Posted on 04/07/2009 5:48:42 AM PDT by Kaslin
How can we explain continued public support for Barack Obama's extremist spending plans, even though it is painfully obvious that his much-touted "remaking America" means mortgaging the financial future of young people with trillions of dollars in debt? Are the American people really willing to let the government be our nanny, manage our economy, federalize our schools, and decide which businesses can keep their doors open, what health care will be permitted, who will get new jobs and how extravagant will be the foreign handouts as Obama "rejoins the world community"?
One answer to these questions may be what has been taught over the last 30 years in U.S. colleges and universities, where the radicals of the 1960s have become tenured professors. David Horowitz has made it his life mission for the last two decades to expose the hypocrisy of professors pushing propaganda instead of education.
The latest of his several books on the academic left is called "One-Party Classroom: How Radical Professors at America's Top Colleges Indoctrinate Students and Undermine Our Democracy" (co-authored with Jacob Laksin; Crown Forum). "One-party" does not refer just to the fractious Harry Reid Democratic Party -- full-blown Marxist socialism is the "one party" that is indoctrinating students in the classroom.
Horowitz documented 150 college courses at 12 elite universities, from Columbia in New York to the University of California at Santa Cruz, which he calls "the worst school in America" and whose highest-ranking professors are the communist lesbians Angela Davis and Bettina Aptheker. Other institutions along the way include Duke, Penn State, the University of Colorado and the University of Southern California.
Horowitz quotes directly from the syllabus of each course he critiques, lists assigned readings, and reports on the credentials and background of the instructor paid to teach the course. The most offensive departments are women's studies, black studies and peace studies.
These so-called academic departments teach students to hate America, to believe that women, blacks and all minorities are the victims of oppression and racism, and that America is a land of injustice that needs drastic change in our social structure. The universities teach William Ayers-style "social justice," which is the template for a socialist political agenda.
Women's studies departments teach that gender is not a fact of nature or biologically determined, but is a socially or environmentally determined classification that ascribes qualities of masculinity and femininity to people, a peculiar view accepted by feminists as though it were a principle of Newtonian physics. Women's studies instructors consider it a given that women have been subordinated and discriminated against by an unjust male patriarchy and need government action by legislatures and courts to give women their just due.
At Columbia University, students who hope to be teachers are expected to adopt a radical view of American society and to attack the legitimacy of the social order. The courses dish out a running attack on capitalism and the free-market system.
Even at the University of Miami in Ohio, the women's studies department makes clear that its courses are organized around radical feminist theory. To get a degree in women's studies, the first requirement for the senior thesis is that it "must incorporate feminist perspectives."
If any course syllabus promises to include "critical thinking," that means criticizing men and the patriarchy.
The University of Texas uses required texts that take as their starting point the patriarchal structure of society. Twenty-five points of a student's final grade are determined by a gender journal in which students question norms about sexuality.
Typical readings assigned at the University of Arizona reveal the bias of the courses: "Capitalist Patriarchy and the Case for Socialist Feminism," "Sexual Democracy: Women, Oppression and Revolution" and "The Radical Future of Liberal Feminism."
A course at the University of Missouri asserts that U.S. institutions exert social control over women's bodies to promote gendered inequalities, especially the media, the legal system and the medical profession. Missouri courses attack femininity as "a tool of self-oppression," and courses are frankly described as "a training course for radical feminists in radical feminism."
Women's studies courses don't assign readings by any of the great women writers: Jane Austen, George Eliot, Emily Dickinson or the Bronte sisters. Also blacklisted are those who criticize feminism, such as Christina Hoff Sommers, Carolyn Graglia, Daphne Patai and Camille Paglia.
The cultural Marxists have been teaching college students long enough to deceive two generations. The abuses of the liberal arts curriculum were set forth 20 years ago by Allan Bloom in "The Closing of the American Mind" and nearly 50 years ago by E. Merrill Root in "Collectivism on the Campus."
When are young people and their parents going to stop paying exorbitant tuition for the privilege of being brainwashed by the left?
The Case Against the College Degree
http://www.smartmoney.com/Personal-Finance/College-Planning/The-Case-Against-the-College-Degree/
These K-12 Marxist indoctrinated teachers have now thoroughly infiltrated our government K-12 schools. Our nation's K-12 schools are full to the brim with them.
SHAME ON CONSERVATIVES! They have consistently failed to provide a nationwide system of tuition-free private schools. They send their kids off to Marxist, atheistic, and secular humanist dominated K-12 schools. Is it any wonder that these kids are defenseless before their Marxist university professors?
