Recently Freedom Center founder David Horowitz – having pinpointed the locus of all our current societal ills in “the indoctrination of our educated classes” – posted at FrontPage Mag a call to de-fund the universities. “Curing this cancer in our midst is essential to restoring the constitutional republic that America once was by reviving the principles and values that made it a beacon to the world,” Horowitz wrote. He continued:
The path to achieving this result begins with recognizing that our premier universities have in their liberal arts programs become one-party states ruled by ignorance and bigotry, and thus breeding grounds for civic and racial hatreds and lawlessness. To remedy this state of affairs Americans must press for the de-funding of these institutions, withholding the federal and state monies that help to spread their hatreds until such time as their faculties represent the true intellectual diversity of America, and eliminate one-sided political indoctrination courses from their curricula.
Hear, hear! But the intellectual rot goes much deeper than just our institutions of higher indoctrination. The educational subversion that Horowitz identified as the fons et origo of our current social chaos begins as early now as pre-kindergarten, with the cultural Marxist indoctrination of children whose minds are blank slates upon which social justice activists eagerly imprint their radical agenda. And it courses from there all the way through every grade of public (and probably most private) schools to mold our youth well before they ever step foot onto a university campus.
Stark evidence of that was presented in a recently-released report from the Manhattan Institute think tank titled, “School Choice Is Not Enough: The Impact of Critical Social Justice Ideology in American Education.” Based on the results of a survey of more than 1,500 Americans aged 18 to 20, the report demonstrates just how widespread and corrosive is the Marxist indoctrination of American students – an indoctrination the Left denies and dismisses as just another vast right-wing conspiracy theory.
It will come as no surprise that the report warns, “schools are a powerful force for ideological indoctrination in the United States.” But it may shock many just how powerful schools’ influence is. The teaching of cultural Marxist concepts such as Critical Race Theory (CRT) and gender ideology, which the Manhattan Institute labels together as Critical Social Justice (CSJ), is “endemic” in American schools: “Ninety-three percent of 18-to-20-year-old Americans say that they have been taught, or have heard about from an adult at school, one or more Critical Social Justice (CSJ) concepts.” [Emphasis added] Those concepts included “white privilege,” “systemic racism,” and the idea that gender is a choice unrelated to biological sex.
Even more damning evidence that these concepts are propaganda, not legitimate fields of study, is that “7 out of 10 respondents who reported being taught at least one CSJ concept stated that these ideas were taught as truth – as the only respectable approach to the phenomena they implicate, rather than as theories that are disputed by equally valid alternative views.” [Emphasis added]
And that propaganda is working. The report determined that CSJ instruction
appears to profoundly influence the beliefs and attitudes of young Americans about race and gender. Those who reported being taught CSJ concepts in class were anywhere from 14 to 29 points more likely to endorse them. More alarmingly, for respondents of all racial/ethnic backgrounds, each additional CRT-related concept taught increased the likelihood of blaming white people for racial inequality and endorsing negative generalizations of white people as “racist.”
[…]
Additionally, white respondents who were exposed to all the CRT concepts were nearly 20 points more likely than non-exposed respondents to express feelings of race-based guilt over racial inequality.
The report made the following conclusions (it’s worth quoting it here at length to get the full impact of the findings):
CSJ appears to have a significant impact in shifting children to the political left.
Those students exposed to no CSJ concepts break 27% to 20% for the Republican Party, while those who have been taught the maximum of eight CSJ concepts lean a whopping 53% to 7% toward the Democratic Party. In strongly Republican counties, young people taught no CSJ concepts lean Republican 38% to 20%, whereas in the same counties, those taught the maximum number of CSJ concepts lean Democratic by a stunning 46% to 14%.
CSJ is not being taught as one theory among others but rather, in 7 out of 10 cases, as “truth.”
These concepts are introduced as the only respectable approach to race, gender, and sexuality in American society. This has significant consequences for the policy preferences of young people (and, thus, for future policy). For instance, support for preferential hiring and promotion of black people increases from 17% among those exposed to no CRT in school to 44% among those exposed to the maximum of five CRT concepts…
[T]hose taught these concepts are 15 points more likely to agree that “being white is one of the most important sources of privilege in America,” 23 points more likely to agree that “white people have unconscious biases that negatively affect nonwhite people,” and 29 points more likely to agree that “America is built on stolen land.”
