"Social justice" assault

Sol Stern of City Journal wrote a lengthy and troubling report for frontpagemag.com on growing leftist indoctrination in public schools and ed schools under the "social justice" label. (Teaching for “Social Justice” -- The Leftist Assault on America’s Public Schools).

Publicly funded institutions should not be used as a vehicle for someone's political passions.

From the introduction:

Among all the ailments that America’s public schools face, one of
the least known but most menacing is the effort by the radical left
to bully present and prospective teachers into using their classrooms
to indoctrinate students in the anti-American and anti-democratic
ideology that goes under the name of “teaching for social justice.” This movement has already achieved some of its aims, as the proliferation
of social justice themed schools in many of our nation’s school districts shows. The teaching for social justice movement threatens not only the children who are targeted for leftist political brainwashing, but it undermines whatever is left of the common democratic ideal of American public education. If the social justice educators achieve their objectives, more and more parents are bound to lose confidence in the public schools. Without parental support there is no public in public education.

Political litmus test for math teacher

A Chicago public school is seeking a math teacher who needs to have a "social justice background" (whatever that is) of all things to qualify. Political indoctrination at taxpayer expense.

Cluster/Area 04/25
School Name/Address Greater Lawndale / Little Village School for Social Justice
3021 S. Kostner
Chicago, IL 60623 (or GSR #37)
Grade or Subject Mathematics
Certificate Requirements (Type 09) 6-12 w/Mathematics Endorsement

Other Information: Progressive educators with social justice background. Must be willing to create alternative assessments and work collaboratively.
School uses IMP curriculum.

UPDATE: See Darren's analysis of social justice math in the Comment section.

Small is radical left

The promise of the small-schools movement was to create manageable, cozy entities as an alternative to the mammoth high-school jungles. Now it turns out that small schools are a vehicle for the implementation of a radical left agenda.

See, for example, this mission statement from a new small school being set up in Chicago that goes by the inspiring name of UPLIFT:

MISSION: Our mission is to continue to adapt and align our curriculum so that it is relevant, student-centered and adheres to the highest national standards. We will transform service delivery so that the theme of social justice is embedded in all subject areas.

Perhaps none of this is surprising since the father of the movement is none other than an SDS (Weathermen) fugitive turned Distinguished Professor of Education at the University of Illinois, Chicago.

Examples of other small schools turned into radical indoctrination centers abound as chronicled by Sol Stern.

Kozol made him do it

Sol Stern discusses how a quasi-official pedagogy permeating pre-collegiate education promotes political indoctrination:

At least the higher education professoriate denies that it favors using the classroom as a political bully pulpit. By contrast, the K-12 public school establishment has adopted a quasi-official pedagogy that encourages the classroom teacher to shape students’ beliefs on controversial issues like race, gender, sexual preference, and American foreign policy.

The documentation on this is so extensive that Jay Bennish might have a pretty good Nurenberg defense: “my union and my professional teacher association made me do it.”

For example, the National Education Association, the larger of the two national teacher unions, supports “the movement toward self-determination by American Indians/Alaska natives” and believes these designated victim groups should control their own education. It believes that all schools should designate separate months to celebrate Black History, Hispanic Heritage, Native American Indian Heritage, Asian/Pacific Heritage, Women’s History, Lesbian and Gay History. This nearly takes up the entire school calendar, leaving scant time for American history – or Geography, the subject that Mr. Bennish was supposed to be teaching when he went off on Bush and Bush’s Amerikkka.

After 9/11, the NEA posted guidelines on how teachers should discuss with their students the terrorist attack on our homeland. It was filled with multicultural psychobabble and stressed the need for children to be tolerant and to respect all cultures – while hardly saying a word about the fact that the country was at war with a vicious enemy out to destroy our tolerant society. The document came so close to apologizing for the 9/11 attack that a public outcry ensued, and the union was forced to remove the teacher guidelines from its website.

NEA-affiliated teacher organizations, such as the National Council of the Social Studies and the National Council of Teachers of English, carry on the political struggle by training teachers to focus inordinate attention in the classroom on issues of “diversity.” The NCSS believes that academic history – which some of its leaders have disparaged as "pastology" – is elitist and irrelevant. The organization has successfully lobbied state education departments to require little or no history. Instead, it has filled the schools with a hodgepodge of "global studies," "cultural studies," and "peace studies" that present all cultures and civilizations as equal in value.

