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Arlington National Cemetery established on land confiscated
Photo: Ileana Johnson
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Parents may be either too busy to check the validity and veracity of what their children learn in school, may agree with the teacher’s activism, or may themselves be ignorant and unmotivated to do anything about it, not caring that their kids’ minds will be forever imprinted with misinformation and social justice drivel. Very young students look at their teachers in awe as the ultimate arbiters of truth.
Middle school students may or may not escape the deliberate indoctrination, depending on how involved some parents are in their children’s homework and school and on how much information students bring home at the end of the day or discuss with their parents.
Middle school students may ask their teachers more difficult questions, depending on their personality and the teacher’s eagerness to answer inconvenient queries from Johnny who happens to be disruptive to her pre-prepared lesson plans pulled from the state-approved curriculum and textbooks.
By high school students have been exposed to a barrage of misinformation from various teachers who may or may not have had a personal socialist agenda, but they were using Common Core textbooks which emphasized collectivism and Islam to the detriment of Christianity and American history facts.
The textbooks used today around the country are almost exclusively Howard Zinn’s version of history published in 1980, A People’s History of the United States. Howard Zinn, a native of Brooklyn, New York, considered himself a radical. The 729-page book is overloaded with manufactured history told from the revised perspective of the downtrodden and the exploited. I am familiar with this heavy-handed indoctrination as our textbooks when I was growing up presented history from the Communist Party’s collectivist perspective.
According to Zinn’s book and other Common Core approved textbooks, America is a land of brutal racism and oppression of the downtrodden but economically is a great place because wealth was stolen from the slaves who made this abundance possible. It is our duty to pay reparations to black people whose ancestors were forced into slavery when they were sold to white men by their tribal brethren in Africa.
Most high schools and colleges in the United States are teaching their students that America was and is bad, yet the downtrodden of the world risk life and limb to cross our borders illegally. If it is so bad, and their third world cesspools so wonderful, why are they coming? Is it because the welfare is great, and money grows on trees?
George Orwell wrote that “The most effective way to destroy a people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history.” If people cannot understand where they came from, who were those who have fought for their country and why, they become people without a compass who judge what happened in the past through the lenses of modern societal social trends. And our youth today is offended and triggered by anything that does not fit into their philosophical view of the global U.N. compact.
When we sat in history class, the teacher gave us dates and her opinion of the events which may or may not have transpired as described, or the textbook writers’ opinion, or the government in power’s opinion of history. We understood who we were as a people based on this information or misinformation.
People with dementia forget their own family’s history, who they are, their families, and no longer connect to their tribe and its history. They are lost and confused. All their memories and experiences which had defined them, have been lost forever, in a jumbled mass of neurons. “Wipe out their memory and you erase their identity.” Wipe out their history and they become global citizens.
When you deliberately repeat in class ad nauseam America’s mistakes, while ignoring or omitting America’s successes, you prepare students who have no respect for their own culture, who are embarrassed by their own history.
Since Jimmy Carter’s department of education was established in 1979, progressives have been overtly promoting their dangerous socialist narrative meant to divide the nation and its accomplishments by constantly separating people by race, class, gender, and deviant sexuality and sowing the seeds of hatred, self-loathing, and revolution.
One of my Economics students decried the statistics in the textbook written by Democrat academics, saying that everything is divided by race, age, and gender. In his opinion, the book, which had numerous editions, was biased and racist.
Academia, Hollywood, corrupt politicians, and the main stream media have invited real and imagined victims of “evil capitalism” which they elevated to a minority entitled to exercise the tyranny of the oppressed while the rest of us must pay reparations to those who have been mistreated by history.
All traditions that have defined our culture, Thanksgiving, Presidents Day, raising the flag, singing the National Anthem, celebrating discoverers like Christopher Columbus, special holidays like Christmas, Easter, and other traditions have been replaced by ethnic holidays or cancelled altogether.
James Robbins described in a recent PraegerU video that we are now involved in a “non-violent civil war.” I am not sure if it is a civil war but the non-violent aspect of attacks is debatable if we consider the ANTIFA violence on campuses around the nation and in the streets. ANTIFA is a radical organization that fashions itself as anti-fascist but is fascist in the behavior of its masked members.
Even though America abolished slavery and many Americans, black and white, have lost their lives in the fight to end such an inhuman practice, the radical left continues to poison the minds of useful idiots with slavery while ignoring the actual slavery taking place in the Islamic world of Africa and the Muslim genocide against Christians.
Our country is portrayed as unjust even though we are the most tolerant nation on the planet today when it comes to accepting people from all over the world as long as they come here to make America greater than when they found it and are not here to fleece the generous welfare system.
