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In 1997, the National Association of Social Work (NASW) altered its ethics code, ruling that all social workers must promote social justice "from local to global level." This call for mandatory advocacy raised the question: what kind of political action did the highly liberal field of social work have in mind? The answer wasn't long in coming. The Council on Social Work Education, the national accreditor of social work education programs, says candidates must fight "oppression," and sees American society as pervaded by the "global interconnections of oppression." Now aspiring social workers must commit themselves, usually in writing, to a...

In 1997, the National Association of Social Work (NASW) altered its ethics code, ruling that all social workers must promote social justice “from local to global level.” This call for mandatory advocacy raised the question: what kind of political action did the highly liberal field of social work have in mind? The answer wasn’t long in coming. The Council on Social Work Education, the national accreditor of social work education programs, says candidates must fight “oppression,” and sees American society as pervaded by the “global interconnections of oppression.” Now aspiring social workers must commit themselves, usually in writing, to a...

Letting the PC slip showBy Mona CharenFriday, October 13, 2006 You've probably never heard of Teachers College, but it has profoundly affected your life and is now affecting your children's lives. TC is the graduate school of education at Columbia University and laboratory of most of the "reforms" that have corroded K-12 education over the past 50 years. New math, whole language, open classrooms, outcome-based education -- you name the fad and it probably originated in Morningside Heights in New York. Teachers College is the most influential graduate education program in the country, and like so many leading schools, it...

Personality Test: The dispositional dispute in teacher preparation today, and what to do about it by William Damon 09/08/2005 The standards of the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Excellence (NCATE) are of critical import for America's future teaching corps and for K-12 education in general and will wield disproportionate influence for decades to come. Over the past fifteen years, 25 states have outsourced the approval of teacher preparation programs to NCATE by adopting or adapting its standards as their own; the other 25 have various "partnerships" with the organization. Which makes it all the more disturbing that central to...

Schools of Reeducation? By Frederick M. Hess Washington Post 02/05/06 For those who have been troubled by the tendency of universities to adopt campus speech codes, a worrisome new fad is rearing its head in the nation's schools of education. Stirred by professional opinion and accreditation pressures, teachers colleges have begun to regulate the dispositions and beliefs of those who would teach in our nation's classrooms. At the University of Alabama, the College of Education explains that it is "committed to preparing individuals to promote social justice, to be change agents, and to recognize individual and institutionalized racism, sexism, homophobia,...

A recent report in Horsefeathers on the way in which education schools like the one at Brooklyn College indoctrinate prospective teachers may have left the impression that the litmus test of “disposition”—evaluating a prospective teacher’s politics—applied only to the so-called soft subjects: the social sciences and—heaven help us—the humanities. Not so. Even mathematics is being taught in the public schools from the perspective of the radical social agenda. “Teaching Mathematics for Social Justice” is an actual course given at Northeastern University’s School of Education in Boston. According to the course description [click HERE], future teachers of algebra, trigonometry and geometry...

10/24/05 By John Leo Class(room) Warriors The cultural left has a new tool for enforcing political conformity in schools of education. It is called dispositions theory, and it was set forth five years ago by the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education: Future teachers should be judged by their "knowledge, skills, and dispositions." What are "dispositions"? NCATE's prose made clear that they are the beliefs and attitudes that guide a teacher toward a moral stance. That sounds harmless enough, but it opened a door to reject teaching candidates on the basis of thoughts and beliefs. In 2002, NCATE said...

Jan. 16, 2006 issue - The surest, quickest way to add quality to primary and secondary education would be addition by subtraction: Close all the schools of education. Consider The Chronicle of Higher Education's recent report concerning the schools that certify America's teachers. Many education schools discourage, even disqualify, prospective teachers who lack the correct "disposition," meaning those who do not embrace today's "progressive" political catechism. Karen Siegfried had a 3.75 grade-point average at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, but after voicing conservative views, she was told by her education professors that she lacked the "professional disposition" teachers need. She...