If NCSS had its way, American education’s entire system would reflect a race- and gender-centered pedagogy. The organization's official policy paper, "Curriculum Guidelines for Multicultural Education," is one of the scariest documents in American education today, going far beyond the demand that social studies curricula reflect the grievances of a rainbow coalition of ethnic and racial groups. In the tone of a commissar's lecture at a political reeducation camp, the NCSS exhorts teachers, administrators, and other school employees to think and act multiculturally during every moment of the school day, lest they become accomplices of American culture's invisible but omnipresent racism. Teachers are instructed to scrutinize every aspect of the school environment – from classroom teaching styles and the pictures on the walls to the foods served in the lunchroom and the songs sung in the school assemblies – to be sure they reflect "multicultural literacy."

At the heart of the NCSS paper lies a fundamentally racist assumption: "[T]he instructional strategies and learning styles most often favored in the nation's schools," the guidelines declare, "are inconsistent with the cognitive styles, cultural orientations, and cultural characteristics of some groups of students of color." These students flourish under "cooperative teaching techniques" rather than the "competitive learning activities" that work for white kids.

We are left with this Orwellian conclusion by the Social Studies group: "Schools should recognize that they cannot treat all students alike or they run the risk of denying equal educational opportunity to all persons."

Tales out of ed school

While going through ed school I had the dubious pleasure of encountering postmodernism and "critical pedagogy" on several occasions. One such occasion was a course required for middle grades endorsement. The only book used in the course was called Affirming Middle Grades Education edited by Carl W. Walley and W. Gregory Gerrick (Allyn and Bacon).

A nebulous title like that does not bode well and indeed the book is about all kinds of things except academic achievement. You'll find chapter headings and topics like Middle Grades Teacher Advisory System (this is big), Interdisciplinary and Interthematic Curriculum Designs (educationists are obsessed with interdisciplinary and thematic units, more often than not contrived), Morally Responsive Teaching, Team Teaching, Community Building...

The weirdest chapter was The Excluded Middle: Postmodern Conceptions of the Middle School. It's couched in thick postmodern jargon and obsessed with "power arrangements". It argues for a "fundamental shift away from the status quo power arrangements. The survival of the planet is at stake." Education must no longer serve "social structures" (whatever that is) and "unjust power arrangements" and embrace a "postmodern vision." The author urges that "society must be the function of education," as John Dewey and George Counts are said to have "insisted". Apparently this means that "the primary focus of education" must be the improvement of society and the creation of a "just, caring and ecologically sustainable community." Middle schools must adopt this vision or students and teachers will never be "empowered".

Schools must move away from "linear organization of curriculum on scope and sequence charts...mastering proficiency in discrete skills...memorizing officially sanctioned information (could the author mean academic subjects?)...accountability...written tests..." The author proclaims that we "have now entered a postmodern era" despite those who cling to "hegemonic schooling structures." Postmodern education "promotes diversity, understanding and a new social imagination with 'multiple points of consent.'"

What should education be about? Condemning "modern power structures." What will be "the hallmark of postmodern learning environments?" You guessed it! "Multiculturalism; eclecticism; cooperative practices; interdisciplinary experiences; community based projects; racial and gender inclusiveness; ecological and spiritual sensibilities; shared power arrangements; just economic structures that support health, nutrition and psychological well-being of all citizens..."

So education is all about welcoming some "structures" and condemning other "structures". The "structures" that education "must be prophetic" in condeming turn out to be, once again, "modern power structures."

I would have liked to learn some specifics about these nefarious "modern power structures," but apparently the author feels they are self-evident and that repeating the phrase endlessly is sufficient. This is odd since these "modern power structures" that education must not serve (how is education serving them now?) are evil incarnate and "have resulted in holocausts, genocide, starvation, ecological destruction, massive poverty, slavery, patriarchal domination, colonization, environmental degradation and other horrors of the twentieth century." They surely deserve to be described in great detail so we can recognize them and stare them in the face en masse.

The author issues this dire warning: "If education does not focus on these issues, then it is complicit in the continuing modern holocausts."

Adopt the ill-defined postmodern stew or you are a criminal!

This is some of the crap prospective teachers must endure to become "certified."

BTW, the author of this chapter is Patrick Slattery, Associate Professor of Education at Texas A&M University where he teaches "curriculum theory" and "foundations in education" among other things.