There's a fight brewing in the education field-with a well-rounded education in one corner and a political indoctrination in the other. Calling the problem teacher bias is taking the easy way out. For, in many cases, teachers don't even know they're promoting a biased viewpoint and most don't feel they have a right to demand a teaching environment untainted by political and social engineering. Parents send their precious young child off to kindergarten or even preschool with every expectation that the experience will support and build upon the principles they as parents espouse. At the very least, they expect that their child not become a pawn in a game of social control. And they fully expect them to learn to navigate such skills as reading, writing and basic mathematics. In today's educational climate, that occurrence has become a rarity.
College students beginning in the education field have a belief that they are going to become skilled in molding young minds to learn and to contribute to society. In very many college situations, it doesn't take long before they encounter professors who espouse a particular point of view-often very different than the viewpoints they grew up with. They quickly find that many of their courses, especially those dealing with the aspects of teaching they are looking forward to learning come with a price much higher than the tuition they or their parents are paying. They find, because of professor bias, that they must espouse a liberal viewpoint or be penalized in terms of grades, respect and acceptance. Regardless of their family backgrounds, religious beliefs or personal convictions, they are expected to swallow a far-left social and political viewpoint to survive. Because they are paying a supposedly older and wiser professional to guide them, those with less firmly-established personal convictions are quickly molded into the new mindset. Because these young students lack life experiences to draw upon, they tend to accept the new views whole-heartedly, much to the chagrin of the parent paying the bills.
Older students or those with a stronger sense of self-determination may not fall into the trap quite as easily. For their stubbornness, they are rewarded with low or failing grades, ridicule and ostracism. They may well be counseled out of the field as being "unsuitable" for teaching.
At some of the supposedly best-and certainly most expensive teaching universities, seemingly unrelated courses such as psychology, American History, American Government all become exercises in change: events are redefined to show racism, intolerance, oppression and injustice. Despite written university policies to the contrary, course syllabi are filled with far-left values judgments, false "facts" and twisted outcomes designed to prove systemic racism, sexism and injustice. Required reading for the course often consists only of texts written by the instructor him-or her-self or those with identical viewpoints and cites false research designed only to support the foregone conclusions. In these universities, because so many on faculties in the liberal arts schools agree with these false constructs, a student has very little recourse no matter how vehemently they disagree with the course materials.
The recently released book by David Horowicz and Jacob Laskin, "One-Party Classroom" explores these built-in biases in teaching at the university level by examining course syllabi at ten mid-standing universities. Reviewing course offerings at the universities, the authors quote obvious bias in such study areas as Black Studies, Feminist Studies, Gender Identity Studies and History with the psychology and sociology fields heavily represented. Examples given of "social justice"-based coursework at Columbia University-the premier graduate teachers college- are particularly enlightening. The entire framework of the position documents at Columbia makes it clear that the school sees the education field as an adjunct of politics and the teachers thus trained are expected to become political activists in the classroom. Just seeing the absolute drivel that passes for education at these expensive universities explains much of the overt bias that many new teachers exhibit upon graduation. And, upon receiving certification these young teachers go to work for an educational administration trained by the same universities which will reinforce the bias in their everyday teaching.
Most teachers, after being carefully trained in the belief that they are to instill a Marxist-leaning form of Social Justice consciousness first and academics second, are forced to follow a canned curriculum that gives lip service to academics with no cohesive method of teaching same. The teachers union they are all expected to join adds even more "Social Justice" demands, leading to such monstrously illogical curricula as teaching kindergarteners about the Gay lifestyle and terrifying them about the coming catastrophic global warming scenario to the point they have nightmares over their parent's transportation choices. It is entirely commonplace for children to be thoroughly brainwashed into believing conservative political figures are worse than the frightening specters of Satan and monsters once promoted by the seventeenth century Church. In the past election cycle, nearly all elementary school children were exhorted in liberal election politics by their so-called "mainstream" teachers to the point children attempted to force their parents to vote Democrat-causing concern among even parents whose political views coincided. Oddly, this election cycle, "old people", with "grey hair" were specifically singled out to these children as objects of derision, distrust and incompetence: what better way to disrupt familial and generational cohesiveness, traditions and loyalties? Horrified parents, when they find out and complain, are called "backward" or "religious nuts" and the child is further singled out for "remedial" attitude-changing activities to "overcome" their parent's regressive moral and ethical stances.
The consequence of such poor methodology has led to declining test scores and a loss of the United States' former high standing in academics. When, in a misguided attempt to right the wrongs in the classroom politicians decree testing to assure mastery of key subjects, it simply causes even more disconnect between what the school actually teaches and what students are expected to "know". Many teachers solve their time-constraint dilemma by teaching so-called "social justice" precepts during the day and leaving the academics to mounds of unexplained homework children are expected to muddle through on their own. Some few children actually appear to be learning by osmosis, or a caring teacher who is willing to sneak around the obstacles put in her way to actually facilitate learning. Other times, parents finally realize their child is becoming educationally disadvantaged simply by attending such dysfunctional classrooms and take it upon themselves to fill in the gaps of their child's education. Because so many children cannot learn in such a dysfunctional environment and because required testing reveals the massive failures, children who don't manage to succeed in spite of the obstacles are encouraged to opt-out of the public school system so as to keep test scores up by controlling the averages.
Analysis of the covert reasoning behind all of this "re-education of the masses" is beyond the scope of this article. An understanding of what this is and how it came to be can be gained by reading Charlotte Iyserbyt's "Deliberate Dumbing Down of America"-available free to read online. Further explanation of this bizarre phenomenon can be garnered from a reading of Beverly Eakman's "Cloning of The American Mind: Eradicating Morality Through Education." What ever it is-and whatever the reason, basic education is not the goal in most schools and classrooms. Our children are being cheated out of one of the fundamental rights of living in America-the right to a basic education. These children aren't the first victims of the newly-politicized system. They're the second generation. Out classroom teachers were the first.