Contributors

Tuesday, July 12, 2005

The University of Propaganda and Ignorance

Well, I guess having control over the Executive, Judicial, Legislative Branches and the press isn’t enough. Being the paranoid always-a-victim bunch that they are I guess the Right felt it was high time they started getting their message out in yet another area of our life: the education system.

It seems that conservatives see bias in the school systems in our country and have decided to get their message into the classrooms. We all know that college campuses have seen many a battle go back and forth regarding alternating viewpoints.

But now K-12 is being targeted by the Right…..that’s correct folks….I am not making this up: K-12!!! A recent article in the Christian Science Monitor discusses how they are stopping this liberal indoctrination process.

Currently there are 14 states that have bills under consideration that would allow students to file grievances if they perceive political bias in the classroom. This is an important battle, according to proponents, because younger students are more impressionable. They are concerned about multicultural studies, particularly those that deal with the Muslim faith.

The article goes on to detail how some right thinking students would like to offer an opposing viewpoint when their instructor says that the Iraq War is about empire building and oil. Another student would like to be able to share his web site, which shows beheadings, with his school to prove that the Muslim faith is evil. The article ends with a vision of the future of schools: liberally leaning schools and conservative leaning schools that each teaches their own version of history.

Each time I write one of these I always think I have seen it all. I guess I never will see it all because there is no end in sight to the extreme level of bullshit that the right is heaping on people. It makes the manure scene in the Back to the Future movies look like a sudsy bath. Isn’t a 7 year old supposed to be learning the basics of Math and English? Does s/he really have to hear that Democrats hate America and freedom in general?

They are questioning the WRONG people. They are basically saying that we shouldn’t question our leaders but question the people that are providing us with an education thus removing any sense of intelligence from our culture leaving only autonomatons who blindly listen and never question our government.

Does anyone else out there see where we are heading? Sure the folks on the right will say that they will FINALLY get their say now. But are they really getting their say or just disseminating propaganda? We live in an age now where nothing can be questioned without being accused of being a criminal, a communist, a pedophile, a spy, or an anti-American hater of democracy.

And yet all vestiges of our democracy are being slowly removed from us and no one seems to care. Actually, many of them are cheering for it! I guess when I send my daughter to kindergarten this September I better make sure she is carrying all the appropriate literature with her. You know, the magazines and newspapers that tell say that all is well with US in the world.