Homeschool is the only option left to the rational, freedom-loving American. The left and their subversive partners have destroyed our universities and colleges. Every parent with a child in school knows how awful the leftwing indoctrination is.
The war on education commenced with the student rebellion of 1964. Brick by brick, piece by piece, the great American education system was dismantled, destroyed. This did not happen organically. This was a deliberate, systematic attack on America and individualism.
“Teaching as a Subversive Activity”: The Theory of Political Indoctrination PJM
Last weekend I visited the U.C. Berkeley campus and on a whim attended a lecture with the provocative title “Teaching as a Subversive Activity — Revisited.”
Because this was a presentation aimed at education insiders only, the lecturer, retired professor H. Douglas Brown from S.F. State, seemed perfectly willing to let the cat out of the bag about political indoctrination on college campuses. Fortunately, I had my trusty camera with me, so I was able not only to snap a few pictures but also record several key portions of his speech, which I found so eye-opening that I felt the general public deserved to hear it as well.The timing couldn’t have been better: A devastating new report issued by the National Association of Scholars had just been issued a few days beforehand, which documented with exquisite and irrefutable detail the extreme liberal bias at the University of California. However, the main problem with the NAS report (which you can download in full here if you’re interested) is that it’s too overwhelming and too technical to deliver the kind of emotional impact needed to sway public opinion. To drive home the point in a more personal way, the NAS report needed an introductory companion anecdote of a professor frankly confessing the rationale behind what is essentially the “theory of indoctrination.” As if on cue, Professor Brown stepped into that role, unwitting though he may have been.
Let it be noted that Professor H. Douglas Brown is no wild-eyed extremist; in fact, he’s rather bland and respectable and not the most thrilling of speakers, as you will soon hear. But that’s what made his presentation so disturbing: radical and self-admittedly “subversive” attitudes that affect the future of society are discussed with matter-of-fact nonchalance. The main drawback of Professor Brown’s verbal style (at least from my point of view) is that he often resorts to the academics’ tried-and-true escape hatch, which is to rephrase statements as questions, so as to have plausible deniability if later confronted. Thus, for example, instead of just flatly saying something like “We should indoctrinate students with leftist ideologies,” he asks “Should we indoctrinate students with leftist ideologies?” and only after five minutes of talking in circles eventually concludes “Yes.”
The title of Brown’s lecture is taken from an influential and groundbreaking book published in 1969. Written by Neil Postman and Charles Weingartner, the manifesto Teaching as a Subversive Activity did not actually advocate political indoctrination in the classroom, but rather it was one of the first books to completely deconstruct the concept of education itself, and the “subversion” it advocated was much deeper and more structural: Get rid of tests, the notions of “the right answer” and “the wrong answer,” the memorization of facts, the ascendency of teachers, and so forth; instead, make education an ungraded process of learning how to think and how to criticize, respecting the opinions and ideas of the students themselves. Of course, this being 1969, it was presumed that the establishment status quo with its facts and rules was rigid and conservative, while the students were radical and transgressive, so all one had to do to foment a revolution was simply to put the kids in charge of their own education, and they’ll naturally overthrow society without even being specifically instructed to do so. (If you’re curious, the entire text of Teaching as a Subversive Activity is now available for free online as a PDF document.)
Read the rest.
UPDATE: An Atlas reader writes me:
Dear Pamela,
I read the article, "Systemic Practice of Political Indoctrination at Universities and Colleges". My daughter was gifted in Nevada schools until the 6th grade she was in gifted classes. For some strange reason the schools figure the kids are no longer gifted after that and do not provide advanced classes. I was on the fence about homeschooling her until I read John Taylor Gatto's books, "A Different Kind of Teacher" and "Dumbing Us Down". Mr. Gatto was teacher of the year in New York and his books disclosed the true agenda of public schooling which started back in the industrial age.
Once I saw the real agenda I took her out of the public schools and homeschooled her. She entered college at 15, had a two year degree by the time she was 18, was Phi Theta Kappa, Dean's list, and Honor's list.
Then came the horror of the indoctrinations in University. She has had to protect herself many times from the Socialists, Marxist, and Leftists teachers trying to convert her.
Our education system has been taken over by the worse of this society along with more and more Muslim influence. I urge all parents to read Gatto's books and see if you can afford to continue to leave your children in public schools.
Respectfully,CS Goodwin.