CSJ increases fear among students.
Thirty-eight percent of those who were not taught CSJ reported that they were afraid of being punished, shamed, or expelled for voicing opinions on controversial subjects, rising to between 62% and 68% among those taught at least two CSJ concepts. Among Republican young people, fear levels jump from 31% to 74% after exposure to CSJ. As a likely consequence of this fear, those exposed to CRT become less willing to criticize a black schoolmate, preventing black pupils from hearing useful feedback from classmates.
CSJ is taught in all types of schools.
The survey found 73% of parochial schoolers, 82% of non-religious private schoolers, and 83% of homeschoolers report being taught at least one CSJ term. Public schools do teach more radical gender theory, with 56% of those who attended one being taught at least one radical gender concept. This figure is somewhat lower among non-religious private schoolers, parochial students, and homeschooled children, but gender theory is present in all forms of school.
“This is a disaster for those who endorse classical liberal ideals such as color-blindness, equal treatment, the scientific method of discovery, and free speech,” the Manhattan Institute concludes. “These results represent a major defeat for those who believe it is important to cultivate pride in American achievements and attachment to American national identity.”
For conservatives who think that a mass exodus from the public school system will shield their children from CSJ concepts, the findings also suggest that homeschooling, parochial schooling, and (non-religious) private schooling “are only minimally effective in preventing CSJ from being taught… [partly because] only a small number of parents have the political awareness to be able to limit the impact of progressive ideology in schools and prevent leftward socialization.” A better use of conservative political energy, the report argues, “is to focus on regulating or banning the teaching of CSJ in schools and teacher training while pushing for curriculum transparency.”
The report makes a number of interventionist recommendations to address this problem, including banning the teaching of CRT and gender theory as truth, clamping down on political indoctrination, and introducing more content on the excesses of left-wing utopianism and non-European civilizations in history, in order to give some context to American history and help students understand that America’s sins are less exceptional than its achievements.
It also recommends that public schools adopt political impartiality requirements – perhaps something along the lines of David Horowitz’s proposed Code of Ethics for K-12 educators, which bans political bias (Left or Right) in the classroom.
But nothing quite spurs change like putting the brakes on the gravy train. It’s time to get deadly serious about rescuing our youth from the vampiric evil of the far-Left radicals who have dominated our educational system for a half century and corroded it from within.
So in the spirit of David Horowitz’s call to de-fund higher education, it’s time also to call for politicians who care about preserving our Union and our civilization to pursue measures to withhold federal and state monies from our failed K-12 schools until the social justice indoctrination is eradicated.
This will no doubt send leftist educators and teachers unions into apoplexy, like the meltdown union president Randi Weingarten had outside the Supreme Court this week. But it’s long past time to root out the cultural Marxist educators and curricula that have sown so much division and hatred in America. It’s time to take back our children and our country.
Originally posted at Culture Warrior.
It’s not enough to be clear on what to oppose. Progressives reintroduce the same evil under new names or no names. The Manhattan Institute advocates “classical liberal ideals such as color-blindness, equal treatment, the scientific method of discovery, and free speech.” Most of all one has to clearly advocate “objective reality” and the epistemology of grasping reality: reason. I don’t think conservatives are up to this task. We need a foundational change
At this point in history maybe it is possible, maybe it is not. Of course in reason one must keep on fighting for reason. So long as Americans still have Freedom of Speech one must speak out for reason, for the rational, for sanity, for reality.
But it could be too late. An irreversible tipping point does arrive. What did the last generation, or two, or three of Pagans feel like as a tidal wave of Christianity was taking over the Classical world? Is America and the West in that same situation today?
“a tidal wave of Christianity was taking over the Classical world?”
Too bad. If your vaunted classical world, in all of it’s rationality, was not enough to prevent the tidal wave 2000 years ago, what makes you think it’s strong enough to resist DEI/ESG/CRT/CSJ.
