A Marxist Indoctrination of Teenagers – here? Part 1

Last Friday, I was glancing through the Pine-Richland school district e-newsletter and something caught my eye – "secretary of education to attend Symposium". I clicked through, thinking, wow, Arne Duncan will be in Gibsonia…only I didn't read very carefully, its only the PA sec. of ed. Oh well, may as well keep reading. It's called a Symposium on Ethics in Education, and says our U.S. Representative Jason Altmire will be a guest, among others. Sounds interesting, so I click through again and wow! The new-age eastern spirituality of the cover art (done in a proficient manner by a sophomore) that greeted me was a foreshadowing of things to come (see for yourself www.prsymposium.info). I let it go…for a day. Then I googled a few of the required reading books:

Immanuel Kant, The Metaphysics of Morals
Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed (chap 2)
Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics
Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
Wendell Berry, The Long Legged House
James Baker "Islam without Fear" (not referenced in any essays)

Well, I almost fell out of my chair when I found two of the "required reading" books available for free reading on the website http://www.marxist.org/, Freire and Kant. Being unable to find peace, I eventually printed out the readings (except for To Kill a Mockingbird, which I recall reading in HS), and also the 160 or so pages of essays written by the best and brightest students of Pine-Richland.

Here is what I found. No one used James Baker's work at all. The majority of papers used Kant, Aristotle and Freire. No one seemed to know that they were reading opinions, that these were these men's personal views, no matter how high in esteem the school and certain left-leaning persons hold them. Many used John Dewey's book, Democracy in Education, - Dewey was recently profiled in The New Republic as one of the "Four Horsemen" of progressivism, and here is an interesting note:

Finally, Dewey arguably did more than any other reformer to repackage progressive social theory in a way that obscured just how radically its principles departed from those of the American founding. Like Ely and many of his fellow progressive academics, Dewey initially embraced the term "socialism" to describe his social theory. Only after realizing how damaging the name was to the socialist cause did he, like other progressives, begin to avoid it. In the early 1930s, accordingly, Dewey begged the Socialist party, of which he was a longtime member, to change its name. "The greatest handicap from which special measures favored by the Socialists suffer," Dewey declared, "is that they are advanced by the Socialist party as Socialism. The prejudice against the name may be a regrettable prejudice but its influence is so powerful that it is much more reasonable to imagine all but the most dogmatic Socialists joining a new party than to imagine any considerable part of the American people going over to them." (from the article "John Dewey and the Philosophical Refounding of America" by Tiffany Jones Miller on National Review http://nrd.nationalreview.com/article/?q=OTY0MjA1YzVjNjVkOTViMzM5M2Q5M2Y0ODk0ODc0MmM=)

One student used Friedrich Nietzsche extensively as a source of inspiration. A couple of her shining moments are as follows:

• "More simply explained, institutions of society, religion in particular, seek to destroy the very characteristics which dominate humans and human nature, and instead intend to replace them with unachievable ideals of perfection."
• Quotes Whichcote from Michael Gill's book: "…if we would just follow our true nature we would live as we should." Oh really? She also did not like the Catholic church or Calvinism, apparently.

She also quotes Enlightenment philosopher David Hume, another star in the http://www.marxist.org/ Encyclopedia of Marxism, as well as Kant and Freire.
The next author's main source is Aldous Huxley's Brave New World.
One kid writes: "philosopher Georg Hegel". Ouch. Here is what my new favorite source says about Georg: "The greatest philosopher of "German Idealism," theorist of modern dialectics and the most important influence on Marx and Engels and essential to Marxism." (http://www.marxists.org/archive/index.htm)
One kid actually studied Adam Smith's work The Wealth of Nations, but he concluded that it had an overall negative effect on ethics.
One girl, who did well in using the Bible as a source of ethics, mentioned that "An example of an unethical law or government would be one where the people are oppressed and cannot make decisions about their own life without going through the government." Later she says, ironically, "Teachers must be careful not to let their own opinions get in the way when educating children about ethics." Amen.
I could go on and on, but the fact is that one worldview is basically conveyed across the essays that I read, and that is secular humanism.
So I questioned the teacher in charge of the Symposium:
Hi Mr. XXX,
I had seen the announcement for the Symposium on Education in the announcements on Friday and have a few questions. Is this event open to the public? Will the video be shown on PRTV?
I also have some concerns with the subject matter. the artwork on the home page is excellent, but it certainly represents eastern or pagan spirituality (it did not strike me as Greek, which may flow with the idea of a symposium, but as a goddess in a Hindu worship pose and a triangular labyrinth). Even more disconcerting is the fact that I can find two of the required readings on the website marxist.org (Paulo Freire and Immanual Kant). Presenting these authors as credible sources of the viewpoint on "Ethical Considerations for the Twenty-First Century" is simply unfathomable to me. Can you explain these choices?
At another time, I would like to explore last year's writings - being a left-brain person with a left-brain child, I find it troubling that the schools concentrate entirely on the attributes of the right-brain individuals as the entire future of our society.
Sincerely,
He replied:

Due to the number of concerns that you bring up, I think it would be appropriate for us to discuss this face to face. I have students working with myself and Mrs. xxxxx after school on Thursday and Friday in room xx. That way you can speak with both of us. Please let me know when you would like to meet.

Of course a meeting precludes putting your views in writing. Well, we met yesterday. I learned that the symposium was only open to students in honors/pre-AP or Advanced Placement (AP) classes, it involves about 150 students, and it included English, Social Studies and Science classes. It is open to the public. Participation was optional except for at least some classes of 12^th grade AP English students. The required reading list was from various teachers' suggestions. The teachers claimed these weren't Marxist authors…I told them I read the works, read the essays and found the essays agreed with these works. The students quoted more progressives as sources, and none at all disagreed except possibly the gal using the Bible as a source. I asked why use these materials, and why not provide alternative viewpoints. We discussed Freire's assertion that the "banking method" (which I prefer to call "direct instruction" or more simply, "teaching") was oppressive, but I maintained that kids do need to learn facts first, then analyze and discuss, and that it does not seem like there is much emphasis on mere memorization here anyway. Eventually the English teacher got mad and left abruptly. The other teacher did not explain the rationale behind the selection of authors, said participation was optional (except for the kids for whom it was required, apparently) and the kids were free to disagree. But no one did disagree or even seem to realize that these were opinions, and the secular humanistic worldview shone through (wow I did learn something in high school!). But when the school presents one viewpoint, and does not inform the students that this is controversial and there are other views, and does not provide sources of opposing information, and it's a view that many if not most of the parents in our conservative upper-middle class school district would find objectionable, that is not acceptable. I hope I implied they were brainwashing our best and brightest. I did remark how appalling I found the universal adoration of Dewey, she replied that public education is a prograssive idea, and I thought - but did not say - that government control of public education is one of the ten planks of Marxism. To be continued...