The intellectual rape of Oakland's schools

TownHall.com ^ | 1/17/03 | David Horowitz

[kattracks]

Back in the Sixties, Dan Siegel's claim to fame was leading the charge to tear down the fence around "People's Park," a lot owned by the University of California which was to be the site of new dorms. The charge led to the occupation of Berkeley by the National Guard, but in the end of course the radicals won. Intimidated by the left, supported as always by the media and all good thinking progressives, the University backed down and the lot became a park. Over the next thirty years the park became a home for Berkeley's derelicts, the site of many rapes and other urban crimes and the Center of Berkeley's heroin trade. Over the same years, Dan Siegel became involved in every radical cause that came along including support of America's enemies at home and abroad.

Now he is on the Oakland school board, which presides over one of the worst school districts in the nation. The victims of this corrupt and failing school system are largely made poor, inner city blacks. This is the school board that tried to make "Ebonics" -- ghetto slang -- an official black language, thus giving up altogether on the effort to educate the children in their charge. This week, Dan Siegel and the Oakland school board led their corrupt and failing school in an excerise in anti-American propaganda, turning over all of Oakland's school children from the first grade to high school, to the tender mercies of radical ideologues and their rants against the war in Iraq, the President and America.

It was called a "Teach-In" recalling the anti-American harrangues of the Sixties that led to America's withdrawal from the war in Vietnam and the slaughter of two and half million peasants in Indo-China in the 1970s. Of course there was a big difference. The "Teach-Ins" then were conducted in universities and from "outside the System." Professors then weren't the anti-American leftists they are now, and the "teach-ins" were held to attack institutions that were not hospitable to propaganda passing itself off as intellectual discourse, let alone to puerile radical rants.

Now the puerile radicals are in control of the schools themselves, both universities and K-12 systems like Oakland. Radicals are not bothered by the niceties of innocence or the responsibilities of educators. Born bullies whose views are bankrupt, indoctrination is their game. And lying as well. Here is the AP's watered down account of what happened: "Oakland's school board drew criticism for authorizing a teach-in on Iraq that was dominated by opponents of a possible war....No one on the list of speakers at Tuesday's event supported the Bush administration's assertion that war may be necessary to remove Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein....But organizers, who called the event a timely exercise in critical thinking, said they simply couldn't find pro-war speakers who were willing to appear. 'Our teachers and our students here in Oakland are too smart to be victims of propaganda,' said Dan Siegel, a member of the school board. 'Our goal is to do education and to have people make up their own minds.'" Like first graders.

©2003 FrontPageMag.com

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[PGalt]

Thanks for your post.

[irv]

organizers, who called the event a timely exercise in critical thinking, said they simply couldn't find pro-war speakers who were willing to

subject themselves to the kind of crude intimidation and harrassment that the Left always practices against people whose opinions it opposes.

[nutmeg]

bttt