This from a University of Minnesota campus:
In a report compiled last summer, the Race, Culture, Class and Gender Task Group at the U’s College of Education and Human Development recommended that aspiring teachers there must repudiate the notion of "the American Dream" in order to obtain the recommendation for licensure required by the Minnesota Board of Teaching. Instead, teacher candidates must embrace — and be prepared to teach our state’s kids — the task force’s own vision of America as an oppressive hellhole: racist, sexist and homophobic.
The task group is part of the Teacher Education Redesign Initiative, a multiyear project to change the way future teachers are trained at the U’s flagship campus. The initiative is premised, in part, on the conviction that Minnesota teachers’ lack of "cultural competence" contributes to the poor academic performance of the state’s minority students. Last spring, it charged the task group with coming up with recommendations to change this. In January, planners will review the recommendations and decide how to proceed.
The report advocates making race, class and gender politics the "overarching framework" for all teaching courses at the U. It calls for evaluating future teachers in both coursework and practice teaching based on their willingness to fall into ideological lockstep.
Just confess your own bigotry and you are on your way to “cultural competence.” And just in case you are one of those pesky people who believe in liberty and free inquiry and you actually get through the program, you’d better be careful not to be too loud about it. Otherwise you’ll be sent back for re-education.
Educators in our left-wing dominated college campuses are usually quite clear about their basic worldview, and their desire to inculcate it into their students. But this takes that to a whole other level. And just think, only 50 million kids are enrolled in K-12 education in America and have the privilege of being taught by teachers who have themselves been taught by teachers who hate America.
–Mike D’Virgilio
Robert, you are spot on. The problem isn’t necessarily the ideology of professors, but the ideological agenda, e.g. “diversity”, too many try to push. But when a profession like academia becomes in effect monolithic, liberty and true intellectual diversity will suffer, as in indeed it has.
Keep in mind a further deleterious consequence of this leftist hegemony in academia: there are 50 million children in k-12 education in American, and they are forced to read textbooks written primarily academic leftists. This might not be so bad if a solid portion of teachers shared a love of the nation’s founding values, but most are either apolitical or lean left.
You nail the ultimate solution: conservatives need to enter this, as well as other cultural influence professions, and join the dialogue. To that end we’ve started an organization called The Culture Alliance. Below each post at The American Culture is a link to sign up for our Weekly Update. In addition to great weekly content, you’ll be tied into a growing movement of people calling for conservatives and others on the right to enter the cultural influence profession. Please join us.
How much do you want to bet these are the very same people who are constantly caterwauling about “academic freedom” whenever teachers of their own particular ideological persuasion are challenged?
As a former teacher, I actually believe in academic freedom, tempered with a responsibility toward objectivity. And as a former student, I have benefited from the professors and teachers I have known who were Marxists, libertarians, mainstream Democrats (however you classify those these days), and maybe even one or two that could be called conservatives.
We are all aware that the ratio in academia already skews heavily toward the left. But I actually don’t have a problem with that. A good professor who takes his vocation seriously invites debate and encourages a diversity of opinions in the classroom; my above examples all did that. If conservatives really want to have a voice in this world, they need to enter the profession and join in the dialogue.
What I find ominous is that recommendations like this–often cloaked in the guise of improving “diversity”–effectively close the door on REAL diversity. Not to mention academic freedom. I am heartened that it is only a recommendation at this point. Disheartened that it got that far.
I think the report quoted got the name of the multiyear project wrong. Shouldn’t it be the “Teacher Re-Education Initiative?” That, at least, would express some truth in its advertising.