published 2005
Jonathan Kozol (born September 5, 1936 in Boston, MA) is a non-fiction writer, educator, and activist, best known for his books on public education in the United States. He has been working with children in inner-city schools for more than 40 years. Kozol is the patron saint of today’s powerful liberal educational establishment. While focusing mainly on poor and minority kids, he has preached his version of how kids should be educated, and his influence today is immense. Kozol is a fierce opponent of traditional learning, which he says deadens children’s souls. He believes that education cannot and should not be politically neutral. Indeed, the once outrageous idea that teachers should use their classrooms to espouse liberal/ radical views – i.e., to propagandize – can be traced directly to Jonathan Kozol. His views on the subject are laid out in his influential book, On Being a Teacher, which was written following a visit to Cuba in the mid-70s. Taking as his starting point the crude Marxist view that education in all societies is ‘a system of indoctrination,’ ‘an instrument of the state,’ he worked out a method by which teachers could subvert capitalist America’s bad indoctrination and – cleverly and subtly – substitute some good left-wing indoctrination in its place.” All the book’s model lessons aim to teach little children to withstand America’s state-sponsored brainwashing and to open them up to the self-evident truths of feminism, environmentalism, and the Left’s account of history. What’s so alarming is that, because Jonathan Kozol is so admired in the education establishment, his ideas are put into practice every day in classrooms all across America, from high school all the way down to preschool.
1968 - Jane Elliott, an American schoolteacher, created the famous “blue-eyed/brown-eyed” exercise. The exercise labeled participants as inferior or superior based solely upon the color of their eyes. She 1st conducted the exercise with grade school children. She exposed the students to the experience of being a minority by having them experience prejudice and bigotry. Elliott said she developed this encounter experience in response to the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. on 4/08/1968. This launched her career in a new direction as an anti-racism/ feminist/ LGBTQ activist and educator. Today she is recognized as 1 of the 1st pioneers of diversity training.
Diversity training began in public organizations (military, government, colleges/universities) in the1960s as a reaction to the civil rights movement. The aim of these educational training sessions was to increase understanding and awareness of differences in race. At this time, the use of encounter groups was the primary training method. This encompassed bringing multiracial groups together for an emotional and confrontational discussion about racism. In the 1970s and 1980s diversity training began to include issues of gender differences. Beginning in the 1980s and 1990s, businesses began implementing diversity training to protect against civil rights suits. Also in the 1990s, diversity training expanded to address sexual orientation, age, religion, and national origin.
published 1980
Howard Zinn (August 24, 1922 – January 27, 2010) was an American historian, author, playwright, and social activist. He was a political science professor at Boston University for 24 years and taught history at Spelman College for 7 years. Zinn wrote more than 20 books, including his best-selling and influential A People's History of the United States.[2] He wrote extensively about the civil rights and anti-war movements, and labor history of the United States. Zinn was born to a Jewish immigrant family in Brooklyn. Eager to fight fascism, Zinn joined the U.S. Army Air Force during World War II and was assigned as a bombardier in the 490th Bombardment Group,[7] bombing targets in Berlin, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary.[8] As bombardier, Zinn dropped napalm bombs in April 1945 on Royan, a seaside resort in southwestern France.[9] The anti-war stance Zinn developed later was informed, in part, by his experiences. Zinn described himself as "something of an anarchist, something of a socialist. Maybe a democratic socialist." He suggested looking at socialism in its full historical context as a popular, positive idea that got a bad name from its association with Soviet Communism.
Howard Zinn claimed his eyes were opened to the racist, imperialist horror that is America by writer I.F. Stone, who later was confirmed to be a KGB covert influence agent when the Iron Curtain fell and certain Soviet documents became public.
Quote from the 1997 Hollywood fillm, “Good Will Hunting,” written by native Bostonian and political progressive, Matt Damon in the lead role: “You wanna read a really good American history book? Read Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States. It will knock your socks off.”
A sample of his writing in The Progressive. Zinn’s contempt for America and its citizens fairly drips from each word: “The deeply ingrained belief — no, not from birth but from the educational system and from our culture in general that the United States is an especially virtuous nation makes us especially vulnerable to government deception. It starts early, in the first grade, when we are compelled to ‘pledge allegiance’ (before we even know what that means), forced to proclaim that we are a nation with ‘liberty and justice for all. … And then come the countless ceremonies, whether at the ballpark or elsewhere, where we are expected to stand and bow our heads during the singing of the ‘Star Spangled Banner,’ announcing that we are ‘the land of the free and the home of the brave.’ There is also the unofficial national anthem ‘God Bless America,’ and you are looked on with suspicion if you ask why we would expect God to single out this one nation — just 5 percent of the world’s population — for his or her blessing.”