Conservatives must start immediately doing several things simultaneously:
1) Remove your kids from government K-12 schools. Do this immediately!
2) Search out private colleges that support conservative values.
3) Stop sending money to Marxist universities and colleges.
4) Organize conservative educational foundations that would award grants to private conservative teachers. These conservative teachers would open tuition-free one room school houses, mini-schools, and homeschool cooperatives. The conservative educational foundation would certify the teacher, approve the curriculum, and test the students.
5) Organize college philanthropy foundations to open new conservative colleges and universities.
Please abandon the idea that government K-12 schooling can be reformed. It was a socialist idea from the beginning whose goal was to produce a pliant and conforming citizenry. It is succeeding admirably in its goal.
Marylanders PING
F Y I
I was listening to John Taylor Gatto (new book, “Weapons of Mass Education”) on the radio a couple of nights ago. He rattled off about ten names of people who started companies such as Microsoft, Dell. These ten people either didn’t bother to attend college or if they did, didn’t bother to graduate. They did pretty well for themselves as everyone knows. He did mention one person, Wozniak (sp?) who decided to go to college to earn a teaching degree (giving back to the community, I guess).
He also mentioned open source education which is available to all today. He said parents should encourage their children to become entrepreneurial and open their own businesses while teenagers.
This is sort of an aside to the main point of the article, but I think that premise is seriously flawed. I took a woman's studies class in the 70's and you could use the same methodology they used to "prove" women were oppressed to show that men are actually the oppressed class these days.
Far from having a patriarchy, I think we've got a matricrhy far more: our whole society is geared toward ensuring security. No tax is too onerous, no law too oppressive, if only it creates some sort of security for someone.
....the reason the Women’s Studies people are anti-capitalist is simple....a W.Studies degree is worthless in a capitalist economy....so they make jobs for themselves in universities.....there was a funny song out a while back that went:
“I got a degree in Women’s Studies, how come I can’t pay my rent?”
Not everyone can afford to send their children to private schools and not everyone can home school their children. I certainly would not have been able to when my kids were school age.
Lets hope so.
Do you think he's being too hard on the colleges and just needs to calm down? [sarcasm tag]
I’m finishing a master’s degree program at a Christian college. The government now requires a master’s for me to continue to work.
Every class features a multiculturalism assignment. You could take a course on drywalling and they would insert a multicultural assignment.
Now I’ve got an entire course to take on this communist drivel. Usually, I fill up my papers with ironies and twists that leave the instructors wondering if they support it or not. I’ve been torn between doing that for a semester, or taking the direct approach, saying “Kill whitey. Whitey must die, and citing communist party sources.”
I find that unbelievable. However, the way you phrased it, if there's one in 10,000 who cannot do either of the two, you are technically correct.
That said, there are more than two alternatives -- a parent needs merely to explore the matter thoroughly, and options will be found. There are affordable private schools; affordable parochial schools; scholarships; tuition assistance programs; and other things that people can cut from their budget, things of less importance than their children's minds and futures.
If I could not homeschool, I would sooner apply for food stamps, medical assistance or private charity, than entrust my child to the government and its educational system.
It's hard to imagine any conservative who is intellectually or financially incapable of homeschooling. They merely haven't given it sufficient consideration.
But again, there could be 1 in 10,000!
This morning our local talk radio host, Tom Marr, said that radical Islamists were responsible for all the terrorism in today's world, and Obama shouldn't be over there apologizing to muslim nations for our system; it's their systems that need to shape up. A guy called in insisting that Islamists weren't the only world terrorists. So Tom Marr said, "Name the other terrorists." The guy reached back to slavery in the U.S., and then to the localized and more settled Irish troubles, which Marr refuted. "Name one today," he insisted; the guy said, "Hey! You're really putting me on the spot here!"
Moron.
Dr. Braa, your village is missing its boob.
Yes, when you ask the mush-minded to answer a direct question, using accurate facts, it really flummoxes them.
Are you willing to foot the bill for any student who has to repeat a class after disagreeing with their communist professor?
This co-founder of Apple Computer may actually have something to teach. Is he a lib???
I don’t know. Sounds altruistic though. The type that thinks he has to “give back.”
I’m suspicious too...
What ever happened to the old quote from the King James?
Train up a child in the way he should go and when he is old he will not depart from it.
Raise them to be conservatives and they will be conservatives. Mom’s and Dad’s lessons, sermons, and the occasional kick in the butt to remind me I was going down a bad path helped me learn to say or write what I had to in order to get the grade then forget it.
Can a real conservative be re-educated to be a ZEROBOT Zombie? I surely hope not!!!!
Cadddis the Younger
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