Originally in American Thinker, March 27, 2010.
Welcome to the machine.
What did you dream?
It’s alright, we told you what to dream.
– Roger Waters
The education machine that keeps churning out newbies conditioned in mind-blunting nonjudgmentalism has laid the groundwork for a left-wing takeover.
What reduced American education to its current state?
In part, the answer lies in cultural Marxism, a societal disease spawned by an Italian, Antonio Gramsci, in the 1920s. Gramsci preached that in order to free “oppressed” social groups, the oppressors’ beliefs must be marginalized. Because Gramsci saw one particular group — that is, traditional Christians — as oppressive, he prescribed attacking tradition in general and Christianity specifically as the solution to oppression. Gramsci denounced moral certainty and elevated moral mushiness.
Historian John Fonte observed that while traditionalists want to revitalize “objective moral truths” in order to “remoralize society,” cultural Marxists push “subordinate groups” to invent situational truths to “achieve political and cultural liberation.” Traditionalists support personal accountability. Cultural Marxists heed Gramsci’s command to politicize everything, a command followed religiously by feminists, for example. Traditionalists want to strengthen America, but cultural Marxists want “transformation.”
To observe that Gramsci’s formulation ignores the lessons of the human experience is to observe that Marxism itself sows disaster every time it’s blindly attempted. So counter to reality is cultural Marxism that believers can further the doctrine only by not discussing reality at all. Lazy thinkers posing as intellectuals have integrated cultural Marxism into the education system for nearly a century, intensifying the societal decay which lazy thinker John Dewey’s educational philosophy instigated. Marx and Dewey relentlessly reach from the grave to erode the judgment skills of America’s youth and erase consciousness of America’s beginnings.
Teachers have embraced cultural Marxism, pushing Gramsci’s notion that “the personal is the political” and hatching generation after generation of hypersensitive students who proceed to hyper-sensitize the American conversation — political correctness run amok. The education establishment has incorporated cultural Marxism into the teaching of philosophy, the arts, literature, social sciences, and even the hard sciences.
Colleges of education condition teachers to believe that only the unenlightened reject multiculturalism, “social justice,” and other twisted applications of moral relativism and moral equivalence. The “good” educator does not tolerate something as offensive as a universal moral code and knows that traditionalism, though reinforcing to America, is not a “good” thing, for America herself is not necessarily good. The compliant teacher “transforms” America one young mind at a time.
It would be tempting to dismiss as hysterical any concern over America’s transformation were it not for evidence of cultural Marxism-induced political correctness in education. But evidence there is. Educators have convinced textbook publishers to ignore common sense, encourage amoral waffling on moral questions, and stroke victim groups’ self-esteem. Hot dogs, sodas, cakes, and butter cannot be pictured in textbooks because such foods offend people who carry surplus biomass. The term “Founding Fathers,” apparently sexist, offends the highly evolved, who regard with great shame that “The Framers” were all men. References to Mount Rushmore’s graven images of pale male presidents are banned. Schools should focus kids elsewhere. But where?
Certainly not on “jungles,” which must be called “rainforests” because blacks may feel that “jungle” perpetuates an offensive stereotype.
How far will textbook publishers go to “protect” victims? The California Department of Education sets the bar. “We need to make sure that all ethnicities are represented. We need to make sure that both males and females are represented. We need to make sure that our materials cover the full gamut.”
Many educators deemphasize objectivity and the logic skills required to objectively weigh anything, instead teaching children to emotionally “process” the world through a “tolerance” filter — ideological indoctrination. It’s important to note that true conservatism is no ideology, but instead a commonsense way of observing and dealing with reality. The American conservative refuses to weaken individual freedoms for the sake of a collective and promotes the free-market system which fostered the most free, innovative, and prosperous society ever. Real conservatives defend capitalism as moral.
But to the left, cloaked within the “progressive” movement which has been attacking America since the early 1900s, Western society and capitalism mark the main battlefront. Within progressivism hides cultural Marxism, which attacks minds not only through corrupted textbooks, but also through more insidious channels.
In a class called [requires registration] “Chemistry of Bling,” Chicago students studied precious metals and “the political, economic, and social consequences of the diamond trade.” The journal Education Next reported [requires registration] an example of cultural Marxism in which the curriculum editor for Rethinking Schools described “social-justice” as “teaching kids to question whomever [sic] happens to hold the reins of power at a particular moment.” The organization distributes articles like “‘I Thought This U.S. Place Was Supposed To Be About Freedom': Young Latinas Engage in Mathematics and Social Change to Save Their School.” It is within the scope of typical behavior for supremely brainwashed zealots to use anti-Americanism and corrupted math to effect “social change.” Pentagon bomber and Obama associate William Ayers heavily influences education with his ideas on “social justice.” Teachers and teachers’ colleges alike eagerly embrace Professor Ayers.
Along with the philosophy of John Dewey, cultural Marxism constitutes a currency traded within the education profession. Ayers and other left-dogmatists spread the currency like a virus throughout universities, infecting teachers with Deweyism and cultural Marxism without regard for how the ideologies sicken America. Teachers carry the virus into elementary, middle, and high schools, to inoculate the children of America and guarantee the spread of a cultural disease called progressivism.