It can’t. But I guess you couldn’t resist taking a swipe at Christianity once again, even though the article is not about your narcissistic obsession, or you.
The fool was so close to making a good point, without blurting “Ugh. Christianity bad!”
He has atheist Tourette’s syndrome. He just can’t help it.
If you read my comment accurately you will see that I did not say Christianity bad or Paganism good.
We can add that the fool also can’t comprehend a paraphrase.
That “tidal wave” took hundreds of years to “take over the classical world.” And “the takeover” cost the lives of untold numbers of Christian believers. Your “classical” world” was a period of unfathomable cruelty, ignorance, and injustice, and ancient Rome was the epitome of Nietzsche’s Master / Slave morality. The Romans and Greeks alike glamourized power and denigrated weakness. In their world, power was a moral “good.” Weakness was defined as morally “bad..” Does anyone in their right mind want to return to that world?
The tipping point will come when enough white people have seen the evil looks that coloured people are currently giving them.
In London last week and the contempt young coloureds were showing was disturbing.
Race riots will start soon and the government and very diverse police force will use it as proof that white people are inherently racist.
Job done, another step towards rational thinking and Agenda 2030.
Get rid of Jimmy Carters’ Department of Education which acts as a top-down mechanism to funnel freak show ideology to every school in America. Return power to school districts and property-tax payers. This would not be a technically challenging maneuver, though the howls of leftist outrage echo through the galaxy.
Not sure if you know… but most all of Obama’s 48%+ aren’t property tax payers… and what you present would be racist, genderist and falling short of equality…
The snowflakes would melt… feeding climate change… lol
Yeah, I know. Thats why those who dont pay taxes love top-heavy government as government perpetuates and empowers itself by doling out working peoples money to those who loaf around. The end result is a hollowed-out middle class and an elite quasi-nobility ruling a nation of serfs.
I’ve been proposing a new agency. The unconstitutional Department of Education would be shut down, and the budget transferred to the new agency, the Department of Deportation. The departments sole function would be to hunt down, prosecute, and deport all illegal aliens.
Local school boards have climbed onto the devil ‘s knee and now find themselves entirely trapped in the bargain they made. Where would the money come from if the DOE were eliminated? Have the local politicians sheltered themselves from the criticism of their constituents by taking ever more largess from the central planners instead of assuming more local responsibility? It’s a hole they’ve dug that will end them if they try to dig out. It’s a Catch-22 that no one is willing to address for fear of being party to their own destruction. Another consideration is how many tax payers are willing to bear the full brunt of financing the public schools? It’s practically a given there are few politicians that will present this issue to their constituents with any sort of plan to separate themselves from the DOE. It’s the 800 pound gorilla in the room where everyone complains about the threat it poses but no one dares come up with a plan to remove it.
The money would come from taxpayers–the customers.
For the most part, property taxes go to funding local schools. That, obviously, is a direct tax. Where does the DOE get its money? From taxpayers. The double whammy! The problem is the DOE funding also supports a massive govt agency that siphons off who knows how much to keep it in business. The rest of the money is redistributed back to the local schools. The local school boards can’t afford Frank Lloyd Wright looking schools, massive sports complexes and top-heavy administrations so they have taken the deal from the DOE that, in effect, makes them onlookers as far as running the schools. Take that to the local taxpayers and see how much of it they want to pay for. I think you’ll find very few people are willing to give up what they think other people are paying for. You never win when you bargain with the d evil.
As long as the so-called “public schools” are in fact publicly funded GOVERNMENT schools, they will teach ever more rank collectivist pig slop to students whose parents are forced by the states’ compulsory school attendance laws to send them there. That is to say, 90 + percent of American school age children. Dump the compulsory school attendance laws. Defund the DOE, bring down the government school monopoly, burn the “public schools” to the ground, then salt the earth in the manner of the Roman legions at Carthage. Revolution now!
Burning the schools down will leave piles of toxic waste…
And here I always thought you are the narcissist with yourself important blather about Satanic this and that, beema-bop-a-looma seats and your bizarre version of Christianity. How’s that church attendance coming along anyway?
