Ideological Training Starts Well Before College Even Begins

American Thinker ^ | 18 Jul, 2022 | Matthew G. Andersson

[MtnClimber]

Are our country’s educators acting as speech and thought “shadowers” who are perhaps unwittingly putting divisive and dispositive ideas into the impressionable heads of our students?

Our nation’s media is saturated with opinion concerning the ideological influences on our college and university campuses. This issue, however, is equally present, and perhaps even more intellectually destabilizing, in our secondary education institutions -- even in so-called private ones. An example is the Watkinson School in Hartford, Connecticut.

I had the benefit of attending the private college preparatory Watkinson School (from 1975 until I graduated in 1977, both with a secondary education or “High School” diploma, and a diploma in creative arts performance in conjunction with the next door Hartt College of Music at the University of Hartford). The school back then was much more conservative, where by “conservative” I mean aware of, and still confidently informed by, certain strong and functional traditions.

Conservative also means some leaning toward faith. While the Christian faiths were explicit in Watkinson’s founding culture, we also had many other religions or variants on campus, including Jewish, Baptist, Muslim, and devoted agnostics. We had nearly every race and “orientation” on campus as well, from White Anglo-Saxons, to African-American, Indian, Hispanic, straight and “gay.” And you know what? None of us even thought about it. We all got along; we all laughed, played sports, chamber music and jazz, debated -- and socialized. There was no “diversity” director, nor any speech guidelines other than civility (there was a dress code which as I look back wasn’t a bad idea). But we also had a healthy respect and enjoyment of the “opposite sex” and developing our identities as men and women were critical to also developing America’s strength and culture, in part because they define the most important unit of

[MtnClimber]

When I talk to parents of school-aged children, most seem clueless about leftist indoctrination and what they should be watching for.

[nopardons]

BTTT

[libertylover]

“We don’t need no education.
We don’t need no thought control.
No dark sarcasm in the classrooms.
Teacher, leave them kids alone.

HEY TEACHER, leave them kids alone!!!”

***
Oh, the irony.