EDUCATE, DON’T INDOCTRINATE
“I thought she was a Communist,” my friend said about her daughter home on break from a university near Chicago. My friend said her daughter’s political and social attitudes now were very different than those of her and her husband. After sepending at least 30 years around the higher education crowd, I’ve done a lot of thinking about what happens to our kids. Only after I retired was I able to put into perspective what I went through and then to try to figure out what was causing so many conservative middle class kids from typically conservative families to become so radicalized.
The stealth cause lies in the academic hiring committees in the departments of our colleges and universities. These hiring committees are made up of senior department members very steeped in the “60′s if it feels good, do it,” ideology. These committees have instinctive antennae that pick up on any conservative themes, phrases, or beliefs of prospective new department members they interview in the “soft” subjects such as English, journalism, history, literature, philosophy, social and political sciences. These hiring committees often are comprised of 60′s males who entered and stayed in college to avoid “Nam,” and of uber feminists so committed to their feminist creed that any conservative threat in their midst quickly is disqualified as a prospective hire.
Our higher education is turning out young grads who know how to be very multicultural and ethnically diverse but not evenly balanced in terms of America’s vision, history, cultural and religious history. The America is Bad crowd, in my experience, decry capitalism, old fashioned moral codes of parents, censorship of any kind in our media, yet won’t acknowledge communism as failed statism or pornography as an impetus for the sexual and moral breakdown we now are witnessing. I feel many of the corrosive attitudes about America are coming out of the Education departments that “educate” our future teachers in pedagogy but not in specific disciplines.. I was told, “We don’t teach grammar and spelling any more; that’s old fashioned. . .you don’t want to give a student an F. . .that could hurt his self esteem.”
Unmistakable is the fact that our country was established on the foundation of Christianity. The pilgrims struggled to upright a cross at the place of Hope on our east coast after their arduous ocean crossing. Yet our American history has been so deconstructed that students are being taught Thanksgiving is a celebration to the Indian Squanto for teaching our founders how to plant corn. (Feminists object to the word history, feeling the word does not convey “her story.”) Children can’t have red or green napkins at their “Snowflake” celebrations in December because the red could make them recall Christ’s blood shed or the green could refer to Christmas trees.
Three things must happen to change our U.S. public education: I. Parents must be given vouchers to pay for K-12 tuition in schools that will educate, not indoctrinate, our children. When the Obama administration took away the D.C. vouchers, a serious mistake was again repeated because public schools got the message they were untouchable. 2. Politicians must stop the use of grant funding to politically correct our country . By continuing to fund the America is Bad crowd of left wing educrats, we are letting our elected officials doom another generation. 3. Hiring committees must be held accountable for refusing to hire conservative professors in our colleges and universities. One statistic I recall is that at least 85% of university professors call themselves Democrats. Applicants no longer may be denied employment simply because they have conservative views or an old Europe surname. We have let politicians and educrats hijack the education of our children. We must demand political equality.
Suzanne Eovaldi, B.S. Journalism, University of Illinois, M.A. English DePaul University, Chicago, M.S.Media Communication, Governors State University, retired college professor.
Loading ...