they have been striving for years to produce?
Check out these real news headlines from the past several weeks and months about the state of public education across the country:
--"U.S. teachers tell U.N. sex is a 'spectrum' -- advocate mandatory classes to free students from 'religion'"
--"Principal orders (Ten Commandments) yanked from school lockers"
--"Teens ask for more sex ed, greater condom availability"
--"University defines Christians as 'oppressors'"
--"Why Catholic Schools Score Better Than Public Schools"
--"Teachers take charge to save ailing public schools"
--"Texas Schools' Mandatory Arabic Classes Create Firestorm"
--"District taking money, but censoring Christians?"
--"No opting out of pro-gay school propaganda"
--"District pays up for slamming student's rosary"
--"Judge cites homeschoolers for violating U.N. mandate -- Police interrogate parents, confiscate their curriculum"
--"Some say schools giving Muslims special treatment"
On Dec. 27, 1820, Thomas Jefferson wrote about his vision for the University of Virginia (chartered in 1819): "This institution will be based on the illimitable freedom of the human mind. For here we are not afraid to follow the truth wherever it may lead, nor to tolerate any error so long as reason is left free to combat it."
But what should happen 200 years later when our public schools and universities avoid the testing of truths? Or suppress alternative opinions because they are unpopular or politically incorrect? Or no longer tolerate opinions now considered errors or obsolete by the elite? What happens when socio-political agendas or scientific paradigms dominate academic views to the exclusion of a minority's even being mentioned?
What happens when the political and public educational pendulum swings from concern for the tyranny of sectarianism in Jefferson's day to secularism in ours? What happens when U.S. public schools become progressive indoctrination camps?
Dr. Jim Nelson Black, founder and senior analyst of Sentinel Research Associates, wrote "Freefall of the American University," which is an excellent book. In it, he documents the clear biases pervading our public academic settings. Among that lopsidedness is the intentional training of students to disdain America, freely experiment sexually, forcefully defend issues such as abortion and homosexuality, and become cultural advocates for political correctness, relativism, globalization, green agendas and tolerance for all.
One of the primary ways these educative platforms are spread is by recruiting and retaining faculty members who reflect and teach them. For example, citing the polling firm Luntz Research, Black notes that 57 percent of faculty members in our most esteemed universities are Democrats (only 3 percent are Republican), and 64 percent identify themselves as liberal (only 6 percent conservative). Moreover, 71 percent of them disagree that "news coverage of political and social issues reflects a liberal bias in the news media." They also were asked, "Who has been the best president in the past 40 years?" The No. 1 answer was Bill Clinton. (Only 4 percent said Ronald Reagan.)
This is why it is no surprise that the two largest teachers unions, the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers, are the largest campaign contributors in the nation (giving more than the Teamsters, the National Rifle Association or any other organization) and that 90 percent of their contributions fund Democratic candidates. So do you think such funding is going to balance traditional and conservative values with liberal ones in public schools?
The impact of progressivism is being experienced by students across this land, hundreds of thousands of whom already have cried out with complaints of academic inequity. A sampling of the hundreds of student grievances from across the academic spectrum can be found on Students For Academic Freedom's website.
It is also no surprise that an average of 6,000 students every year are leaving the approximately 94,000 public schools in America. If the powers-to-be over our public schools, such as government and unions, continue to oppose conservative curricula and impose overarching liberal educational revisions and laws, public schools will continue to experience an exodus.
I fully realize there are some great conservative people on the staffs of many public schools and universities, but I know that virtually all of them would concur that a liberal bias in our academic curricula and system is overwhelmingly dominant and ubiquitous.
Is this present restrictive and one-sided educational environment that which Thomas Jefferson and other Founders intended for the future generations of America? Absolutely not! Rather than encourage freethinking, the U.S. academic system has turned Jefferson's plans for open education into our culture's system of indoctrination.