You seem to be making more comments these days. I guess they let you out of your room a little more for good behavior, right?
You are so dumb and gullible you actually believed I was chasing women around my church.
If you’re addressing me, sir, I never believed or said anything of the sort. I don’t know you from Adam, so why would I?
Since you ask, attendance at my church has risen substantially just in the last few months. If mine is a “bizarre version of Christianity,” how does that pick your pocket?
I’ve said nothing about you or your church, so given that you know very little about me and nothing about my church, it seems to me you’re the one with the bizarre version. Do you frequently take gratuitous shots at Christians you don’t know? Is that a common practice in your house of worship? I ask because if it is, your claims of kinship to Christ are dubious at best – IMO, of course.
I was addressing sumsrent
It may be too late. The philosophy of Altruism-Collectivism may be too entrenched in the culture. But the idea is the right one, the Altruism-Collectivist poison is coming from the universities. The universities and their philosophers of irrational philosophies and irrational ideas are as you say Mr.Thornton, the fons et origo of our current social chaos.
“The philosophy of the school room in one generation will be the philosophy of government in the next.” – Abraham Lincoln
The philosophy of the Objectivists in one generation will not be the philosophy of the population in the next.
Is he just a giant troll? I skip all the back and forth with him. No insult intended to you..
It is easy to feel isolated these days But perhaps his loneliness surpasses all others. And it drove him mad.
Or he’s a troll,
He is a troll but he is also has what can be termed narcissistic personality disorder. He is obsessed with Ayn Rand and Objectivism and has a real problem with Christians and Jews.
He definitely needs to see a psychiatrist because he has gotten worse over the years.
From a psyche journal:
Signs and symptoms of narcissistic personality disorder and the severity of symptoms vary. People with the disorder can: Have an exaggerated sense of self-importance. Have a sense of entitlement and require constant, excessive admiration. Expect to be recognized as superior even without achievements that warrant it.
I think maybe he is also a shut in but I’ll never know.
A narcissist accusing another of being a narcissist… hahaha… how funny…
Evidently you can’t comprehend the definition of a narcissist…
Well… it does appear to the commenters here that you’re important… how sad…
Do you really skip all the back and forth with me? Well then, thank you, that’s the way it should be, no need for useless personal insults. If you don’t like my comments just skip them, that’s actually the civilized way.
If only you were civilized…….
We’ve known for decades that teachers get paid quite handsomely. However, we were always told by public school teachers “we aren’t in it for the pay, we are in it for the kids.” Anyone entering the teaching profession already knew what the pay was, and accepted that fact. Once these lazy and phony college kids graduated, and started to become employed, only then did they start to complain about pay. Never mind that the test scores of American kids ranks near the bottom of international testing, teachers still complain they want more money.
The Dept. of Labor did a study years ago and it showed when time off was calculated teachers earned as much as white collar professions per hour. Public school teachers deserve a pay cut; not a pay raise.
Look at this scam: Summers off, holidays off, 2 weeks for Christmas, 1 week for Thanksgiving, 1 week for Spring Break, sick leave. The time off, pay and benefits costs taxpayers a fortune. Now, here is even a bigger eye raiser. IN ADDITION to all the listed time off teachers get 10 days a year of annual leave to take during the school year!!!!!
Public schools are filled with Leftist teachers who’d rather teach diversity and multiculturalism. Math, science, English? They don’t do a good job at.
“Give me a child until he is 7 and I will show you the man.”
Brainwashing by American government…
The true battlefield has ALWAYS been education.
To our undying shame, our utter humiliation what WE allowed to happen to our children….
Healthy breasts and penis’s chopped off
Gender mind fckery
CRT / DEI
CV19 hoax
The unbelievable level of fear pumped into them
Men pretending to be women grinding their genitals in kindergartners faces
Etc., etc.
During this moment in history will hang around our necks like a rotten albatross. And rightly so as this happened on our watch.
Point fingers all you like but remember three are pointing back at us.
Their will not be enough millstones available when this bill comes due.
SHAME ON US! SHAME ON ALL OF US!
