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Posted on 11/07/2021 6:14:06 AM PST by DoodleBob
When the pandemic hit, school went online and learning seemed to be thrown to the wind. As the pandemic stretched on, many teachers were loath to return to the classroom because of apparent COVID fears. Parents began to question whether teachers were really concerned about or eager to foster their children’s learning, especially as they could see the learning loss that was happening … or rather, the learning that often wasn’t happening at all.
Such fears were groundless, according to Cecily Myart-Cruz, head of the powerful United Teachers Los Angeles union. Myart-Cruz scoffed at the idea of learning loss in a recent interview with Los Angeles Magazine, claiming:
It’s OK that our babies may not have learned all their times tables. They learned resilience. They learned survival. They learned critical-thinking skills. They know the difference between a riot and a protest. They know the words insurrection and coup.
To the discerning reader, it’s apparent that Myart-Cruz could have stated the above much more succinctly by saying, “Our babies learned propaganda.”
And in fact, they have been learning that propaganda for many years. Unfortunately, we looked away, convincing ourselves that such propaganda was only in big districts such as Los Angeles, or New York, or Chicago, not in our own local, Middle American neighborhoods. For years we kept our children in those schools, convincing ourselves they were safe, that their teachers and the curriculum they were studying were teaching them good things. That those good things would prepare them for living in the free world, able to embrace truth and recognize error immediately.
Given the accelerated rate of deception in society, it now seems clear that schools indeed didn’t prepare children to recognize propaganda; instead, they were the ones that fed propaganda to children hook, line, and sinker.
The late author and historian Richard Weaver observed this phenomenon in a 1955 essay entitled “Propaganda.” “It’s tempting to say that the only final protection against propaganda is education,” Weaver said. “But the remark must be severely qualified because there is a kind of education which makes people more rather than less gullible.
Most modern education induces people to accept too many assumptions. On these the propagandist can play even more readily than on the supposed prejudices of the uneducated. It is the independent, reflective intelligence which critically rejects and accepts the ideas competing in the market place. Education to think rather than mere literacy should be the prime object of those seeking to combat propaganda.
Regardless of whether our children go to public, private, or homeschool, they will inevitably be exposed to propaganda. So how do we educate our children—and our own selves in the process—to think and wield the sword against this enemy? A few ideas come to mind.
First, train yourself and your children to explore both sides of an argument. For example, if you think the election was stolen, examine the arguments of those who agree with you, but also look at sources claiming to debunk such alleged conspiracy theories. Likewise, if you think the COVID vaccine is perfectly safe and can’t understand why people won’t take it, dig into some of the scientific studies and testimonies of those who have a wary view of it. Knowing what the opposition is saying will strengthen your own arguments and make it more difficult for people to accuse you or your children of being narrow-minded.
Second, look for logical fallacies in the information coming out of the television, the classroom, and the internet. The Fallacy Detective by Nathaniel and Hans Bluedorn is a fun way to introduce children to this subject. Once these fallacies are learned and digested, create a game by seeing how many fallacies your family can spot in a news report or a politician’s speech.
Finally, expose children to the wisdom of the past. Just as those trained to detect counterfeit never accept fake money, but only the real thing, so we must only give our children good, high-quality reading material. Many of the books written today are filled with fluffy, politically correct drivel, but often books written in past decades are filled with messages promoting traditional values and solid character. Place these latter books in the hands of your children, and they’ll soon sniff out and reject “woke” material.
“Most modern education induces people to accept too many assumptions,” Weaver said. Buck the trend and actively ensure your children reject the propagandistic assumptions they are taught at school and in society.
Please adjust the last word in the headline to “Propaganda”. Thank you.
I don’t know, given where the propaganda is coming from in our culture “propagan” kinda works.
not very pro pagan huh?
Right-Liberals have certainly convinced young people that anything which represents Conservatism or in any way puts Conervative in a positive light IS propaganda!!
Propaganda Analysis was a require course for graduation from Iowa State University when I was there. It was to teach us how the old people are conning us. They tried to used the Readers Digest to show how articles changed from the original writing to a conservative perspective. mid 70’s
Propaganda and propaganda analysis have a long history.