All nations on the globe have been established and reshaped from land purchased, taken, given, won, occupied, or gained following wars and other means of partition. It has always been a struggle.
Our students should be taught that America, although not perfect, is still a land of opportunity if those seeking it assimilate and understand its history and culture from factual data, not collectivized and manufactured history to fit the radical agenda of Democrat Socialism.
Well, no. Yes and no. We do have many “progressive” and crazily liberal ideas floating around. Abortion, excuses, greed (even among the poor, the immigrants) is everywhere. All that harmful stuff. But as for schools, I have to say: Not in Texas. Common Core is rarely in our classrooms. And no teacher can go off on tangents today. The approved curriculum does not permit teachers to inflict their version on events on students. For one thing, a teacher submits lesson plans, must keep up with the Texas state approved curriculum and—literally, at any moment—the teacher must expect “someone” from the office to enter the classroom, someone from somewhere is listening. This is why the sexual reports of teacher-with-student is so hard to understand. When? How? Teachers are the most spied-up of employees! So, no. But yes, some somehow do whatever. This is why it is important to go to parent meetings, to talk with your children, observe their homework. Be active about textbook selections—but text books do not dictate what a teacher teaches. The curriculum, the plan, does. Many schools really want input into their curriculum planning, all of which takes place many many months, even years, before the first breath of today’s lesson in the classroom.
ReplyDeleteBetty,
DeleteI agree with some of your points and disagree on others. You are lucky to be in Texas in an area where curriculum is properly scrutinized.
A class action lawsuit should be brought against the Department of Education for approving Zinn's "People's History of the United States."
ReplyDeleteExcellent point, Caro.
DeleteA point about Betty Pack's comment-Texas public school teachers may not be able to go off on tangents but a lot of school board accepted teaching is down right propaganda, i.e. Pro-Islam and Anti-Christianity. I suspect critical race theory is required too, for instance.
ReplyDeleteFrom my friend and colleague, Linda G.:
ReplyDelete"Bravo! This brilliant article exposes the intentionally politicized curriculum, and deliberate anti-American, anti Judeo-Christian, pro-Muslim indoctrination of American students in our public schools. Additionally, the deliberate dumbing down and confusing of our nation's children with the twin failed systems of sight words and new math have made public education the leftist Democrats most successful weapon. What began in 1979 with Jimmy Carter's Department of Education has become the Ministry of Propaganda under Obama. An indoctrinated, functionally illiterate population is the unaware and compliant voting public the Democrats require to finally succeed and impose their socialist nightmare on America. Don't let them."
I taught Algebra 1 to special needs students before I retired, but as a sub in San Marcos, TX I often co-taught. I was the extra teacher in a classroom where students with special needs were embedded, and my job was to assist any student who needed assistance in any form. Texas has State learning goals in every subject, and teachers may not stray from the goals at any time. Each subject department, for example Algebra 1 or World History, has regular meetings to share lessons and critique. What teachers present is coordinated in the department and usually all will do major projects on the same day. Increasingly textbooks aren't used, and materials are pulled from a wide range of sources, all under the supervision of the department head. When the material comes from an internet source, or if a teacher loads a lesson onto the site where students pick up lesson plans and instructional materials, most schools have carts of laptops from the school library for student use.
ReplyDeleteI often covered in freshman history, attending class while assigned to a student with autism or other behavioral issues. I was regular coverage for the behavioral unit. Each concept in any class had to be presented in the context of how it would be presented on the state exam. That is determined by the legislators of the State of Texas. It takes a middle ground, and any topics of discrimination of Africans or Native Americans is in a world context. For example, how indigenous people are mistreated in the United States, South America, and Asia pulling in the current situation in Myanmar is one unit. That way students don't come away with the topic thinking about how dreadful our country is, but how that problem is present in the world and people have suffered. We had many refugees from Salvador, Mexico, and places in Central America that students would not reveal because of fears of being found. It brought understanding to the students as to why those kids were here, and they asked polite questions and got to know the new kids. The new immigrants were not previously indoctrinated and were mostly focused on getting to know other kids and how school worked. They were eager to learn English and I offered to practice with them when we ran into each other in the building.
So, yes, I agree with Betty Pack. I was aware that I could be listened in on at any time by intercom, or that a teaching coach or administrator could enter my room at any time in both my pre-retirement job or while subbing. Even as a sub, I did not stray off topic but excused myself by telling students that I was certified only in math in the State of Texas and could not comment. I followed lesson plans precisely and if not possible, left a note as to how I deviated from the plan.
Pat