Time to quit forcing Teachers to join the NEA or some corrupt Union and end the Brainwashing by the left and bring back the three R,s and real American History no more of this liberal revionists stuff and true enviromental stuff no more of this Global Warming/Climate Change Lie
It’s time to abolish all government education and the government education monopoly. Half-way measures won’t do. I absolutely guarantee that somewhere in the state of Florida there are teachers teaching the same collectivist bilge they always taught and thumbing their nose at the governor.
You know Mark, David, you, and others like us are putting up the valiant fight, but the damage is done and irreversable with out something really drastic occurring. “We are only one generation away from tyranny” said a wise man decades ago.
That one generation has already happened and the results are devastating. The infiltration of the Neo-American – Communists is insidiuos, thurough, and already complete. They marched through the institutions and are now using our DOJ/FBI, and the US intelligence apparatus against us.
I fear only and armed rebellion can really stop this descent into madness and the destruction of the greatest country in the history of the world.
These Neo-Commies won’t stop until they are stopped!
Do not despair. The good news is there’s no limit to what can be accomplished when the eternal struggle to defend our nation’s founding principles of individual liberty, equal justice and limited, consensual government is waged from the moral high ground of non-violent civil disobedience. It is this universal truth, not armed resistance, which keeps actual and wannabe dictators awake at night from Beijing to Tehran to Moscow, and from Brussels to Davos to Washington, D.C. (ref. www.newguardsforliberty.com).
I agree! Defund ALL PUBLIC EDUCATION. Put education back into the hands of Patriots and parents. Return to classical education and the values that our country was founded upon.
Either homeschool your kids or send them to a private school that engages in classical education ONLY. Better yet, if you can find a school that incorporates Judeo-Christian morals and ethics, then you are truly ahead in the ballgame.
Back in the 50s, the public schools ran like well oiled machines, complete with tough disciplinarians, dress codes and real academics. I saw the deterioration starting in high school with bullshit courses like Humanities, which was taught at my school by a young, hip guy. There was no book. We listened to records and kept “journals” of our observations of the world. It was ridiculous and we all knew it. I learned absolutely nothing. Years later I heard this teacher was involved with some of the girls. No surprise.
Fast forward to 1990 when my son started first grade. I was shocked, absolutely shocked at the political propaganda they were laying on the kids, mostly multiculturalism.
Now I know this was all coming from the Dept of Education. Trump should have shut it down Day One. Betsy DeVos was worthless and complained that everybody there had a left-wing agenda. Betsy, why didn’t you DO SOMETHING!?!?
Needless to say, I put my son in Catholic schools which was a tremendous relief for me. In fact, I will never forget sitting in my car with my son at a McDonalds when he was a freshmen with him telling me about a special session they had about abortion. He said,”I can’t believe anyone would do that.” WE NEED A VOUCHER SYSYTEM.
I thought you were going to say your son told you that for the first time he finally understood Calculus.
Foment the race wars, then blame the Conservatives…
Having escaped our once-respected universities, woke ideology has spread like an engineered viral infection through the public and private sectors of society. Its sufferers are legion. They are characterized by their rejection of the laws of biology, economics and physics. They regard these timeless truths as social constructs which can be ignored without consequences. The bad news is that this suicidal notion has set our nation on a collision course with reality. All is not lost, however. Although this mental and moral contagion is dangerously widespread, the good news is it hasn’t penetrated deeply into the minds of the afflicted. Its purveyors are acutely aware of this fact. They know that even a single independent thought by their delusional victims can generate sufficient light and heat to vaporize a lifetime of their leftist lies. It is this possibility which accounts for their decades-long efforts to dumb down our K-12 schools in pursuit of their nightmarish vision of a godless, joyless, post-rational, dystopian America. The salvation of our constitutional republic hinges upon the willingness of a rational remnant of liberty-loving, God-fearing citizens to remove these ideologues from our educational institutions and restore critical thinking, traditional morality and simple common sense to their curricula. Only by doing so will we preserve for future generations the blessings of liberty which we ourselves inherited from our wiser, nobler ancestors.
Red States should de-fund and then rebuild all school districts without unions. All Universities should be de-funded and restructured.