Union Teachers Push for Marx in the Classroom

Posted by Tina

Sarah Knopp, a Los Angeles teachers union leader (in the Tax the Rich shirt) and Megan Behrent a New York City teacher affiliated with the International Socialist Organization, explain how to push Marxism in the public school classroom.

Some Americans think Marxist indoctrination in the classroom is harmless!

Do you think these women represent is a small group that is harmless? Think again. These are activists; their first love is not teaching but indoctrination toward a socialist utopia! They seem to believe that pushing Marx in the classroom will lead students to become to critical thinkers when just the opposite is occurring. They seem to have little knowledge of the heritage of their country. It appears they have no respect for our republic or for the freedoms they enjoy because it is a constitutional republic. They have no respect for the people who built the schools where they teach or for the people that pay taxes for their big salaries and perks. They are not servants of the people but indoctrination activists. They believe that justice, under laws devised by man, are superior to rights granted by a higher authority.

This element in our schools systems is not harmless! It is local and made up of activists that are organized and committed. Their aim is the destruction of our free capitalist republican system…a complete transformation of the country. They, like all socialist, dictator-loving dupes, will use our children to accomplish their goals.

In my research I came across this page, I assume posted by a teacher/tutor, in which we find two book reviews: “The Classroom Without Reason,” by Douglas Campbell and “Courage to Teach: Exploring the Inner Landscape of a Teacher’s Life”, by Parker J. Palmer.

Mr. Campbell identifies some important reasons why schooling is in the bad shape it is today: too many teachers and professors regard teaching as “moral training,” i.e., as pushing their own point of view on students; and too many teachers and professors train students in irrationalism: reason to them is evil or to be avoided, but going on emotions or ‘gut feelings’ or what the student is told is good.

Ask yourself what it accomplishes, if students cannot think for themselves. In what periods of history do we find people who cannot reason and think independently? Is such a state of personal identity and of social mores values we should strive to achieve? Who does it benefit, if students cannot think for themselves? What do people use for guidance, when they cannot use reason to guide themselves individually by facts and reality?

In “The Classroom Without Reason” by Douglas Campbell (April 27, 2009 on the National Association of Scholars Website), Mr. Campbell — lecturer with the Department of Recreation and Parks Management at California State University at Chico, CA — said, after giving some examples of discussions he’s had with students in which the students would be unable to articulate a reasoned viewpoint, but were instead emotionalistic:

Where does such [irrational, emotionalistic — MG] thinking in university students come from? The answer is that it comes from the university itself. [And from primary and secondary schools!! — MG] As further evidence I offer the following example. Recently, I completed a required program of instruction that was intended to improve my teaching. Among the required readings were two particularly disturbing books presented as critical to our personal and professional development. The first, Becoming a Critically Reflective Teacher, by Stephen D. Brookfield, stated that our job is “to increase the amount of love and justice in the world” and “change the world.”[1] Brookfield described faculty with an “anti-collectivist orientation” as “obstructionist dinosaurs standing in the way of desirable innovation and reform”(249).

…
Now that Brookfield has set the stage by insisting we all believe, on faith, in the existence of a conspiracy causing oppression and mass disenfranchisement and that all things are not as they seem, he tells us that the nonspecific they are overworking us, demanding unfair accountability and forcing us unfairly to respond to market and economic realities. Brookfield advocates for what he calls a “critical pedagogy” (208), whose foundations he credits to Karl Marx, as “a means by which students are helped to break out of oppressive ways of thinking and acting that seem habitual but that have been imposed by the dominant culture” (209). Brookfield goes on to assert that education cannot be practiced in a capitalist economic system–implying that universities need a collectivist environment to function properly and that the foundation of the conspiracy is capitalism itself. Finally, he encourages faculty to take the role of “agent provocateur” and urges readers to develop “tactical astuteness and cunning” (41) instead of honesty and candor. Brookfield’s fantasy conspiracy and his goal of increasing the amount of love and justice in the world now become the justification for engaging in an actual conspiracy and dishonesty in which the end justifies the means. (emphasis mine)

The second book, Courage to Teach: Exploring the Inner Landscape of a Teacher’s Life, by Parker J. Palmer, was no better.[2] Palmer tells us “to correct our excessive regard for the powers of intellect”(6). He goes on to attack all philosophies that insist on the primacy of the rational thought process, and he blames rational thought for totalitarianism, violence, and every social ill imaginable. Palmer tells us that we must put our feelings on at least an equal–preferably–dominant position to logic and rational thought processes.

The obvious problem with this is that when feelings are emphasized over logic in problem solving we cease to think rationally and instead devolve to rationalizing our feelings. Feeling and emotions are natural, but should flow from the rational examination of facts. Then the resulting feelings are justified and may even be called logical and worthy of respect. Education should be the triumph of facts, logic, and reason over unsupportable emotions.

I can vouch for that. I saw exactly that type of thing and those types of books when I was getting my teacher’s credentials from the University of Houston in the 90s. And in reading what is going on in modern education, I have learned about more of the same — for example, William Ayers is for “social justice,” which is merely a euphemism for Marxism and for the irrationalism that Mr. Campbell discusses above. I kept quiet mostly, so I could get my credentials and get out. I was “threatened” in writing once (a professor saying he thought I should not be a teacher, and if I contested the low grade he gave me, he’d speak against me) and — in getting my B.S. in Math and my B.A. in Philosophy at UT, Austin — I had a few professors “threaten” to fail me for speaking an alternative to their indoctrination (‘do not oppose me, or you will be failed’).

Would you rather your child or grandchild had the ability to think or to emote? Would you rather they had opportunity or equality of outcome in their futures?