Posted on 04/24/2008 8:53:31 AM PDT by LJayne
Today's morning must-read is a flashback to Sol Stern's 2006 report in City Journal on how Bill Ayers' radical "social justice" curriculum has infiltrated the K-12 public school system: Reason number 99,999,967 to home school.
An excerpt:
The readings that Ayers assigns are as intellectually stimulating and diverse as a political commissar's indoctrination session in one of his favorite communist tyrannies. The reading list for his urban education course includes the bible of the critical pedagogy movement, Brazilian Marxist Paolo Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed; two books by Ayers himself; another by bell hooks, a radical black feminist writer and critical race theorist; and a "Freedom School" curriculum. That's the entire spectrum of debate.
For students who might get bored with the purely pedagogic approach to liberation, Ayers also offers a course on the real thing, called "Social Conflicts of the 1960's." For this class Ayers also posts his introduction to the soon-to-be-published collection of Weather Underground agitprop that he edited with Dohrn—called, with no intended parody, Sing a Battle Song: The Revolutionary Poetry, Statements and Communiqués of the Weather Underground, 1970-1974. "Once things were connected," Ayers's introduction recollects, "we saw a system at work, we were radicalized, we named that system—imperialism—and forged an idea of how to overthrow it. We were influenced by Marx, but we were formed more closely and precisely by Che, Ho, Malcolm X, Amílcar Cabral, Mandela—the Third World revolutionaries—and we called ourselves small 'c' communists to indicate our rejection of what had become of Marx in the Soviet Block [sic]. . . . We were anti-authoritarian, anti-orthodoxy, communist street fighters."
Ayers makes clear that his political views haven't changed much since those glory days. He cites a letter he recently wrote: "I've been told to grow up from the time I was ten until this morning. Bullshit. Anyone who salutes your 'youthful idealism' is a patronizing reactionary. Resist! Don't grow up! I went to Camp Casey [Cindy Sheehan's vigil at the Bush ranch in Crawford, Texas] in August precisely because I'm an agnostic about how and where the rebellion will break out, but I know I want to be there and I know it will break out."
See also Stern's new blog post in which he points out: "The more pressing issue is not the damage done by the Weather Underground 40 years ago, but the far greater harm inflicted on the nation's schoolchildren by the political and educational movement in which Ayers plays a leading role today."
Barack Obama was unavailable for comment.
I probably won't be there when it breaks out, but I wish I could be there. I only hope they have video footage of this idiot being bullet riddled.
Denver. August 25.
What Bill doesn’t realize is this: any student confronted with this load of horse manure for reading will be forever bored with Leftist thinking and spend the rest of their lives rejecting it.
Leftists always overestimate the power of education in the lives of children; as a teacher myself, I can see this first hand every day. When you come into the classroom like a guru with a message which must be obeyed or else, most of the students immediately get back to their lives, which revolve around sports, music, girls/boys, friends, and themselves. The few that are interested are eventually worn down by the incessant ideological cant.
I can imagine the rolling eyes of any student in this teacher’s classes as he says, “Yeah, he was some old hippie, he made me read some book by some boring hag who forgot to use capital letters, and he just went on and on. So I just told him what he wanted and got an A.”
Which is just what happened in the old Soviet Union. Teachers presented Marxist theory and students pretended to learn it. At the end of the day, the system produced cynical, disiniterested students.
The only thing you get from stuffing crap down someone’s throat day after day is fois gras.
If you want to go blind, try reading bell hooks. She’ll be a footnote in some encyclopedia someday.
I had to read Ayers and Friere to get my teaching credential. It was mandatory. A whole class devoted to “social justice” and “whiteness theory” and so on...
Where did you go to school that post modernist thought was required for teaching credentials?
The quality of public school education is inversely proportionate to the growth of the NEA. The NEA hired Saul Alinsky, back in 1948 or 49 to train their union organizers.
Southern Illinois University. For a while I was in anthropology. When incoming students would join the department, I used to tell them, “Welcome to Red Square. Please set your watches back 30 years.” Then I dropped out of the program and decided to just get my teaching credential.... where I learned about Ayers, Pope, Friere, all that. Miserable.
The worst union ethic that I encountered in the public school system was in California, but Illinois must be worse. In California, I had a seventh grade English teacher tell me that he wouldn’t assign anything longer than a paragraph to be written because he planned to have the kids exchange papers and mark them. He stated that the parents weren’t willing to put our money where our mouths were and hire lay readers to do the marking and marking papers would interfere with his surfing. The relationship between the parents and the schools was like a constant union negotiation. Unfortunately, too many of the parents were too easily bought off by easy grades for the kids.
When I was in high school, the school that I attended was in the top 10 in the country, all thanks to the principal of that school. When the superintendent of schools retired and the principal was passed over for the position, I never understood why. Now, I know, the union didn't want excellence.
bump
So they get this big grant recently to pay for co-teachers. That is, two teachers in the classroom instead of one. Now, will they let me, as a co-teacher, pull out the kids who are struggling (or problematic) for special attention? NO. Why? Because, that's why. It's the best possible solution, but it's flatly forbidden. Why? I don't know why. "No pullouts, it's not inclusive, we have to be inclusive..."
Nothing is less conducive to learning than a room packed with kids and distractions. I've pulled kids out just during my conference period, for free, unofficially, and taken a small group to my nice, quiet room, usually four or five, and worked with them. And they improved! Quickly! But no, no, we can't do something that might actually work...
The theory is that all teaching must be equal, brought down to the lowest common denominator. You are supposed to move at the pace of the slowest students so as not to damage their psyche. They say that the brighter students will pick up things on their own, or they should be skipped a grade.
I swear that the text books that are used in CA are designed to handicap the kids regarding learning outside the classroom. The algebra and geometry books at Capistrano Valley, where my daughter went had NO examples. So, when I went to help her, I had to go out and buy other texts and try to match them with the lessons.
The theory is that all teaching must be equal, brought down to the lowest common denominator. You are supposed to move at the pace of the slowest students so as not to damage their psyche. They say that the brighter students will pick up things on their own, or they should be skipped a grade.
I swear that the text books that are used in CA are designed to handicap the kids regarding learning outside the classroom. The algebra and geometry books at Capistrano Valley, where my daughter went had NO examples. So, when I went to help her, I had to go out and buy other texts and try to match them with the lessons. 40% was a passing grade in algebra at Capistrano Valley High School.
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