Free Republic

If somebody wanted to fundamentally transform a society to its roots, where would he or she start? The most logical starting point would be education. And if there were one part of the educational system that would produce this transformation most broadly, effectively, and efficiently, it would most likely be at our schools of education that train teachers for the K-12 classroom. That’s where ideas from the rest of academia are inserted into the curriculum for elementary and high school students, and where politically unsophisticated young people are turned into classroom teachers. Control the schools of education, and the education...

<p>Two factors have so far shielded the American university from the sort of criticism that it so freely levels against almost every other institution in American life. (1) For decades a college education has been considered the key to an ascendant middle-class existence. (2) Until recently a college degree was not tantamount to lifelong debt. In other words, American society put up with a lot of arcane things from academia, given that it offered something — a BA or BS degree — that almost everyone agreed was a ticket to personal security and an educated populace.</p>

Those who believe that America is a special place where dreams can come true and everyone has the opportunity to succeed, had better keep their thoughts to themselves if they attend the University of Minnesota’s College of Education and Human Development. A new report posted by the Race, Culture, Class and Gender Task Group of the University recommends those training to be Minnesota public school teachers must repudiate our cherished American dream. This “Task Group” even recommends teacher candidates adopt its party line that America is “an oppressive hellhole: racist, sexist and homophobic.” Teachers must harbor hatred and resentment for...

As a new School of Ed student hoping to become an English teacher, I'm perfectly used to left-wing academic claptrap. I've already suffered through four years of it as an liberal-arts literature-major undergraduate. Deconstructionism and Derrida ruled the day. But now I'm with the School of Education folks and it's a rather different strain of pseudo-Marxist hogwash. The problem is this: with the Literary Liberals, it was just a zoo of academic dimwits up in the ivory tower babbling to each other. These Education Liberals are the ones teaching the people who will be teaching the children of America; they...

Teaching for “social justice” is a cruel hoax on disadvantaged kids.In 1980, Bill Ayers and his partner Bernardine Dohrn came up from the underground—the Weather Underground, that is. It had been a wild ride for the Bonnie and Clyde of the sixties New Left. They first went into combat during the 1969 “Days of Rage” in Chicago, smashing storefront windows and assaulting police officers and city officials in the fantasy that they were aiding their Vietnamese allies by “bringing the war back home.” They spent the next few years planting bombs at government buildings around the country, including in restrooms...