Posted on 05/25/2014 6:55:40 PM PDT by Nachum
Cass Sunstein, Obama’s former regulatory “czar” and one of the smartest and most devious thinkers on the left, has a highly revealing Bloomberg column out this week reporting on the results of a study of the way China has attempted indoctrination in its school system. This column and the underlying study (it’s an NBER paper, behind a paywall unless you have academic access) are useful as background reading for everyone who is rightly concerned about how Common Core standards will likely become the means of nationalizing a liberal school curriculum. (What? You mean you aren’t reassured by the promises from Washington that if you like your local curriculum, you can keep your local curriculum? Why ever not?)
Sunstein reports that
recent curricular reforms in China, explicitly designed to transform students’ political views, have mostly worked. The findings offer remarkable evidence about the potential influence of the high school curriculum on what students end up thinking. . .
The crucial finding from the study is that the new curriculum greatly affected students’ thinking. They became more likely to count the Chinese political system as democratic. They displayed a higher level of trust in public officials. They were more skeptical of free markets, and more likely to reject the view that a market economy is preferable to any other economic system. . .
Sunstein, a leading advocate for increased government power across the board, is likely envious of China’s prowess at indoctrination. There was, however, an interesting area where China’s indoctrination failed to work, and it is a highly curious exception:
Students didn’t become more favorably disposed toward environmental protection. They were not more likely to give the environment priority over economic growth, and they were not more willing to give up some of their income to
(Excerpt) Read more at powerlineblog.com ...
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Another View — Cass R. Sunstein: How easy is it to indoctrinate students? Easy
http://www.unionleader.com/article/20140522/OPINION02/140529580
Stella Morabito Green, “Everyone Should Take a ‘Propaganda 101’ Class to Understand How They Are Manipulated” http://stellamorabito.net/2014/04/28/everyone-should-take-a-propaganda-101-class-to-understand-how-they-are-manipulatedtand-propaganda-101/
Nice. ‘This tracks closely with a large body of literature on the “Environmental Kuznets Curve” that you won’t have social and political support for expensive environmental protection until you achieve a middle class standard of living for a nation. [...] This is why China and India are unlikely ever to agree to the U.S.-Euro climate agenda.’
For more than 10 years I have been on various political message boards warning conservatives to SHUT DOWN GOVERNMENT SCHOOLING!
Government schooling is our nation’s **most** serious threat but if we continue to turn over the nation’s children to Marxists freedom in this nation is over. There will be a worldwide Dark Age that will last for centuries.
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