http://townhall.com/columnists/chucknorris/2011/03/08/public_education_progressive_indoctrination_camps/page/2

Jeanfromfillmore
03-15-2011, 12:18 AM
US Public Schools: Progressive Indoctrination Camps (Part 2)
Last week, my main point was that liberals couldn't care less about changing anything in public schools because they are producing exactly what liberals want. And that biased programming will deepen in the minds and hearts of America's young people unless we patriots stand up in every community, resist those progressive tides and demand alternatives.
There are ways to improve national academic imbalances. In Part 2 here, I give seven ways to counter that torrent of progressivism. Among the list of correctives that have been proved to work are the following:
1) Vocalize your opinions to local, state and federal representatives that government and unions need to have less of a role in running our children's education and more of a role in supporting parents' educational decisions for their children. Children belong to their parents, not to the government or unions. And parents must retain the right to personalize their children's education as they so wish.
2) Don't blindly accept a public school's or university's education plan based solely upon its name, past reputation or slick marketing. Confront the administration. Ask the hard questions of teachers and professors.
3) If you experience teachers or courses that create an intimidating atmosphere for expressing varied opinions, disparage alternative views, or advance one-sided political or social ideologies, report them to the administration or the school board. And if your concerns aren't heard, go to the district office. If the district doesn't listen, then take your complaints to other parents and the online community by posting blogs or sending mass e-mails. If our government isn't going to hold our academic institutions accountable, then its citizens must.
4) Encourage local schools and colleges to accept Students For Academic Freedom's "Academic Bill of Rights" and "The Student Bill of Rights," which are located online.
5) Consider starting a countercultural mission by teaching or assisting in a public school, college or university or even in the U.S. Department of Education. Whether or not you have a child in a public school, you still can be an active and vocal part of your school's board, PTA or equivalent. Volunteer to assist in any way that could balance the academic current.
6) And what if public schools don't improve or match the values and beliefs in our homes? Then we must remove our children from public schools and seek private alternatives, chartered schools, Christian schools or home schooling co-ops. Encourage older children to attend a private, conservative or Christian college or university, such as Liberty University or Patrick Henry College on the East Coast and Biola University, Azusa Pacific University, Pepperdine University, Westmont College or Bethany University on the West Coast. As I said last week, if you want to improve U.S. public education, support the competition.
7) Lastly, work to install a Bible curriculum into your public school district. Yes, it's legal, constitutional and being placed right now in thousands of schools across the country. A brand-new electronic version of the curriculum is available this week. The National Council on Bible Curriculum in Public Schools' curriculum has been voted into 572 school districts (2,086 high schools) in 38 states, from Alaska and California to Pennsylvania and Florida. Ninety-three percent of school boards that have been approached to date with the curriculum have voted to implement it because the course helps students understand the Bible's influence and impact on history, literature, our legal and educational systems, art, archaeology and other parts of civilization. In this elective class, students are required to read through their textbook -- the Bible.
For a contribution of any size, you will receive a starter package with a step-by-step guide, all legal data necessary to satisfy the questions of school board members, letters from school districts that have implemented it, the table of contents of the Bible curriculum, and other NCBCPS information.
Send to: National Council on Bible Curriculum in Public Schools, 2816-A. Battleground Ave., Box 313, Greensboro, NC 27408. Phone: 1-877-On-Bible or 336-272-3799. Fax: 336-272-7199. Website: http://www.BibleInSchools.net.
Thomas Jefferson was an enthusiastic advocate for public education and believed it was the key to preserving a republican government and society. Yet he was equally an ardent opponent against "any tyranny over the mind of man." Whether that dominance were sectarianism or secularism, conservatism or liberalism, Jefferson (and, I believe, our other Founders) would oppose and seek to correct today's disproportions in our nation's public schools.
If Jefferson supported reform in public education as a prerequisite for a lasting republican nation, would he not expect the same of us today?
http://townhall.com/columnists/chucknorris/2011/03/15/us_public_schools_progressive_indoctrination_camps _part_2/page/2