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“He said small government and Limited Government are good! He wants to starve people!” — most any so-called “progressive” when to cut ti the chase
Our 3 year old Grand-daughter already knows how to apply the phrase, “That’s Silly!”.
Yeah, I remember the Readers Digest tried to propagandize young Americans to avoid pre-martial sex while the New York Times lauded Joe Stalin for his Potemkin Villages and supplying food to the the Russian Peasants and Ukraine.
A song being taught to school children today (to the tune of “I’ve Been Working on the Railroad”)
I will always wear my face mask
All throughout and day
I will always wear my face mask
To keep covid away
I will always wear my face mask
Guarding my family and friends
I will always wear my face mask
Till the second my life ends
Well played. I deserved that.
One of the most important things I taught my children while growing up were the common fallacies of logical thinking. It taught them to spot manipulation, whether logical or emotional.
The Top 10 Logical Fallacies and How to Avoid Them in Arguments
Straw Man Fallacy.
Begging the Question Fallacy.
Ad Hominem Fallacy.
Post Hoc Fallacy.
Loaded Question Fallacy.
False Dichotomy Fallacy.
Fallacy of Equivocation.
Appeal to Authority Fallacy.
Hasty Generalization Fallacy
Appeal to Popular Opinion Fallacy
https://successfulstudent.org/the-art-to-argument-persuasion-logical-fallacies/
This was a popular book when my kids were growing up:
https://www.amazon.com/Fallacy-Detective-Thirty-Eight-Recognize-Reasoning/dp/097453157X?dchild=1
Students are age-segregated into ghettos of kids of similar age from whom they can’t receive any assistance discovering their own identities, which they used to get from adopting their parents’ livelihoods and culture as little adults. Disposable networks of limited purpose and duration fostered by schooling malfeasance have pushed out our once vital community involvement; school disrupts the free relationships in which people of all ages used to be able to freely associate with each other in in-depth personal involvement, people of different age categories offering involvement based on their life experience, young people giving the elderly their vigor, elderly people their wisdom and attention. Television pushed this out, now cell-phone based internet, in the future, field-generated connectivity to captivate all the senses so contact with ordinary reality can be continually monitored, regulated and modified by central controllers.
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Childhood which John Taylor Gatto declared from the pre-technolocratic past normally to be over by 7, or 11 at the latest, is being indefinitely extended beyond the 20s with “life long learning” conditioning. (I worked with a man who had been in college from just after high school until his mid-50s, who had taken 5 college degrees without attaining any noticeable life accomplishment, college was simply an unreal world in which there was no accountability or self-checking about the results of one’s activity, if there had been some harm to others caused by intellectual experiments upon real-life people, there was no accountability.)
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From the beginning of the Prussian system as devised by behaviorsts like Pavlov’s teacher Wilhelm Wundt, students were socially conditioned to themselves insist on conformity in outlook and ideation, to be their own enforcers of ideological homogeneity, to socially punish rebellious individuality. This conformity drive continues with Queen Bees and Wannabes under the personality corrosion of social media experience designed by experts in fostering addiction.
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I knew Jan 7 that Jan 6 was a false flag operation, the only source of wonderment is that most people still don’t understand it. I knew Antifa would be involved, the glass breakers were Antifa, I just didn’t know that FBI provocateurs were trying to get people to go from the Trump speech to the Capital. The key moment was when those unwary people who did go to the Capital were all contained in an orderly rectangle, then right on cue the Capital Police fired tear gas into the crowd. That was the real Reichstag fire, equivalent to the Nazis using a bewildered, Dutch mental patient as pretext to start over. I’d bet most readers of this website still don’t know it was an FBI-Antifa False Flag Operation.
I agree. This may be one of the best ways to counter. It needs to be done in early grades, perhaps under the banner of teaching kids to not be swayed by advertisers, like a consumer course…how to wisely buy a car, what tactics are used by sales people, manipulative language to be aware of, etc. etc. after all politics is simply a sales pitch…recignize one, recognize all.
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